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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-200th-episode-live-show).

**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

**Craig Mazin:** My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is the 200th episode of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

We are here live, recording this episode for the whole world to listen to. I was thinking back that our very first live episode was in a pretty small room. That was in Austin, right? That was the first live show.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think so. That’s right.

**John:** Since then we’ve done shows in Austin, Los Angeles, New York City.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** This time we’re doing it live for the entire world to hear at once.

**Craig:** Oh, my…

**John:** Yeah, I know. It’s daunting.

**Craig:** And we’re live streaming it, right?

**John:** Yeah, we are. There are 198 people as we recorded this show who are listening to this show as we are recording it.

**Craig:** And so while we talk, they can give us feedback in real-time —

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So they can complain about me instantly.

**John:** Absolutely. Keith Vacario says, “Hello world.”

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** So that’s absolutely the kind of thing to do.

**Craig:** God, you know what the funny thing is, you know, we watch things like this all the time. But when you do it, suddenly you feel like you’re the first person to ever do it.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Like, “Oh, my god, I’m flying a plane in the air. Look at me.”

**John:** It’s amazing. We’ve landed on the moon.

**Craig:** Whoa!

**John:** And there’s no better person to be in the cockpit with us as we’re trying to attempt this moon landing than our own, very first guest, our Joan Rivers, Aline Brosh McKenna. Welcome Aline.

**Craig:** Yay!

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** Yay! You had to say cockpit.

**John:** I had to say cockpit.

**Aline:** You had to work blue.

**John:** I had to work blue. I had to bring it back to phallic humor.

**Aline:** [laughs]

**John:** Aline Brosh McKenna, you were with us at our last live show. And at our last live show, you described this TV show that you were trying to make with Rachel Bloom. I’m so sorry it didn’t work out. But we’ll get in to all of that stuff. We’re going to talk about TV. We’re going to talk about whether the quality of a movie affects its long-term prospects at the box office.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And we’re going to answer a whole bunch of listener questions including the ones that people are typing right now —

**Craig:** Right now.

**John:** Into the little field.

**Aline:** Type, type, type, type, type.

**Craig:** Type your questions. This is it. This is your chance.

**John:** This is the show. Aline, when we saw you last you brought Rachel Bloom with you and she sang for us and she described the show called Crazy Ex-Girlfriend that was —

**Aline:** What month was that? It was Christmas, right?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It was the Christmas show.

**Craig:** Yeah, it was right before New Year’s.

**Aline:** Right. So what was happening at — do you want me to tell you the —

**John:** Tell the story.

**Aline:** Okay, so what happened at Christmas was we were feeling pretty good about the show’s chances. We had just delivered the cut. We were doing the show for Showtime and they’d been super encouraging. We had a great experience with Showtime. And they were kind of saying the things that you say when you want to take the girl to the prom. It seemed like they were really interested in doing it. And then in January, we kind of started to hear, well, in Christmas, we had thought we would already be hearing from them and we kind of didn’t. But we kind of thought, well, maybe he’s going to call us later.

**Craig:** Maybe they’re busy. Maybe they’re at church.

**Aline:** Yeah, they’re on vacation.

**John:** So, like, Showtime wasn’t ready to leave his wife.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Aline:** Showtime was not showing up with the corsage. And, you know, I always say that in show business good news happens really quickly and the rest of it doesn’t. Anything that doesn’t happen quickly is basically bad news.

**John:** So when did you have a sense that things were not going to happen?

**Aline:** January.

**John:** Oh, really?

**Aline:** So in January I started to feel like, “Hmm, this is taking an awfully long time,” and I just could tell, you know, having done this for a while, you can tell when there is that level of enthusiasm in phone calls and it kind of wasn’t there and we had had such a good experience with them that it was one of those breakups that was like everybody really liked each other. We’d had a great time.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** They were really sad. We were really sad. It ended up not being a good fit for them kind of tonally and brand-wise. And it was kind of great and difficult because I understood where they were coming from because the show ended up being a little bit more sunny and upbeat than it had seemed on the page. On the page, it had seemed very edgy I think. And Rachel is sort of a pretty naturally cheery, upbeat, lovable person. And try though we did to squelch that, we failed.

**John:** You could not break her spirit.

**Aline:** And we could not. So what happened after that was that we all went to what I have now come to see as one of the stages of grief when you work on a TV show is we’re shopping it to other networks.

**John:** Now, this is about the time that I ran in to Rachel Bloom because she and I were randomly both flying to Boston. We were seated next to each other on a Virgin Atlantic plane to go to Boston. And so, I had not seen her since the live show. I was like, “Hey, Rachel, what’s up with your show?” And she was at exactly the stage of like, I guess, it is past denial to bargaining?

**Aline:** But having to run into a lot of people who’s like, they have a busted pilot. And you say, “What are you doing?” It’s like, “We’re waiting to hear from Epics.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Is that a thing? Is Epics a place?

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s a real place.

**Craig:** What is that? [laughs]

**Aline:** So what you come to find out which I didn’t know because I actually haven’t worked in television that much is that so many people do programming.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And our joke with my friend Kate who is our executive at CBS is that we were right at the point when we were thinking someone was going to call and say, “You know what, Eggo is doing programming now and it’ll be on your toaster and you’ll be in the morning making your Eggo and there’ll be a TV show.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And we would have been like, “We’re perfect for them. We’re perfect for toasters and waffles,” and you got to this place where, honestly, they were places that I had never heard of that were considering the show anyway.

**John:** So at this point, you have the show.

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** If you have the cut.

**Aline:** We have a pilot.

**John:** You have the cut.

**Aline:** We have a pilot and we have episode two and episode three written.

**John:** Oh, great. So, you are showing them this pilot that you’ve cut and it’s cut sort of for Showtime. They’re seeing that pilot and they’ve seen these two other scripts. They could theoretically come into the room with you if you guys wanted to talk.

**Aline:** Exactly.

**John:** But what was the conversation? Was it just your agent sending it out or were you doing — ?

**Aline:** They were sending the link and the scripts to people and we got a variety of reactions. And I guess it’s sort of like putting a movie in turnaround. We got a couple of instances where somebody liked it and then they would try and bump it up to someone else.

**Craig:** To the next level of approval.

**Aline:** Right. But TV is like — people are developing very specific products for their network and what they think is their brand. And so they don’t really, you know, it’s rare for shows to move. And so, you know, as —

**John:** And yet there are examples of like shows that did move and became giant breakout hits. CSI is I think the most classic example.

**Aline:** Was it shot though?

**Craig:** Who let CSI go?

**Aline:** No, it wasn’t. I don’t think it was shot though. I think it was a script.

**John:** I thought CSI was shot. I mean, I may be misremembering.

**Craig:** How can they let that go?

**John:** Isn’t that crazy?

**Aline:** Somebody should tell us right now live.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Absolutely. Someone who can do research live, tell us where CSI was actually shot for and who picked it up.

**Craig:** It’s about time these people paid us back.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** There are a lot of instances of scripts being picked up by other networks but not that many of things being shot because people in TV in particular want to feel like they put their stamp on it.

**Craig:** So where did it end up?

**Aline:** So what happened was in the meantime while we were shopping it, I had gotten very into this show called Jane the Virgin.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** On the CW because I had several friends and a bunch of them are our mutual friends who insisted that I should watch it and that it was great. And then I would love it. So I started watching Jane the Virgin and I was simultaneously obsessed with it and sort of broken-hearted because I felt like even though it’s not like our show, there’s something about it in spirit. I felt like it reminded me of our show.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** So I called —

**Craig:** More wine?

**Aline:** Here is your half glass.

**Craig:** Thank you. Here is my half glass.

**Aline:** So I called our executive and I said, “You know, I know we’re only going to cable places but do you think there’s a possibility that we could send this to CW, what do you think?” So he sent it to CW. I’m going to make this story shorter. We sent it to the CW. They really liked it. We had a meeting.

**Craig:** CW is Warner Bros.

**Aline:** So CW is half CBS and half Warner Bros.

**Craig:** Got it.

**Aline:** It used to be UPN and the WB. They merged into The CW. They’ve recently gotten a lot of shows that are very popular and critically acclaimed. Two of them are superhero shows, Berlanti does —

**John:** Flash and Arrow.

**Aline:** Flash and Arrow.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And then they have Jane the Virgin which has done really well and won a Peabody and its lead won a Golden Globe.

**Craig:** Got it.

**Aline:** So they’re doing cool stuff. So they expressed interest in our show. They really liked it. They really dug it. The people there really kind of got what it was. We had a meeting with them and they said, “Can you do an expanded version of it?” So what we did was we took the existing pilot and we — in the script stage, not in the edit. You know, we just wrote what our scenes would be. And what I didn’t realize is that a network — how much longer — okay, so a cable half hour and a network hour, what do you think the time difference is?

**Craig:** A cable half hour, my guess is it’s probably like 26 minutes. And a network hour is like 43 minutes.

**Aline:** So the cable half hour is like, it can be 30, 31, even 32 minutes.

**Craig:** Oh, like a real half hour.

**Aline:** Yeah, a real half hour because they don’t have commercials.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And the network hours can be like anywhere from 41 to 44 minutes, something like that.

**Craig:** I wasn’t that far off.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** You weren’t that far off, yeah.

**Aline:** So basically —

**Craig:** I barely know what TV is.

**Aline:** Right. So basically we had to add — we have to add about 10 minutes.

**Craig:** 10 minutes.

**Aline:** 10 minutes.

**Craig:** No big deal.

**Aline:** So it wasn’t double, which some people thought we were doubling the size of our script.

**Craig:** You know by the way the story about Game of Thrones? Not to interrupt.

**Aline:** Yeah, go ahead.

**Craig:** But I’m interrupting.

**Aline:** Interrupt.

**Craig:** Dan and Dave did their first show and they were having this problem because they weren’t hitting their time, you know. Like they had, basically, they had done like, I don’t know, they had shot now like nine episodes and they just weren’t timing out. They needed more time. So they had to set aside a week where they just wrote extra scenes to put in for all of the shows.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** And then they just shot a bunch of scenes of like people talking to pad out the shows, but in a weird way those scenes where it was like it’s just two people talking were some of the best scenes of the first season.

**Aline:** That people enjoyed the most.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because it was just what people wanted to see.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They wanted to see two interesting people talking. But it’s like the whole timing thing is a fascinating thing.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I know that Derek and Chicago Fire, they are constantly dealing with the breaks and all that stuff.

**Aline:** Right. And so it’s a different format. It’s also a different format because you don’t break obviously on a cable half hour.

**Craig:** Correct.

**Aline:** You don’t break. So we had to build in breaks. We did that. We lengthened it. And here is what happened which is funny, I think, and interesting for writers. So that was in April, we had that meeting. And they said, “We’re interested and can you expand it? And we are thinking about maybe you for off season development,” which I had never heard of before. And we were like, “Okay.” And they said, “But we don’t need to have the script back until later, until after we’ve finished with our development.” And so, Rachel and I had actually started working on something else and we sat down in my office and she goes, “You know what? Let’s just do it. Let’s just do the script. Let’s just expand the script and hand it in and just be done with it. We’ll know it’s done before we do something else.”

**Craig:** Smart girl.

**Aline:** Jew.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Jewish. That’s a Jewish mind at work.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** Are we going to be in trouble if we talk about Jewish people like that?

**John:** No, I think it’s absolutely fine.

**Craig:** Because we’re Jewish.

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** Yeah, you guys can talk about anything.

**Aline:** We can do that.

**John:** I’ll stay silent here.

**Craig:** John, what are your opinions about the Jews?

**John:** As a German I feel —

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Aline:** So we did it. We turned it in. And I think it showed them that there was a show there that had some viability that didn’t involve a ton of changes.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** We had profanity in the Showtime show and we had some sexy stuff but we were able to pull it back pretty easily. And so, what ended up happening was we went from being like something they were going to consider offseason to midseason to a show they were putting on the fall schedule.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Which is, congratulations. So you are now a show on The CW fall schedule which is nuts.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s awesome.

**Aline:** And we’re going to be the lead in to Jane the Virgin —

**John:** Great.

**Aline:** Which is like a Cinderella story. I mean, it’s just like a happy thing for me because I am such an obsessed huge fan of that show.

**Craig:** Well, fantastic.

**John:** So, I think you’re allowed to say that you’ve sent me the link to see the show and it’s amazing. I just love it.

**Craig:** I’ve watched a bunch of it. Now, how did I watch a bunch of it?

**Aline:** You watched a — there’s like a six-minute trailer.

**Craig:** That’s what I watched.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I watched a six-minute trailer and it was —

**John:** So I watched the whole show and it’s just great.

**Craig:** Okay, I’m not surprised because I love her. I love you. I love musicals. But also, in watching that trailer it really reminded of that segment from 500 Days of Summer that Marc Webb shot —

**Aline:** Yes.

**Craig:** Where Joseph Gordon-Levitt turns his problems and his joy into this outside Busby Berkeley dance number.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Oh, here’s the thing that I did not know which is that Marc Webb could go toe-to-toe with you on the musical theatre stuff.

**Craig:** Oh, I have no doubt.

**Aline:** He knows absolutely so much about musical theatre.

**Craig:** But is he having coffee with Seth Rudetsky this weekend? No. I am.

**Aline:** Well, he did, though, take us to Marie’s Crisis. Do you know what Marie’s Crisis is?

**John:** No, so therefore you’re much more knowledgeable.

**Aline:** OMG. So Marie’s Crisis is this bar in the Village.

**Craig:** I don’t live in the Village. It’s not fair.

**Aline:** Well, you go to New York.

**Craig:** I did meet him in the Village.

**Aline:** And they sing show tunes.

**Craig:** Well, that sounds pretty great. But I mean, I sing show tunes in my car.

**John:** Singing show tunes in a bar is —

**Aline:** But it’s a bar filled with people and there’s a piano in the middle and he sings show tunes.

**Craig:** So what you’re telling me is there’s a gay bar in the Village? Is that what you’re telling us? Is that the big news?

**John:** [laughs]

**Aline:** I’m telling you that Marc Webb goes there and took us there.

**Craig:** I would totally go there, by the way.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Yeah. You would love it.

**Craig:** By the way, Seth Rudetsky is, if you are in Los Angeles, I’ll just give Seth a plug.

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** He’s playing Largo Saturday evening. He’s doing his Seth Rudetsky Deconstructs —

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** Broadway songs at Largo.

**Aline:** Oh, wow.

**Craig:** So go check it out.

**Aline:** I love him.

**Craig:** I’m not going to be able to make it myself, so I’m just going to have a special one on one. By the way, I talk about Seth Rudetsky like the way other people might talk about Tom Cruise.

**Aline:** Yeah. Right. [laughs]

**John:** Absolutely. [laughs]

**Craig:** Nobody cares.

**John:** You’ve named him so often that —

**Craig:** Most people don’t even know who he is.

**John:** Like Seth Rudetsky is like a —

**Aline:** I think he’s great.

**Craig:** By the way, you want to know how cool I am? I know Seth Rudetsky and people are like, “Ah, is that your rabbi or — ?” [laughs]

**John:** So let’s do some real-time follow-up. Stuart Friedel sitting off at the corner.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** Can you do a Google search through all the transcripts and see how often in johnaugust.com Seth Rudetsky shows up? For a person who’s actually not part of the show, I bet he shows up at least 10 times.

**Craig:** Stuart has leapt into action.

**John:** So —

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** You are going to be so busy.

**Aline:** So busy.

**John:** Oh, my god.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** So because you were kind of late to this whole process —

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** You had to race to get a staff together, correct?

**Aline:** Yes, yes.

**John:** You had to have a staff that could also like write songs.

**Aline:** Well, I had another friend who got a show picked up and I called her. And I said, “So what writers are you [laughs ]meeting with?”

**John:** Oh, no. [laughs]

**Aline:** And she said, “Oh, we’re done.” Because she knew from, like, weeks that they were getting picked up. So she had already staffed. So we’ve been staffing which has actually been really fun. I’ve read great people and that’s been really interesting. We do have original songs. So we’re trying to get kind of into our season early because we’re going to write — and for the first 13, we’ll have like maybe 25 songs. And Rachel is our primary songwriter.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** So, she’s the sort of the showrunner of the song staff. But she, you know, has a million ideas. So it’s fun. I mean, I think for people who listen to this show, what’s interesting is that when you’re a writer of a screenplay, you have a completely different role from being the showrunner or the executive producer of a television show. You really are a producer and writing is your sort of, I would say, your main, your core responsibility. But there’s a lot of production stuff.

And I can’t remember who said that producing is the stuff that writers do to procrastinate.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** Like making phone calls and taking meetings.

**Craig:** Right. So now it’s like they’re paying you for it.

**Aline:** And now it’s like a huge part of your job is a lot of phone calls, meetings.

**Craig:** Sure.

**Aline:** And meeting executives. We did have a —

**Craig:** You’re still going to have to write.

**Aline:** But we have a lot, a lot of writing to do. So I have people around us who really can help us, you know, get the logistics of the show going. We had an amazing, amazing line producer, Sarah Caplan, who did Lost and —

**Craig:** Jewish.

**Aline:** She’s British, though.

**Craig:** Oh, British Jewish. That’s barely Jewish.

**Aline:** So it’s interesting. She did Lost and she worked on thirtysomething. So she’s great. Anyway, we have a lot of people helping us. But it’s fun. You know, it’s a different role from being a screenwriter because as a screenwriter, your role is always mediated and mitigated through the director no matter how close you are. You’re really not the boss, unless you’re the producer, in which case you’re still not the boss.

**John:** Yeah. On the 100th episode which I just recut for like two episodes ago, we talked about this idea of like the screenwriter-plus. And we were talking about people like Simon Kinberg —

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** Who are sort of that screenwriter-plus. They are the person who’s essentially showrunning this idea of the movie.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** And now you’re going to have that firsthand experience of showrunning an actual show.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** And you will love it and it will also just drive you crazy.

**Aline:** Well, I know your experience. I remember your experience.

**John:** Yeah. So I’ve done a couple of these. And the one time we actually went to series, it was soul-crushing. But you are wiser and more mature and you have better people around you. So I think you’re going to flourish.

**Craig:** And you’re Jewish. I mean, I think it’s a huge thing.

**Aline:** [laughs] We keep going back to that.

**Craig:** I’ve got my own little series that I don’t, you know, I have yet to write anything. I still have to write the pilot. But if that happens, I would be in that position, along with our good friend and guest of the show, Carolyn Strauss.

**Aline:** Oh, right. Carolyn Strauss.

**Craig:** And, you know, I’m kind of looking forward to something like that. But it’s funny. Sometimes that, you know, even Simon who’s oftentimes the screenwriter-plus, there are probably jobs where he’s like, “No, I’m just the screenwriter.”

**John:** Yeah, absolutely.

**Craig:** It’s kind of a weird thing, you know. Like, “Oh, yeah, on this one, I’m just the — ”

**John:** I’m just the words.

**Craig:** I’m just a guy.

**Aline:** Well, something —

**Craig:** Nobody really cares. [laughs]

**Aline:** Something that’s interesting is that, you know, we talk a lot about why there aren’t more female directors. And I think that if we shot a substantial amount of movies in Los Angeles, that that would change. Because if you look at, there are so many powerful, successful female showrunners —

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And most of them shoot their shows in L.A.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** Jenji is here, Shonda’s here.

**Craig:** Shonda’s here.

**Aline:** And, you know, you can have that, you know, whatever happens no matter how many hours — and I had been on the track to direct a movie which would have taken me to Eastern Europe for months at a time. And so even though my workload here might be difficult, I’ll still be able —

**Craig:** You’re here.

**Aline:** To be here. And I think if we —

**Craig:** They have that huge complex in Santa Clarita.

**Aline:** Yes.

**Craig:** Your show is set in the Valley anyway.

**Aline:** Yeah. We’re going to shoot it —

**Craig:** Is that where you’re going to shoot it?

**Aline:** We’re not shooting in Santa Clarita, I think. But we are going to shoot in a place like that. Our show is set in West Covina. [laughs]

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** [sings] West Covina.

**Aline:** Which is like a —

**John:** California.

**Aline:** Which is like a, you know, a sort of a sun-baked California suburb. Luckily, most of Southern California looks like that.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** But I do think that if there were — it’s such a Shonda, just to keep it Jewy.

**Craig:** Oh, not Shonda Rhimes, but this is a different Shonda.

**Aline:** It’s such a Shonda —

**Craig:** That’s Yiddish for a sin.

**Aline:** That we don’t have more production here in L.A. where everybody is based. You would be —

**Craig:** I know. It’s a Shonda.

**Aline:** But wouldn’t you be? Yes.

**John:** Stuart did complete his research and found out how many mentions of Seth Rudetsky have occurred on the Scriptnotes podcast.

**Stuart Friedel:** Nine.

**Craig:** Nine.

**John:** Nine.

**Craig:** Well, now it’s up to like 20.

**John:** Exactly. We’ve mentioned Seth Rudetsky so many times.

**Craig:** Seth Rudetsky.

**John:** You’re basically his publicist.

**Craig:** Look, I would love that, you know. By the way, Seth Rudetsky [laughs] I’ll just say another thing. He has a show. It’s really, really funny, called Disaster. He’s trying to bring it to Broadway. It’s hysterical, hysterical.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So.

**John:** Broadway —

**Craig:** I will, yes.

**Aline:** You’re an uber fan.

**Craig:** I’m a huge fan.

**John:** Let us —

**Aline:** Let’s move on.

**John:** Congratulate Aline on her amazing show.

**Aline:** Thank you very much.

**Craig:** Well done, Aline.

**Aline:** Thank you.

**John:** And we’ll put a link to the trailer in the show notes so that people can —

**Aline:** Thank you. [laughs]

**John:** Our next topic is something that Stuart found. Stuart found this thing. It was a subreddit, which is talking about the relationship between a film’s quality and its box office. And so what this guy did, it was a Reddit user named tcatron565 which is like a totally Reddit name.

**Craig:** Yes. It’s the perfect statistical mean of all Reddit names.

**John:** I’m sure. It’s a subreddit called DataIsBeautiful. And he looked at the wide releases in 2013 and figured out what percentage of their total gross came from their opening weekend. And then he charted that against their audience score from Rotten Tomatoes. So he’s basically saying like, how much money did this movie make on its opening weekend versus total.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And do people like the movie. And intuitively, I think all of us here would agree that like —

**Aline:** Big multiple.

**John:** Big multiple. And so it was interesting to look through this subreddit because they didn’t have the same lingo that we would have for it. They were talking about like —

**Craig:** I loved it, by the way.

**John:** Yeah, I really loved —

**Craig:** Because I was that dork from college. I thought it was great. I actually thought that guy did a great job because first of all he picked two interesting criteria. One was that he picked the audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, not the critic ratings.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Which one would imagine probably is more relevant to determining how a movie resonates with an audience. And I also like the criteria of what percentage of the movie’s total box office was earned in the opening weekend because the theory is, okay, well, if a movie earns most of its money in its opening weekend, there was a big drop-off, it probably means there was bad word of mouth.

Now, that’s not perfectly good because there are some movies that have so much pent up demand and interest they’re always — like if a movie opens to $150 million, there’s no way it’s coming back next weekend and doing another $75 million. It’s not possible.

**John:** What’s interesting looking through this is that they didn’t have the lingo that we would have for what that was. So Aline said it right from the start. What was the multiplier?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Basically, what percentage of its total box office came from that opening weekend. So if you opened at $10 million but you made it to $100 million, you have a 10 times multiplier which is crazy.

**Craig:** That would be awesome.

**John:** That would be amazing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Almost unprecedented.

**Craig:** Right. And whereas like a 2.5 — I mean, the standard really you’re looking for is a 3 multiplier, right? That’s sort of middle of the road. And that’s exactly what he found. Roughly the average was around 3.2 or 3.3 multiplier was average.

**John:** The other thing we would talk about is what was the drop-off from first week to second week.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And we would definitely weight that based on what kind of movie it is.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And so if a prestigious art film drops off 50% in its second week —

**Craig:** Probably bad.

**John:** Doom.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But if something like, you know —

**Craig:** A horror movie.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** A horror movie, totally expect that drop-off to be 50% or more —

**Craig:** Because —

**John:** Or a giant box office, you know, it made $100 million, it’s going to drop off hugely.

**Craig:** It has to drop off. And especially with real genre pictures that appeal to teens in particular, you’re always going to get that drop-off because teens are, as we know, they’re highly motivated to see movies opening weekend. So, horror movies, broad comedies, they tend to be really frontloaded just because the nature of the audience. It doesn’t necessarily mean when all is said and done that people didn’t like the movie.

But he did a really aggressive and thorough statistical analysis. He was talking about regression to the mean. He was talking about his R-values, his R-score. I mean, there’s all this like really good stuff in there. And buried in the thing, he sort of said, I was kind of surprised how loose the correlation was.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Now, alternately, there was a very similar study that was done and posted on The Black List blog, and we’ll throw that link into the show notes. And that one I wasn’t as much of a fan of because that one, it was the same thing. On one sense, it was what percentage drop-off was — or what percentage of your total box office was your opening weekend.

But the other one was they used the Metacritic score, which as far as I’m concerned, is irrelevant. And, you know, then they charted out all these things. As far as I could tell looking through the charts —

**Aline:** What were the conclusions of the first Reddit thing?

**Craig:** Well, the conclusions of the Reddit thing was that there was a loose, a very — here’s the thing. Statistics. You can say anything you want in statistics, but it’s all about but how robust is the correlation. So if you flip a coin twice, you could say, “Well, it looks like this coin is going to come up heads all the time but it’s a very loose correlation.” So he was saying there is a loose correlation between —

**Aline:** Between the “quality” of the movie.

**Craig:** Between the audience’s affection for a movie —

**Aline:** Perceived quality, yeah.

**Craig:** And the box office multiple.

**John:** Yeah. You had sent me a link this afternoon to the second thing which is on The Black List. And what I found interesting about it is because this guy broke out movies by sort of like their total box office tier, it was useful to look at, you know, a tiny little indie movie, like the multiplier factor is really huge. When you look at the giant box office behemoths, they will make a tremendous amount of their box office that first weekend just because —

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** Of the nature of the kind of movie they are.

**Aline:** Right. So that —

**John:** So that tiering was useful for me.

**Aline:** Uh-huh.

**Craig:** The tiering was, I mean, it’s the kind of movie it is, and then also you have to remember, huge budget movies have massive marketing budgets behind them.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So of course they’re motivating an enormous part of the audience that might normally slip to week two. They’re showing up at week one because they’ve just been motivated. They’ve been bombarded. So it’s a little difficult to make this correlation. I think it’s fair to say that if people love a movie, it will have good word of mouth and it will do better. Duh, right?

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** There’s no big surprise there. I think it’s a mistake to try and equate good movie with, say, Metacritic score, or even with Rotten Tomatoes score because that’s a self-selecting audience anyway.

**Aline:** But I just think it’s interesting, you know, every weekend you have these postmortems where people try and figure out, and they’re doing it right now with Tomorrowland —

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** Trying to figure out was it this, was it that, is it original in content, is it not, is it… — And the truth is that, you know, it really goes back to the Goldman rule like, you know, we all do the best we can in a inexact science and you can’t really account for why certain things — you can account for a certain amount of these phenomena, but really, things break out because of a million reasons or don’t break out for a million reasons.

**Craig:** And Tomorrowland, correct me if I’m wrong, made mid-40s, right?

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Made like $45 million. That’s good.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** What happens now is people will say, “Well, it’s good but not good in light of its budget.” The audience doesn’t care about the budget.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** The audience doesn’t care about your profit and loss sheet.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** $45 million worth of tickets sold is good.

**John:** So the real conversation will be next Sunday or Monday as the second week comes through and everyone will take a look at like what was the drop-off, which will probably be a factor of what was the reception of the audience.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And the audience reception was mixed. And so that will be curious to see sort of how it plays out next week.

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**John:** That’s the sort of normal conversation we would have. What’s so fascinating is to look at, you know, a person with a stats background who didn’t have any of our terminology trying to explain this phenomenon he was seeing.

**Craig:** It was interesting. There’s another thing that people forget sometimes when they do these analyses. And there are two movies come to mind, Austin Powers and Pitch Perfect. Movies that come out and kind of bomb in their own sort of way. And then find this life on video and —

**Aline:** And they’re also, I mean, they’re marketed. They have marketed themselves. I mean, Pitch Perfect had marketed itself for, you know, the months since it came out because people watched it over and over again. It caught on and that, so —

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** There was so much marketing that was beyond the marketing they were actually doing.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**Aline:** And so those movies have such built-in awareness.

**Craig:** If you just look at the point on the chart of how much money did Pitch Perfect 1 make at the box office. Austin Powers 2 made more in its opening weekend than Austin Powers 1 made its entire run.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Oh, I think that’s true of Pitch Perfect as well.

**Craig:** I’m sure it is. It has to be.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** And so that’s really the lesson there is, well, box office isn’t necessarily the only test of success either, because some movies are discovered after. Office Space is the bomb of all bombs when it comes to theatrical release. And God only knows how many hundreds of millions of dollars —

**Aline:** Do you think if they made a sequel now people would go?

**Craig:** Oh, my god. If Mike Judge ever did it, and he won’t —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But if he ever did, it would be massive. No question.

**Aline:** That’s interesting.

**John:** I think that’s true as well. And it’s a thing we encountered with Big Fish because Big Fish was not a huge box office hit but it actually did so well in its afterlife that we continue to sort of get interested in doing more stuff with Big Fish because it did so well.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** There you go.

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** And so that’s an example. Like that’s not a movie that lends itself to a natural sequel. There’s not a Big Fish 2 on the docks, but like it’s useful for things down the road.

**Craig:** Wasn’t Free Willy kind of in its own way a sequel? [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Yeah, it really was.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s its own sort of unique thing.

**Craig:** It’s its own thing.

**John:** I think it’s time to open up for some questions.

**Aline:** Yay.

**Craig:** How do we sound, Stuart? Stuart, I’m check —

**John:** Oh, we got a thumbs up from Stuart.

**Craig:** Stuart gave us a thumbs up.

**John:** We have two questions that came in early, so —

**Aline:** [makes noises] That’s my alien voice.

**Craig:** I know. [makes noise]

**Aline:** [makes noise]

**Craig:** What have we got? Live questions?

**John:** Well, we had two questions that came in before we started the show at all. So I was wondering if Aline might read the first question from Molly.

**Aline:** Okay, the question from Molly is —

**John:** Because it’s a question from a woman.

**Aline:** Hi, John and Craig and Stuart.

**Craig:** Awww.

**John:** Stuart.

**Craig:** Stuart. If can’t get Stuart married off of this?

**Aline:** I’m writing a script that is an adaptation of the life of a former U.S. president. I strive for authenticity —

**Craig:** I hope it’s McKinley.

**Aline:** And historical accuracy. So I would like to use direct quotes from the president’s speeches, letters, and memoirs as dialogue. Is this an acceptable practice in biographical films or seen as unoriginal because the dialogue didn’t originate with me, or is it plagiarism? If it’s acceptable, do I somehow need to cite which lines are actually historical and not my own original creation? Looking forward to the show tonight, Molly.

**Craig:** Molly.

**John:** Molly.

**Craig:** That’s a really good question. I have an answer for you, Molly.

**John:** I do, too.

**Craig:** The answer in order is yes, no, no, yes, no, no. So, it’s absolutely acceptable. It is not plagiarism. It is part of public record. Presidents are public figures. Their speeches are absolutely reprintable in all ways, shapes, and forms. No, nobody would look at it as plagiarism. In fact, quite the opposite. Take an obvious example, if you were doing a movie about Lincoln, which of course has already been done, and you change the text to the Gettysburg Address, people would be angry.

**Aline:** But let me throw in a caveat.

**Craig:** Yes. What is your caveat?

**Aline:** With Selma —

**John:** I was going to say Selma.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Aline:** They did not have the right to his speeches.

**Craig:** Okay. I think they did. Here’s my point. My feeling is that they would have had the right to those speeches but they could also be sued and have to battle over it. And then they have a movie about Martin Luther King that is being sued by the estate of Martin Luther King, which is bad press. But I actually think an argument could be made that as a public figure delivering a public speech, that is now part of the public record and is absolutely public domain.

**Aline:** But she had to paraphrase them and you don’t think that she — do you think she just didn’t want to take the risk?

**Craig:** I think the studio combined with the — I’m sure the screenwriter initially had that in there completely. You get into trouble there where it’s like, okay, if we’re making a movie about Martin Luther King and the family is like, “Boo, you’re exploiting,” oh, it’s a nightmare.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But if you’re making a movie about McKinley [laughs], I don’t know why I like to go to McKinley always —

**John:** You should.

**Craig:** Somebody should make a movie about Franklin Pierce. If you’re making a movie about Franklin Pierce, go for it. I mean, obviously, A, everything is in public domain now anyway because of the age. So always check, you know, if you’re making an old — if you’re doing one about Ford, you should be fine anyway, I think.

**Aline:** But do you think like in the way that Martin Luther King’s speeches are owned as intellectual property by his estate, like if you were doing a John F. Kennedy movie where he has a lot of famous speeches —

**Craig:** I don’t —

**John:** Here’s a question. Like if you took something from Profiles in Courage, John Kennedy’s book —

**Craig:** That’s different. That’s different. And by the way, of course John F. Kennedy did not write Profiles in Courage.

**John:** But his name is on it.

**Craig:** His name is on it. It was ghostwritten. But that’s a novel and that’s expression in fixed form. But if you do a movie about Kennedy and you have him stand up and say, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” —

**John:** Well, of course that’s fine.

**Craig:** Well, you say of course that’s fine but really —

**Aline:** But that’s —

**Craig:** But that’s what the King family was saying is it’s not fine.

**John:** That’s true.

**Craig:** And I think that’s about avoiding an unpleasant battle in public opinion, especially on something as sensitive as Martin Luther King and the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement. The last thing you want to be is like, “A white corporation going against the wishes of the family,” you know, like it just smells bad. It’s bad business.

**John:** So going back to Molly’s question though, she’s writing a movie about a president, which is awesome. Make the best presidential movie possible. If you think you need to use a lot of stuff from his speeches, then I worry that you’re not making the best possible presidential movie.

**Craig:** Or maybe there’s one speech or another.

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** I mean, let’s say she’s doing like Teddy, you know.

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** Teddy had some good speeches. But I guess even beyond that, regardless, you should write — this is the time where you get to do whatever you want. I mean, if the downside of being a screenwriter is that we’re not actually making a movie but we’re making a movie on paper, the upside is we can do whatever we want.

Down the road, some roomful of lawyers will give you advice on that stuff. But nobody will look down upon you for actually using the text of publicly delivered speeches by political figures.

**Aline:** And I’m assuming that Molly is going to be writing conversations with him and his spouse and his advisors. She wouldn’t have access to those anyway.

**Craig:** Right. Dramatize —

**Aline:** She’s going to be making that up. Especially, if they’re famous speeches, obviously people will know that she’s excerpting. But in general, she’s going to have to make up probably what consists of her dramatic writing, she’ll have to make up anyway.

**Craig:** Word.

**John:** Word. Craig, another question that came in before we started recording.

**Craig:** Yes. This one came from Cody Tannen-Barrup.

**John:** What a great name is that.

**Craig:** The best. Hyphenated, Tannen-Barrup. Hey, John and Craig. Thanks for everything you do. That’s weird, Cody didn’t thank Stuart.

**John:** Oh.

**Craig:** But I guess that’s just —

**Aline:** Also, I wasn’t thanked.

**Craig:** And also Aline wasn’t thanked. [laughs] You’re welcome, Cody Tannen-Barrup. Question. I was asked by an agent to send him a script. I sent it two weeks ago. What’s the etiquette of following up? How long do I wait? Do I just expect that if he liked it he would get back to me, unless I should move on? Thanks. Cody from Northampton, Massachusetts. Sent from his iPad.

**John:** Aline, tell us, when should you follow up?

**Aline:** Well, this is a great question. I’m glad that we can share some of this. I’ve been doing this a long time. I have never gotten any better at the waiting to hear part.

**John:** I haven’t either.

**Aline:** I don’t know what it is.

**Craig:** You’re human. [laughs]

**Aline:** There’s something about the minute you press — it’s like the minute you press send, you go back into the document and you find a typo instantly.

**Craig:** Always.

**Aline:** Instantly.

**Craig:** By the way, isn’t that amazing?

**Aline:** You press send —

**Craig:** Always.

**Aline:** You go back in there and you’re like —

**Craig:** It’s sick.

**Aline:** Yeah. That’s I think —

**John:** In the old days when we used to print out scripts —

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** I would wait for the messenger to come and pick up the script and take it away. And then I would look through it, like, “No, typo.”

**Craig:** I know.

**Aline:** Always.

**John:** And now it’s a PDF.

**Craig:** I know.

**Aline:** It’s something, honestly, that I still work on when I hand in a script. My husband pretty much wants to get away from me. I have not gotten any better at this. In the beginning of your career, it’s so difficult and it’s so heartbreaking.

**Craig:** I mean, like we send a script in to some agent or whatever the hell we do, two weeks go by, maybe it’s slightly bad news. But when you’re trying to start your career and this is — well, one agent you know and the one person who showed you interest and now two weeks have gone by, it’s your whole world focused on that one return call.

**Aline:** But I think it’s fascinating. It’s sort of like, you know, when you’re driving and there’s a pedestrian in front of you, you’re like, “Move more quickly. I’m going to hit you. [laughs] What are you doing?”

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And then when you’re the pedestrian, you’re going [makes noise].

**Craig:** Right. Yeah, easy car.

**Aline:** And it’s the same thing when someone —

**Craig:** I know.

**Aline:** Gives me a script to read. It’ll often sit in my inbox for a long time and I won’t respond or won’t read it. And it doesn’t mean I don’t like it or I didn’t it —

**Craig:** So what do —

**Aline:** Here’s the thing. You can’t read anything into the two weeks.

**Craig:** But what do we tell them? Like when should you write back?

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** So I think you should write back with — if you sent it on a Thursday or Friday, you should write back on Tuesday to make sure that they have it.

**Aline:** Oh, interesting. Interesting.

**John:** So I would give them a weekend, which counts as sort of one day. Otherwise, you give them like just, you know, a few days to make sure that —

**Aline:** I might give them a week.

**Craig:** It’s funny, like I’m actually a two-weeker guy.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Oh.

**Craig:** Like I feel like email works. And so I would check in two weeks later. By the way, also you can always call the assistant.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Like for instance for that one, like four days later, give the assistant a buzz and say, “I’m so sorry to bother you — ”

**Aline:** I just want to make sure.

**Craig:** “I just want to make sure it came through and then I will leave you alone, I promise.” And they’ll say, “Oh, yeah. It came through.” Then I would give it two weeks and then I would just drop a quick line.

**John:** So I had a conversation with my agent, David Kramer, about this and he said that it’s one of his great frustrations is when people don’t send the email back saying, “Got it.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Just acknowledge that you received it.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Because it honestly reduces your stress load tremendously to say like, “Got it. Thanks.”

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**John:** And so just this last week I had a situation where I sent something through and I expected like, well, it’s a long weekend, whatever. And then I get the email back today saying like, “Oh, because of Con, we didn’t send it through, so it’ll be like another week.” I’m like —

**Craig:** So frustrating.

**John:** Yeah. It’s like, oh my god, the whole time I was like —

**Craig:** It’s so frustrating.

**John:** I’m picturing all the bad news that possibly could’ve happened.

**Craig:** You know what the word for what you were doing was?

**John:** What?

**Craig:** Because this is what my therapist tells me I do all the time.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Catastrophizing.

**John:** I love that word.

**Craig:** You were catastrophizing.

**Aline:** Oh, and that’s what happens when you turn in a script, all you can do is picture them thinking, “Oh, my god. What do I do? How do I — what do I say to her?”

**Craig:** It’s catastrophizing. But not only does this draft not work, this person can’t ever work again in Hollywood or anywhere.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** And should be punished publicly. [laughs]

**John:** This person —

**Aline:** And it’s funny because even —

**John:** This person is an impostor.

**Craig:** Yeah. [laughs]

**John:** The impostor has now been revealed.

**Craig:** At last we know the truth.

**Aline:** But you kind of build up a thing where “You know what, I feel pretty good about this one. I’m just going to hand this in and go to the Grove and I feel great.” And it takes anywhere between two minutes and 11 minutes to go into the spiral.

**Craig:** It breaks everyone.

**Aline:** So if it makes Cody feel any better, it happens to everyone. I would say after a couple of weeks, you can lob in. And I would probably, if John’s saying a Tuesday, I would say the end of the following week, I would say lob in an email saying, “Hey, just checking in. I wanted to make sure you got it. Would love to hear from you about it. Would love to talk about it with you.” If you don’t hear from them way soon after that, I think you can just take that as being French for no.

**Craig:** Well, you could. I mean, the truth is that sometimes it takes time, and especially if you are a flier. An agent is like, okay, a friend of a friend and you come, whatever. You send me your script.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s at the bottom of my pile.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So at some point, they’re going to pick it up.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then you just have to be patient. And in your mind, essentially you have to remove yourself from that sicko equation of this is going to change my life. You just got to keep going on with your life and assume that that’s not going to change your life. And then if a wonderful thing comes crashing in, like the letter from Hogwarts inviting you and telling you you’re a wizard, then that’s great.

**Aline:** But the thing I would also say when you’re starting out is give your script to lots of people.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Give your script to a friend. Give your script to an agent. Give your friend who’s an assistant. And I always think of it as like you’re putting little paper boats into the Central Park reservoir.

**Craig:** I’ll tell you who I give my script to. Just the other day, one of the smart — here’s an unsung screenwriter — he’s sung. But one of my favorite people in this business and he’ll never come on the show because he’s like a weirdo shut-in and he’ll never listen to this, so I don’t have a problem [laughs] with saying —

**John:** So you can call him a weirdo shut-in and —

**Craig:** He’ll never know that I called him a weirdo shut-in. But Bob Gordon, do you know Bob Gordon?

**John:** I know Bob Gordon.

**Craig:** So smart. So Bob Gordon is probably most known for writing Galaxy Quest. Brilliant, brilliant guy. I met him in Nashville actually. And like you know when you meet someone, you’re like, “Oh my god, you’re like me [laughs], you know, but even weirder. This is great.” And I sent him my script and he had such a smart comment that was just so good and really —

**John:** Was it devastating?

**Craig:** No. That’s the thing. First I thought, well, because I really like to be open about these things, I thought, “Okay, well, if I took that on its face, it could theoretically be devastating to the structure of the story.” But then the more I thought about it, I thought, “No. You know what he’s getting at I can actually solve and it will make so many things better and I could do it in three pages at the start of the script.”

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** And it was so helpful that —

**Aline:** But, you know, you just —

**Craig:** This isn’t about praising Bob Gordon.

**Aline:** You put your little boats in the water, send them out, as many as you can.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And then try not to worry about them. And some of them will come in.

**Craig:** That’s what Seth Rudetsky would do.

**John:** [laughs] So a question from the feed.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Steve Bethers asks, “Craig, do you think Robert Mark Kamen is Writer X?”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Wouldn’t it be great if like these two threads came together? So Robert Mark Kamen was the unsung screenwriting hero that Craig brought up last week and Writer X was this screenwriter who — wouldn’t that be amazing? I think it’s impossible, amazing.

**Craig:** It would be shocking, obviously. It would shatter me in many ways.

**Aline:** Wow. Will Writer X ever be revealed?

**John:** I’m not sure there ever was a Writer X.

**Craig:** Writer X will never come back.

**Aline:** Do you think he’s not a real person?

**Craig:** No, I think Writer X was a real person. I think that —

**John:** Well, I think Writer X had no produced credits, so that was the issue.

**Craig:** Right. And so Final Draft was like, “Hey, Writer X, why don’t you do this and we’ll give you a hundred bucks.” I don’t know if they even paid him. But I think after the shellacking that occurred, Writer X probably will not appear again. No, I don’t think Robert Kamen is Writer X. At the risk of being a dick —

**John:** Isn’t that amazing?

**Craig:** I don’t think the writing was good enough to qualify as Kamen level.

**Aline:** Kamenesque.

**Craig:** Yeah. It was not Kamenesque.

**John:** All right. We’re going to scroll back through the feed and look for a new question. So if you have a question for us, put it in the feed and we’ll hit it. Stuart has one all highlighted.

**Craig:** Ooh, god, Stuart, you’re good.

**John:** We have a question here from G Red asking, “Aline, there was some discussion about dress codes in Hollywood for writers. ‘Don’t be the best-dressed person in the room.’ Is that true for women?”

**Aline:** Yeah, I remember hearing that and I giggled through that at the thought that Craig or John would be at all concerned about —

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Aline:** How they were dressed with respect to the others.

**Craig:** I think that was a Writer X thing in a weird way, wasn’t it?

**Aline:** It was a guy who’s saying that he shows up at meetings dressed in a suit and he feels more comfortable in a suit.

**Craig:** Whatevs.

**Aline:** I mean, I will say for women that, you know, I remember when I very first came out here I had bought a lot of fancy clothes and suits. This was a long time ago.

**Craig:** Like Hilary Clinton suits?

**Aline:** Yeah, kind of. And my agent said to me, “You’re a writer, wear Converse.”

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** I think that dressing well in Hollywood is a little bit different from dressing fancy. You want to show that you have some — well, for a certain type of writer, it’s not —

**Craig:** [laughs] Meaning not me.

**Aline:** Terrible to show that you have some taste and that you’re cool and that you’re — you know, I think dressing fancy, dressing up, wearing heels, wearing a skirt, wearing a blazer, that’s not really what writers do.

**Craig:** Don’t dress like a suit. That’s basically —

**Aline:** Don’t dress like a suit, yeah.

**Craig:** You don’t want to be corporate.

**Aline:** You can be cool and people can see that you’re making an effort in how you look. But fancy is not really du jour for anybody.

**John:** On the podcast, I had discussed Wes Anderson. If Wes Anderson showed up for a meeting, you kind of want Wes Anderson dressed like Wes Anderson. So if you were a female writer, a female director, it would be appropriate to dress up kind of like the person who you kind of are.

**Aline:** I know more people whose thing is that they do something odd in the other direction. Like they always wear hoodies or they wear pajamas or, you know, writers are more known for doing that kind of thing —

**Craig:** There is a writer, I won’t say his name but everybody will probably figure out who it is when I say it, who’s constantly just doing these very contrived things with his clothes. He wears a mask. [laughs] He’ll put on a clown nose. It’s just —

**John:** I know who you’re talking about.

**Craig:** You know who I’m talking about. It’s ridic —

**Aline:** I do not.

**Craig:** I just mouthed it.

**John:** Mouthed it.

**Aline:** Right, right.

**Craig:** It’s ridiculous and it’s just insecure and dumb. I mean my whole thing about — this is one area where there’s definitely sexism going on for sure. For a guy, you know, I always feel like I have the confidence of thinking, it doesn’t what I’m wearing. I’m going to be wearing something sort of schlubby because that’s who I am. But if I can start talking impressively, nobody will give a damn what’s on my body. I do think that people are judgy about women. I actually think that it’s — a lot of a women are judgy about women with clothes, and that’s a bummer but it does — I think if what you’re saying is don’t look like a not-creative person —

**Aline:** That’s right.

**Craig:** But don’t also try and look like some contrived example of a creative person, you should be fine.

**Aline:** Yeah. I don’t — I think it’s just — it’s we live in a casual city and people dress casually.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And you can look cool. But it really isn’t a thing of dressing up. People don’t really wear suits, so you would look, you know, odd. That being said, there are some people who that’s their thing. Sam Raimi wears suits. Everybody knows that.

**Craig:** If it’s natural to them —

**Aline:** And if it’s — and if it’s your thing.

**Craig:** Paul Feig does it.

**Aline:** Yeah. Paul Feig is dressed —

**Craig:** Paul Feig directs in a suit.

**Aline:** Yeah, he is dressed to the nines all the time.

**Craig:** Which is crazy. That’s like taking a shower in a suit.

**Aline:** You’re right.

**Craig:** It’s nuts.

**Aline:** He’s dressed to the nines all the time.

**Craig:** Do you know who dresses great?

**Aline:** Who?

**Craig:** Sexy Craig. Oh yeah.

**Aline:** Sexy Craig. Sexy threads.

**Craig:** You like this velour? Yeah, it’s real velour, 100%.

**Aline:** This is from J.Crew.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** We have a lot of speculation in the chat thread about who you were talking about when you mouthed off —

**Craig:** Oh, really? Who did they come up with?

**John:** Some of the things are fantastic. Carrot Top. Is it Nolan?

**Aline:** I read a great thing.

**Craig:** No, Nolan is a jacket and tie guy.

**Aline:** I read a great thing that somebody tweeted which is like, if you have a Carrot Top, shouldn’t your hair be green?

**John:** That’s a really good point. Wow.

**Craig:** Mind blown. Mind blown. Inception.

**John:** All right. Another question from Stuart from one of you listeners. Jason Bob Gardner II writes, can you break down the skill set difference or responsibilities between a showrunner for a show versus director of a feature film?

**Aline:** The showrunner for the show is the producer and the writer. So you’re doing really what a feature producer would do for a movie, you’re doing for every episode. And you’re the writer. And then you choose a director and the director figures out sort of how the thing is photographed.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Aline:** If that makes sense.

**John:** I think that makes a lot of sense. A director is still incredibly important in television because that director is Marc Webb in your case, who did your pilot, is figuring out the vision for sort of how the shots go together, especially on a pilot. But even on a given episode, like how you are going to make that day’s work work, how you’re going to put this whole thing together.

**Aline:** You’re translating the visual — translating the script into the visuals, yeah.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** And then editing that pilot together.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** At least the first stab at it.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** And the real difference, though, is that unlike a feature screenwriter, the showrunner has tremendous influence and power in sort of deciding what the final cut of something is going to be.

**Craig:** True.

**John:** It’s hiring that director onboard.

**Aline:** It’s sort of like you’re in charge of the whole — and the whole is not the one episode. The whole is the series.

**Craig:** That’s right. The showrunner is going to be there later. So they have to be in charge of things like, you can say, “Well, as a director when you make a feature film, what are the characters wearing?” That’s your job. It’s not your job on television. It’s everyone’s job in television particularly the showrunner because the showrunner is stuck with that for when you’re gone.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** In features, if a director is also the writer, then frankly they are kind of like a showrunner. In that regard, it’s very similar.

**John:** Yeah, they’re a showrunner who’s doing a pilot.

**Craig:** A showrunner doing a two-hour pilot. Exactly

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So like, you know, Todd Phillips, basically is like a showrunner on his movies. He is the producer, he is the director, he is the writer or at least, you know a co-writer. And so —

**Aline:** And often, showrunners direct. I mean, Matt I directed the finale of Mad Men.

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**Aline:** I mean what’s interesting for me is that I had a big adjustment to make in being a screenwriter because I am fairly sociable. I like to be around other people. I like to talk to other people. So especially for the first 10 years in my career, it was very difficult for me to deal with the being alone in a room. I’m also, and this will be a surprise to everyone, a bit bossy.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** No, not true.

**Aline:** And so —

**Craig:** What?

**Aline:** I enjoy — working on a TV show is fun because it’s rather gregarious, lots of people. You have a crew, a cast, a family, a set. You know, I like to make decisions and I’m comfortable with extending the writing decisions into the production decisions.

**Craig:** So bossy. Just —

**Aline:** Just a little bossy.

**Craig:** Who am I scared of more than you? Nobody.

**John:** Nobody.

**Craig:** Nobody.

**Aline:** That says more about you than me.

**Craig:** It does.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Completely.

**Craig:** [laughs] Absolutely. Whatever you want me to say.

**John:** Chris Percal writes, as someone rushing to finish a TV spec for the Fellowships, how important is it to follow a showrunner’s format? Specifically, if the showrunner has a few formatting quirks that are atypical? Thanks.

So Aline, you must have read a bunch of scripts.

**Aline:** I couldn’t care less about it for a minute, I think.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, if you’re — you have to stick to the structure of the show.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** If you’re — if the show that you are mimicking or writing an episode of starts with a cold open every time —

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** You’ve got to do that.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** If the show has a certain amount of breaks, you got to do that.

**Aline:** I will say this. I know how you guys often say, you know, the first 10 pages of a screenplay are really important, blah, blah, blah. Wow, the first 10 pages of your pilot that you’re submitting for consideration —

**Craig:** Sure.

**Aline:** Couldn’t be more important because you don’t really have the time to read past and, you know, the people that I have read for staffing where I read the 10 pages and I’m like, “I’ve got to read this whole thing.” If you can do that, you stand out so much. You’ve got to grab people in the beginning.

**Craig:** So that’s more important than nailing the tiny little formatting, quirky, baloney, rules, baloney?

**Aline:** Also, do not save your good stuff for page 48.

**John:** Yeah. Right at the start. You must have read more in this last of couple of months than years.

**Craig:** What’s the state of writing out there? [laughs] Not good, huh?

**Aline:** Well, when you find somebody who can really do it, I think particularly for the beginning writers, it’s a bit like music. You know, I always love that thing when the first couple years of Idol where people would audition and Randy Jackson would say, “You know what, singing, not your thing man.”

**Craig:** It’s not for you.

**Aline:** It’s just not for you.

**Craig:** It’s not for you.

**Aline:** You know, what else you like you to do?

**Craig:** And he would say —

**Aline:** Remember, he would say, “What else do you like to do?”

**Craig:** “What else do you like to do? Do you have other hobbies?” And they’re like, “But all my friends tell me that I’m great.”

**Aline:** Right. And I think you can tell particularly with the emerging writers, right away, if they, you know, there’s a voice and a music. I mean the thing that really kills me and continues to kill me is, particularly in television, people writing things you cannot see.

**Craig:** I know.

**Aline:** She remembers the summer by the sea.

**Craig:** Makes. Me. Crazy.

**Aline:** But particularly like I feel like I will give more leeway to that in a screenplay where you’re setting a mood and maybe you write in a more of prosey style.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** But when you’re writing a television episode —

**Craig:** I know.

**Aline:** If you want to tell me, she smells hyacinth and thinks of her Aunt Lou, I got nothing. There’s nothing I can see.

**John:** She’s throwing your script across the room.

**Aline:** Yeah. It’s tough.

**Craig:** And by the way, these are people that have agents, have managers.

**Aline:** Oh, yes.

**Craig:** Are represented.

**Aline:** Oh, yes.

**Craig:** And still you’re —

**Aline:** And also, it’s a taste thing. I’m sure there are scripts that I don’t respond to that other people pick up and think are great.

**Craig:** I actually, I think that I’m pretty good at telling the difference between my reaction to a script. If I read it and I think, “This is not my taste versus you are bad. You’re actually incompetent. This is not right. This chair only has three legs and you’ve forgotten the back is upside down. And I can see glue blobs.”

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** There’s a difference.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** And it is, I got to say, it is amazing. And this should be encouraging for our listeners out there, following along live as we stream. There are a lot of bad, bad, bad writers who have agents. And you can take them out. And by the way, a lot of people think I’m one of them.

**Aline:** So I have a bunch of friends.

**Craig:** So you can take me out, too.

**Aline:** I have a bunch of friends who are writers because they were readers.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And they were reading a lot of the scripts and they thought, “Man.”

**Craig:** I could do better.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah, but it’s that shit plus one thing that makes me so nervous.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** It’s making a —

**Aline:** What?

**Craig:** Terry Rossio’s crap plus one. Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So his crap plus one theory is that a lot of people look at Hollywood and they go —

**Aline:** Oh, right.

**Craig:** “Well, that’s a bunch of crap. All I have to do is plus one of that and I’ll be fine.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But they don’t realize that —

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** The crap that you see eventually —

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** Has already been broken — like something started brilliant —

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** And then the process just destroyed it down to crap.

**Aline:** Right. But you can — it’s kind of glorious and interesting to see people who just have an ear and this is what they were put on Earth to do.

**Craig:** It’s fun. It’s great finding people like that.

**Aline:** And, you know, how much of it is learned and — but, you know, I have by and large enjoyed the process of reading. And I don’t think for a second about the format, is the short answer.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Great. One last question from Adam Alterburk. He writes, “Who decides when script is locked for production? And how does one handle the political side of this decision?” We’ve never talked about that.

**Aline:** That’s a great question.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** What a good question.

**Craig:** Well, locking for production is something that you — if you are the writer now that’s sort of the production writer, and in fact I’m doing this right now for The Huntsman.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So I have to talk to the line producer, a woman named Sarah Bradshaw. And she and I coordinate. What I say is, “Look, I don’t — it doesn’t matter to me when I lock this. It doesn’t matter to me what we call the white draft. And it doesn’t matter to me what we call blue or if we should lock pages at this point or issue a whole new draft. What would make your life easier on your end?” And then she tells me and that’s what I do.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because that’s not creative. That’s about a process. There are times when I’ll say, “Look, because of the way this last week went, we’ve just changed the second half of — there’s like every page, there’s a single asterisk gone and it’s super annoying. Why don’t we just not — why don’t we issue a whole new draft?” And then they’ll say yes or no. And that’s what we’ll do. And it’s as simple as that. You just coordinate with the line producer and get to know them. And it’s really important for you to be a master of your software.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So you know exactly how to do it and you know exactly know how to not screw them up. They have all experienced screenwriters who have screwed them up.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And it’s huge mess. And they don’t like that. So know how to work your stuff.

**Aline:** It’s also great to find somebody who knows how to do it, too.

**Craig:** That’s the best.

**Aline:** You know, somebody else who knows how to handle the program. But the one thing, I have worked with people who hate revised pages. I worked with a director and a producer who want to keep the script as white as possible. And so they want you to lock as late as possible so you don’t end up with a script that’s stuffed with confetti.

**Craig:** Sure. No, I get that. But, you know, at some point you have to be able to —

**Aline:** Of course.

**Craig:** To move around. And so what I’ll do like, for instance, I know that there are some things I have to write that are for what’s coming up in the next three weeks of shooting. Rather than just send one thing at a time which would create multiple revisions.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** What I’m doing is I’m saying, “Okay, look, here’s the new stuff, not in a script. Take a look at it, let’s get it approved by the director and the studio.” And then if everybody approves, then I’ll just say, “Okay, here’s a bunch — an aggregated bunch of approved stuff. This is now our green draft.

**John:** So I’m going to talk people back through who have not been through production drafts to understand what we’re actually saying. When a script goes in production, it has a locked draft. Basically, all those page numbers are going to stay the same.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That is considered the white draft. And then if there are changes that are made to that script, they release it as colored pages. And those colored pages will fit into the script that was already released and locked. So if you have change something on page 56, and you’ve added a page between 56 and 57, that is page A56 or 56a depending on how your numbering system works.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And those pages will go in there. So it’s a way of like not reprinting the whole script every time, which is a really good thing. The issues and challenges become, when do you close that down? And most scripts that I’ve brought into production, it tends to be about like two weeks beforehand, it has pulled the trigger and suddenly like, okay, that’s the white draft and everything from that point forward.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But what Craig is saying is really smart too, is that if it is just a small change and it’s not going to shoot really soon, you hold back on releasing those pages so you can release it as a block so it’s much less confusing.

**Aline:** You just to be careful because sometimes there’s departments that are waiting for those pages for some reason.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s why to me, there’s a sort of like two levels. When I try and do this stuff. I mean I would do this like with the Hangovers, this is how Todd and I would do it. We wouldn’t — because we were changing stuff all the time. But we wouldn’t just like every five minutes, go — we made sure like, “Okay, who needs to know this?”

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Here’s three pages that’s not script stuff. And it’s not like pulled from the script. It’s just a scene that we all now we’re going to be doing. Obviously, you never mess with scene numbers. That’s the one thing you can’t do. And then if everybody knows, then we can hold it and then we do an issue.

**Aline:** The funny thing about scene numbers, I know you guys have talked about this is that, people rush over to you and say, “Are you doing something to 56?” And you’re like, “What’s 56?”

**Craig:** What is 56?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** How would I possibly know what 56 is? But they know — the crew —

**Aline:** Well, eventually you kind of learn.

**Craig:** Always knows.

**Aline:** Eventually —

**Craig:** I don’t.

**Aline:** Never?

**Craig:** I never once — I’ve gotten to the end of a movie and somebody’s like, “All we have left is 83a”

**Aline:** 73.

**Craig:** And I’m like, I still don’t know.

**Aline:** Yeah, once in while, there’s ones that become, you know, important or you know that scene is being revised.

**Craig:** I don’t have space in my brain. [laughs]

**Aline:** And in 27 Dresses, it was scene 69. And every time it came up —

**Craig:** How’d you remember that one, huh?

**John:** A question for you guys. I suspect you do the same thing. I always keep a printed out copy of the script so I will do like one last idiot check if I’m going to release pages to make sure they will actually fit in the real script. Do you keep a printout of your script or do you just trust that it’s going to work?

**Craig:** I don’t. What I do instead is I have the prior draft and the current one. So, for instance, if I’m working on, I don’t know, what’s the order, blue, yellow, pink?

**Aline:** Blue, pink.

**Craig:** Blue, pink, yellow. So I’ve got — let’s say I’m going to yellow. So I take my pink draft. I save it as. And now I got my pink draft on the left, I got my yellow draft on the right. And then when I’m done with my yellow changes, I just look back —

**John:** You’re looking at the PDF that you created out of it?

**Craig:** No, I’m looking at my screenwriting files.

**John:** And I would never trust that. I will always either create a PDF or literally print it just to make sure there’s no like —

**Craig:** That’s what a German would do.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s very German.

**Aline:** Brings it back around. There’s absolutely nothing worse than realizing that you’ve unlocked some page or not locked a page.

**John:** Oh god.

**Aline:** Or starred a page.

**John:** I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight, Aline.

**Craig:** Why would you do that? What’s wrong with you?

**Aline:** You’ve done five hours of work and not locked or unlocked or released or marked —

**Craig:** Stop talking. Please stop. Stop. [laughs]

**John:** I will have nightmares.

**Aline:** Because there’s no way you can go back and recapture all those keystrokes. That’s really — so when you’re doing —

**Craig:** I’m getting pee shivers.

**Aline:** When you’re doing production revisions, you have to turn on the part of your brain that is the librarian that can —

**Craig:** Yes.

**Aline:** Sort of monitor what you’re doing.

**Craig:** Because my god, they will hate you. And also, it’s not just hatred. It’s a hatred plus you’re an outsider who doesn’t understand our world. It just makes screenwriters look worse in that — as screenwriters, we have to be able to operate the way the crew operates.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** Or they won’t respect us.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They don’t really care that we, “I invented everything. None of you would be here without me.” They don’t care.

**John:** They don’t care at all.

**Aline:** But the first time you do the job — the first time you’re the job, the writer in production —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** There’s a little bit of like, “So okay, listen, I was just still wondering. Guys, what do I…?” You have to sort of — I guess it’s like any job. Anybody who’s ever worked in production, you kind of fake it till you make it. You kind of use your, you know, your wits. I, you know, when I —

**Craig:** Sure.

**Aline:** The first movie that I did that on, there was no Internet. Oh god, I can’t believe I said that. But I couldn’t Google like how do you lock that, unlock that, what did I do, what were you doing?

**Craig:** What year were you born? [laughs] The no Internet.

**Aline:** The first movie that I wrote when I was doing the production edits was ’99.

**Craig:** Oh, there was the Internet in ’99.

**Aline:** But I mean, we weren’t on there. Like you wouldn’t —

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** You weren’t going to Google and saying, “How do I lock this?”

**Craig:** No. That’s — oh that, yeah.

**Aline:** “Unlock this?” You know.

**Craig:** I mean my first production —

**Aline:** No, I feel like people now —

**Craig:** Was ’95.

**John:** Mine was ’98 for Go. Yeah.

**Craig:** Mine was ’95 for America’s favorite —

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** Classic RocketMan. And —

**Aline:** Well, I’d done TV stuff.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** I have another Cool Thing. I have Two Cool Things.

**Craig:** You have Two Cool Things?

**Aline:** Yeah, I just realized another one.

**Craig:** That’s not my Cool Thing.

**Aline:** I just realized two things.

**John:** Okay. Start us off Aline.

**Aline:** With our two things?

**John:** Cool Things.

**Aline:** Okay. I realize one, there’s a diet thing that I haven’t discussed with you guys, which is this — and I would like to put the — if we could find the study, put it in the show notes. There is a study that shows that it matters when you eat. So you should eat within a 12-hour span. And they did a study with mice or rats where mice who ate all of their food, no matter how many calories they had, in a 12-hours span, never gained weight. And the mice who ate the exact same amount of calories over a 24-hour span, gained tons of weight.

**Craig:** But who’s eating over 24 hours?

**Aline:** Well, but a lot of people eat from 6 o’clock in the morning until midnight.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** I’ve heard this general theory like you should only eat during —

**Aline:** So the general theory is you should eat from 7am to 7pm.

**Craig:** So explain why Spanish aren’t super fat.

**Aline:** They don’t start eating until — I don’t know.

**Craig:** They wake up, they eat breakfast.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** Then they have like, they take a nap.

**Aline:** I am only —

**Craig:** Have a huge dinner. And then they eat dinner at like 11pm.

**Aline:** Well, I’m just reporting the fact. I’m just reporting the facts, ma’am.

**Craig:** And then they —

**John:** Twelve hours diet.

**Aline:** Twelve hours diet. And then the other thing is —

**Craig:** That sounds like baloney to me.

**Aline:** All right.

**Craig:** It smells.

**Aline:** I wanted to run it by you just to see how —

**Craig:** It smells.

**Aline:** How it went on the umbrage, because you know what? I want to tell you something. I totally believe it.

**Craig:** You believe it?

**Aline:** I totally believe it.

**Craig:** Something about it smells.

**John:** There’s science in mine as well. But go to yours.

**Aline:** Okay. So then the other thing is —

**Craig:** Mine is all about science.

**Aline:** So bone broth has gotten very trendy.

**Craig:** I’m sorry, bone broth?

**Aline:** Bone broth, do you know what this is?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Do you make broth out of bones?

**Craig:** Is it broth out of bones?

**Aline:** So if you guys lived in Brooklyn or in Silver Lake —

**Craig:** I was born in Brooklyn.

**Aline:** You would know what these things are. So bone broth has become very trendy.

**John:** Stuart Friedel is from Silver Lake.

**Aline:** It’s a — you know what bone broth is?

**Stuart:** I’ve heard of it.

**Aline:** Yeah. Bone broth is a soup that you make by boiling bones for hours and hours and hours.

**Craig:** Oh, god.

**Aline:** And people distill it and they make, you know — and Kobe Bryant drinks it and it’s trendy.

**Craig:** Oh, then it must be good.

**Aline:** And when you go to a butcher, you can have bone broth.

**Craig:** Yeah, it makes sense.

**Aline:** But bone broth is —

**John:** Somebody in the thing just said, Aline Broth McKenna. [laughs] Congratulations, Craig McDiarmid. You won the feed.

**Aline:** Well done. So, but bone broth is something that Korean people have been eating for centuries.

**Craig:** Correct.

**Aline:** And we lived in Koreatown. And I found this place that makes authentic Korean bone broth.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And it’s awesome. It’s the only thing they serve.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And I love restaurants where it’s the only thing they serve.

**Craig:** We serve bone broth.

**Aline:** We serve bone broth. You go in. And you decide —

**Craig:** I’ll have the bone broth.

**Aline:** But you can have bone broth with flank, brisket, intestines, tripe and tongue or mixed. So you get a bowl with the bone broth and it’s supposedly one of the most nourishing things you can eat.

**Craig:** Oh, god.

**Aline:** And you choose the kind of meat. And then it’s unsalted. So you salt it and they bring you scallions and they bring you hot sauce and they bring you kimchi and rice.

**Craig:** Everything other than the bone broth there, sounds awesome.

**Aline:** It’s like a delicious beef soup. Anyway, it’s supposed to be —

**Craig:** If you boil bones long enough, you’ll get glue.

**Aline:** It’s supposed to be the most restorative wonderful thing. And I found this place in Korea that does it. It’s not a trendy place.

**Craig:** In Korea?

**John:** Koreatown.

**Aline:** Koreatown.

**Craig:** Oh.

**Aline:** Did I say in Korea?

**John:** You said Korea.

**Craig:** Because that’s a whole —

**Aline:** Wow, the wine is kicking in.

**John:** 1.5 glasses of wine.

**Craig:** Well, there’s South Korea —

**Aline:** The wine is kicking in.

**Craig:** And there’s North Korea.

**Aline:** Anyway, it’s called —

**Craig:** They would love bone broth in North Korea.

**Aline:** I sent the link to myself so that I can remember the name of it, and it’s in Koreatown. And it’s called, for the eight people who are going to drive over there, oh good lord, where is it?

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Aline:** Where is it? It’s called Han Bat Sul Lung Tang.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** Stuart will have that in the show notes. So everyone can like feast on bone broth there in Koreatown. Craig Mazin —

**Aline:** There’s also a line out the door.

**Craig:** I have a One Cool Thing that in many ways is just wonderfully oppositional to the nonsense we just heard about 12 hours and bone broth. This is a new Alzheimer’s treatment that they are working on in Australia. And it’s actually pretty remarkable and I have to say, very exciting because, I don’t know — do you guys have anybody with Alzheimer’s in your family?

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s the worst.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s the worst. My aunt had it. It’s the worst. And it’s just a brutal, brutal disease. So Alzheimer’s happens basically because there are these proteins that start to gather in the brain that should be cleared up by glial cells and they’re not. And so they basically become like sticky, tangled bone broth in your brain that are kind of blocking transmissions and disrupting memory and ultimately destroying you as a person.

So what these guys in Australia are doing is they’re actually using this kind of ultrasound — so they’re — it’s not invasive. It’s not pharmacological. They’re actually ultrasounding your brain and it’s disrupting those tangles of proteins. And what they found in rats is that they were able to restore 75% — they had rats with memory problems. I don’t know how exactly they get rats to have Alzheimer’s but they just do.

**John:** [laughs] They try to do the crossword puzzle and they can’t.

**Craig:** They can’t.

**John:** They can’t do it.

**Craig:** So they pulled them out. So they had rats with Alzheimer’s, 75% of them regained all of their memory after this treatment, all of it.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** Which is astonishing. So it was so promising that they’re already kind of moving towards human trials which is amazing. They think they’ll be able to get human trials going in 2017. If this sort of thing works, you and I —

**Aline:** Won’t have to worry about it.

**Craig:** And Stuart will not have to worry. I mean I’m kind of hoping that we can hit the singularity and just be put into —

**John:** Yeah. I would say that Alzheimer’s is way up there on my list of overall fears because the idea of not being able to, you know, be myself and sort of have my memories and have my own personality is terrifying to me.

**Craig:** It’s terrifying. And if there’s something as simple as this to solve it —

**John:** That would be great.

**Craig:** That would be awesome.

**John:** Great. My One Cool Thing is also about simplification and science. So it’s a article that was in FiveThirtyEight this week by Emily Oster called Everybody Calm Down About Breastfeeding. And Emily Oster, she is not a doctor. She is an economics professor. And she was looking at the data behind breastfeeding and sort of like the real study is to see like what is actually really going on behind the scenes when they’re doing the studies on breastfeeding.

And because we’ve always been told that like breastfeeding is awesome.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And I kind of believe breastfeeding is awesome. But I also had this sort of suspicion is like, but how are they really testing for that? And are they really taking care of all the other variables?

**Craig:** How do you measure awesome?

**John:** How do you measure awesome?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Because are you really like taking into account the age and background and economic setup —

**Craig:** Socioeconomic status.

**John:** Of all the people who are breastfeeding.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And she was able to do that. So she took a look at all the studies. And when you actually filter out for all that other stuff, you find that a lot of the advantages of breastfeeding aren’t quite so pronounced or aren’t —

**Craig:** They’re not boob-based. They’re sort of related to other issues.

**John:** Exactly.

**Aline:** They’re correlative?

**John:** They’re correlative, rather than causal. So I bring this up because, you know, I think breastfeeding is still awesome and I’m a fan of people who want to breastfeed, I think we need to make sure that we make it an option for any woman who wants to and sort of create structures for that.

**Craig:** And not demonize women who don’t.

**John:** Exactly. Not demonize families that don’t do that because, you know, we’re a two-dad family. And so we did not have breast milk.

**Craig:** [laughs] Try as you did.

**John:** But we know other two-dad families who did like, you know, they would have —

**Craig:** They would buy it.

**John:** They would buy it.

**Craig:** I told my wife to sell it. We had a freezer full of this. She would make me freeze every stupid extra bag. She made so much — my wife is not a big bosomed woman.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** She makes so much milk.

**Aline:** Making milk has nothing to do with the size of your boobs.

**Craig:** Apparently, I did not know that. I just went like, big, you know, like a guy, big boob, big, lots of milk. No. She made so much milk. And so our freezer’s full. So I’m like we should sell this. And she was like, “No, I can’t sell it.” She was weird about it.

**John:** Yeah, she totally could have. But I think the question is, you know, we had other two-dad families who ended up like, you know, having breast milk frozen and like FedEx’d and every day they were using that stuff.

**Craig:** And it’s probably —

**Aline:** So I think a lot of us, you know —

**John:** But according to science, it’s actually not necessarily —

**Craig:** It’s not worth all that trouble.

**John:** No.

**Aline:** A lot of this with parenting all these like, you know, strongly held beliefs that people have are just, you know, their talisman that they’re clinging to because it’s so scary and it’s so challenging emotionally. So people cling to things which are “we’re attachment pair, we’re not, we’re breastfeeding, we’re not…”

**John:** Right. Absolutely.

**Aline:** You know, it’s all sort of like things you tell yourself that is going to —

**Craig:** And then they go away.

**Aline:** It’s something that’s going to make you safe.

**Craig:** Like remember co-sleeping?

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** Co-sleeping, everybody had to co-sleep. So our baby, our first kid was born and we tried co-sleeping for two days. And we’re like, screw this. He’s sleeping, we’re not.

**Aline:** Right.

**Craig:** This is the worst.

**Aline:** And we just don’t have enough —

**Craig:** He doesn’t remember.

**Aline:** Of an emphasis on our culture in happy parents make happy babies.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** And sort of do what works for you. And we cling to these things in a very anxiety-ridden, unrealistic way, punish each other. It’s the same thing with childbirth and natural child birth —

**Craig:** Yes.

**Aline:** And not. And there’s so many judgments attached to it. Whatever works for you.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Aline:** Whatever makes you a happy parent is what makes for a happy child.

**Craig:** I’m so with you on that. You know, we were like — I remember, we went to my son, our first kid was born at Cedars because we lived near here. And we went to this talk that the retired head of obstetric anesthesiology ran. He was no longer in practice, really old guy, he’s like 80 years old. And he was talking about epidurals and why and how, you know, why he thought it was a good idea. And this one woman raised her hand and she was very like and she said, “Well, I’ve heard from my friends that an epidural can prolong labor and I don’t want to prolong my labor because I don’t think it would be good for my baby.”

And he said, “Well, in my experience, actually, it shortens labor because when you’re in pain, you’re muscles tighten. When you’re not in pain, you’re relaxed, you relax and labor actually goes faster. Granted that’s only in my experience, I’ve never had a baby myself, but I have overseen the delivery of 70,000 babies.”

And that’s when I leaned back and went, “Okay, epidural.” [laughs] 70,000, that’s good enough.

**Aline:** You know, it’s funny my dad — but do you know there are some people who have like a very valid reason for not wanting that and that’s important to them.

**Craig:** Totally.

**Aline:** And they should do that. When my parents were raising me and they didn’t have a lot of, you know, they were living in a country they weren’t born in. And I remember my dad went to a lecture that a parenting expert gave. And, you know, everyone asking these questions about should you do this, should you do that and do that.

And the guy said, “You know, what’s really important, the most important thing is to love your children.” And my father thought, “Well, I’m doing that.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So what could go wrong?

**John:** I think it’s really good on the 200th episode of this show that we’ve brought all the way back down to really the crucial fundamental issue of what Scriptnotes is.

**Craig:** Vagina.

**John:** Vagina. Female health.

**Craig:** We’ve always been a gynecological podcast.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** We have like a shadow gynecology podcast. We dress it up as screenwriting.

**John:** Yeah, but it’s really —

**Craig:** But we’ve always been about gynecological issues.

**John:** A pretense about that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Two hundred episodes.

**Craig:** Unbelievable.

**Aline:** I can’t believe it.

**Craig:** John, congratulations.

**Aline:** How long ago did I start emailing you and saying, “What’s going to happen for the 200th?”

**Craig:** I know, I know. Aline was very excited.

**John:** Episode Four or five.

**Aline:** I was very excited. [laughs]

**Craig:** But I have to say, John, what an adventure we’ve been on. I mean, you know, I wouldn’t have foreseen this.

**John:** Not a bit.

**Craig:** I mean we — this is over — almost four years.

**Aline:** Wow.

**John:** It’s crazy.

**Craig:** It’s insane.

**Aline:** And I know I think I’ve said this before, but when each of you said I’m doing this thing with the other guy, I thought, “Well, that would be interesting.” [laughs]

**Craig:** That’s not going to work. [laughs] Well, that’s kind of why it does work.

**Aline:** It does, yeah.

**Craig:** I think, I mean if we weren’t an odd couple, it would be very boring.

**John:** We’re both strong personalities, but very different personalities and —

**Craig:** Well, you know what I think one of the things that helps us, we are both strong personalities, but I decided very early on — I don’t even think I decided. I just did it. I decided to be the beta male. [laughs] I decided to be the beta podcast male because it’s just — it felt right.

**John:** If people are watching the Twitter feed, I posted a photo of Craig and Aline and Teddy who is our summer intern. And Teddy, the dog is the alpha dog even though he looks like the beta dog.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And it’s crucial to see dogs in their own environment having their own sort of space.

**Craig:** I’m totally the beta podcast guy. Now, what’s — how many people actually showed up for this?

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Oh, we had a total of like 250 people in our —

**Aline:** Wow. Nice.

**Craig:** Oh, thank you, everyone. Thank you. That’s awesome.

**John:** That’s amazing. So that’s like a big full house. So thank you guys very much for listening.

**Craig:** And we can kind of cull some of these questions for another Q&A.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** So we’re going to be saving the transcript of all the Q&A here.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So we’ll get back to some of those things.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** Guys, thank you, guys, so much for listening.

**Aline:** It was fun. Thank you.

**Craig:** Thanks. And thank you, Stuart. Two hundred — and Stuart, have you been here for all 200?

**Aline:** Oh wow.

**John:** Stuart Friedel has been here from the very beginning.

**Aline:** Wow.

**Craig:** Stuart just nodded.

**Aline:** And it was as if, yeah, it could have been grief. It could have been joy.

**Craig:** It was as if I had asked him do you like tuna fish. He just has one emotion which is mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

**Aline:** I like tuna fish.

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah.

**John:** He does like tuna fish. Our show is produced by Stuart Friedel.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And is edited by Matthew Chilelli who also did the outro for this week’s show. Thank you, Matthew, and he did our intro and so much stuff for the show.

**Craig:** He’s the best.

**Aline:** Lala.

**John:** If you have a question for me or for Craig, you can write to us @clmazin for Craig, @johnaugust for me. Longer questions, go to ask@johnaugust.com. People who listen to the show know where we are.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** We are on iTunes. We’re Scriptnotes. Look for us there. We have an app which is downloadable. You can find our show there.

**Craig:** {laughs]

**John:** It’s been two glasses of wine. It’s a lot.

**Craig:** John hit two glasses and has just fallen off —

**Aline:** Yeah, that’s it, it’s going off for a cliff.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah.

**John:** Craig Mazin, thank you always. But Aline Brosh McKenna, thank you for coming by.

**Craig:** Aline. Thank you, Aline. You are our Joan Rivers, but alive.

**Aline:** I want to be Supergirl.

**John:** You could be our Supergirl. Did you watch the Supergirl trailer?

**Aline:** I did. It’s my friend Ali’s show.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** I’m excited about it.

**John:** I’m excited for her, too. And I heard like negative buzz on it. And it was like — but the show is not for you. I mean like the show —

**Aline:** No, I think it looks like lots of fun. She’s adorable.

**John:** She’s adorable.

**Aline:** That actress is amazing. She’s the girl from Whiplash. Supergirl —

**Craig:** I have to recuse myself from discussing any issues regarding superheroes and gender. Thank you.

**John:** And thank you all for listening. Good night everyone.

**Aline:** Bye-bye.

**Craig:** Good night.

Links:

* [Aline Brosh McKenna](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0112459/) on episodes [60](http://johnaugust.com/2012/the-black-list-and-a-stack-of-scenes), [76](http://johnaugust.com/2013/how-screenwriters-find-their-voice), [100](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode), [101](http://johnaugust.com/2013/101-qa-from-the-live-show), [119](http://johnaugust.com/2013/positive-moviegoing), [123](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-holiday-spectacular), [124](http://johnaugust.com/2013/qa-from-the-holiday-spectacular) [152](http://johnaugust.com/2014/the-rocky-shoals-pages-70-90), [161](http://johnaugust.com/2014/a-cheap-cut-of-meat-soaked-in-butter), [175](http://johnaugust.com/2014/twelve-days-of-scriptnotes) and [180](http://johnaugust.com/2015/bad-teachers-good-advice-and-the-default-male)
* [CW picks up Crazy Ex-Girlfriend](http://deadline.com/2015/05/crazy-ex-girlfriend-dc-legends-of-tomorrow-cordon-cw-series-1201422393/) on Deadline, and [the first-look trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ctFmXGm_yE)
* [Jane the Virgin](http://www.cwtv.com/shows/jane-the-virgin/) on CW
* [Marie’s Crisis](http://www.yelp.com/biz/maries-crisis-new-york) on Yelp
* [Seth Rudetsky’s Deconstructions](http://www.sethtv.com/watch-tv/deconstructions/)
* u/tcatron565’s Reddit post, [2013 Domestic Wide Releases Opening Weekend Out of Total Gross Over Audience Perception of Film](http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/37d8fg/2013_domestic_wide_releases_opening_weekend_out/) from [r/dataisbeautiful](http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/)
* [A Cliff or a Rolling Hill](http://blog.blcklst.com/2015/05/a-cliff-or-a-rolling-hill/) from the Black List blog
* [Can You Copyright a Dream?](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/selma-martin-luther-king-can-you-copyright-a-dream-114187.html#.VWyxT1xViko) on Politico
* Hear about Writer X on [Scriptnotes, Episode 194](http://johnaugust.com/2015/poking-the-bear)
* The New York Times Magazine on [A 12-Hour Window for a Healthy Weight](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/a-12-hour-window-for-a-healthy-weight/?_r=0)
* EaterLA on [Korean bone broth soups and where to get them in LA](http://la.eater.com/maps/bone-broth-korean-los-angeles-koreatown-map-guide), and [Han Bat Sul Lung Tang](http://www.yelp.com/biz/han-bat-sul-lung-tang-los-angeles) on Yelp
* [Ultrasound Restores Memory to Mice with Alzheimer’s](http://www.popsci.com/ultrasound-restores-memory-mice-alzheimers) on Popular Science
* [Everybody Calm Down About Breastfeeding](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everybody-calm-down-about-breastfeeding/) on FiveThirtyEight
* [Supergirl first-look trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOAMGpRilnI)
* [Intro and Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes editor Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-long-and-short-of-it).

**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

**Craig Mazin:** My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 196 of Scriptnotes. A podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we will talk about writing tight versus writing long, producer credits in US television, the trend of hiring multiple writers simultaneously, screenwriter’s dress code, the jealousy over other writers’ success, and several other questions related to previous episodes. Craig, it’s going to be a very, very big and busy show.

**Craig:** Yeah. You want to pray for traffic right now. You need time folks. You need to settle in now, calm down, relax. You’re in a safe place. We’re going to walk you through everything.

**John:** Absolutely. So, this is a great podcast to listen to as you’re driving to the West Side, or from the West Side. If you’re in New York City, maybe this is a great time for the subways to slow down a little bit. If you have a big chore in front of you, like a lot of dirty dishes, maybe dirty up some extra dishes. Make an extra big pot of chili because this is going to be a lot of stuff today.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm, this is a five-chili podcast.

**John:** [laughs] In follow up, last —

**Craig:** I don’t even know what means. What does five-chili mean? I don’t even know what that means.

**John:** A five-chili podcast, I mean, is that a hot podcast?

**Craig:** I guess. It’s like you have to make five pots of chili. It really makes no sense. But sometimes when I say things that are stupid, I like to just keep talking about it. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. It’s always important to dwell on the things that make no sense at all.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, what do we got today?

**John:** Last week on the show we had Ryan Knighton and he was fantastic. I loved that episode. And he talked about writing while Canadian. And people seemed to have a great response to that.

**Craig:** He’s a really intelligent guy. And he has this very interesting perspective on screenwriting because he’s an outsider. He’s an outsider because he’s Canadian. He’s an outsider because he’s a novelist. He’s an outsider because he’s blind. And he’s completely blind, by the way. Before we started the show, sometimes people say well they’re visually impaired, I can see some things. He actually smashed his head into the microphone. He’s that blind.

But he had all of these things that made him kind of an outsider and yet somehow through, oh my gosh, talent and hard work, he’s about as inside as it gets, writing a screenplay for Ridley Scott. And I feel like, frankly, everybody is an outsider until they’re an insider. And so I think that was part of it. But he was just particularly good at expressing what his perspective was and how it had changed over time. It was a great discussion.

And maybe my favorite part of it is that you and I got into a fight in front of him about what he looked like.

**John:** Yes. And so I want to sort of go back to that thing, because I said — we were talking about some project that he was involved with and someone had brought up Chris O’Dowd. And I said on the podcast, oh yes, I think Chris O’Dowd could play you in the movie. Or I said basically like you look kind of like Chris O’Dowd. And we threw it out to the listeners about whether our guest, Ryan Knighton, looks like Chris O’Dowd.

And the votes came back and I was wrong, apparently. He does not look like Chris O’Dowd.

**Craig:** No. He looks nothing like Chris O’Dowd. And it was interesting because usually when you say to somebody, oh, I think you look like so-and-so, they will either say, “Yeah, I get that,” or, “What?” But Ryan was like, “Oh, do I?” Because he hasn’t seen his own face in a really long time. So he might now look like Chris O’Dowd.

But, no, Ryan, you do not. I don’t know what —

**John:** I had a hunch I was going to lose this bet because Stuart Friedel was tasked with trying to find two photos to put in the show notes that would show how Chris O’Dowd and Ryan Knighton looked like each other. And he had a very hard time doing that.

So, he picked the two that looked the most alike. But he said, “You know what? You’re going to lose.” And I lost that bet.

**Craig:** Yeah, he just doesn’t look like Chris O’Dowd.

**John:** Scott wrote in and said, “As someone who is legally blind, though I am still able to use a computer and type, it was inspiring to listen to today’s podcast. One of my biggest fears is if I do lose all my sight completely, I wouldn’t be able to continue with my dream. That’s clearly not the case. Thank you. I listen to your podcast religiously, but not cultistly, and treat you and John like my film school.”

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** So, that was a very common email we got in. People loving that episode with Ryan Knighton. But I wanted to highlight that one because that last sentence, “I listen to your podcast and treat you and John like my film school.” So, it was written as if it was written to Craig, which is so strange because Craig never checks the email.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** He doesn’t even have the password for the email.

**Craig:** I would if you let me.

**John:** It was so weird.

**Craig:** Yeah, you don’t — you keep me away from all that stuff. That is odd.

**John:** So I assume it was written towards Craig, not written towards Stuart, but maybe it was written towards Stuart. I don’t know.

**Craig:** Well, I don’t think anyone is treating you and Stuart like their film school.

**John:** Yeah, probably not.

**Craig:** I mean, listen, there’s something about me that either drives people away, or draws them in tight. I’m either the worst or best.

**John:** I think there may be like a daddy thing, honestly, where because daddy has strong opinions, you’re sort of like — you push back against daddy, but then you’re also sort of like, oh, but I love daddy. So, if daddy is on my side, I think you’re kind of the daddy of the podcast. If I’m the professor, you’re the father. And you give people stern talking’s to, but sometimes they love you for it.

**Craig:** I think of myself as the Oracle and you as the Architect.

**John:** Oh, great. Yes, so back to the Matrix.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. Great.

We have some questions for our listeners. So, this is episode 196. We are approaching episode 200. And we are trying to figure out what is going to happen at 200 and what is going to happen beyond 200. So, spoiler alert, there is not going to be a live show with an audience like we traditionally have done for some other big events, and that’s all because of Craig. Craig does not want to do a live show with an audience because he has stage fright suddenly.

**Craig:** Well, I just, I don’t know. We’ve done a lot of them. And I get this kind of panic, a little bit of a panic, that we’ll do one and suddenly we won’t be the Jon Bon Jovi of podcasts anymore. And we’ll have half of an audience full of people that have been there before. And they’ll all be like, “Yeah, you know…it’s all right.”

**John:** They’ll want us to play our greatest hits. Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, I figured, oh, well, you know, if you don’t go away, how can they ever miss you. But, you had a really interesting idea because then Aline started yelling at me, which as you know, is an intense experience.

**John:** So, if you’re the Oracle and I’m the Architect, who is she in this? Is she Neo? Is she Trinity? Who is she in the Matrix analogy?

**Craig:** I think she’s the Merovingian.

**John:** Oh, wow. I don’t know what that is.

**Craig:** Oh, you didn’t see the sequels?

**John:** I did see the sequels. I just didn’t understand them.

**Craig:** [laughs] I actually understand them. It took me a long, long time, and I had to do a lot of reading. It’s actually kind of amazing. I don’t — the third movie just does not entertain me. The second movie is incredibly challenging and entertains me and actually has some remarkable things going on philosophically and in terms of what they’re suggesting.

I don’t know, one day we’ll have that discussion. But the Merovingian is the French guy in the restaurant who is very, very aggressive, but also French. And she’s French and aggressive.

**John:** That is Aline, because she’s French and she’s aggressive. Done.

**Craig:** Done. Right? Although she would probably want to be Monica Bellucci, his wife, because she’s super stylish. I’m still going with the Merovingian on that one.

Anyway, you had this really interesting idea that maybe what we should do for the 200th episode, since it deserves some kind of attention, is a Google Hangout where we basically — anyone can see it, right? So anywhere around the world people can just hang out with us while we do our show.

**John:** Yes. So I think that is what we will try to do, something like that. And so I’m throwing this out to listeners basically saying, help. So, if you are a person, a producer, who does those kind of things where everyone can sort of tune in and listen and watch a livestream happening, that is a thing we would be interested in doing. And we would be happy to come to a place and do that and perhaps bring in a guest and do that.

But we don’t want to sort of have an audience big situation. We just want to have us doing the show live there. And maybe be able to take some real-time questions and comments from listeners around the world.

So, I know it’s very possible to do it just with a standard Google Hangout. And worst comes to worst, we will just do that. But I have a hunch that someone who listens to us in the Los Angeles area probably has a setup that is kind of custom made for this. And if they would like us to use their facility, we would be delighted to use their facility.

And so it would be probably a nighttime kind of thing, so people could watch it after work. And sit back and watch us do our show.

**Craig:** That would be nice. I just don’t want to wear pants. I mean, that’s really the thing.

**John:** Well, it’s going to be from the waist up, so it’s all fine.

**Craig:** Good. That’s better than from the waist down.

**John:** Oy. That’s never a good podcast.

Now, if you have a suggestion for that, you can write in to ask@johnaugust.com, our standard email address, or on Facebook or Twitter. Just tell us that you are a person who knows how to do this thing.

I have two other questions for our listeners. First off, would you want a 200-episode USB drive? So, way back in the day when we hit 100 episodes, we put out a USB drive that had the first 100 episodes on it. And we updated those later on to 150. I’m not sure if people still want them. And so we haven’t been selling them for a while. If people are interested in a 200-episode USB drive, let us know.

So, again, you can tweet at us, you can let us know on Facebook. If there seems to be sufficient demand, we will make them. If there does not seem to be sufficient demand, we won’t make them at all.

Last question for you, this is something we talked about at lunch. If you had to pick your favorite episodes out of the 200 episodes of Scriptnotes, or basically like a beginner’s guide to Scriptnotes, what would those episodes be? Because there certainly are a lot of episodes. And I’m trying to put together a blog post about here are the top episodes of Scriptnotes. And it’s actually kind of challenging, because they’re all so very different.

The ones that keep getting brought up on Reddit are things like the Final Draft episode, or the more recent sort of investigatory episodes. But there’s also episode 99 about Psychotherapy for Screenwriters. There’s the Frozen episode. There’s Ghost. I don’t know which you would recommend as being the top episodes. But I would love our listeners to provide a listener’s guide. So, if you have ideas for that, email us, send us on Facebook, tweet us to let us know, and we’ll talk through those next week.

**Craig:** That’s a good plan. I like that plan.

**John:** Yeah. Just off the top of your head, are there ones that you’d want to single out for people to pay attention to?

**Craig:** Well, aside from the ones you mentioned, I think Raiders of the Lost Ark was our first in depth movie study. And I really enjoyed that one. Craft-wise, I thought our episode on conflict was really good. I’m trying to think of like one of the more oddball guests we’ve had, because we’ve had quite a few now at this point.

You know, I think the Lindsay Doran interview is great. The truth is that like everybody else I’m going to have some recency bias.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** So, I think that people should dig deep. Dig deep into the back catalog. Look for those B-sides. Find something cool back there.

**John:** Sounds good.

All right, let’s get to today’s work. The first question comes in from Danny who asks, “Do you always strive to write the tightest, most economical ‘perfect script,’ or do you ever purposely write extra?” Craig, what is your answer to Danny’s question?

**Craig:** Well, I’m not sure that this is advisable. I don’t know if what I do is right, but the answer is, yeah, I always strive to write the tightest, most economical, ‘perfect script’ while I’m doing it, knowing full well that there is no such thing as perfection or even close to perfection. I might be completely off by 180 degrees. I might think that I nailed it and other people might hate it. This is just the life of what it means to be a writer.

But I don’t ever turn a script in — this is just me — I never turn a script in that I haven’t really carefully tightened all the little tiny screws and bits-a-ma-bobs in. I really try and keep it tight. Yeah. So I do a lot of editing and a lot of careful work.

I don’t write — purposely write — extra ever. I will save things that I think, okay, I’m taking this out and putting it aside. And this may be why I work well with Lindsay because she is the most — I thought I was the most obsessive about these little tiny things. You know, laser cutting the edges. And she’s even more so like that. I mean, every period, comma, everything is discussed and tightened and made just so.

So, that’s my process. I don’t know if it’s right. It’s just that’s the way I do it.

**John:** Yeah. I’m very mindful about where I’m at in the process. And in those early drafts, which are just for myself, when I’m just first putting words on the paper, I will try to write something that feels like the final scene, but I won’t freak out about making every sentence the leanest possible sentence it could be, or I won’t stress out as like, oh you know what, I bet I could do that in two sentences rather than three. I will just try to get it down on the page. And I think it’s most important, you know, the scene that is written is better than the scene that is unwritten.

So, I want to make sure I get something down on the page that reflects the intention. I will go through before it’s a draft I show to anybody and try to make sure that I’ve gotten the scenes as tight as I can and I’ve taken out the scenes that just are never going to make it into the movie. And that’s one of those hard things that only comes with time where you recognize, you know what, this is a lovely scene. We could shoot this scene. It will never make it into the movie. And so sometimes I’ve had to cut a five-page sequence because I recognize this is never going to actually make it in there.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But there have been times, and even recently, where I’ve looked at stuff with that sort of really sharp editor’s eye and said, “Will this ultimately make it down through the process into the final cut of the movie?” And I can’t say with certainty that it would. But then my question is will this help the people who are trying to make this movie understand what the movie feels like? Will this help get the cast and the directors to take this movie seriously?

If the answer sometimes is yes, then I would be more inclined to leave that scene, that line, that moment in the movie in the script for right now, because it helps inform the kind of movie that we’re trying to make. It’s helping be part of the trailer for let’s make this into a movie. So, sometimes I’ll recognize that this might not survive, but it’s important to be in the draft for right now.

Do you ever do that?

**Craig:** Yeah, for sure. I mean, the distinction I make is this is good for the read, as opposed to this is good for the movie. There are times when something is good for the read. And there is value there, because a good read will get you to your movie. And a good read will also clarify your intentions and, as you said, fill in some of the blanks for people, even if it’s not required in the movie itself. And it may be cut in the editing room. It may be cut prior to shooting, but that’s one of those spots where you do have to acknowledge that while we are writing a movie, we’re limited. We’re limited. We just don’t have the tools that a movie has.

That’s why we don’t charge tickets to stand around and read screenplays. So, yeah, sometimes you want to keep something in there for the read. But I wonder if part of the difference between our techniques or work practices is just in the way we — you know how some people are auditory learners and blah, blah, blah. So, when you’re writing, do you find that your writing occurs while you’re writing, or is your writing occurring in your mind and then you write it?

**John:** I think it’s happening in both ways. I’ve described before on the show that essentially my process of doing a scene is just looping it, just visually looping it in my head and hearing the people talk, and figuring out, like filming the scene in my head, essentially. And then trying to get a version of that down on paper as quickly as possible. Then going through and finding the absolute best possible words to describe it.

So, it’s the looping. It’s the scribble. And then it’s the real writing. And obviously all of those phases are real writing, but we tend to think of writing as being that final phase where you’re picking which nouns and which verbs go in which order.

**Craig:** Well, I suppose my theory is no good, because that’s pretty much what I do, too. I mean, I play the scene in my head and I have people talking back and forth. I will start to edit dialogue in my head as I’m going. And then I start to write. And before I kind of say I’m done here, I do really read it through. And this is one area where I know you and I are different. I am a re-paver. I will go over it, and over it, and over it, and over it, and over, and over, and over. Then I move on.

I don’t feel comfortable moving on. I need — it’s like a security blanket. I need to know that if they had to shoot that tomorrow, there wouldn’t be a problem. So, it’s mental.

**John:** And because I write out of sequence, that’s not a huge factor for me. So, I don’t worry about that.

**Craig:** The thought of writing out of sequence makes my heart race.

**John:** But I want to circle back to this idea of how lean you can write, because there always is that option that you could take out that sentence. You could take out that parenthetical. If you really wanted to, if you looked at the final movie and you just wrote down here’s what the actors are literally doing, and here’s what they’re saying, that would be the screenplay of the movie.

It’s a representation on paper of what the movie is like, but it’s not a real plan for making that movie. And often the carefully written sentence description that is giving the feel of what that scene is like is as important as the lines of dialogue being spoken. And so I’m always very mindful of as I’m cutting, wow, I hope I’m not cutting meat and, worse, I hope I’m not cutting into the bone as I try to slice this thinner and thinner.

And as I’m trying to trim pages, as I’m trying to get the movie in its best fighting shape, I’m often mindful of like, wow, you know what would be better? If we just took out this whole scene, rather than trying to cut the scene down so short. I would be better writing around this problem than trying to just make a shorter version of this moment.

**Craig:** This is a constant inner battle. You don’t want to be the person who cuts nothing. Nor do you want to be the person who goes cut happy and starts to hurt your own movie. That’s almost scarier. This is where having a trusted partner is an enormous help, because when they are with you on the ride the whole way, whether you’re working very closely with a director, or working very closely with a producer, or those of you who write with writing partners, it’s baked into that situation.

Somebody can say, “Actually, we’ve hurt the movie. And so losing that hurt the movie, and we need to put that back.” And I’ve had those moments with Lindsay for sure. I sometimes get a little over zealous. And it’s interesting — somebody else defending your work and its worthiness of being in the movie is more compelling than you doing it to yourself, you know?

Because we are not objective, of course. I mean, it’s easy enough to fall down the trap of, well I read it, it’s good. If somebody else says, “You wrote it, and it’s good. Please put it back.” Maybe you should put it back. So, it’s good to have somebody like that along for the ride if possible.

**John:** There’s always this talk about you shouldn’t direct from the page, which we’ve dismissed many times. Of course you are trying to provide a vision for the movie. But I’d also say you shouldn’t try to control the Avid from the page. And if you are writing so tightly and so specifically that it literally feels like there’s exactly one way you could shoot this and no other way could possibly work for this, that may be a signal that you are writing a little close to the bone. And that you’re not giving enough space for this to exist in a scene, exist as a moment.

And there have been times where I’ve come into a scene and realized you are trying to park in too tight of a parking space and you’re not giving yourself the options of how you’re going to actually handle this moment.

**Craig:** Well, then, of course, reality will intrude. And so even if you’ve written the scene to be the tightest parking space of all time, hopefully you are still in communication and partnering with the production. And they’ll call you and they’ll say, “We got to change this. We can’t shoot it this way. But here’s what we have.” And then you go to work.

So, you’re right. There is a point of diminishing returns on fastidiousness. And you do have to be aware of that certainly, because ultimately the world will not conform to your micrometer-measured sentences. There’s going to be some confirmation to the world around you as you shoot.

**John:** A real world example that happened pretty recently. There’s a movie I wrote where I got these notes about tone and I realized what they were actually responding to was essentially I had edited it a little too tight. And there were moments of sort of scene description and sort of feeling that I had taken out just kind of for the economy of getting to the next thing. And without those it was feeling rushed.

I had taken out some of the painting of the world, a little bit of the feeling, the looseness, the suspense in some cases. And I needed to sort of put that back in. in some cases it was literally like adding a few more line breaks so that those — there was a little bit more air on the page.

And it’s so hard when you’ve looked at it a thousand times to recognize like, oh yeah, I actually do need that extra little bit of space there, because people are going to zip through this and not pay attention.

**Craig:** Yeah. You’ve become accustomed to your own material and it becomes part of your experience of the script to the point where you don’t need it anymore. It’s no longer a crutch for you. But everybody else needs it. Everybody else — they’re reading it for the first time, essentially.

**John:** I think it may have been Aline on the show who talked about you look at a joke a hundred times, like, wow, this joke is not funny anymore. It has to be cut. And then everyone else, like it’s funny for them because it’s the first time they’re seeing it. And that can be a real challenge, too.

**Craig:** Yeah. You’ve got to really be careful about that stuff. And, you know, as you’re going through — this is where, by the way, actual production experience is very helpful, and watching movies get edited is very helpful. Sometimes I will have discussions with producers or executives and they’ll say, “Well you know, we’re just wondering, do we need this line?” And I’ll say, I don’t know, but you’re there and you’re shooting. And it doesn’t require set up. It’s free. It’s essentially free.

So, where I take “do we need this” notes very much to heart is when it will actually impact the day. But if it’s not going to save any time, well, just do it. Why not? Unless people just don’t understand it, you know?

**John:** Yeah. There’s always that sense of, well, we could cut this. And they’re trying to point out like this is not absolutely essential. And so there’s this sense that anything that is not absolutely essential could be cut, and therefore maybe should be cut. And it’s a question always worth asking, but it’s never an automatic guarantee that you should cut those things.

A lot of times I’ll have moments, and I’ll know that in the back of my head like well that could disappear. And I’ll think through the editing math of like well if that moment, if that scene, if that line went away, would it be possible for everything to still make sense? And I’ll have a plan for it. But that doesn’t mean that the line should go away, because it could be incredibly integral to everything.

Certainly going back to our discussion of Ghost, there are so many scenes in Ghost that could go away, but that movie would be diminished if they went away.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And if they had cut those scenes during the writing process, the movie would not exist.

**Craig:** And then, of course, there were scenes that they did cut. And that’s the thing — sometimes I feel like when people are discussing a screenplay, the writer is there with the producer and the studio and the director, but there’s this fear of being humble. There’s a fear of admitting that we’re all guessing. But, it’s important to admit that right off the bat, because everyone who has made a movie has gone into that first screening and been shocked by something that worked, and shocked by something that didn’t.

Sometimes the biggest laugh in the movie is a line you didn’t even think was that good. It’s just —

**John:** Oh, 100 percent.

**Craig:** It’s the weirdest thing. So you have to kind of be humble enough to appreciate that there’s a chaotic factor to this that cannot be predetermined. It cannot be divined. So, if you’re on the fence, sometimes it’s good to skew in favor of inclusion.

**John:** It reminds me of the common thing said about when, I think it was Sony was buying Columbia Pictures, and the legend is always that one of the Sony execs pulled the Columbia exec aside and said, “By the way, we only want to make the hit movies.” And the similar thing for in making an individual movie is like the director saying, “Well, I only want to shoot the scenes that are going to be in the movie.” Or, “I only want to shoot the exact shots I need to make the movie.” But, of course, you don’t really know that. And so what you’re doing is your best guess about what things you’re going to want to have in the editing room to construct the final movie.

And so the writer is coming up with this material and hopefully shaping it in a way that if followed to the tee and really following his plan, you will have a good movie. But you won’t really know. And you won’t really know until you’re in your seventh cut of this film.

And so you’re trying to get the best material possible so you can have the best shot of making your film.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s the great paradox of writing is that you have to write it like you’re shooting it, and that is all that will be shot, but at the same time you have to be flexible enough to change it.

**John:** Yes. Our next question comes from Michael in Liverpool who asks, “Can someone please explain why the TV show The Following has a list of producer credits the same length as my penis?” And I don’t know —

**Craig:** Does he give the length?

**John:** So he says that his penis is attached as a PNG, as a graphic, but that is not in fact true. There is no graphic attached.

**Craig:** Oh…

**John:** So we’ll have to assume that his penis is about 13 names long, which is how many names —

**Craig:** I think you need to read this question like you’re from Liverpool. The same length as my penis?

**John:** Can someone please explain…?

**Craig:** No, that was kind of Irish.

**John:** I’m not great with my British accent at all.

**Craig:** This is The Beatles thing. The same length as my penis? Uh, well, how long is his penis? Let’s find out in names.

**John:** In names. So, there are 13 names listed on this episode of The Following. And so I went through and I did my homework and I actually looked up on IMDb like who those people were. And so of those 13 names, nine of them are writers, which is not surprising because in US television, most of the names you see listed as a producer are high level writers. So, they are writers who are no longer at the entry level. They are no longer staff writers or story editors. They have moved up the ranks.

And when you move up the ranks in TV writing, you get a producer credit. And those producer credits escalate as you rise higher and higher on a show, or sort of moving show to show.

Way back in 2004 I wrote a blog post describing sort of TV credits. And so this was the hierarchy that I listed then, which is largely accurate. So, you’re looking at given TV show, you’re looking at the credits scroll by, one of the executive producers is almost always the creator of the show. And that creator of the show may also be the showrunner, the person who is most in charge of the show at the moment, but it may not be the case.

There could be other people listed as executive producers. Below that, co-executive producers. Below that, somewhere in that vicinity, a consulting producer, a supervising producer, a producer, then a co-producer. Then below that would be a story editor and a staff writer.

Now, sometimes those aren’t exactly accurate, but that’s a general sense of what that is. The other producer credits you might see are a line producer, or an associate producer. Those are almost always not writers. Those are usually the people who are responsible for the physical production or the editing. So, those are some of the names you’re going to see. And that’s absolutely true with the credits for The Following.

Because there are so many names, we’ll have a list in the show notes, but essentially of the 13 names listed, nine of them are writers. So the only ones who aren’t writers there, there’s a woman, Lauren Wagner, who based on her credits I think she runs Kevin Williamson’s production company. Kevin Williamson is the producer/creator of the show.

Kevin Bacon is Kevin Bacon. He’s the star of the show. He’s listed as a producer. There’s a man named Michael Stricks who is a production manager. And there is Marcos Siega who is a famous director, a big director who is the director of this TV show.

Everyone else there is a writer. So, what’s with all the producers? Well, there’s a bunch of writers. And so that’s employment. That’s great.

**Craig:** It’s essentially a symptom of the fact that television is written by a staff. So when you have a large group of employees working on something, somebody somewhere has to figure out what they’re going to be paid. And anytime you’re paying groups of people stuff, what immediately begins to happen is a codification of salaries and leveling. So, we’re not going to pay everybody ad hoc. Nor are we going to pay you more money than the person that’s your boss. So, eventually titles occur.

And it’s very much a military system here. I mean, just replace lieutenant and corporal and captain with consulting and supervising and co-executive. That’s kind of what’s going on.

In movies, that’s not the way we do it. There’s one writer working at a time. And so there isn’t a staffing system and a ranking system. Sometimes the writer that ends up with the credit for the movie, the writer that’s written it all, well she actually got paid half as much as the woman who kicked the whole thing off, who got paid more. So, the salaries are all over the place, and therefore in features the producers are typically not writers — sometimes they are — but typically not and they are more running the business and creative end of the company of the movie.

But here I think it’s probably about salary.

**John:** Yeah. It’s about salary, it’s about experience, and responsibility on the show.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so the people who have been doing this for a long time, they’re going to rise up the ranks and they’ll have higher producer credits on a given show. And that is a way of reflecting that and a way of paying them for that.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** So, Craig, in your last answer you said that features do not have multiple writers simultaneously, but now unfortunately that situation seems to be happening more and more. Jay writes in, “My writing partner and I are repped working writers in the studio system with about five years of credits on relatively big studio movies, sadly none yet produced. But more importantly we’re big fans of Scriptnotes and have been since the start.”

**Craig:** That is more important.

**John:** Jay, you’re awesome.

**Craig:** That’s the most important.

**John:** It is more important. Yes.

“We just saw this disturbing report that WB is hiring established screenwriters like Will Beall, Jeff Nichols, etc., to start writing first acts for their upcoming DC movies. That is pitting three writers against each other to work on the same outline and write competing versions of Aquaman’s act one, for instance. Do you see the industry as a whole moving in a similar direction with writer’s rooms? Paramount is setting one up for Transformers, for example. Is this a larger trend in bake offs?”

A related post to this is Kim Masters at the Hollywood Reporter wrote a long piece about DC and Warners and them trying to figure out how they’re going to do their movies. And so both Aquaman and Wonder Woman have this situation where there are multiple writers working simultaneously on things and it apparently is not always the happiest situation. Craig, what do you think?

**Craig:** Well, the Kim Masters piece in the Hollywood Reporter, I think, puts its finger exactly on the big difference between what they’re endeavoring to do with the DC properties and what Marvel does with the Marvel properties. And I understand that at Warner Bros they’re looking at the way Marvel does it. They probably see some version of kind of a writing room system. And which is, by the way, the way that movies used to be done way back in the day.

And they’re thinking, well, let’s just copy that. It’s working. And I understand that. But, the main difference is there is one authorial vision being imposed on all of those Marvel movies and that’s through Kevin Feige who runs Marvel. And Kevin Feige is renowned for not only doing his job well but being an extraordinarily educated Marvel-ologist. He was hired, I think, in small part because of his encyclopedic knowledge of what is a very large collection of characters and storylines that interweave and reboot and restart and have various versions.

So, he is imposing a singular vision. If you are going to hire multiple writers to work on one movie as a bake off situation, they must be guided by one creative authorial vision. They have to be, or you will just end up with a bunch of parts that don’t fit together. And I’m not even getting into the fact that I think this is just kind of bad for writers and bad for movies in general. I think it’s not going to works. Unless there is somebody that has Kevin Feige’s knowledge of Marvel but for DC, I don’t see how this works.

It’s tempting. I know why they do it. It’s tempting. It seems like, oh, well it will go faster. Instead of hiring three writers in succession, we’ll just hire them all at once. It just doesn’t work that way.

**John:** Yeah. If writing were the kind of thing where you could clearly tell like well this is the version that won, and therefore we are going to get behind her script and her vision and she will be the one to deliver it and praise everybody — this is the one — then I could maybe see it working. I could maybe see the consensus of rather than have a bunch of people pitch their takes, we will pay them money to write it up and we can look at their actual words and say like this is the person who has the vision for what this movie is.

We will support her 100 percent and go with her vision. But what this article says and what we know from our other conversations is that is not at all what happened. And it’s not what seems to be happening in the DC movies. And it’s never really happened anywhere else. You might say like, “Oh, we’re going to have these three versions,” and then you’re going to have a bunch of different opinions about what is the best of those three versions. And then you’re going to hire on a director who is going to have different opinions about what the best of those three versions is.

And so rather than having one writer pulled in a bunch of different ways, you’re going to have three writers pulled in a bunch of different ways and everyone is going to be extra confused.

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s this thing that happens when one writer writes all the way through. They will get some amount of it right. They will get some amount of it wrong. No one is perfect.

Consider Joss Whedon, for instance. Joss Whedon is I guess the other singular vision over there at Marvel who has had enormous influence obviously on the movies that he makes, but on the movies around him at the same time that are touching on his movie. Well, Joss Whedon doesn’t get everything right. Joss Whedon makes mistakes. I’m sure Joss Whedon would be the first person 20 years from now to look back at Avengers and say, “Well here’s a bunch of things I think I could have done better.”

But here’s the thing. They’re his mistakes. They are mistakes that are consistent in voice, tone, and vision with the stuff that works. When you’re looking at a movie that’s been cobbled together from three, or four, or five different writers, like a Frankenstein monster, the mistakes will be incredibly jarring because they have nothing to do with the stuff that’s working.

They won’t be consistent mistakes. They won’t be part of the same feeling. That’s where things start to come apart. And I’ll tell you, when you watch a movie and it has that cobbled feel, it’s hard to even say what exactly is putting itself between you and the movie, but something is. It’s like there’s a thing between you and it. It starts to take on an artificial hollow vibe.

So, for instance, I’m a big fan of Chris Nolan and his Batman films. I can look at each one of those Batman films and say well here’s something I just don’t like, but the mistake is consistent and it’s part of Nolan’s vision and so I am okay.

**John:** I get that. Thinking about other situations where multiple writers are working on a movie simultaneously, James Cameron is trying it right now for the Avatar sequels. And so he is essentially the showrunner and he has — I believe it’s three writers who are writing the movies with him/for him. I don’t quite know what is happening in that room. Josh Friedman is a friend, but I don’t know any sort of secret insights about what’s actually happening, but the goal is for them to work together and create something that is better than any one of them could do separately.

Is that possible? Maybe it’s possible, but they certainly have a very strong showrunner in James Cameron who is going to direct these movies and has the vision for what they’re supposed to be.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s a situation I believe would work, rather than three writers reporting to a committee of people who then have to figure out what is actually going to happen and what’s going to go on. That seems to be the challenge.

**Craig:** It seems like Warner Bros is leaning on Zack Snyder to be their singular overarching vision bringer. But he’s been making this most recent Superman vs. Batman movie. Well, if you’re directing a movie you can’t do this part, right. So, Kevin Feige can do this part while Joss Whedon is making Avengers. So, it seems like they’re missing a vital piece there if this is the way they’re going to go.

And if they don’t have that vital piece, and frankly I don’t know if — for better or worse, the DC universe does not really inspire the same kind of obsessive encyclopedic curiosity that the Marvel universe does, then I think they may want to consider — I’m talking like I run Warner Bros. Isn’t this great? They may want to consider kind of returning back to their original model which worked extraordinarily well with Batman and that is to say find a filmmaker with a singular vision and give them that thing. But, the problem from them is they want — everybody wants the shared universe. Everybody wants to do what Marvel is doing.

It may not be possible.

**John:** The other question will be whether the Star Wars universe and sort of what they’re trying to do and Kathleen Kennedy’s role in bringing together all the Star Wars movies, will that be possible. Now, in that case they don’t multiple writers working on one script at the same time, but they are trying to build the future of this whole universe, and there has to be considerable creative collaboration and creative consensus in what that world-building will be.

And whether that falls on her shoulders or someone else, somebody has to finally make those decisions. Someone has to be the Kevin Feige in those decisions. And that will be interesting to see how that shakes out.

**Craig:** No question. I think that it probably very much is Kathleen Kennedy. But they’re making I think the right choice of, for instance, okay, so J.J. really took this next movie and did it. And Rian Johnson is taking the movie after that and he’s going to do it. And they are allowing a vision. They’re allowing a singular voice. And we should also acknowledge that J.J. brought in Larry Kasdan. And Larry is, you know, kind of the great keeper of the flame of the Star Wars universe.

So, Larry and J.J. were that first one. Rian is going to be the second one. That’s the right way to go. I feel like that’s the way to do it. This kind of Frankenstein — and also, frankly, pitting three writers against each other is — any time I hear a studio say, “Well, we’re going to do a cut and paste version,” I just think, yup, you’re done. That’s it. Movie is bad. That’s it.

**John:** Yeah. You and I have both in situations where the cut and paste has ended up happening because there have been multiple writers employed over the course of time. So, someone is brought in to rewrite something, you and I have both rewritten somebody, and we’ve both been rewritten. And sometimes those movies turn out just fine.

And lord knows it can sometimes work out, but are any of those movies as amazing as they might have been with a single writer writing all the way through? I can’t think of any. That doesn’t mean that it could never happen. But it’s generally not the best sign when multiple writers have been working on a movie. That’s the reality.

**Craig:** At the very least, if multiple writers are working on a movie, one writer needs to be the one that does the final reconciliation. You can’t have non-writers doing their cut and paste. They simply won’t see the mistakes that — and screenplay mistakes ripple forth like tiny little seeds that blossom into awful things.

Sometimes you just can’t see them there in the script and then, kaboosh. So, you know, I’ve been in situations where I’ve looked at three drafts and I’ve done something, and then somebody else has come in, and then I come back and they’re like, “Look, we want to keep this and this.” And I’ll say, great, but I still need to incorporate it properly. I can’t just slap it in. There’s a craft to this. There’s an actual job, [laughs], writing. I know, it’s crazy. Crazy.

**John:** That’s crazy.

A simpler question. Adam writes in, “I’ve always been someone who for lack of a better term dresses up. I feel more comfortable in a sport coat and tie rather than a hoodie. I have nothing against sweat pants. It’s just how I roll. I treat every general or pitch like something in between a job interview and a first date. And looking back I’ve probably been the best dressed person in the room more often than not.

“I’m sure I’m overthinking it because it was only brought up after Craig made it clear that there isn’t a writer’s dress code. But do you think there is a subconscious message I’m sending out by not wearing a t-shirt and jeans? Does the writer in a bow tie come off as less authentically creatively than the writer in a graphic tee?”

Craig, what’s your thought?

**Craig:** Well, I mean, I wish it weren’t so, but maybe. I mean, you know, this is one of those things. We’re all taught not to judge a book by its cover, and then everybody goes around judging books by their cover. And particularly in Hollywood where the cover of the book is the most important part of the book to the people that spend money hiring writers. [laughs]

Yeah, if you show up really buttoned up in a jacket and nice pants and a bow tie, it may put other people a little bit ill at ease. Like nobody likes to be the worst dressed person in the room. The writer’s job in Hollywood is the one place where being the worst dressed person in the room kind of makes you cool. And that’s okay.

You know, that said, Adam, I feel like you walk in and if you just acknowledge and you’re like, “By the way, this is how roll. I just like bow ties.” No will care. I mean, whatever immediate impression they get from your bow tie, it will be obliterated by the things coming out of your mouth. So, as long as you yourself are not a non-creative seeming person, I wouldn’t worry about it.

I mean, just know that it’s there. It will be something you’ll overcome every time.

**John:** Yeah. I don’t even necessarily know that it’s an overcome. I think it’s just being aware of expectation. And I think in most cases the expectation is going to be, well, writers don’t dress very well. And so if you dress very well you are pushing against that expectation. And that could be to your benefit or to your detriment.

Let’s say you are a Wes Anderson type. Then you wearing a bow tie is fantastic. Because they are bringing you in, they want to meet with you because they have a perception of you are and it fits that kind of brand. And so if the things you write are movies that people would wear bow ties in, they’re delighted to see that.

If Wes Anderson showed up for a meeting and he was scruffy and wearing dirty jeans and looked like he hadn’t bathed in a while you would say, “Wait, that’s not the Wes Anderson I was expecting.” So, looking like the person that they are expecting could be useful to you. And so if that is a dressed up person and you are writing dressed up movies, that’s fantastic.

Now, if you’re writing dark and gritty crime thrillers, if you are writing big goofy dumb comedies, that may be a bit of a challenge and you’ll just have to figure out what that is when you’re in the room and how you play that.

But, I wouldn’t necessarily change how you dress. You just want to come in there confident. And if confident for you is dressing up some, go for it.

I think my biggest caution against dressing up for these things, and when you say first date or job interview, that makes me feel nervous. And it makes me feel like you don’t know what you’re doing, or that you’re a newbie. And that you are nervous about this whole thing. And that is not a position of strength to be coming into that room.

**Craig:** I agree. Well, hopefully that will help you pick out tomorrow’s sartorial selection. But now we have something about writers judging each other. This is a question from Bobby. He writes, “I have a question/concern regarding all the to do over This is Working. That was the all-script, all-page challenge that you and I did. It sounds like a great script, and I do believe you’re right in your assessment of K.C.’s talents.

“I am filled with vicarious joy, but also jealousy at hearing him get such praise on your show. Basically the thought that occurred to me as I was listening to you continue to praise him in your follow up episode was ‘why him?’ And I realized that gets to the fundamental rub of all Hollywood success stories. The answer essentially comes down to ‘just because.’

“I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling jealous that his pages were picked over mine. I’m sure I’m not alone in believing I’m every bit as talented. I hope this doesn’t come across as critical, and certainly don’t take it as pouting or childish. I recognize that I had as much chance being picked as K.C. did. And that’s really what I’m trying to get at here. It’s all a lottery. Maybe your podcast just changed K.C.’s life. I’d be surprised if it didn’t.

“But it could have just as easily been someone else. And I guess I’d like to get your general take on that sentiment.”

What do you think about that, John?

**John:** I think Bobby is largely right. I think it could have been him, or anyone else. And also that feeling of why him, why not me, that doesn’t go away either.

And I’ll tell you quite honestly as I look at success of other people, or I look at somebody getting that great book assignment, that will still come up in my heart of hearts, too. Where it’s like, but why did that person get that thing, and why didn’t I get that thing? That is a natural human emotion and it doesn’t ever go away.

What I think the lesson to take from this feeling, and from K.C. Scott, is that to some degree it is a lottery, but you don’t win the lottery without buying some tickets. And K.C. Scott took a big risk by putting himself out there and entering the Three-Page Challenge, but then also being willing to send in his script and not know how we were going to receive it. And really tell us more about his life and his own worries and thoughts about the future. Those were all sort of brave choices.

So, while it could be anybody, it’s more likely to happen to somebody who is brave and someone who is taking some chances. And so if there’s a lesson to take from this, it’s that fortune does favor the bold.

**Craig:** I come at this from a slightly different angle because I recognize that this is something that a lot of people feel. And I think you’re probably right; it’s one of those things if you feel it, you feel it, and then it’s all really about what meaning you assign to that feeling.

I have all sorts of mental problems. They’re all related —

**John:** But that’s well-established.

**Craig:** [laughs] And a lot of them are connected to my work. The guns that I have are almost always pointed back towards my own chest. I have never felt jealous of another writer. I don’t have it. And I don’t mean to come off like a saint, because I’m not. I just don’t have that. I’ve never been jealous. If I’ve gone for something and somebody else gets it I just think, huh, well, they must have done something better. [laughs] I don’t know, that’s just the way I am.

But I’m never jealous about other writers. I always feel good when good things happen to other writers because I just don’t have that bone. I wish I could tell you it’s because I’m enlightened. I think it’s just because I’m actually missing that chunk of neurons. I have other chunks of neurons that cause me all sorts of trouble. So, I guess really I’m not much of a help for you here, Bobby, other than to say on my side of it, it’s actually quite nice to not be burdened by this. If there’s a way for you to be less burdened by it, then all I would say is this: it’s not going to help you. And it’s not going to get you anywhere. And it’s not going to motivate you.

And so when you feel it, just recognize it for what it is which is a meaningless feeling. It doesn’t mean that those people are better than you. And it doesn’t mean that you’re better than them. It doesn’t mean that the world is specifically unfair to you. The world is pretty much generally unfair to everybody. So, that’s the only advice I can give you over here in the oddly, weirdly, non-jealous camp. I don’t know. I’m a weirdo that way, I guess.

**John:** I would say that I am genuinely happy when other writers who I know are able to succeed and get great projects. And I’m genuinely happy for them when these things happen. But there’s always a voice in my head that says, “Well, why didn’t I get that call?” And then some of those self-doubts creep back in. And it makes me wonder, well, is it because I am too expensive? Is it because I am the wrong person for this project? Is it because I have this relationship with this person?

What is it that made it so I did not get that call? And Bobby is describing a version of that call, like why did K.C. Scott get called up to have this spotlight put on him. Well, the answer is sort of that kind of random lottery in this case. It was literally Stuart read a bunch of Three-Page Challenges. He sent us the ones he thought were the best. And we said we agreed. And we said, yes, this is the thing.

But just as easily it could have not happened.

I think the thing to take from this is that, yes, there is an aspect to this that is like a lottery. And the good thing about that is you can buy a lottery ticket. And the game is not fixed before you start to play. You can increase your odds of winning this lottery by figuring out ways to just literally increase your odds. Take more swings at bat. Take more general meetings.

Do what Ryan Knighton did in this last episode and he takes like 20 general meetings in the course of a week. That is how you get lucky is by making situations where you can get lucky.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm. Yeah.

**John:** That’s the lesson here.

**Craig:** I think that’s right. And, you know, you’re making a good distinction, actually. There’s nothing wrong with saying, “Okay, I just heard a friend got a job. I’m happy for them. I am also wondering why didn’t I get called for that.” Those two things are different and can be maintained simultaneously.

And when you ask yourself I wonder why I didn’t get called, that’s a useful question, because that question can lead to strategies, plans. Okay, what am I doing now that I could differently? Because obviously there is something I want that isn’t currently here. Let me actually exercise some thought and care and take some action and see if I can’t change my circumstances. That’s valuable.

The part of jealousy that’s not valuable is the part that doesn’t let you enjoy, truly enjoy, when something good happens to somebody else. Even if it was something that maybe you wanted for yourself, that’s the part where you are in a weird way robbing yourself of what I think is one of the great pleasures of life, which is celebrating somebody else’s good fortune with them.

I love that feeling. When Rian told me that he was going to be writing and directing the next Star Wars, I mean, my little heart just about exploded. I was so excited. I mean, I just didn’t know, you know, like, ah, it was just the best feeling ever. I felt like — in a weird way I felt like I was doing it now because it’s my friend, you know. [laughs] I was so happy. So, that’s the only thing, Bobby. Just make sure that you don’t kill that, you know.

But, it’s a good thing, I think, what John is saying, too. Then sort of step back and go, “Well gee, if this is something that I feel I ought to have but I don’t, what can I do to change those circumstances?”

**John:** Yeah. The other thing you can take from that is it is possible for a person in this situation to achieve this thing, so therefore it is possible for me to achieve that thing. And that is a great take home from K.C. Scott is that this is a person who wrote a good script, put it out there, and got a great response from it. And that is possible for anyone who can write a great script.

**Craig:** Correctamundo.

**John:** Great. Circling back to our discussions of arbitration, David writes, “I’m a WGA member who has gone through an arbitration a couple of times. So, I found the episode about arbitration especially fascinating. I was reading that Donna Langley was defending her decision to hire E.L. James’s husband to write 50 Shades Darker, the sequel to 50 Shades of Grey, because he had done some work on the first movie.

“But he didn’t get a credit. Only Kelly Marcel did. Was Donna Langley legally allowed to say that? Was it against WGA rules to publicize uncredited writers? Or does that only apply to writers themselves?”

Craig, what is the actual rules here? What are common best practices? Talk us through what is legitimate for an executive like Donna Langley to say about that situation.

**Craig:** It’s an interesting question, actually. I mean, on the writing side of things we have working rules, which are union rules. They govern our behavior as union members. And we are subject to union discipline if we break them. And union discipline is essentially, it could be a fine. As far as I know the union hasn’t disciplined anyone for anything in forever.

But, one of our working rules is that we would abide by the credits as put forth and that we wouldn’t publicize a different credit. So, if we wrote on something and we don’t get credit for it, we don’t do interviews where we say things like, “I deserve credit on that,” or “I wrote a lot of it,” etc.

Now, was Donna allowed to say that? Probably yes. I think that the — almost certainly yes. The way the contract works is that company is forbidden to publicize incorrect credits. Once the WGA determines credits, they can’t print up posters, take out ads in newspapers, put a different credit on the screen or on video or when it runs on TV.

But it’s a simple free speech issue. And individual is certainly allowed to say I hired somebody to do something. That’s — I don’t think in any way that Donna did anything wrong there. And in that circumstance I think it kind of was something she probably had to say. I think, I mean, it’s a tough spot. Right? You’re hiring the author’s husband. It feels like, on its face, it feels kind of like crazy nepotism. So, you kind of need to be able to say, “No, no, no, he’s actually a screenwriter, too. He was hired to write on the first movie.”

That’s a fact. I think that was fine for her to say. She didn’t say he deserved credit on it. She didn’t say he was the screenwriter. So, I think that’s fine.

In general, it’s not something that you see executives doing because, frankly, they have as much investment as we do in our system of credits.

**John:** I agree with your separation of facts from sort of general policy and practices.

So, you know, by rules they’re not allowed to stick his name on as a writer. That very clearly would be a violation. But facts are facts. And so you can’t just pretend that reality doesn’t exist and that he wasn’t hired. I think it’s a completely reasonable thing for her to say in this situation.

And people will ask me about a film that I’ve worked on that I’m not credited on, I will happily say, “Yes, I worked on that movie, but I never claimed I should have gotten credit.” Yet, all the same, you will see the situations, we talked about the situations on previous arbitrations where people have been very unhappy. And so you can’t go back through and enter into a time machine and un-say all the things you said about who you thought should have gotten credit on the movie.

You said that aloud and that was a thing that happened. And that’s why I think it’s important to be very, very mindful about the kinds of things you’re saying publicly about movies that have not yet had final credits because you don’t know what’s going to happen.

And so just treating everybody fairly and nicely, and being kind, is a general good rule.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s one of those areas where restraint is a good policy. If you must, for extenuating circumstances, as was I think the case here with Donna, yeah sure. But, you know, otherwise if you don’t have to, don’t. You know, it just feels more professional to me, at least, that we not do that sort of thing.

**John:** So, our next question comes from John in London. He writes, “I don’t think my question has been covered yet on the show, but the longer I wonder about it, the more it feels like a time bomb. I’ve begun to write film criticism for a website here in the UK and I’m having a great time of it. I would love to eventually work in Hollywood as a screenwriter. And I have the slightest paranoia that some of the reviews I’ve written, some of which have been mildly scathing, but eventually make me someone that can’t be hired.

“What do you think about this? Have I been watching too many ’70s paranoid thrillers? Or is there cause for concern about publicly criticizing one’s work, and then having it come back to bit me?”

**Craig:** Good question. Well, I would be remiss if I didn’t suggest to you that you stop being scathing, just because I don’t really feel that that’s productive or helps anybody. Criticism is different than scathing. I don’t know what “mildly scathing” means. That’s an oxymoron. Regardless, film critics routinely overestimate their importance and impact on the business.

I actually think barely anyone would notice. It’s possible that if you wrote something and you sat down with the director that you wanted to direct your script, and you had destroyed that person, they would have something to say to you and rightly so because at this point you’d kind of be a hypocrite.

But, if you sat down with a studio, they don’t care that you gave their movies bad reviews. You know what they care about? If their movie bombed or not.

If you give a hit movie a bad review, it’s like you didn’t happen. If you give a bomb a bad review, it’s like you didn’t happen. [laughs] It kind of doesn’t matter, because the movie was going to bomb with you or without you. And the movie was going to be a hit with you or without you.

There is an interesting thing that happens with — it doesn’t happen frequently, but occasionally film critics will become screenwriters. Rod Lurie I believe was a film critic who became a screenwriter. Stephen Schiff, who I’ve mentioned before on the podcast, is an excellent screenwriter and he was a film critic for The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. So he was pretty high up on that food chain.

And I once asked him about it, and it was sort of a version of your question, John. And he said, “Maybe three or four months after I had left my job as a film critic and started my job as a screenwriter, it kind of all came to me in a rush that the entire time I was writing film reviews and critiquing films for The New Yorker and Vanity Fair I had no idea what I was talking about. None.” And he said occasionally he would see a lot of his old cohorts who were still writing reviews and it was the feeling that he suspects ex-smokers get when they see their friends huddled outside of a bar all puffing away.

You know, there’s this other thing on the other side that actually is, frankly, more rewarding. So, I’m thrilled that you want to work in Hollywood as a screenwriter. I think that’s spectacular. And I would suggest to you that you would be better served working on that now than spending too much time writing mildly scathing reviews of movies. I don’t think that’s going to help you achieve what I think you’re saying you want to achieve.

**John:** I agree with you, particularly because your name is going to be associated with a bunch of reviews of movies that aren’t especially good largely. I mean, yes, hopefully you’re reviewing lots of really good movies and you’re saying very smart, wonderful things about them. And maybe you can be a champion for some movies that otherwise would go unnoticed.

But more likely, you’re going to have to see some terrible movies and tell everybody that they’re terrible. And your instinct will be to use your clever words to describe their terribleness in a way that is rewarding to the audience for having read through what you’re writing. And that’s not going to serve you well down the road.

If people do find those reviews, they will be mildly annoyed by you when you try to sit down with them for a meeting. If you want to be a screenwriter, I think you’d be better off writing screenplays than writing reviews of other people’s movies. Just, you know, it’s great to watch movies. It’s great to watch movies to understand movies, but just like we’ve talked about before, writing a bunch of coverage on screenplays is a great way to learn about screenplays and then you have to stop because it will just burn a hole in your brain.

And I think being a film reviewer will ultimately burn that hole in your brain and hurt you as a screenwriter down the road.

**Craig:** I agree. Our next question is from Kirk who lives in Huntington Beach here in sunny California. And he says, “What are your thoughts on using sizzle reels in pitches? Specifically Ripomatic ones? I found this term online, so I don’t know if it’s something people actually say. If not, I’m referring to when one would edit together clips of existing movies/copyrighted footage.”

So, as an aside, yes, people do say Ripomatic. So, the idea is that you would find bits of movies that would be sort of like the thing you’d be doing in your movie. And then you edit it together to show them sort of what your scene might look like.

Kirk continues, “I have a professor who swears by them. He has actually worked in the industry. But he also says not to use recognizable people, for instance, movie stars, the people in all existing movies. I have watched a few online.” I think he means a few Ripomatics. “Including Rian Johnson’s for Looper. He used voiceover from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the eventual star, but he used stuff from Se7en and we saw Brad Pitt very clearly.

“Is it better to use a variety of people, not just one actor as a stand in? Or is it okay to use one actor as the star of the sizzle reel? Or is it not wise to make or use a sizzle reel at all if I were to be pitching as a screenwriter and not a writer-director?”

John, what do you think about this?

**John:** I think sizzle reels are terrific for directors. Sizzle reels are a useful tool for a director to land a job or to convince people that as a writer-director that you should be hiring them to direct this movie. I don’t think writers should be making sizzle reels. I think writers should be writing scripts and that is where they should largely focus their time and energy.

But sizzle reels I think are good. I think they’re a useful way of describing to somebody what the movie is going to look like because words will fall apart. And people will see different things when you describe a movie. But if you show them what the movie could look like, that will get them excited and they will lean in and I think it will be a useful tool for you.

So, I strongly encourage sizzle reels. In terms of using one actor or multiple actors, it’s going to depend on what your project is. In most cases, I’ve found sizzle reels are much more useful to describe the world, what the movie feels like, rather than try to show a hero’s journey. Because frankly you’re going to be really Frankensteining something together to try to show this actor from different movies to try to make that feel like one movie.

What’s your thoughts, Craig?

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean this is not something screenwriters ever do. If you’re trying to sell yourself as a director, if you’re trying to get financing for a movie, sure. But we’re paid to create a movie through words only. That’s our gig. So, if we can’t pitch at using words only, then we have a problem. If we can’t provide some sample of our writing that is words only, we have a problem.

So, when you ask is it not wise to make or use a sizzle reel at all if I’m to be pitching as a screenwriter, my answer to you is it is not wise.

**John:** 100 percent agree. Now, there have been times where I’ve brought visual aids in, and that I think can be very, very useful. Like when we were pitching Prince of Persia, we brought in artwork that showed kind of what the world looked like. That was useful; it was something for them to — it was literally just like mounted on cardboard and showed what that thing looked like. Great. Terrific. Absolutely do that.

But if you’re having to stop and show a reel for something, then you have lost their interest in what you are pitching for your take. So, I would not recommend that.

**Craig:** Absolutely yes. Still photos, I mean, we did this with the movie that I’m doing with Lindsay. We had a collection of still photos that we submitted along to say, look, this is what certain things will look like. And that was very helpful. But no Ripomatics. No. And those are our questions. Those are the questions of the week.

**John:** There were a lot of questions, but we covered a wide range of topics. So, it’s almost time for One Cool Things. Before we get to One Cool Things, a few weeks back I had invited our listeners if they were in the Los Angeles area and wanted to join us for a play test of this new game we were trying, I would love them to come help play test it. And they did. They showed up. And they were wonderful. And we had a really good play test.

And we’re actually really close to being able to launch this game. So, the game is called One Hit Kill. It is a card game. It is fun. And if you want to see what the artwork looks like for it, even the people who came to the play test were testing some sort of generic artwork, so you can see what the real artwork looks like. We have a site now. It’s just onehitkillgame.com. And you can see what the cards look like. And it’s good. It’s fun.

And there’s also kind of a meta game happening on that site, so you can unlock additional cards. As we are recording this on a Thursday, no one has actually unlocked all the cards, so perhaps when this episode comes out on Tuesday someone unlocks it all on that day, I will know it just because of Scriptnotes and I will tweet my congratulations to you.

So, if you want to see this new game we’re about to launch, it’s called One Hit Kill and you can find it at onehitkillgame.com.

But now it’s time for the real One Cool Things. Craig, what is your One Cool Thing this week?

**Craig:** My One Cool Thing is called Rocketbook. This was tweeted to me by one of our listeners. It’s an Indiegogo campaign, so forgive me.

**John:** Ha-ha. I can’t forgive you for this, Craig.

**Craig:** I kind of can’t forgive myself. I can’t.

**John:** But tell us about it.

**Craig:** Well, it’s a sort of fascinating little product here. And their goal was $20,000. They have currently raised $669,000, so they’re doing pretty well. It looks like a standard school spiral notebook kind of deal. But it’s a bit more than that.

So, you take notes in it, and there are multiple pages. I think their typical one is like 50 sheets. And you take notes in class or wherever and then at the bottom of the page there are a bunch of icons. One of them is for Dropbox. One is for Evernote. One is for Google Drive. You know, stuff like that. And you can check which one of those you want your notes to go to. And then the idea is when you’re done, you use their app to take a picture of the double fold, you know, so you open up two pages at a time. Take a picture of those two pages at a time. It will read the pages, scan them, I think it OCRs them. It also sees which of the things you’ve checked off at the bottom. Sends the things to the various spots you want them to go.

And then in perhaps the niftiest little bit of all, if you use these particular kinds of pens called Friction pens by Pilot, you can erase the pages by microwaving the notebook. [laughs] I’ve stunned you, haven’t I?

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** I’ve just put me you into like a —

**John:** You have not stunned me at all. You have stunned me in many ways, but I want you to finish. So, talk me through the pros and cons of this product.

**Craig:** Well, I think the number one pro is microwave! I’m microwaving my notebook. I love the fact that there are multiple selectable paths to upload things. So, I’m taking notes on one page because I know I want them to go into a Dropbox thing, but on this page I’m doing stuff on a project that I’m sharing with other people, so I put it in a shared box at Google Drive. That’s really cool.

The fact that I can erase it that easily, so I don’t have to use pencil, I use pen, and it erases that easily is brilliant.

The only con as far as I’m concerned is that you have to actually take pictures of the pages which is kind of a pain in the butt. If you do this regularly, it’s very manageable. If you have six weeks of notes, which is probably not advisable, then it would become a huge bummer.

But, you know, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be that expensive. $65 gets you two of the Rocketbooks and a six-pack of the Friction pens. That’s pretty reasonable for a product like this. You know, in my mind I was thinking would this help my son because a lot of times the pages come out, they fall out of the binder, they go bye-bye in his room. So, I thought it was pretty cool. What do you think?

**John:** Great. So, I was fascinated by your choice of this because first off it’s Indiegogo, so it’s essentially Kickstarter. You’re recommending a Kickstarter project.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** That’s fascinating. Second off, episode 100 of our show, we’re approaching 200, episode 100, what was my One Cool Thing? It was the Friction pens. And we were up on the stage in front of a live audience and you and Rawson made fun of me for the Friction pens.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, of course. The pens alone. Who cares?

**John:** Who cares? So these are the erasable pens. And so the reason why they’re erasable is it’s actually heat friction that erases them. So, yes, is it a clever idea to microwave the notebook to get rid of them, yes. But any notebook you microwave with a Friction pen on it will erase. So, that’s essentially nothing magical about the notebook.

**Craig:** I’m standing by Rawson and myself that you need both to be exciting.

**John:** So the microwave — I applaud them for using the microwave as a marketing hook.

**Craig:** Very clever.

**John:** I do salute them for that. So, this app that you point the camera at and it scans, that was another one of my One Cool Things. That was Scannable App from Evernote which does the same thing.

**Craig:** Oh really? Huh?

**John:** So, yes, that was a previous One Cool Thing, so we’ll have links to both of those there. It is a free app for Evernote that does the same situation. So, what is genuinely clever about what they seem to be doing is that you have multiple paths, so you can send it to Dropbox, whatever. So, I applaud them for that. But the $65, whatever that pledge tier is, any piece of people will work as well as the notebook. And the Friction pens you can get at Office Depot.

So, they’re making a lot of money on that. So, what you really essentially are paying for I think is the app, which has no small amount of engineering, so I applaud them for that, but I do find it fascinating that other previously dismissed things of mine packaged together are Craig’s One Cool Thing.

**Craig:** Well, I guess, you know what? You’re jealous. [laughs] That’s the deal. You’re just jealous.

**John:** That’s what it is. I’m deeply, deeply jealous.

**Craig:** All I can say is this. When you said it, nobody cared. When these guys said it, they got $670,000. There’s some magic in their pudding, man. They got a flavor in there. It’s like a special flavor. I don’t know.

**John:** I’m going to say that adding microwave to One Hit Kill will clearly be the thing that would push it over the top.

**Craig:** You could try. I’m just saying.

**John:** I should try.

**Craig:** You should try.

**John:** My One Cool Thing this week is the new trackpad on the 12-inch MacBook and on the 13-inch MacBook Pro. So, what is remarkable about the trackpad now is that it seems completely unremarkable. Like you click on it, it’s like, oh, it’s fine. Until you find out how it’s actually working. Have you seen how they actually do the trackpad now?

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s not moving at all. It’s just using this haptic thing so that it seems like it’s clicking. But it’s not clicking.

**John:** Yeah. It’s not clicking. It’s all an illusion. So, if you go into an Apple store and you go to one of their computers, if you were to turn it off, go to shut down and actually turn the power off, and you tapped on where the trackpad is, like it doesn’t click at all. But the minute you turn it on, it clicks. And it’s all an illusion. And so essentially there’s a little motor underneath it that is creating the vibration that really makes your finger think that it is clicking.

And so because it is all an illusion, it can also create the illusion that if you push harder on it, it has a second level of depth and it clicks down deeper. And it is remarkable how well it fools your finger into thinking that it’s done something that it has not done at all. So, I would just encourage you to try it out next time you’re at the Apple store because the first time I was at the Apple store and I was trying one I was like, oh, this must not be the new one because this doesn’t feel any different. But it was completely different.

**Craig:** I’m waiting on that one just because I’m looking for them to release a new cinema display that works with their USB 3.0 port. How are you — like for instance, right now, you have to plug in your microphone and you also have to plug in power. It wouldn’t work with this?

**John:** It really wouldn’t work with this. And so I was debating getting the 12-inch. I tried typing on it. I hated it. And people I know who have used it, they’ve said like, oh no, the typing is fine when you get used to it, but no one loves the keyboard on it. Or very few people love the keyboard.

So, my travel computer was an 11-inch MacBook Air. And it was just too small. The hard drive was too small. The screen was too small. And I was making do and I decided to stop making due. So, I ended up buying the 13-inch MacBook Pro and it’s great.

**Craig:** That’s what I use.

**John:** I’m happy with it. It’s heavier, but it’s fine. And the screen is delightful. And I got the new trackpad, so I’m delighted.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s cool. All right. Awesome. That was a good show. Good show.

**John:** Good show. Our show is produced by Stuart Friedel. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli who also did the outro this week.

If you have a question for me or for Craig, you can write to us on Twitter. I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

Longer questions like the ones we answered this week, you should write into ask@johnaugust.com.

At johnaugust.com you will find the show notes for this episode and every episode. You will also find transcripts for every episode. So, thanks Stuart for getting those all edited because that is a huge part of his job every Thursday is getting those transcripts up.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** If you are listening to this on the website, you should also go over to iTunes and subscribe, because that helps people find out about our podcast and sign up themselves. You should also leave us a comment, because we love comments, because we’re human being. You can also leave notes on Facebook for us or on Twitter. Specifically on Facebook we’d love to know your thoughts about, A, do you have a great venue for hosting our 200th episode where we can livestream it; should we do more USB drives; which are the best episodes we’ve ever done? Facebook can be a great place to tell us about that, or you can email us.

You can also find all of the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. Some of my favorite episodes that you will find there are the bonus episodes, the ones that never got released to the main feed, especially like the Dirty Episode with Rebel Wilson.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Her story about the beret will make you never want to actually look at a beret the same way again.

**Craig:** Yeah, it was gorgeous.

**John:** It was gorgeously filthy.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, that was a fun one. So, if you’re a new subscriber to the premium feed and you haven’t listened to the Dirty show, maybe listen to the Dirty show.

Final plug for One Hit Kill. It’s at onehitkillgame.com if you want to see the artwork for that. And we will be back with you next week. Craig, have a good week.

**Craig:** You too, John.

**John:** See ya.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [Scriptnotes, 195: Writing for Hollywood without living there](http://johnaugust.com/2015/writing-for-hollywood-without-living-there)
* [Email us](mailto:ask@johnaugust.com) or [leave us a Facebook comment](https://www.facebook.com/scriptnotes) and let us know your favorite episodes
* [John’s 2004 blog post on producer credits](http://johnaugust.com/2004/producer-credits-and-what-they-mean) and [screenwriting.io on the television writer/producer pecking order](http://screenwriting.io/what-is-the-television-writerproducer-pecking-order/)
* [Superman vs. Batman? DC’s Real Battle Is How to Create Its Superhero Universe](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/superman-batman-dcs-real-battle-792190) by Kim Masters
* [See artwork from our new game, One Hit Kill, and play our mini-game now](http://www.onehitkillgame.com/)
* [Rocketbook: Cloud-Integrated Microwavable Notebook](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/rocketbook-cloud-integrated-microwavable-notebook) on Indiegogo
* [Scriptnotes, the 100th Episode](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode)
* [All our past One Cool Things](http://johnaugust.com/onecoolthings)
* [The MacBook’s new trackpad will change the way you click](http://www.macworld.com/article/2895758/the-macbooks-new-trackpad-will-change-the-way-you-click.html) on Macworld
* [Scriptnotes, Bonus: The Dirty Show with Rebel Wilson and Dan Savage](http://scriptnotes.net/the-dirty-show-with-rebel-wilson-and-dan-savage)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes editor Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/midseason-finale).

**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

**Craig Mazin:** Yeah, my name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is episode 188 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Now, Craig, if I bring up the term “midseason finale,” what does that evoke to you? What does that mean to you?

**Craig:** Nothing. [laughs]

**John:** Nothing?

**Craig:** Nothing. I have a blank.

**John:** You don’t watch TV. I keep forgetting that. I keep trying to bring up these things that involve television.

**Craig:** I mean, I watch some TV but I don’t, like, I never realized there was a midseason finale.

**John:** I think it’s a fairly recent construct. And what it is, is generally as a TV show, especially a show that has a 22-episode season, they sort of break into two chunks. And so, you’ll go through a long narrative arc that will sort of like culminate after like 13 episodes or something. And this often happens sort of around Christmas time and then there’s a break and then they come back for the second half of the season later on.

And so, the midseason finale I think about sort of wrapping up a bunch of plot lines but also establishing the new stuff that’s going to happen.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And this episode of Scriptnotes kind of feels like a midseason finale to me because even though we’re not taking a break, even though next week there’ll be a show, there’s a whole bunch of stuff on the outline to go through which is basically let’s just wrap this stuff up and be done with it for awhile.

**Craig:** Well, I like that. I’m a big believer in getting things off the plate. Some of these things I never want to see again.

**John:** Yes, and so some of these things will be buried forever.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But let’s talk through some of the things we’ll talk about today.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** We will have a follow up on a previous Three Page Challenge. We will talk about the WGA diversity numbers.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** We’ll look at Road Runner cartoons.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** Gerritsen’s Gravity lawsuit.

**Craig:** Wait, we’ve already done all of these things. Oh, this is the point.

**John:** This is the point.

**Craig:** Got it.

**John:** More rules on screenwriting.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** But then we’ll be looking forward to the future.

**Craig:** Ah.

**John:** And so establishing the second half of the season of Scriptnotes.

**Craig:** Oh, I see, I didn’t even know we had a season. That’s how far ahead of me you are.

**John:** Absolutely. The new thing in podcasting is seasons.

**Craig:** Oh, okay.

**John:** Yeah, so Serial has seasons. We haven’t had seasons to date, but maybe we should have seasons and then maybe that’s a thing we should talk about.

**Craig:** Oh, yeah, Serial I presume is going to find somebody else who’s definitely guilty to talk about for awhile about how maybe they’re not guilty which you could do with literally anyone.

**John:** Yeah. That’s fun to do.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Go back and revisit things that are already decided.

**Craig:** I have stolen my pronunciation of literally from Seth Rudetsky.

**John:** Oh, good.

**Craig:** Yeah, he has his own.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** He has — like the English people say “literally” and Americans typically say “literally” but he says, “literally, literally”. It’s his own thing. I love it. Stole it.

**John:** Yeah. So it’s like a lit tree.

**Craig:** Yes, literally.

**John:** As an adverb.

**Craig:** Right, literally yeah.

**John:** Yeah. It’s good. All right, so before we get in to this big batch of follow up, there’s a little bit of actual news. So news on my end, we have a brand new version of Weekend Read out which finally adds the thing that Craig has been asking for the last year for is support for the iPad.

**Craig:** Thank god.

**John:** So the new version, version 1.5 of Weekend Read adds iPad support but also adds iCloud Sync which is very useful. So you can start reading a script on your iPhone, continue reading it on your iPad and it will know where you are and it will keep those files together and in sync.

**Craig:** Great

**John:** It will also let you do folders, which is super handy, so you can group things together. And you can even build a folder on your back, in the little iCloud folder and just drag a bunch of files in there. So, super useful. I want to thank Nima Yousefi who literally went —

**Craig:** Literally.

**John:** Literally ripped his hair out and went insane trying to make it all work. But it works, so thank you.

**Craig:** Do you think he did it for me?

**John:** Mostly he did it for Craig. Whenever he was about to give up, I said, “But think about Craig.”

**Craig:** And he literally went back to work.

**John:** Yeah. And so, Craig, you signed up as a beta tester but we can actually check how many times you installed the beta and it was zero.

**Craig:** [laughs] That’s so me.

**John:** That’s so Raven.

**Craig:** That is so Raven. I’m going to — look, I don’t, listen man, now that I know it’s real —

**John:** Now it’s real.

**Craig:** I’m just going to —

**John:** Now it’s on the App Store.

**Craig:** Yeah, I’m just going to buy it. I’m just going to literally going to buy it.

**John:** Yeah, that’s great. Thank you.

**Craig:** How much does it cost?

**John:** Yeah, well, it’s free to download and then to upgrade it for all the new extra features, it is a one-time purchase. If you upgraded the original version of Weekend Read, just click Restore Purchases and it would already be there.

**Craig:** And if I upgrade it because I’m going to — you know me, I love to upgrade.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I’m an upgrader.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** What am I looking at here? 400, 500 bucks?

**John:** $9.99.

**Craig:** I can do that. I can swing it.

**John:** You can absolutely do that.

**Craig:** Totally.

**John:** Yeah. I’ve seen your house. You could totally afford that.

**Craig:** I could totally afford it. And you know what? I’d could have done ten.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I could have just done a flat — nobody does that by the way, right? Is there anyone that does that on the iStore?

**John:** You actually can’t do it on the App Store, there are set price tiers, so.

**Craig:** That’s amazing.

**John:** They do these price tiers because depending on what country you’re in it’s a completely different amount of money.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** And so they set the price tier so it can be convertible to whatever currency it’s in.

**Craig:** And 9.99 is more convertible than 10?

**John:** Yeah. I don’t know.

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** Everyone understands it’s 10.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** It’s actually literally called tier 10.

**Craig:** It’s literally tier 10.

**John:** God, oh no.

**Craig:** I hope that’s Seth —

**John:** I mean, Mathew is going to have to go through this and just cut out all of these.

**Craig:** We have to send this to Seth. I don’t care.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I want him to listen to this. I literally want him to listen to it.

**John:** Our friend, Aline Brosh McKenna, has issued a jeremiad against the term “seriously.”

**Craig:** Well, I’m with her. I mean, “really” and “seriously” both need to go.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Both.

**John:** They’re clammy.

**Craig:** They’re gone.

**John:** The other new thing we put out on the same day as Weekend Read 1.5 is brand new versions of our flagship font. So we make Courier Prime. We are the people who released Courier Prime which is free for everybody but we made it. And we also put out today Courier Prime Sans and Courier Prime Source. And so these are, the Sans version is basically it’s the exact same metrics as Couriers Prime but without the serifs on it so it is more like a Helvetica that there’s not little feet on the letters and heads.

And Courier Prime Source is designed for people who are writing programs who wanted a great mono space font. It is the same font as Courier Prime Sans but the Os have slashes through them so they don’t get confused with zeros. Actually the zeros have slashes —

**Craig:** Yeah, I was going to say the zeros are supposed to have the slashes.

**John:** That would be a huge mistake if we made that.

**Craig:** That would have been, literally, we could have brought the world down.

**John:** Yeah, like literally —

**Craig:** Literally.

**John:** Oh, we’ll never stop this.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** Satellites could have crashed because of this one mistake.

**Craig:** Absolutely, a lot of lives would have been lost. I like that it’s your flagship font as opposed to, what, your 10 other not-flagship fonts?

**John:** Yeah, we have a lot of other internal fonts that we use for other things.

**Craig:** Oh, you have internal fonts?

**John:** Yeah. We have a busy font making —

**Craig:** A little font factory.

**John:** Operation.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so Courier Prime Sans is actually the same face essentially as Highland Sans, the face that we use inside Highland. We just wanted other people to be able to use it. So Slugline was the first people who came to us to say, “Hey, can we use that?” And we’re like, “Yeah, sure,” but it feels weird that it’s called Highland so we changed the name of it. And then the Source font basically because the font we made as just as a Sans didn’t really work right for programmers, so we fixed some things for programmers.

Things like the asterisk which, you know, for a normal typewriter face you want the asterisk to be a certain way. But if you’re actually coding where you want it to be a much bigger, a more centered thing because you use it for multiplying numbers and such or pointers.

**Craig:** Is there a term, a linguistic term to describe a word in a language that is a foreign source but everybody mispronounces it just as a general — like Sans is, everybody knows that like a font is a Sans font.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But it’s from sans, the French without. And there are words like San Pedro here in Los Angeles.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** What the hell is San Pedro? That’s the weirdest thing. It’s not like we — why would we say that? Why don’t we just say San Pedro?

**John:** I’m sure there is. So, please listeners, if you know the name for the word that Craig is searching for, let us know. Because it’s a special consistent thing, like you have to learn that it’s La Brea, like le, le, but it’s La Cienega, same word pronounced completely differently based on what street it’s associated with.

**Craig:** Le Brea, La Cienega. You’re right. And my wife speaks fluent Spanish, and so she really gets rankled by Los Feliz. That makes her nuts. Because we all know Feliz Navidad, it’s not like we go Feliz Navidad. We all know how it’s supposed to be but we say Los Feliz. And her favorite is in Florida, there is a lake, Buena Vista. But in Florida they call it Buena Vista.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** What is that?

**John:** It’s madness but it’s just the way it is. And I would also argue that Los Feliz and Los Feliz, you hear both being pronounced and it’s partly because that neighborhood in Los Angeles still has a large Spanish-speaking population who choose to call it what it’s actually — more like what its actually Spanish would be.

**Craig:** They have to be so angry every day.

**John:** I don’t think they’re so angry.

**Craig:** I think they, I would be.

**John:** I think they recognize they’re living in a period of language transition.

**Craig:** I would riot. I mean — no, I’m not — listen, when I say I would riot, please understand I’m not trying to instigate a riot. But if I were walking around, I spoke Spanish, I was raised speaking Spanish and someone is like, “Oh, where do you live?” And I said, “Los Feliz”. And they said, “Oh, you mean Los Feliz?”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I would light a garbage can on fire at that point.

**John:** So, I think in the SNL app that you highlighted earlier, two weeks ago probably, I do recall an SNL sketch where they over-pronounced Spanish words and it’s just so terrible, like “Chimichanga” like, you know, really go too far in pronouncing a Spanish word in a Spanish way. That’s one of the worst things you could do, also.

**Craig:** That’s the local news anchor disease.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Very much.

**Craig:** Yes, yes.

**John:** The last bit of news I had that was just sort of news because I got to experience it for the first time is I went to PAX East which is the big game convention here in Boston which happened to line up with the dates that I’m here in Boston for Big Fish. And it was just overwhelming and amazing.

Now, Craig, do you like conventions? Do you like going to big nerd-out bunches of people?

**Craig:** I love nerds and I love so much what happens at those conventions. Like when E3 comes around or when Comic-Con comes around I will definitely look and see what the news is coming out of them. But I cannot explain how much I hate being in an enormous box room with people jammed against me…eh…ah..eh…do you hear that noise?

**John:** Yeah, that’s pain.

**Craig:** That’s my brain every sec. I went to E3 once.

**John:** I went to E3 once too and it was —

**Craig:** Once.

**John:** Yeah. So I would rank this on the whole scale of like these kinds of conferences and conventions. So I went to CES once in Las Vegas and it was one of the most overwhelming and terrifying things I have ever encountered where like I wanted to stare just at a blank wall for like 20 minutes just to sort of get my eyes to shut up. I did not enjoy that. And then I also went to E3 and that was a similar kind of thing but a little scaled back. This was actually much better. It was a huge number of people, just a crazy number of people.

And so as you descend the escalator into it, you’re like, “Oh, my god, I’m going to have a panic attack.” But I realized quite early on that half of the convention floor is all the videogame stuff. And that’s the big, bright, loud, noisy part. And there’s probably amazing things to see and you’re seeing things like Over-Watched the new Blizzard game and there was Oculus stuff and there’s amazing stuff if you’re in to that. I just bee-lined straight through there and went to the other half of the hall where they had all the table-top games and it was just so much more sedate and calm and just delightful.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** One of the best things that I saw there, which I had anticipated is they have these tables where they have a bunch of opened board games and box games and table-top games and you can just check them out. You basically give them your ID. You can check them out. Like go over to a table and play them. And it was just a brilliant, simple idea but the chance to actually see what those games are like when they’re played. And I just commend everybody who sort of ventured over into that half of the arena.

**Craig:** That’s probably where you would find me. I like to go in the quiet place. I like quiet and cool. I don’t like it to be too hot.

**John:** Nope.

**Craig:** I don’t mind too cold. I’ll put a jacket on.

**John:** Yeah. That’s fine. Yeah. So, part of the reason why I wanted to see this PAX East board game space is because we actually are developing a board game in my little company.

**Craig:** What aren’t you doing over there?

**John:** We’re kind of doing a lot. We got a lot of —

**Craig:** Are you guys going to build a car?

**John:** Shh.

**Craig:** Okay. I’m just saying because I, you know —

**John:** We know you love cars.

**Craig:** Well, if you could out Tesla the Tesla. I’m just saying

**John:** Yeah, out Apple the Apple cart.

**Craig:** Anyway, all right. So back, so you’re developing a game.

**John:** We’re developing a game. And so part of the reason why there were some specific people there I needed to talk with about this game we’re developing and trying to figuring out and one of the things we need to do next is actually put it in front of a bunch of people to play test it. So this is a callout to listeners and I’ll also put this on Twitter, but in Los Angeles on which day, on — ?

**Craig:** March 23rd at 9:00 p.m.

**John:** We are going to be testing this game.

**Craig:** That was a wild guess, was I right?

**John:** You were absolutely right. You were looking at the Workflow ahead me.

**Craig:** I might be cheating.

**John:** You might be cheating. We are going to need about 30 people to test this game. So if you are a person who really likes board games, table-top games, card games, that kind of thing, we might really benefit from your just spending 90 minutes and helping us figure out this game. So if you’d like to do that, the sign-up for that is johnaugust.com/game and that would be cool if you want to come join us. So it’s in Los Angeles. It is on March 23rd at 9:00 p.m. It’ll be somewhere in the Hollywood area/Mid-Wilshire area. And we will make sure the game actually makes sense, that the instructions make sense.

**Craig:** Am I allowed to go to that?

**John:** You are allowed to go to that, Craig.

**Craig:** I’m just, like, I mean, because, I mean —

**John:** So we now need only 29 people, so tick-tock.

**Craig:** Well, maybe, I mean, hold on a second, March 29th.

**John:** That’s a Monday.

**Craig:** That’s a Monday, I got — wait, it is?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Oh, yeah, I’m looking at April.

**John:** Oh, March 23rd, March 23rd.

**Craig:** March, I’m not wrong, March 23rd, right. Yeah, I think I might do that.

**John:** That’d be really fun. We’d love to have you.

**Craig:** If I go there and I start playing and people are really enjoying it but then I just started saying eh… Is it really that good? Eh?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I start turning people against your game.

**John:** That’s absolutely fine.

**Craig:** Oh, okay.

**John:** You have to, you know —

**Craig:** Challenge accepted. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. [laughs] Follow your heart, Craig.

**Craig:** Exciting.

**John:** Let’s get in to the meat of our show which is all of this follow-up.

**Craig:** Follow-up.

**John:** So the first bit of follow-up is we got an email from Chris French who was one of the writers from our Three Page Challenge last week. And he’s the guy who wrote the script called Seven Secrets which involved a forest fire.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And if we recall, we were so intrigued by sort of what was happening. And we were really frustrated and confused by some of what we were reading on the page. And so, Chris sent through a much longer description about sort of real things that were happening there. But I wanted to read a little bit of what he wrote.

He writes, “To begin, yes, this is a screenplay where we will never see the faces of an adult. The entire film will frame the camera exclusively on the faces of five 9-year-olds in Big Sur, California. As for the grownups and their lives we’ll see silhouettes hands, feet, clothing, but never their faces. The film focuses on the way these five kids struggle, connect and eventually escape life-threatening circumstances forming unimaginably strong bonds with one another.”

So that was — you and I had that fundamental question because —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** The first line of the script kind of says that but was it only a rule for that scene or was it a rule for the whole movie and he says, “That’s a rule for the whole movie.”

**Craig:** Yeah, so, in our little back-and-forth with him, I think he acknowledged this when he wrote to us, he realizes now, yeah, I probably do need to put something between the title page and the beginning of the script that says, “Hey, this is the way this is going to work and this is the rule, the cinematic role of this movie,” because no one would ever — it’s not something you can casually put in there.

**John:** No. Craig, what do you call that page between the title page and the first page? Is there a term you would use for that?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Because I — that came up this week. Because the script I — the other reason why it’s a midseason finale, I turned in a script.

**Craig:** Yay!

**John:** And I ended up doing that intermediary page and I guess intermediary page makes sense. It would be kind of a dedication page kind of.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, people will use that page for quotes.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You’ll see that fairly frequently. So it’s like a — but in this case it’s really just a — what do they call it, a nota bene page.

**John:** Yeah, a nota bene. So you’re trying to frame the experience of reading it based on that one page that goes before the movie starts. And I had a back-and -forth with the producers about whether or not to put that page in. And I originally left it out and then they had this concern and I said like, okay, right before I sent you the draft, I took that page out. And so this is what was on that page. And they’re like, “Oh, yeah, that page needs to go back in there.”

**Craig:** Okay, yeah.

**John:** And it was just a way of framing the read that helps people understand what they’re about to get.

**Craig:** Was it a quote or was it note from you?

**John:** It was a single sentence and I don’t think I can say more than that.

**Craig:** No, no, you shouldn’t say anything more than that.

**John:** It was a single sentence but it basically framed expectation in a way —

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That was useful. So in Big Fish, that page exists and it says, “This is a southern story full of lies and fabrication, but truer for their inclusion.” And that was always in the script and that never was meant to be filmed or shot, but it was a useful way of sort of framing people’s expectation that like you’re going to see a bunch of really crazy tall-tales and that’s sort of the point, it’s like what’s really underneath those.

**Craig:** Yeah, anytime you feel like you need to put that context there, because remember, when people go see movies, of course, they have the context of the trailer and the commercials and all of the publicity that goes around it. There is a hundred ways to prepare people for a certain kind of viewing experience. There is no way other than what we’re talking about to prepare them for the script-reading experience. So I’m always in favor of that being really direct with people.

In Cowboy Ninja Viking, I didn’t put it in between the title page and the front because I wanted to have the audience experience confusion for a bit, and then when it was time, I broke out a little paragraph in italics and said, “This is how this movie works.”

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** But the one thing, I’m not a huge fan of what I would call the inspirational quote. You’ll see that a lot of times, somebody will throw a quote on there from Thoreau or Nietzsche or Plato, I don’t know.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I always feel like, “Oh, yes, well, we can’t hire them,” so perhaps you’re just trading on somebody else’s wit and wisdom. I like what you did with Big Fish. You like said this is — because you know, like people are going to read this going, “Wait, is this happening? Is this not happening?” They’re a little confused because they’re not experiencing the movie. You just come right off the bat and say, “There’s going to be a bunch of lies in this. Have fun.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. And it’s also trying to tip off the reader that the language is going to be a little bit more flowery than they’re probably used to.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** It’s a very deliberate choice.

**Craig:** That’s right. Yeah, you’re setting that tone of the tone of tone.

**John:** That said of, you know, maybe 60 screenplays I’ve read, I think I’ve done it twice. So it’s not a thing you do all the time.

**Craig:** No, that is a particular ingredient that you add when required.

**John:** Our next bit of follow-up is the WGA diversity numbers which we discussed in the last episode. Friend of the show Dennis Hensley writes, “On the heels of the WGA’s diversity report, which you talked about in the last show, the WGA offers a writer’s access program which showcases mid-level guild writers from different diversity categories. I ticked the GLBT box. I was one of 11 writers who got in out of 171 scripts submitted.”

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** “I’m one of only two comedy writers, the rest are drama.”

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** “I want to thank you both for the practical tips I learned listening to you as well as the overall morale boost reality checks you offer. It really helped me with the script I submitted.” So there’ll be a link to this in the show notes but this is essentially the WGA TV Writer Access Project, a program designed to identify excellent diverse writers with television staffing experience.

**Craig:** Yeah, I think that’s great. I mean, the downside of the WGA diversity report which is the annual collection of depressing statistics that do not change is that they don’t do anything except point backwards in time and say, “Eh, bad.” This program which has been going on for a bit now, this is what you would want your union to do, you know.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** To go out and say, “Okay, well, we’re not going to sit here and just complain. Look at these people. We pick them. We read their stuff. We like it. You should take a really close look.” So I love that. Interesting also that the Writers Access Program does include sexual orientation or gender status whereas the diversity report doesn’t seem to get into that, as far as I could tell, at least, the diversity report is really about race and gender unless I’m missing something, and age.

**John:** And age, yeah. So this program has five diversity categories, minority writers, writers with disabilities, which the diversity report I don’t think singled out, women writers, writers age 55 and over, and gay and lesbian writers.

**Craig:** Oh, so they’re putting the number at 55, which again, probably —

**John:** Makes a lot more sense.

**Craig:** Yeah, a lot more sense than using the 40.

**John:** 40.

**Craig:** Yeah, 40 makes no sense.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Well, anyway, I’m really happy Dennis that we gave you any tips that were helpful to you and we are rooting for you and the Writers Access Program.

**John:** So one of the things they highlight about this program is that it’s all blind submissions. And so the idea of blind submissions I think is really interesting and crucial. And so, I was talking with Andrew Lippa who is here during Big Fish with me, the composer of Big Fish. And they were talking about how many more women players are in orchestras and then how much higher chairs they have reached in the last 10 years. And apparently, the reason why that change has happened has been blind auditions. So essentially, the player is playing behind the screen and the judges are listening but not seeing the player play.

**Craig:** Fascinating.

**John:** And so blind submissions for this project. And also, I’ve read the same thing for like John Oliver show. Everybody came in with just a number on their submission page and it was all read based without names or any other information about who that writer was.

**Craig:** I think that’s great. I mean, I don’t know if you recall. At one point, we talked about that study, the Princeton study where they sent out the same play under a male name and a female name and female authors actually ran aground of discrimination from female readers.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** This issue of whatever you’d call it, gender bias, whatever, all the bias. Bias, how about that word [laughs]? This issue of bias, it’s not necessarily always the stereotype of the 50-year-old white guy.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But I think that blind submissions are really smart. I love that.

**John:** And sometimes people will make a misassumption based on a name on a title page. So just last week we had, I think it was K.C. Smith. We loved what we assumed was her sample, which was that great script about this guy who really wanted to eat waffles and was not allowed to eat waffles.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** And so we said, this woman wrote a terrific script and it turns out K.C. is a guy and an African-American guy. And so, hooray.

**Craig:** Yeah, we didn’t know if K.C. or Chris were men or women. But it turns out they’re both guys.

**John:** They’re both guys.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Two guys wrote in with a link to a live action Road Runner short. So last week we talked a lot about sort of Road Runner rules, the rules that the creators of those cartoons had set for themselves about how the Coyote and the Road Runner should function. And so this was an interesting example of trying to do that in a live action world.

I didn’t find it entirely successful. But I found it kind of just fascinating to try to apply cartoon physics and cartoon logic to a live action scenario. And one thing it reminded me of is we didn’t talk about in that list that sense that in a Road Runner cartoon, you only fall once you realize that there is no ground beneath you.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** Yeah, which is just crazy.

**Craig:** Yeah. Falling is a function of awareness, not gravity.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah, just odd.

**Craig:** Yeah. No, that’s the best part of those cartoons was when Wile E. Coyote was midair and was still really happy.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then, huh.

**John:** Huh, wait.

**Craig:** And then he would look down and then he would look at you like, “Oh, you got to be kidding me.” [laughs] And then his body would fall while his head stayed there [laughs]. And his neck would expand, which by the way, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the slow motion video of somebody dropping a slinky, it kind of works that way. Like they let the slinky go and the bottom drops while the top essentially stays and then it drops like Wile E. Coyote.

**John:** That’s good stuff.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** On the subject of gravity, we have some follow-up on the Gravity lawsuit.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** So Med writes —

**Craig:** Med.

**John:** “I’m baffled by your continued defense of Warner Bros and Cuarón.”

**Craig:** Baffled.

**John:** “Unless there are significant errors in the revised claims, Tess Gerritsen definitely did get robbed.”

**Craig:** I thank God that this guy or woman is writing because they definitely know what happened. Continue.

**John:** [laughs] “You both seem pretty quick to decide against anyone who is not closely aligned with the screenwriting community maybe due to your union allegiance.”

**Craig:** Good point. Good point.

John “I’m not sure.”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** “In any case, I suggest you put yourselves in Ms. Gerritsen’s shoes and tell me you would not be outraged.”

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** “She was right to state that writers in general should be ultra cautious in selling properties to Hollywood. For successful writers like Gerritsen, it seems like ‘cash and carry’ with no bonus, earn out, or residual options is really the only bulletproof option. This is a doubly true if writers cannot even depend on their own larger community to support them when they are wronged. Still enjoying your show very much even on those few occasions when I disagree.”

**Craig:** [laughs] So, John, you hear people say, that begs the question all the time but they misuse it. You probably know the real meaning of begging the question, correct?

**John:** Absolutely. Assuming facts not in evidence.

**Craig:** Begging the question, actually, it’s building an argument around something that needs to be figured out by the argument. It’s essentially saying, people are definitely hungry because they’re hungry. This guy is basically saying I’m baffled by your continued defense of Warner Bros and Cuarón because they’re wrong.

**John:** Yeah [laughs].

**Craig:** But you’re supposed to prove that, you see [laughs], your argument. You are begging the question. So going through this very quickly, you say that Tess Gerritsen definitely did get robbed. I have no idea how — we are not saying that she definitely didn’t. I’m not sure what access to the cosmic oracle you have that we don’t [laughs]. No, we are not pretty quick to decide against anyone who is not closely aligned with the screenwriting community. We’re not quick to decide anything. And union allegiance surely has nothing to do with it I think. [laughs]

**John:** Absolutely nothing.

**Craig:** Nothing at all. It doesn’t work that way.

**John:** So in our very long and very exhaustive episode about the Gerritsen lawsuit, I recall making it very clear that if I were in Tess Gerritsen’s position, I would probably perceive things the way Tess Gerritsen perceives things because from her perspective, it does feel like that. And so our objective with that episode was to show, you know what, if you zoom out and take it outside of her personal experience, it probably looks quite a bit different. And that was the perspective we were trying to provide.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But a great example this last week of like, “Well, I just can’t believe that happened,” was the Blurred Lines lawsuit. So we are not a music industry podcast or we’re not a show for songwriters and people who are interested in songwriting, but I thought the Blurred Lines things was nuts. And so to summarize for people who don’t know what we’re talking about, Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams and another collaborator were sued by Marvin Gaye’s estate arguing that Robin Thicke’s big, giant hit song infringed upon the copyright of a classic Marvin Gaye song.

And if you listen to the two songs back to back, you’re like, “Oh, yeah, they’re in a similar kind of vibe.” But in any sort of like one thing is directly lifted from the other, I was astonished. And most people were astonished who were sort of music industry legal scholars were amazed that they lost this lawsuit.

**Craig:** Well, you know, obviously this comes down to juries and so forth. I, myself, was completely rooting for the Marvin Gaye estate and was thrilled. I, unlike you — so, here, Med, you can see. We do not have union allegiance or whatever the hell. Or even allegiance to each other. I thought the song was a dead rip-off, I really did. I thought it was —

**John:** Wow, that’s amazing.

**Craig:** A straight up rip-off. Look, if they had contacted the Marvin Gaye estate when they were making it and said, “Listen, we want to basically do a version of your song,” because they didn’t copy it directly. What they did was a version of it. I think there was infringement. I don’t know if the — the award seems a little whacky [laughs] but the damages. But, you know, I was on the side of that.

But, look, Med says, “I suggest you put yourselves in Ms. Gerritsen’s shoes and tell me you would not be outraged.” Why? Who cares if I’m outraged or not? Okay, I’m in her shoes and I’m outraged. Whoopty doo.

**John:** Yeah, right.

**Craig:** Outraged doesn’t mean I’m right. In fact, outraged generally means that [laughs] feelings are clouding my logic. She was not right to state that writers in general should be ultra cautious in selling properties to Hollywood. Let me remind Med that she did get paid $1 million, I believe, regardless. She had a lawyer. That’s the caution that you take. This was not her first rodeo, as far as I understood either.

I actually think she liked the way this turned out. But, no, I don’t think any of the conclusions here are correct, nor do I think the larger community of writers is meant to support a writer just because the writer says I’ve been wronged.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** Frankly, we supported one of the — we supported the people that wrote Gravity in our estimation. But we are still enjoying your listenership very much.

**John:** Very much.

**Craig:** Even on this one occasion where we have disagreed.

**John:** We shouldn’t spend too much on the show about the Robin Thicke thing because obviously it’s — several other episodes could be about the Robin Thicke thing. What I found so fascinating as I was reading sort of the reaction to this lawsuit, clearly, the fact that Robin Thicke seems like an incredible douchebag, hurt him. Clearly, the fact that he spoke about his influences hurt him.

But if you look at other songs, though, the same claim could be made against them, they are enumerable. And so the same way that I worry that a success by the Tess Gerritsen lawsuit would have a horrible chilling effect on Hollywood, I feel like this verdict of the Robin Thicke thing could have a horrible chilling effect. Basically, imitating a style rather than imitating the exact notes.

So the thing I’ll link to, Jon Caramanica for the New York Times, wrote a piece talking about how copyright law is focused on the sheet music. It’s focused on like this is literally what is on the page. And by that standard, it doesn’t actually work at all. I mean like there should be no basis for it. Instead, we’re just sort of basing it on like, well, they kind of feel like the same thing. But feeling like the same thing is a really murky, dangerous thing to try to talk about.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, there’s the publishing right and then there’s obviously the performance which is its own copyright issue. And I’m sure the Gaye estate was going on the basis of the publishing as opposed to the mechanical, as they say. But, look, I just call them like I see them like everybody else out there. And I actually thought that that one was overt, which is overt infringement to me.

The second I heard that song, just to be clear, the first time I heard Blurred Lines, I’m like “Oh [laughs]. Oh, that’s Marvin Gaye.” You can’t do that. I mean, even down to the people like chitchatting at a party while, I mean, you’ve ripped him off. That was a rip-off. Now, people can argue about, you know, how you define what was ripped off specifically and what wasn’t, I understand that.

I see you brought up Stay With Me, which absolutely is a rip-off [laughs] of Won’t Back Down. It’s a dead rip-off.

**John:** Here’s why I think they settled quickly and did not actually go to the full-on trial is because they wanted to sort of protect Sam Smith from being dragged into it. I suspect if they actually did the research and proved it, you would find 15 gospel songs that have the exact same chord progression.

**Craig:** It’s not the progression.

**John:** [sings].

**Craig:** It’s not the progression.

**John:** [sings]

**Craig:** It is both the progression and the rhythm. So it’s not only the notes but the dots and the rest. [sings] That is very specific. That is pretty much the definition of unique expression and fixed form.

**John:** Right, so —

**Craig:** And it’s a dead rip-off.

**John:** So that never went to trial, so we will never know sort of how that would have sussed out.

**Craig:** See, I think the opposite. I think it didn’t go to trial because I think they knew that they had screwed up [laughs]. I think they knew were wrong.

**John:** I think it didn’t go to trial because of, you know, Sam Smith’s meteoric rise and just trying to protect him. I do strongly, strongly, strongly suspect that they would have been able to find five gospel songs with that exact hook in it. And that doesn’t mean that Tom Petty took it, it just means that I think it was a thing that exists in the world.

**Craig:** It is possible. But again, I got to back up my ’70s.

**John:** Got to back up Tom Petty.

**Craig:** My ’70s era stars [laughs], you know. Don’t mess with Marvin, not when I’m around. Marvin, I mean, really, truly, I love Marvin Gaye. I love Marvin Gaye. I think the world is so worse off for not having more Marvin Gayes out there. And so worse off, frankly, for more stuff that kind of is like, “Oh, we’ll just do Marvin without Marvin being here.” And I love Tom Petty and, by the way, I love Sam Smith.

I don’t think Sam Smith knew. Did he write that song?

**John:** He did.

**Craig:** Oh, then he knew [laughs]. He knew. He took Don’t Back Down and he slowed it down.

**John:** I don’t think he deliberately did it. But we will never actually be able to suss that out.

**Craig:** We’ll never know.

**John:** But what we can suss out are some other rules that were broken or unbroken. This is from Josh who wrote in with a note about coverage he got, which he described as being, in part helpful and in part maddening. So he writes, “The reader wrote, ‘A few other issues that jump off the page are the use of underlining in slug lines usually done only in sitcom scripts, the improper use of italics and narrative in dialogue, and occasional placement of parentheticals at the bottom of dialogue. Bottom line, to avoid development of one’s own script formatting conventions and confer regularly with Trottier for accepted formats.'”

So he’s referring to the Screenwriter’s Bible which is a book that’s often held up as being the standard.

**Craig:** Oh. I don’t have the Trottier. Trottier or Trottier?

**John:** I don’t know if it’s Trottier or Trottier.

**Craig:** Let’s go with Trottier. I don’t have the Trottier book. But if I did, I would hold it up and then throw it down forcefully into a wood chipper. I underline my slug lines. No, I’m sorry, I bold my slug lines. But, yes, people do underline their slug lines. I don’t care. If I’m reading a great script and the slug lines are underlined, I don’t care.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** I don’t know what the improper use of italics in narrative and dialogue are. I will occasionally use italics when I so desire. Not often but when I feel like it. “The occasional placement of parentheticals at the ends of dialogue,” I’ve seen people do that to imply this is unsaid but this is sort of what I want them to act as being unsaid. “To avoid development of one’s own script format conventions.” F-you.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** That’s what I’d say to — and by the way, Josh, your script might be terrible.

**John:** It could easily be terrible.

**Craig:** But the reader really should be concentrating on that because if your script was great and this is what the reader was saying, then I think I would also lift the reader up and throw the reader into a wood chipper.

**John:** Oh, this could be a whole wood chipper festival because that’s all a means of teeing up this article from Script Magazine written by Ray Morton.

**Craig:** Wait, Ray Morton? How did they get Ray Morton? [laughs]

**John:** Well, Ray Morton is a writer and script consultant. His new book, A Quick Guide to Screenwriting, is now available online and in bookstores.

**Craig:** Oh, good. As long as it’s quick because nobody has time for a lengthy guide to something as easy and obvious [laughs] as screenwriting.

**John:** Morton analyzes screenplays for production companies, producers, and individual writers. He is available for private consultation.

**Craig:** Oh, thank God.

**John:** So this is all available online. There will be a link to this in the show notes. And so he has, how many points is this, 12 points to talk through. And I thought we’d talk through them. And because, actually, a fair number of them I agreed with. But some of them were wood chipperable.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** So let’s go through it.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** Craig, would you want to start reading the first one?

**Craig:** Yeah. [laughs] You know my, this is great. The script is short, between 90 and 110 pages. If a script runs longer than 120 pages, that tells me the writer does not know the industry standards or worse, thinks that he/she is an exception to them.

This always reminds me of The Holy Grail, you shall count to three, not four, five is right out.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So the script is short between 90 and 110 pages. If you’ve gone over that, you don’t know the industry standards or you think you’re an exception to them, or you’re Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo and you’ve written The Godfather again.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. So I predict that Craig will say, no, that is poppycock and —

**Craig:** That is.

**John:** Many terrific scripts are larger than 110 pages.

**Craig:** And by the way, some of them are under 90 pages like, I don’t know, The Artist that won the Oscar. This is poppycock. It’s foofaraw and I reject it. [laughs]

**John:** Number two, the front cover is free of WGA registration numbers and fake production company names.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** Yeah. Look, again, if I see a WGA registration number, I’m not going to go, “What an idiot,” and then never read the script. If it’s a great script, what do I care? It’s like I don’t care. Yes, it’s true that amateurs are the only people that are concerned about [laughs] piracy literally. The only people that are concerned about thievery.

**John:** Yeah, yeah.

**Craig:** None of — the rest of us don’t care. Fake production company name, all production company names are fake. They are as fake as, I don’t know, Ray Morton’s expertise. It’s just because you’re saying you’re an expert, you’re an expert. They’re saying they’re a production company, they’re a production company. I don’t care. If it’s a good script, what do I care?

**John:** Yeah, you don’t care. And the only reason why I say I basically agree with this is because if I see the WGA registration number or that goofy production company name, it’s just the first impression. It’s just the first impression like, “Oh, oh, this might be one of the scripts of a person who doesn’t know what they’re doing.” So it’s useful to not have that there because I don’t have any negative thing as I turn to page one.

**Craig:** Well, you know, it is true. Like if you don’t want people to know that you are an outsider, don’t put that. That’s just a fact. If you put your WGA registration thing on, you’re an outsider.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** On the other hand, my guess is people will know you’re an outsider anyway because they won’t know who you are.

**John:** The first page contains a lot of white space. If I open up a script and I’m confronted with big blocks of uninterrupted type, I know immediately that the piece is overwritten, that the author has employed excessively flowery literary style and action lines and/or that he/she has incorporated lots of unfilmable material. Craig, what’s your opinion?

**Craig:** Yes, it is true that if you see big blocks of uninterrupted type that the first page is going to be hard to read which is certainly not what you want. You want people to feel easy reading it. I know that everybody, myself included, if I have a choice of screenplays to read and the first one is just like, “Whoa, lots of text,” and the second one is, “Ah, nice and airy,” I’ll go for the airy one. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to read the other one, especially if it’s —

**John:** It means you’re lazy.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m lazy. Like every human, I am essentially lazy. I don’t agree with these conclusions. When I open up a script and I’m confronted with big blocks of uninterrupted type before I draw any conclusion, I only make one — I know one thing only, for sure. And that is that this person could use their return key more frequently. That’s all I know. The rest of this may be true, may not.

**John:** Yeah. I know who the protagonist is by page five.

**Craig:** Unless you’re Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo and you’ve written The Godfather again or maybe you wrote Star Wars.

**John:** The premise is clearly established by page 10.

**Craig:** Unless you’re Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola and you wrote The Godfather again or you wrote Star Wars.

**John:** Something interesting/entertaining happens in the first five pages.

**Craig:** Unless you’re Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo and you wrote The Godfather again —

**John:** No, I would basically stand up for him here. I think the overall point is that if by page five nothing interesting has happened, I’m going to have a harder time getting to page six.

**Craig:** Well, let’s —

**John:** I mean, that’s human nature.

**Craig:** Okay, but let’s define interesting.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** I mean, so —

**John:** Intriguing. It could be, you know, if you don’t have me curious by page five, I’m less likely to want to read page six.

**Craig:** Look, I’m interested in good writing and then I’m interested in interesting things, right? So The Godfather opens with Bonasera who is the undertaker, in a beautifully underlit single, telling a story in broken English about why he’s come to this man for help. And he tells a story.

Now the story I think is very interesting. But nothing’s actually happening. He’s describing something that has happened. We will never meet the person he’s talking about. What has happened to him, not important to the plot of the movie, particularly at all. He is not a secondary character. He’s like a quadrary character if.

And what he’s describing will contain no stakes in and of itself. It is interesting because it’s an interesting story and then it brings out this interesting relationship with a character who is also not the protagonist of the movie. Point being that this is the dumbest thing to say if you’re a so-called screenplay expert. What you’re really saying is be good. Yeah, thanks, we know.

By the way, how about this? Something interesting or entertaining should happen on every page.

**John:** The first 10 pages contains plenty of action. By action, I mean dramatic action, stuff happening. Not just car chases, although car chases are fine, too.

**Craig:** Okay. So unless you’re Francis Ford Coppola [laughs] and Mario Puzo and you wrote The Godfather because it’s a guy telling a story.

**John:** Or it’s Harry Met Sally.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** There’s not action, per se.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, it’s just, eh.

**John:** Number eight. I can tell what’s going on.

**Craig:** Oh, well —

**John:** I’m sympathetic here. As we talked about pages we’ve read this last week, I had a hard time understanding what was going on. And that can be frustrating, like literally understanding what it is I’m seeing on screen.

**Craig:** Yeah. And if what the person’s describing is not visualizable, sure. However, if what the person is describing makes no sense to me at the moment, we talk about grace period all the time, right?

**John:** Oh, yeah.

**Craig:** So like I didn’t understand what was going on in The Matrix for the first five minutes. Why was he — who’s talking about the Matrix? Who’s Morpheus? What the — what?

**John:** What? What?

**Craig:** Why is she whispering in his ear? Who’s that lady running from? Who are those guys in the suits? Why are they different from the police? How did she jump across the thing? A million questions, right? I love that.

**John:** Yeah, the dialogue is short and to the point. There’s nothing worse than opening a screenplay and getting faced with a single speech that goes on for a page or two or five.

**Craig:** Unless you’re Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola and you’ve written The Godfather, again.

**John:** Well, also, there’s nothing worse, like literally, nothing is worse? Like it’s worse than Hitler?

**Craig:** And there’s nothing worse. There’s something worse.

**John:** That’s the worst thing that happened to mankind.

**Craig:** Here’s something worse. You open the screenplay and it’s not a screenplay at all, it’s actually like a fake screenplay and inside there’s a little indentation. And in the indentation is anthrax.

**John:** Yeah. Or it’s just a single note saying like we’ve kidnapped your wife and family.

**Craig:** Right, exactly. Or you open it up and it’s some kind of amazing existential mirror and through that mirror you realize that you’ve been living in — it’s a fake world, everyone’s been putting on a play, you don’t actually exist.

**John:** Yeah. That’s actually the line I added to the script or to the page. And in between, is that was we’ve kidnapped your wife and family.

**Craig:** This guy, I swear to God, I wish I could send this guy back to the ’70s so that he could advise Puzo and Coppola on that terrible, terrible script they wrote.

**John:** Well, one of the things he might help with is the script doesn’t begin with a flashback.

**Craig:** Yeah. Except that it kind of does because this guy is talking about something that happened.

**John:** Yeah, it is. It’s basically a flashback.

**Craig:** It’s like amazing how bad this guy is at his “job.”

**John:** There are no camera directions, shot descriptions and editing instructions.

**Craig:** Oh, unless you’re Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola.

**John:** There are no coffins. I once received a vampire script packaged in a miniature coffin, complete with the screenplay’s title on the lid and a spring-lidded bash positioned that would jump out when the coffin was opened.

**Craig:** Yeah, okay.

**John:** I fully agree with him. Do not send gimmickry trash along with your script.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Send your script.

**Craig:** Sure. I can’t imagine this is a common thing. But yeah, sure, thanks for that Ray, you nailed it. Can I just say? Look —

**John:** You absolutely may say.

**Craig:** I don’t mean to beat up on this dude specifically. But let’s say that I were a con artist by constitution. I’m a charlatan. I flit around from con to con looking for ways to bill people out of their money. And my current scam is dried up, I’m looking for a new one.

What I’m looking for is a situation where a lot of people want access to something, but don’t have it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And that thing that they want access to is behind a curtain. So I can tell them I’ve been behind the curtain. And if they give me money, I’ll tell them what’s behind the curtain so that they can go behind the curtain. And they’ll never know if I’m telling the truth of not.

And what’s so amazing about all these people is that they never contradict each other. And they never contradict each other because they literally do not have the vocabulary to contradict each other because they, unlike you or me, haven’t been behind the curtain in any real substantive way. So they just write these baloney things and they create this stack of them, this massive whirling stack so that they can basically get people to pay them 200 bucks at a time for information that I have to tell you all is not worth it at all. Stop paying these people. Stop it. Stop it.

**John:** As you were talking, I was thinking about like what other industries have similar kinds of things and clearly the financial industry in general, like investments and stock market. Real estate has a very specific thing because there’s all these little esoteric terms and you feel like, “Oh, this is how you’re going to do it. This is the churn, how you’re going to do it.”

**Craig:** Medicine.

**John:** Medicine, absolutely.

**Craig:** Always, yeah. Because people don’t understand medicine, they don’t understand finance, they don’t understand real estate. And somebody comes along and says, “I’m going to give you the secrets that all those swells are using. And because, by the way, they’re only successful because they know the secrets. And I’m going to share them with you. How about exercise? Same thing, exercise.

**John:** Oh yeah, absolutely.

**Craig:** It’s just like every single one of these things has the same deal. And there’s no way for somebody who is ignorant to question what they’re saying because they’re ignorant. That’s the scam.

**John:** Well, but the thing is you have to recognize, you know, within your own ignorance that there is very likely no correct answer. That’s the hard thing to sort of accept is that there may not be a way to do that. So, you know, as we get questions about like, “Well, how do I break in? Or how do I break back in?” Or how to all that stuff?

Part of my frustration, and I suspect you share it too, is that like, there is no answer. There’s no one answer for like how you and me everyone else “broke in.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And there’s no answers for how it’s going to work for you. It’s just like it’s just a bunch of stuff happens and suddenly you are being employed to do this thing that you really wanted to do. But I can’t tell you why it happens for some people and doesn’t happen for other people. There’s no proper answer.

**Craig:** There is no proper answer. Frankly, the vocabulary that has been defined by the con artistry industry, “breaking in,” there’s no breaking in. Sorry. I mean we just talked — did we talk about the case of the screenwriter who ended up living in his car?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean he broke in and then he was in his car. There’s no breaking in. There are these interesting dribs and drabs and suddenly one day you look in the mirror and go, “Am I screenwriter now? I can’t tell, I think I am. I guess I’ll just keep trying to do it.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** All the things that they’re promising you, rules don’t exist. Breaking in doesn’t exist. Getting rich quick doesn’t exist. Things that you should or shouldn’t do, they don’t exist.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** And if they did, trust me when I tell you, John and I, I like to think of you and I like as Penn & Teller a little bit. Although, we both talk.

**John:** And we don’t do magic.

**Craig:** And we don’t do magic. But Penn & Teller were always amazing about saying, “We’re going to dispel the cheesy fake nonsense around magic,” or all those magicians that walk around. I mean this was really started by James Randi who’s one of my personal heroes. James Randi was a magician and he would do things like cold readings as part of his act and people would believe it.

And part of the reason they would believe it is because magicians have always done that thing that Doug Henning would say, “It’s an allusion, it’s a World of Magic. I come from.” No, you’re not. You’re doing tricks.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And Penn & Teller always said, “No, no, no, there’s no magic. Trust me when we tell you this. We’re doing tricks. And in fact, we’re going to show you how we do some of them and that’s — and then we’re going to do more and still seem like magic and that’s the real fun of it.”

**John:** Yeah, so classically Penn & Teller like it’s done with string. And so they talk you through the whole thing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And it’s like, “Oh, and it’s done with string.”

**Craig:** And then sometimes they’ll do, they did the whole ball and cup thing once with clear cups. And it was still amazing how complicated the whole thing was. You and I, I feel are like that. If we found something, anything that we thought would help everybody that was a magic bullet, we would rush to the microphone and tell you, “We assure you.” But there is nothing. I say this not out of arrogance, but just out of fact, because of the amount of time that you and I have been doing this professionally. Ray Morton, whoever he is, could not possibly know anything more about this than we do. It’s not possible. It’s not possible.

**John:** Yeah. And I don’t ascribe — actually, I want to be clear. I don’t ascribe any negative motivation to Ray Morton. I think he genuinely is trying to help people.

**Craig:** It’s possible.

**John:** I want to say that. And I think he’s also noticing patterns in his own response to things. And I think those are valid personal experiences. The frustration I have is that in observing his own personal reactions to things, then trying to go to the next step and codify these out as like these are things, prohibitions of things you should never do. And I think that is incorrect.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean look, you’re right. I cannot ascribe con artistry as a motivation to Ray. I don’t know him. And I can never say what’s in someone’s heart. That said, you and I do not charge for this and he charges for what he does.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then he writes these things in Script Magazine which has their marketing deal with Final Draft. There’s money involved. And when there’s money involved just really remember my golden rule, screenwriting costs nothing. Nothing. It is free. Don’t pay money.

**John:** Don’t pay money. Which is a great segue to the next thing I want to talk about which is sort of the future and sort of like as we sort of wrap up this midseason finale and look forward to the second half of the season and sort of what is going on ahead. There’s things that you and I need to figure out and sort of our listeners need to figure out.
One of the things that came up was —

**Craig:** Am I getting fired? It sounds like I’m getting fired. [laughs]

**John:** Craig, I’d like you on the phone at 3pm because we have some things to talk through.

**Craig:** And HR will be there.

**John:** So our podcast is like really successful, which is just terrific. We have like a lot of listeners. We have like so many listeners that by most metrics, we’re in the top 1% or 2% of all podcasts out there.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** Which is just crazy.

**Craig:** How many listeners do we have? Are you allowed to say that?

**John:** Oh yeah. We have 60,000 listeners a week, which is a lot.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** Yeah. So that’s great. So that’s fantastic.

**Craig:** Oh now, I’m scared. You should have never told me that.

**John:** Well yeah, don’t worry about it.

**Craig:** You should have told me 60.

**John:** We have 60 listeners a week, we count them off.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** So we have Malcolm and we have Aline. And we have Rian Johnson sometimes. And Kelly when she’s in town. So we have a great number of listeners and fantastic listeners and we love them all. So one of things unusual about our show versus other shows is we’re like kind of the only show in that group of things that doesn’t have ads. And I kind of enjoy not having ads. But you and I have both talked about like, “Well, should we do ads? And what would be that like? And would it ruin the show?” And I honestly don’t know. And we don’t know what that would be like if we do that.

**Craig:** Yeah. We had a good conversation about it. And, you know, my feeling — I have sort of competing feelings on this. I mean on the one hand, I am, you know, like you I really love the fact that we are essentially editorially as pure as the undriven snow. No, sorry, the driven snow because I used to think the driven snow was that a car had driven through it, but it means the wind has moved around. So we’re as pure as the driven snow.

However, I’m also really aware that you and your staff do all this work that I don’t do. Now granted they are supported by our premium subscribers.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** And things like we make a little bit of money on the t-shirt sales. When we say we make money, we actually don’t make money. Correct me if I’m wrong, we are still losing money.

**John:** We still lose money. So we still, you know, through the premium subscribers, through t-shirts and stuff like that, we make enough money to pay for Matthew who cuts the show and bless you Matthew for cutting the show.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And for sort of the basic keeping the lights on stuff. We don’t actually make enough money to pay for Stuart. But Stuart is my assistant normally so like, you know, he has to be sitting at a desk doing some things anyway.

**Craig:** Right. But what about like the hosting?

**John:** Hosting is cheaper than it used to be.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** So again, it’s the economies of scale. So we’re much closer to breaking even. So it’s a question of, though, of whether we should just stay and stop at that point or whether we should do the, you know, the Mail Chimp sponsor at the start of the show and at the end of the show, which sort of all the other podcasts do.

And so I don’t honestly have the great answer for that because I don’t want to change the show in any way that’s sort of detrimental to the show. I don’t want to do something stupid. Either to do it or not to do it.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean this is always the dangerous time when you fix what isn’t broken. But I mean look, I think, I’m just going to give you, ‘m going to give you my opinions like I’m a listener because and in a sense I really am kind of a listener because you really, I mean, people need to know that John and his crew over there do everything. I show up and I talk. I hate the idea of losing money consistently only because it ultimately becomes a strain on you and me and that just seems crazy.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So at the very least, breaking even sounds good. There are a lot of charities that you and I support, not only writing charities but just, you know, off the top of my head, I support three different educational charities. I support a bunch of medical charities.

So if money did come in, I would pledge to people, you just have to take my word for it, I would give it to charity. I wouldn’t keep any extra. Because the thing is you could say, “Well, we just want to make enough to break even,” but there’s no easy way to do that. You get what you get.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So I mean on my end, I would kick it over to charity unless it was millions of dollars.

**John:** Millions of dollars. And it’s not millions of dollars yet. But the thing is it’s actually more money than it was like a year ago. And so the thing, because you don’t listen to other podcasts, you’re not sort of aware of like sort of that the advertising universe in that has actually changed to the point where it’s not like, you know, oh someone will give you $100 for a sponsor read. It’s like a lot more money than that.

**Craig:** And we’re the freaks that don’t do it essentially.

**John:** Essentially, we’re the freaks. And maybe it’s great to stay the freaks. And part of the reason I bring this up in this conversation is because I’m really curious what our listeners themselves feel like about this. And so we always invite you to write into to ask@johnaugust.com or which I thing I always forget we have, what we actually have is a Facebook page.

And so if you actually go to Facebook/scriptnotes, there’s a whole page of Scriptnotes stuff. And no one ever comments on it because we never mention it. But maybe on the link for this episode, basically click on this episode, leave a comment. Just tell us what you actually think because I’m really of two very different minds about what should happen with the idea of advertising on the show and sort of whether it’s a good thing or bad thing for us.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think a lot of the bigger podcasts also are part of networks and we’re not.

**John:** We’re not.

**Craig:** We are floating alone. So it’s actually, look, on the plus side, it’s pretty amazing that we have this kind of listenership for whom we are truly grateful without the benefit of any promotion, any money coming in, any network, anything.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So we want to do right by people. We don’t want to screw people up. But on the other end, I don’t want to like have to write a check for the rest of my life for this thing either.

**John:** Yeah. The second thing I want to bring up is we floated this idea of, you know, we always do the Three Page Challenges and it’s great to look at the first three pages of a script. But it would actually really useful to look at like a whole script and have an episode where we could take a look at an entire script from something.

But we’re not quite sure how to do that because to sort of open up the flood gates, it’s just like terrifying.

**Craig:** It is.

**John:** So I would invite our listeners to absolutely never send us your script. But maybe provide some suggestions for ways in which we could get a script that we could actually all look at. And so perhaps it is a Black List script or perhaps it is some other script that is chosen by some other means to do it.

We had floated this idea of like, “Oh maybe we’ll only take a list from our premium subscribers,” and that also felt weird like you’re paying for access. So I’m not sure what the answer is to that. Although, I would say I think it would really helpful for us to be able to look at a whole script for an episode.

**Craig:** Yeah, I love the idea of giving the subscribers a little something special. Maybe we do like one week, we do a Three Page Challenge that’s only from them. But we don’t just limit Three Page Challenges to just them, you know?

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** For the whole script, also another possibility is maybe we take one of the three pages that we all, you and I were both really enthusiastic about and go back to that person and say would you like the full post mortem? And maybe we go through that whole script.

**John:** Craig Mazin, that’s a very smart idea.

**Craig:** I’m so smart.

**John:** You’re just so smart. See, you think you don’t do anything for the show, but every once in a while, just randomly you’ll have a really good idea.

**Craig:** I don’t like the backwards nature of that. That was very backhanded. You think you’re stupid and 99% of the time, you’re right.

**John:** Yeah. But really, it’s that 1%.

**Craig:** It’s the 1%.

**John:** Yeah. That 1% really makes it all worthwhile.

**Craig:** I’m incredible.

**John:** Anyway, so if you have thoughts about what we should do with either advertising in the future or whether it’s a great or a terrible idea, let us know about that. And if you have thoughts about sort of how we could do a full script for an episode, give us thoughts about that. Please do not send in your script.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Do not. We will delete immediately.

**Craig:** Yeah, we will delete.

**John:** So you can tweet at me or Craig about those things too. But let’s get to our One Cool Things.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I have two very short ones. First off is Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which was the Tina Fey/Robert Carlock show which was supposed to be on NBC which is now on Netflix. I watched the entire thing here in my hotel room, all 13 episodes. I just loved it. So I would strongly encourage you, if you we’re a fan of 30 Rock, to watch it. Because it’s a very premisey pilot. And so you might watch the pilot and go like, “Oh, I don’t know if that’s going to sustain.” But then you’re like, on episode six, you’re like, “This is just delightful.”

**Craig:** Yeah, 30 Rock was a really premisey pilot too. And then you’re like, “Yeah, it works.” Ellie Kemper is great. A Princeton graduate by the way.

**John:** Okay. She’s just incredibly talented.

Second thing I want to highlight is this thing called Draftback for Google Docs. It’s this really clever — I think it’s a Google Chrome extension. But essentially, if you ever are writing in Google Docs, it’s actually recording every keystroke. And so it’s fascinating. It’s this little plug-in lets you replay the writing of an entire document. And so you can see like all the edits and all the changes you made and it basically creates a video of you writing the whole thing.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** So it’s fascinating to sort of see what the writing process looks like for different writers. I think it could also be terrifying if you were not the person who had access to seeing you type it.

**Craig:** Yeah. I like it. I want it.

**John:** It’s of those things that is both like fascinating and dangerous and troubling. So I will steer you to that for a demonstration of it, not necessarily encouraging you to use it.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s a little scary. I mean it’s very smart, but it’s very scary.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** My One Cool Thing comes from one of our wonderful Twitter followers. I love this thing, it’s called VeinViewer. So smart. So everybody has had the experience of having their blood drawn or having an IV line put in. And if you’re young, or if you’re in good shape, you’re veins are usually pretty clearly accessible, but in some people they’re not. And if you’re older or overweight or if you’re really pediatric, you know, a lot of times with babies, it’s hard to find veins. So what ends up happening is they stick you a bunch of times, they cause bleeding, it’s a mess, there’s pain involved. Nobody likes that.

So this company, VeinViewer came up with this brilliant idea to basically pick up, to scan your arm or your wrist or your elbow with infrared because, you know, obviously blood is hotter, you know, as it’s moving through than say your skin. So they can essentially map your veins because they’re closer to the skin’s surface and then they project it back right on to your arm.

**John:** Neat.

**Craig:** Yeah, so that whoever is sticking you, they don’t have to go hunting for a vein. They can see exactly where your veins are. It’s so smart. And we’ll throw a link on as well, it’s very, it’s just so cool. I love stuff like that.

**John:** That’s good stuff. Because I have high cholesterol, I have to get blood draws a lot. And so I’ve just learned that like it’s like my left arm, it’s exactly this one vein, they’re like, “Really? That’s going to hurt.” Like, “Yeah, it’s going to hurt, but otherwise you’re going to be poking like 15 times. So just put it in that vein.”

**Craig:** I’ve always had like full big easy pipey veins

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They’re always thanking me when I go through, they’re like, “Oh, thank you.”

**John:** It’s the umbrage. It’s all the umbrage.

**Craig:** It’s like, yeah, my rage.

**John:** Just pushes it to the surface.

**Craig:** I have rage veins, which is great.

**John:** Hulk.

**Craig:** Yeah, I have rage veins. They’re great. You know, cholesterol, so, I mean not that we have to get into your medical history.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But do you take the Lipitor?

**John:** I do take the Lipitor. I was on a different thing first and now I’m on the Lipitor.

**Craig:** It’s a brilliant medicine.

**John:** Yeah, it’s worked out just great for me. And it was one of the situations where I do eat really quite healthy, but just my family will always have the crazy high —

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s just the deal.

**John:** Both good and the bad cholesterol, so —

**Craig:** It’s just the deal. You know what, it’s German.

**John:** It’s strongly German.

**Craig:** It’s sausage blood.

**John:** Our outro this week is by Kristian Gotthelf. Thank you, Kristian, for sending in your outro. If you have an outro for our show that uses the [hums theme], theme music for our show, send it to us. You can send a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That is also a great place to send questions or longer thoughts about what we should do with the future of the show.

On Twitter, I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. On Facebook, we are Facebook.com/scriptnotes. So leave us a comment there. Leave us a comment on iTunes as well. That is where you can find the show. It’s also where you can find the Scriptnotes app. The Scriptnotes app lets you listen to all the back episodes if you’re a premium subscriber. You sign up for premium subscriptions at Scriptnotes.net.

And that is our show which is produced by Stuart Friedel, edited by Matthew Chilelli. And we will be back with the start of our second half of our season.

**Craig:** [laughs] That’s just ridiculous.

**John:** Next week. Thanks Craig.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**John:** Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [Weekend Read now has iPad support, iCloud sync and folders](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/weekendread/)
* [Download Courier Prime Sans and Courier Prime Source now](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/courierprime/)
* [PAX East](http://east.paxsite.com/)
* [If you live in LA, sign up to help us test a new tabletop game on March 23](http://johnaugust.com/game)
* [Scriptnotes, 187: The Coyote Could Stop Any Time](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-coyote-could-stop-any-time)
* [WGAw 2015 Writer Access Project](http://www.wga.org/content/default.aspx?id=3436)
* [Wiley Vs. Rhodes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ5p9WttVhE) on YouTube
* [Scriptnotes, 186: The Rules (or, the Paradox of the Outlier)](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-rules-or-the-paradox-of-the-outlier)
* [Begging the question](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question) on Wikipedia
* The New York Times on [What’s Wrong With the ‘Blurred Lines’ Copyright Ruling](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/arts/music/whats-wrong-with-the-blurred-lines-copyright-ruling.html?_r=0)
* [12 Signs of a Promising Spec Script](http://www.scriptmag.com/features/meet-the-reader-12-signs-of-promising-spec-script) by Ray Morton
* [Email us at ask@johnaugust.com](mailto:ask@johnaugust.com) or [leave us a comment on our Facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/scriptnotes?_rdr)
* [Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt](http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/80025384?locale=en-US) on Netflix
* FiveThirtyEight on [Draftback for Google Docs](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/watch-me-write-this-article/)
* Laughing Squid on [VeinViewer](http://laughingsquid.com/veinviewer-a-medical-system-that-projects-an-image-of-veins-on-skin-to-help-clinicians-insert-an-iv/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Kristian Gotthelf ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/bad-teachers-good-advice-and-the-default-male).

**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

**Craig Mazin:** My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is episode 180 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Now, Craig, last week’s episode was full of conflict so I think it’s really good that we have someone here to help balance this out, try to make sure everything is smooth and calm today. We have none other than our own Aline Brosh McKenna. Yay, wild applause.

**Craig:** Yay.

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** AKA, The Ref.

**John:** You are the ref. You are the one who’s going to achieve sort of a calmness of flow to all these things. But we actually were thinking about you last week because several things came up and we thought, well, Aline is the perfect person to talk about this because our topics today are the default male problem, which is sort of why characters are male unless they’re otherwise described. And you’ve talked about this on previous shows.

**Aline:** Hm-mmm, I sure have.

**John:** And we’re also going to talk about — so our second conversation is about Whiplash and really that’s about sort of that difficult teacher/student relationship which reminds me a lot of Devil Wears Prada, which is your movie. You wrote that movie.

**Aline:** I did indeed.

**John:** So we’re going to do those two topics and you’re also going to help me with some ethical issues that I’m having. So I think it’s going to be a fun show.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So let’s get into this. So, Aline, we’re so happy to have you here because this is how this default male topic came up this week. And so there was an interview with Raphael Bob-Waksberg from BoJack Horseman. And I think it was actually like a sort of online Q&A. But they were asking about sort of how in comedy, it seems like characters are male unless they’re not otherwise male.

This is what he writes back. “The thinking comes from a place that the cleanest version of a joke has as few pieces as possible. For the dog joke, you have the thing where the tongue slobbers all over the business person. But if you also have a thing where both of them are ladies, it’s like this additional thing muddles up the joke. The audience thinks, why are those characters female? Is that part of the joke?

“The underlying assumption is that the default mode for any character is male. So to make the characters female, there’s an additional detail on top of that. In case I’m not being 100% clear, this thinking is stupid and wrong and self-perpetuating unless you actively work against it.”

That was the creator of BoJack Horseman talking about — in his case, it was like we have these two animated characters and the illustrator said, like, well, why aren’t they both women? And he’s, like, well, that feels weird. Aline, help us out here.

**Aline:** I don’t actually totally disagree with that in so far as I think that, you know, our job is to depict the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. That being said, we do a terrible job of depicting the world as it is, which is that women are more populous than men. I think that, you know, as he mentioned in a scene, you want to weed out extraneous elements. And, in fact, one of the signs of a rookie writer is having just too much stuff in there. They’re trying to set up too many things and say too many things.

If you have a female character in something which is anomalous, which is going to cause you and stop and think about it, it may bump your scene a little bit. But that would be in a case where it’s a female Sumo wrestler, something that we just don’t ever see women doing. I think there are a lot of instances where you can just have it be a female character and not have it interfere — create radio interference with a scene. I have been more of an advocate for taking stock characters that were male, and by making them female finding something more interesting or more dimensional in them because they’re not as expected.

But, you know, one thing I would say is that if you really want to populate your scripts with different kinds of people, you have to stipulate because if you don’t stipulate then people do make assumptions. For instance, in the pilot that Rachel and I did, there was a character who was Asian. We gave him an Asian last name and we stipulated that he was Asian and then that’s who the casting department — that’s what they have on the sheet of paper. And if you don’t stipulate, then the casting department doesn’t know who to look for.

I just think there are a lot of opportunities where, you know, if it’s a cop, if it’s a lawyer, if it’s a, you know, a passerby, you can just mention it unless it’s something that will actually do what he’s suggesting, which is detract from the logic or the flow of the scene. I think that’s actually less of a concern than people think. But I wouldn’t make a huge point of sticking in ladies where they’re wildly anomalous and you’re not doing it for any particular reason.

**John:** Craig, talk us through from the comedy perspective because this point of you’re looking for the cleanest possible joke, is that something you think about as you’re writing?

**Craig:** Well, sure. That’s where the expression a joke on a joke comes from. You don’t want a joke on a joke. So, you know, in Aline’s example, if you’re doing a bit where a Sumo wrestler is being — this is a terrible joke, but a Sumo wrestler is distracted from his opponent by a sandwich. If the Sumo wrestler is also a woman, which is anomalous, then you’re not sure where’s the absurdity in it, right? You only want one absurdity.

If there are multiple absurdities, then the world is absurd and the joke starts to fall apart. That said, I don’t really understand what he’s talking about here. I agree that we shouldn’t default to males but I don’t understand his point. Like, he seems to be saying that if a dog slobbered on a lady, we would be thinking, why is that character female. Is that part of the joke? No, we wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. I don’t get that.

I actually think — I mean, this is not humble-bragging. If this is a problem, I don’t have it. I’ve never defaulted to a male or a female for any particular character. And I don’t think that being a woman is an element of a joke unless, as Aline says, it’s anomalous. Similarly, I don’t think of men as an element in a joke unless it’s anomalous.

If I’m writing a scene in a kindergarten and the kindergarten teacher is a 70-year-old man, that’s anomalous. That’s an element, right? That’s a choice.

**Aline:** Let me interrupt for one second. So in, let’s just take Identity Thief because I’ve seen it a couple of times. Melissa is a woman. Amanda is a woman. One of the bad guys is a lady.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And then a lot of the default characters like cops and — are there other, like — the hotel clerk, was that a man or a woman? Can’t remember.

**John:** And there were other business people as they’re sort of going into the corporation. So —

**Aline:** Like if I looked at your character breakdown for that script, do you think it comes out — what percentage do you think it comes out?

**Craig:** I’m not sure what the percentage is but I know that, for instance, in the hotel there was a male clerk and a female clerk. So in two different scenes, there was a character in — when they break into an office building, there’s a character that’s male but that’s a specific choice because I wanted that to be the mirror image, like basically another Jason Bateman. I wanted him to meet himself in another place. The office was very male. I wanted it to feel really male because I wanted it to feel very old-school and kind of repressive.

But yeah, one of the bad guys is a woman. She’s, yeah, seems like the most dangerous one of them. I just remembered that I made a very specific choice for Jason Bateman and Amanda Peet to have two daughters. I don’t think I defaulted at all. You know, when I’m writing a screenplay, I don’t know, maybe this is different in TV. I think gender is something that you have to be specific and really intentional about every single time.

**Aline:** Once in a while, you’ll say the hotdog vendor, you know, you’ll say the hotdog vendor, the cab driver, the policeman, and if you don’t stipulate that it’s a woman, casting will come to you with men.

**John:** And I want to go back to something you said earlier. If you don’t stipulate that a person is a certain — is not white —

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** That person will be white. And that’s the thing I sort of found again and again as you sort of go through the casting. So I do that thing what you talk about where I will deliberately give a person, you know, a Chinese last name so that they will look at Chinese actors for that part, because if you don’t do that, the default just tends to become white. And that’s no slam on casting directors —

**Aline:** Well, we had a funny thing once where we put in — I put into the script any ethnicity and every person that they brought in was a person of color because —

**John:** Yeah. Maybe that’s good.

**Aline:** They assumed that any ethnicity meant I was looking for something that was — and I just wanted them to hire — I mean, you’d like to be in a circumstance where they’re just hiring whoever is the best person. But if it is important to you and it won’t distract from the scene, it’s not a bad idea to stipulate there’s two clerks at the hotel desk, one’s a man and one’s a woman. I mean, or just name them, just the act of naming, as you said. Just naming one of them Trish, just naming one of the cops Betty is — then people get it.

So you can do things which are — I think what he’s pointing to is you don’t want to — if you stipulate it strongly, then people wonder why you’re doing that.

**John:** Yeah. And so there’s always that fine line between do you give a character who’s only going to appear in one scene a name and if they’re only going to — if they’re going to have, like, one throw-away line, I often won’t give that person a name because then it signals to the reader this person’s really important and they’ll show up again. But a person who’s going to be, like, really helping to drive a scene, scripts are full of like Dr. Gutierrez because it makes that person a little bit more specific and, of course, the advantage to, you know, a name with some ethnic heritage to it is it can stick in your head a little bit longer so you can remember that person was — you remember that character. That character shows up 50 pages later, like, oh, yeah, there was a Gutierrez. That’s helpful.

Amine: Right. I mean, one of the reasons I thought of Identity Thief is because the bad guy — those two bad guys, and often, in a movie like that, it just would be two generic male thugs and there was this lady in there.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, there was a lady in there and she was Latina and there was also — for instance, the character that John Cho plays was not singled out to be Asian-American. So I didn’t single out race there. I do think that default race being white is a problem and that’s something that we do watch out for a lot. But what this guy’s talking about, a lot of, like, for instance, the issue of the hotdog vendor, the cop, the cab driver is an issue for writers to be careful about in television because oftentimes they’re the ones doing the casting.

In features, I don’t want to call out any specifics about the hotdog vendor or the cab driver because if I do, as John says, I’m putting story weight on it for the reader that I don’t want to put there. Sometimes you do want the most bland thing. You want the thing to say meter — you know, a parking enforcer. And then it is up to the producer and the director and the casting director to get out of this mindset of automatically white, automatically male.

You know, when Aline says any ethnicity, the truth is they see the word ethnicity and they go, well, white’s not ethnic. So what she means is anything that’s not white. All of this stuff, this kind of what you would call default thinking, I think is far more serious when it comes to race at least in features, at least for me. Like, I know. I’ll be honest. Like, I am affirmative in my mind about not defaulting to white, meaning I easily default to white.

And so I work to not default to white. But I don’t feel any gear-grinding to work to default to female. If anything these days, that’s kind of where I start with a lot of characters. I prefer it. But I definitely did not understand his example. I don’t understand how in his example the — maybe he just gave a bad example.

**John:** Well, I can understand his example especially coming from an animation point of view where you’re literally having to draw every person. So it’s not like you’re going through and casting. It’s, like, oh, let’s put out a wide net. How are you going to draw those two characters? I think in his specific example, it was that a strong wind was blowing the slobber from a dog onto a business person. And so I can see where in his example are we thinking that there’s a different context because it’s spit going onto a woman versus spit going onto a man?

There are always specifics to these situations. But I want us to go back down to the default male situation because there’s two anecdotes I heard this last week from other writers as this was being discussed. The first was from a writer who said that she literally — all she had changed for this one character was the character’s name from like a Bob to a Barbara. And the note she got back from the studio was like, oh, the character’s so much more complex now.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Like literally nothing had changed other than the character’s gender and name and suddenly every — all those same lines seemed so much different because we apply a complexity to that character in that role if it’s a woman.

**Aline:** And that’s what I was saying if you just go through and look at stuff, especially stuff that you’re feeling like is just functional and not interesting and you start thinking about other genders or races or just doing something that makes that character more interesting. But to be honest with you, I have trouble getting too exercised about this because we just need more female leads. We need more female big roles.

And, you know, with women and minorities, there’s a lot of cops and judges and DAs going on. And I wish that instead of — it’s a much bigger problem than the default thing, I wish that, you know, if you’re doing a buddy movie that you think of a woman and a man, you know, if you’re going to do Ride Along and you could do it with a woman just as easily, that’s the kind of thinking that’s, I think, ultimately going to be more impactful.

And that’s why somebody like Melissa McCarthy, she takes movies that could’ve been two men easily and you just put her right into it and you don’t miss a beat.

**John:** I think Tilda Swinton is the same situation.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton. And that’s a role that didn’t need to be a woman. There’s nothing — her gender doesn’t actually factor into any aspect of Michael Clayton. But her being a woman changes that role in sort of a strangely fundamental way in that you rarely see women making those kind of ethical, horrible moral judgments. And that’s what’s fascinating to watch.

**Aline:** Made it more interesting. I mean, once —

**John:** The same in Snowpiercer. I mean, she doesn’t have to be a woman in Snowpiercer and it’s great.

**Aline:** One just small thing. I sense a segue coming. But one small thing is that in Devil Wears Prada, the character that’s played by Stanley Tucci, it’s never said that he’s gay. We never make reference to it. It’s not in anything to do with the story. Stanley played the character a certain way. And it’s funny people assume that he is and it comes up frequently. And it wasn’t ever — it’s not in — it’s not written anywhere. And I don’t know that he is or isn’t.

**John:** Yeah. Yeah, that’s great. All right, I have questions for you guys because you both have strong opinions and —

**Aline:** [laughs] No!

**John:** And you’re willing to share your opinions and you’re also — you’re very confident in your opinions. And so I look to you for some confident opinions on a couple of ethical questions that have sort of come up for me.

Let me raise these. So as we’re recording this, this is the day the Oscar nominations came out. And one of my stipulations is that I will only vote in a category if I’ve seen all the nominees because that only seems fair. But is that really the right idea or am I sort of doing a disservice to all the nominees if I haven’t — if I don’t vote in a category I haven’t seen?

**Aline:** You voted to nominate having not seen every single movie in the category.

**John:** Absolutely true, because it’s impossible. It’s an infinite set essentially.

**Aline:** Okay.

**John:** But when it comes down to the actual Oscar voting or the WGA voting, I’m only going to vote in categories where I’ve seen all the possibilities. Craig Mazin, I come to you first. What is your feeling about that as an approach?

**Craig:** I mean, of course, you want to say, look, if you have to choose between five movies and you’re picking who the best director of those five movies are, you — naturally, it is ideal for you to have seen all five. But really, underlying all this is the silliness of the voting itself. You’re voting on five that other people have agreed you should vote on. All those people agreed that these are the five based on some movies they saw, not all.

Look, you know my whole feeling about the Oscars is that it should be more like AFI where it’s like it’s a celebration of the five best directed movies of the year. [laughs] I just don’t understand this pick one thing. But yeah, I mean, ideally, you would, sure. I mean, it seems weird to say well, I didn’t see — I saw one of them or two of them and I didn’t see the other three, but I like this one. I’m voting for that one. That’s a bummer to the people that did the other stuff, right?

**John:** It is. Aline, I want your opinion.

**Aline:** I mean, it’s definitely the ideal. You know, I usually have seen all the movies in my category basically. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s better to focus on ones where you feel like you’ve really surveyed the landscape. I think it’s an ideal — I think people do the best they can. And then I think, you know, sometimes people just feel really strongly about one movie and they feel like it’s the best movie they’ve seen among the movies they’ve seen and they’ll just vote for that one.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** So —

**John:** All right. That’s actually a more ambiguous answer. I was expecting a sort of a strong firm one. So now, I want you to tell me if I’m a hypocrite or not a hypocrite based on this exception I’m willing to make. The Transformers movies. I don’t like the Transformers movies. I can’t watch a Transformers movie. They’re too loud. They’re too noisy. They’re too chaotic. I don’t care to watch a Transformers movie. And yet they’re always up for sound mixing or sound editing. And so am I a hypocrite if I vote in that category not having seen those? If I make an exception for Transformers movies, is that a hypocrite?

**Craig:** I would say yes. I get the you don’t have to watch the whole movie. You can watch a sequence. You’ll know which one is the one that the sound guys would hope you’d be listening to and just watch that sequence with an ear on the sound and ignore the other stuff because that’s the point of that category. You and I both know the sound guys, they’re — it’s done. They get the pictures locked. Someone wrote the script. They shot it, da, da, da, da, da, da. They’re just doing sound. So you can’t punish them for the content of the movie. You can only reward them or not reward them based on what you hear.

**John:** All right.

**Aline:** I mean, I feel bad for these guys because their work is being watched not the way it’s meant to be viewed. A lot of it is not being viewed in theaters anymore. So it’s not really what they do in those categories.

**John:** All right, so a more specific question that’s aimed at us, at screenwriters. So we have the nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay both for the Writers Guild and for the Academy Awards. But are you reading all the actual screenplays? Are you basing that vote on what you assumed the screenplay was underneath this movie you saw? Aline?

**Aline:** I don’t read the screenplays.

**John:** Craig?

**Aline:** But I probably should.

**Craig:** I mean, I’m not in the Academy. They’re never going to let me in. [laughs]

**Aline:** [laughs] You’re in the Writers Guild.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s true. I don’t believe that you should be giving awards for documents. Our job is not to write a document. Our job is to write a movie. And so I watch the movie and I discern from that movie the narrative, the dialogue, the structure, the sequencing, all the characters’ characterizations, all the things that go in that we provide a movie. And I experience it through the movie. That’s our job.

**John:** All right. Next ethical question. There have been times when people, producers or studio executives have come to me with a project to work on or to adapt. And I’ve passed based on saying, like, I’m unavailable or, like, that just doesn’t really spark for me when the truth is I just know I will never work for that person. And so I’m unavailable. Is that an acceptable lie to tell in that situation? Aline Brosh McKenna?

**Aline:** Well, you know, Hollywood is really a triumph of Mandarin communication. You have to, like, get a dictionary when you start to figure out what people are actually saying to you. And my favorite story was I had written this script that the main character was in the IRS. And somebody passed on it and they said to me we already have an IRS movie in development. And I walked around repeating that as if that was really the reason they passed on it for like a good year until I was talking to someone else and they said oh, yeah, they were interested in my basketball script.

And then I realized — then they told me they had another basketball script in development. And it hit me like a bolt of lightning [laughs] that that was a lie.

**John:** That’s a thing you say.

**Aline:** Yeah. And so there are things that people in Hollywood say that are code for other things. And there’s a lot of screenwriting ones like “lot of good work here.” You know, there’s a lot of things that people say that are not exactly what they mean. And I think in terms of passing on things, you know, this is something that I have talked about with people which is I will often pass on things by saying I’m not going to be able to do a good job on this.

And that’s usually what I feel. You know, if I’m really excited about it, it’s palpable to me. And if it’s not, then I won’t do a good job on it. I don’t think you ever really need to tell people why you’re not taking on their project. It’s sort of like if you don’t want to go out with somebody, you don’t have to say I don’t like the way you look in pants. You can just decline.

**Craig:** I agree. I mean, this is just basic human stuff. We’re allowed to do it. You know, white lies have value. If you’re not going to be completely honest, then I think all bets are off. You’re never going to say to somebody, “Oh no, no, I wouldn’t do this because I don’t like you. I think that this is stupid. I think you’re stupid. It’s insulting that you would even think I’d want to do this.”

Well, that’s honest but you’re not going to say any of that so you might as well just, you know, go the extra mile and say, “Oh my god, I can’t. I’m so busy.” But, you know, like Aline, I’ll also say to people, particularly people that I have worked with before, people that I do like, then I will. If I don’t want to do something, I’ll just be super honest and say I just don’t get it. It’s probably me, you know.

And God knows that there’s a decent chance that three years from now I’ll be sitting at home kicking myself. And I really do feel that way. And I can’t do it because I just don’t feel it, you know. Everybody respects that.

**John:** So my last two questions are about friendship. This is a situation that happened to me and I suspect it’s happened to both of you as well. A friend is so excited because they just started working on a new project with this person, and a person who I know to be a terrible person or that I had a terrible back history with. Do I say what happened or do I just keep my mouth shut? And at what circumstances do you say something and what circumstances do you not say something?

Again, it feels like that relationship question. It’s like where, you know, if your friend is dating a monster, do you tell your friend that they’re dating a monster?

**Craig:** Well, the thing is, one man’s monster is another man’s savior. I have been in this situation on both sides. And I remember I was doing something with someone. And somebody that I like a lot and respect and whose opinion I value said that person is the worst. On a scale of one to ten, they’re an eleven of terribleness.

And I got along great with the person. Great. And it went fine which just goes to show you some puzzle pieces fit together and some don’t. So with that in mind, unless I know that somebody is criminal, they cheat, they steal, they are abusive, you know, stuff that’s really dangerous that I think they need to know, I’ll tell that. But if it’s just I really did not like them, I didn’t like their taste, I didn’t like their work process, I didn’t like their face, whatever it is, I just keep that to myself because they might love them.

**Aline:** I’ve had something which was strange, which was somebody really heartily recommending someone to me and saying this person is my muse and my angel and everything they say is a pearl of wisdom. And I just had a terrible time understanding what they were saying, getting anything on the boards. And so it’s so personal. Again, I hate to be the chick who keeps bringing up dating stuff but it’s also like that. Like you can have chemistry with someone.

And I think we all have people that we like that other people don’t as much or people that everyone else likes but us. It’s human nature. I mean, in terms of telling someone, I think you can always say, “I had this experience. You may not have this but I just…” It depends on how close they are to you. If it’s a super close friend, I would say, “Listen, just have your eyes open. This is where I think their defect is. And so if you see this red flag come up, there might be more of that where you think there might be more.”

**John:** In the real life cases where this has come up, I’ve tried to frame it — the conversation saying — in both cases, I think I did say, like, there was a problem. This is what the actual experience was. This is where I think I probably was at fault. Let me explain sort of what the whole scenario was and why this person was under pressure.

And I sometimes describe it as like this is a storm we all endure together. That said, I will never ever work with that person again. And it segues back to the earlier question of why are you passing on this because you’re unavailable. It’s, like, because I had just an absolutely horrible time with that person and I will not forget that.

All right. My final ethical question is at what point is it okay to say in a conversation to refer to somebody as your friend when you’re not sure that the other person would refer to you as a friend? And so there’ve been cases where I’ve heard myself saying, like, oh, yeah, he’s a friend. And then I’ve said that in a way to sort of try to be inclusive, to sort of explain like how I know this person, blah, blah, blah.

And then I realize, oh, wait, would that person actually refer to me as a friend? And it often comes with relative levels of fame. So if I refer to somebody who’s like much more famous than me as a friend, am I being a douchebag? It’s a weird situation. And we all know really famous people so it’s —

**Aline:** Well, that’s so interesting. You know, there are a lot of writers that I know so slightly. Like I was on half a panel with them or I, you know, met them in some really oblique way and I will refer to them as my friend. I had this with Chris Morgan who I’ve met once. And Chris Morgan — I’m always like, oh, we’re friends, we’re friends. He comes up and I’m like, we’re friends. [laughs]

And now it’s like a thing when I see him. I’m like, hey friend. And that’s so interesting because with actors, I think, I would probably have to have, like, had a solo social engagement with them before I would say that’s one of my friends. That’s kind of interesting. I think maybe I just consider writers default —

**John:** Yeah we’re all —

**Aline:** Friends.

**John:** In the same boat.

**Aline:** But same with moms, like moms at my school. I might say that I’m friends with her even though we just sort of like stood next to each other in the classroom for two seconds.

**John:** Craig, what do you think?

**Aline:** I think I’m rather whorish with this. I think I’m rather slutty and —

**John:** You’re a promiscuous friendster?

**Aline:** I am a promiscuous user of the word friend.

**John:** Craig, where are you at with this?

**Craig:** I’m the other way. I’m a little stingy you with the word. I’ll say if somebody asks me about somebody I’ll say, oh yes, I know them. You know, we’ve hung out. I might say I know them. But to me, when you say someone’s a friend, you are implying that you have a relationship with them. They’re a part of your life. You’re a part of theirs.

I mean, look, I spent months and months with Bradley Cooper in multiple countries. And I can email him and if I see him we will talk. He’s not my friend. I know that. I’m not his friend. I know that. So I would never say, oh yeah, Bradley’s a friend.

**Aline:** What about Chris Morgan?

**Craig:** Well, Chris Morgan is my friend [laughs] because I —

**John:** Chris Morgan’s a friend to the world.

**Aline:** Not a good test.

**Craig:** No. Yeah, because Chris Morgan lives in my town and I know him, his wife, his kids, and we hang out. But I feel like if I were to say, oh Bradley Cooper’s a friend, I am being a douchebag. I’m boasting. It’s boasty. Even when I am actually friends with somebody — like, I’m actually friends with Amanda Peet or Jason Bateman, I’ll say oh yes, you know, we’re actually — we’re close. Our families are close or something like that.

Because to me, if I’m really like friends with you, then you know my wife. You probably have met my kids. Anyway, it’s that kind of thing. So I do think it’s a little douchewaddy. If I’m familiar with somebody, if I know somebody, I’ll just say oh, yeah, I know them, you know, we’ve spent time together. I’ll say something like that.

**John:** It is interesting with actors because like Ryan Reynolds is genuinely a friend. I’ve been to both of his weddings. He was at my wedding. So that kind of stuff is really there. But there’ve been other actors who I’ve just helped out on a thing or they’ve been in a workshop and so I know them.

Like Hugh Jackman I know really well. I know his wife. But like I’ve never been to their apartment and we’ve never hung out. Same with Will Smith. Like you’ve hung out, you’ve dealt with Will Smith. And so I like him. I mean, he’s an acquaintance. I think he would probably recognize me but he has no idea about my life.

Maybe the test is that he would never — like, Will Smith is never going to text and say like, “hey, what’s up? How’s your day going?” And a friend maybe would more likely do that.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know, in a weird way, if you play Words with Friends with someone, they’re your friend. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs]

**Aline:** Well, it’s funny. I just saw somebody that I play this game, Wordbase, which I’m obsessed with. And I just saw this woman who’s a friend of mine and she said — we were catching up with some other people and she said, oh, I don’t need to talk to you, I see you all the time, which is not true. We just play Wordbase every day. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs]

**Aline:** So it seems like we see each other every day. So it’s slightly another one of those Hollywood Mandarin things about who you say is your friend. And actually, as you’re talking, I think that when actors come up that I know, I think I say something like we’re pals or something. I think I use another word. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs]

**Aline:** Just to — that captures like we’ve spent time together and they probably know me by sight and —

**John:** Yeah. I was in a conversation where there’s a director who I haven’t made a movie with him but we worked together on a project. And so he was on the list. And it’s, like, oh, yeah, I really like him. And I didn’t say friend because, like, that would be completely inaccurate. Like, I’m not sure — I have his correct email address now, but I know that if we were in the same room together, we’d get along great.

And so there is that weird middle ground with people you know but they’re not — I mean, they’re acquaintances but it’s a different thing.

**Craig:** Even somebody that I’m legitimately friends with, if I think it’s going to make me sound douchey — like I’m really friends with Melissa McCarthy and I feel douchey about it. If somebody says, oh, you know, what’s Melissa McCarthy like? Oh, well yeah, she — we’re friends. I’m sort of saying, look what she — she’s my — she likes me. I don’t, like — so what I’ll always say is I love her. I wish I put the arrow the other way, you know. I just like, I love her, she’s the greatest.

**Aline:** I’m going to use this opportunity to point out that you guys have both name-dropped a bunch of actors that you’re friends with.

**Craig:** Well, we have to, that’s the topic.

**John:** That is the topic. What actors are you friends with? Oh, Rachel Bloom.

**Aline:** Yeah, well, you know, I’m going to be discreet.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** I will tell you that I know that’s, you know, I love these guys. But Zach Galifianakis would never call me his friend. Ed Helms isn’t going to call me his friend. Now, Mr. Chow, yes. But, Bradley — it would be so cool if I could walk around be like, “Well, yeah, Bradley Cooper is my friend. We’re friends.” But we’re not. I love the dude, he’s awesome. But I know that he doesn’t think about me ever. [laughs]

**Aline:** But it’s partly the actor thing because it really — I’ve done roundtables with writers. And then, you know, after that, I consider them friends of mine.

**John:** Yeah, you aloud a script together and you pitch jokes. That’s really —

**Aline:** Yeah, and we have professional camaraderie. So I think I am very loose about it with definitely with writers because I consider them all sort of my friends.

**Craig:** You are looser than I am because —

**Aline:** Hooray.

**Craig:** For instance, I’ve spent time with Simon Kinberg. I love it when we bump into each other at something. But we’re not friends because, you know, he doesn’t call me, I don’t call him. I’ve never been to his house, he’s never been to mine. So it’s weird to say that you’re not friends with somebody because it sounds like you’re in a fight with them. I mean, I think the guy’s awesome.

It would be fun to be his friend. But I know I’m not, it’s not enough for me. I have to, like, actually have a relationship with somebody. What is the value? Why are we talking about this? [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Well, if you want to know more about Simon Kinberg, you can go back to the episode in the premium feed where I talked to Simon Kinberg for an hour about writing and X-Men: Days of Future Past.

**Aline:** This is just going to be a long podcast where we go through everyone we know and say friend/not friend, friend/not friend.

**John:** Weirdly, Simon Kinberg like runs the gamut for us because like sort of not friend to Craig Mazin. Not enemy but not friend. I’ve been to both of his houses, his house in LA and house in New York because our kids were in preschool together. But you are genuinely friends because you’ve like written movies with him.

**Aline:** Yeah, he’s one of my besties.

**John:** It’s the range of Simon Kinberg. Let us segue to our third topic for today which is — we started talking about Whiplash and sort of that dynamic of teachers and students which I think is so compelling.

I think maybe for writers, especially because, I think, I know I had writing teachers who were — they didn’t throw symbols at me but they were difficult and demanding and that became part of the process of doing stuff. And Aline Brosh McKenna wrote The Devil Wears Prada which has in some ways a similar dynamic of this person who’s such a perfectionist who’s driving the ship. And you’re trying to please her and there may not be any pleasing to her.
So, you saw Whiplash. Did you feel that connection to your movie in seeing in it?

**Aline:** I did feel some of that but only in so far as I think that Whiplash is basically a horror movie. And I think The Devil Wears Prada is also a horror movie. They’re monster movies. And so, you know, he’s playing a much more — that character is a much more overt monstrous character.

I think that also Prada is a Faust story. So in Prada, she gets pulled towards the monster and becomes a little bit the monster. And that’s not really the case in Whiplash. He doesn’t really start to compromise his values towards — he keeps trying to live up to this guy and then he repudiates him.

So, yeah.

**John:** But I would argue whether he does fully repudiate him. Because I think what’s actually fascinating about the movie of Whiplash is that he is like the Andy character in Devil Wears Prada is like attracted moth-like to this bright burning flame even though that he keeps getting burned by this bright burning flame.

But there’s a vindictiveness to the teacher character in Whiplash that does not exist in your story. I remember having a conversation with you about The Devil Wears Prada where you were so insistent on trying to find who is the human being underneath the Miranda character. And why was she doing what she was doing? What is the beauty underneath there? And I guess Whiplash does that to some degree as well. But it ultimately leaves the question ambiguous. It’s sort of like why is this person doing this.

**Aline:** Well, I think one of the fantasies that in mentor-protégé movies, one of the fantasies is that this person is ever going to notice you. And I think in Prada we made a big point of the fact that even after that, you know, through that whole movie, I don’t even think she is totally registering who this other person is completely. She doesn’t really remember her name.

And then, so that scene towards the end where she actually — you see, that she has thought about her. She has noticed that they have similarities. And at the very, very end when she smiles after seeing her, I think what’s enjoyable about that is thinking that this person who is so, so outranks you is noticing you at all.

And I think Whiplash has a great moment — spoiler alert — Whiplash has a great moment where you come to understand that he doesn’t really know — the Miles Teller character doesn’t really know whether J.K. Simmons has really registered his existence. And at the very end of the movie you’ve come to realize that he’s really been thinking about this kid.

And I think that’s what’s part of the perverse pleasure of it is being around this monster who so outranks you. They’re not paying you any attention. And then all of the sudden they focus their gaze on you. I think there’s something. And it has to do with the parents, I think. It has to do with this sort of allure and fear of a small child in front of its parents.

The movie that we really — I did not think about all weirdly when I was writing. But then of course realized very much afterwards was very similar to ours was Wall Street.

**John:** Oh yeah. Well, let’s talk about movies that sort of fall into this general category. And we could talk about movies that have good teachers and movies that have bad teachers or sort of bad mentors. And so some of the ones we’ve listed as we were making up this list before we started — good teachers: To Sir, with Love, Stand and Deliver, Dangerous Minds, Mr. Holland’s Opus, School of Rock, The Miracle Worker. In each of these cases, you have a teacher who recognizes there’s something special about this kid.

**Aline:** Dead Poets.

**John:** Dead Poets Society. Oh my god, a great one. There’s something special about this kid. I will single out this kid and make sure that the sun shines on this kid. And I may push the kid but I am pushing the kid to a place of safety. And oftentimes, the good teacher is sort of working in opposition to a bad parent. And essentially like things aren’t perfect at home but I’m the person who’s going to elevate you and be that father figure.

**Aline:** Right. And Whiplash has the opposite.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** I actually think that one of the hallmarks of the good teacher movies is that they don’t zero in on any single kid, but they actually zero in on a bunch of kids. The formula is I’ve got a bunch of kids, none of whom are reaching their potential, each for different reasons. And I’m going to figure out why and inspire all of them. School of Rock, Dead Poets Society, Mr. Holland’s Opus, Dangerous Minds, Stand and Deliver, they’re not elitist teachers. They’re actually egalitarian teachers. It’s the bad mentors, I think, that are very elitist and zero in on one person because they see something in them and then attempt to essentially make them blossom by trying to destroy them.

**John:** Another thing I noticed about the teacher movies, the good teacher movies we singled out here, good meaning like the teacher is good, not that the movies are good because these are all really great movies, is in most of these cases the teacher is the outsider who’s come in to a situation. So it’s an outside teacher who’s come in to a classroom and therefore transformed the classroom and brought to it.

But as we look at these bad mentors, these bad teachers, it’s usually the opposite. Let’s list some of these movies: Amadeus, Black Swan, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, Wall Street, The Devil’s Advocate, Whiplash, Devil Wears Prada. In these situations, the mentor was already in that world and we’re looking at a new person who’s come in to this situation and is — come in optimistic, hopefully, and with dreams and visions, and this teacher character is crushing those dreams.

**Aline:** God I love Amadeus because the agony of realizing that this guy, this flibbertigibbet is more talented that he is, that he’s witnessing this incredible talent. And that the child is not worthy — the kid is not worthy. It’s so great. It’s such a good one.

**John:** So you referenced Faust, so talk us through the Faust of it all. So what was the dynamic in there that you saw with Devil Wears Prada?

**Aline:** Yeah, I mean we don’t have her. She doesn’t ever instruct her for the point of instructing her. When she tells her, the speech about the blue sweater, she’s insulting her. She’s saying, you’re stupid. She’s not doing it to edify her. She just wants her to stop saying stupid things in her presence.

And then, you know, she’s putting up with a lot of stuff. Anne’s character is putting up with a lot of stuff. Until the end when she realizes that she’s becoming this person that she thinks is not a good person; that she did something to her friend which is similar to what Miranda does to her friend. And it’s the mirroring. It’s the scene where she says, I see myself in you that causes her to quit.

And it was interesting because in the book it was much more a repudiation. It was much more of like you’re terrible and I’m going away from the terrible thing. And what we wanted to do was more of a story about somebody who says I see the kernel of this callous disregard for others. I see it in myself and I don’t wish to nurture it. I want to turn my back on it. And that’s why she throws the phone in the fountain. So we we’re hoping for something a little bit more nuanced. Whereas in a monster movie, you just need to kill the monster.

**John:** The Beauty and the Beast is sort of the example of like you need to find the wonderful character underneath the monstrous feature. Or King Kong is sort of you’re coming to love the thing underneath the monstrous facade. But in the case of Whiplash, the case of I’d say Black Swan as well, like there’s not a good thing underneath there.

**Aline:** Right. I mean, one of the things about writing these movies is that they’re really a swampland of clichés. They’re really difficult. They’re very tried and true. And so I think we really appreciate movies that have a spin on them. And I thought Whiplash was sort of transfixing from the very beginning because the drive of the junior character was so powerful. And what he was up against with was so intense.

So I really have to hand it to him for making that really, you know, refreshing that. Because I think it is a tough genre. Sometimes when you — particularly the good teacher. Sometimes when you see the good teacher come in you feel like you can map out the beats of that, don’t you?

**John:** Hm-mmm, absolutely.

**Craig:** The thing about Whiplash that I think sets it apart is that it had — that Damien Chazelle clearly made a decision to not have the devil be the devil. It’s no coincidence that two of our bad mentor movies have the word Devil in the title. And in Platoon, you can see clearly that Tom Berenger is the devil. And in Wall Street, you feel that Michael Douglas is the devil. And in Black Swan, the devil seems like — the devil’s emerging, and so on and so forth.

In Whiplash, what he chose to do is say, look, I’m going to actually have you — I’m going to make you hate him and also agree with him. And then I’m going to force this question on you which is is it worth it? Is it worth this toxic relationship if you get better at a thing? And particularly better at an art. And then underneath that is is great art worth the suffering that goes into it, is the suffering necessary? Could this have happened without this relationship? Was this man doing this in order to inspire greatness or was he doing it simply because he’s a sadist who’s out of control and he happens to inspire greatness?

All these wonderful questions are there for you to decide for yourself. But I think what sets Whiplash apart at least in terms of its characterization is that it did not answer the question in any way.

**John:** And what’s also I think smart about I think both Whiplash and Devil Wears Prada is it puts those thematic ideas in the mouths of the characters who were best able to speak them. So in the case of Whiplash, you know, the Miles Teller character asking where is that line? Like, where do you go — you know, when do you push somebody so far that they actually run away from the thing that they’re great at? In the case of Devil Wears Prada, you were able to have Meryl Streep’s character really express what it was that she was trying to do and then really be able to speak those things.

And so often, you get very nervous about sort of putting thematic lines in a character’s mouth but you sort of have to. It’s that elegant way of sort of stating it without making it clear that you are really stating it. Or getting to that sort of emotional punch line so that you’re ready to hear it. It’s like, oh, yeah, I get that. And everything else frames around that question.

**Craig:** I think that that’s one of the great things about this genre is that you can have characters pose those thematic positions because they don’t necessarily resolve easily. It’s easy for the character Fletcher in Whiplash to say, listen, Jones throws the symbol at Parker’s head. Parker becomes The Bird, right? He becomes Bird. Sorry, not The Bird, Bird. The Bird was Mark Fidrych, pitcher for the Detroit Tigers as you both know.

So there’s this kind of thing that then is unspoken. It’s for the audience to then ask. Okay, he stated a theme that is an argument. But did he need the symbol thrown at him or would he have been great anyway? And also, hey, Charlie Parker died young of an addiction. He was tormented. And so the movie casually introduces in an interesting way and then kind of twists the details of it. Another suicide, right? The movie is reminding you of this.

So these characters make these statements. But we understand that the movie is saying don’t necessarily buy this. You know, question even what this character is saying because this character is not giving you the truth. They’re only giving you their truth.

**John:** Another thing I’ve noticed about these bad mentor movies is we think of them as being two-handers. I think in my recollection, I think of Devil Wears Prada as being Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep. But of course it’s really not just those two characters. You have to have ancillary characters out there who can provide other viewpoints. And so it’s not just the same fight over and over again.

So in the case of Devil Wears Prada, you have Emily Blunt’s character who’s a version of what Anne Hathaway could become. You have Stanley Tucci’s character who is sort of the fairy godmother, sort of showing you like, helping you make that transition.

In the case of Whiplash, you have Paul Reiser’s character who’s asking those questions like this isn’t worth it. I’m here to protect you, let me protect you. And it was interesting reading through the actual screenplay for Whiplash. There was a lot more there and a lot of that got cut out. I think they recognized in the edit that it’s, you know, ultimately they want it to be more than two-hander. So there was a lot more that Paul Reiser’s character was trying to be the voice of, you know —

**Aline:** Man, I love that scene where he goes home and — are those his cousins?

**John:** Yes.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** The scene with the cousins. And to be able to make your lead character really kind of a dick and not even kind of a dick, saying truly dickish things. But it really got you into his perspective on things.

**Aline:** But it’s smart because it also shows how the monster is kind of rubbing off on him and how this pursuit of greatness that is sort of a religion, how it’s distorting his interactions with everyone.

**John:** Yeah. And, you know, Amadeus has that aspect as well where the desire to prove yourself, to achieve something is what ultimately pushes Salieri to these points. It’s that weird case where Salieri is the protagonist/villain sort of your story. I love those things where you feel like there are just those two people but there’s actually a whole world around them.

And I think it’s also interesting that in each of these cases with these bad mentors, they’re very specific, unusual worlds. If you look at Amadeus, like we know nothing about classical music, but we’re being taught this whole world.

In Wall Street, we’re being taught the world of Wall Street. We’re being taught the world of fashion in The Devil Wears Prada. I don’t care at all about jazz or drumming, and yet I was introduced to this world and found it fascinating and believable within Whiplash.

**Craig:** Also, I would say that the movie would not have worked if nothing had changed other than the instrument. There is something about drumming that we understand to be physical and inscrutable. We don’t know why reaching a certain tempo is so important.

And by the way, I have to say, a lot of the technicals of the movie about jazz, for instance, like the bleeding hands and the tempo and the speed isn’t really true. I mean, it’s not true to life. If your hands are bleeding and you’re holding your sticks wrong, and speed is not the be-all-end-all.

But even the pieces they’re playing aren’t really what you would call like the kind of true crucible pieces for advanced jazz musicians. But if it’s a trumpet, we’re going to listen to it and go, “That sounds pretty good. Right?” Or, okay, I mean either it’s you can play the trumpet or can’t play the trumpet. We can kind of hear that.

But in drumming, there is this like weird spiritual magic to it. It’s the only instrument in the band where you can sweat and bleed on your kit. And it’s physical, and it moves at a speed that seems impossible. I’ve got to give Damon Chazelle an enormous amount of credit for shooting Miles Teller playing that kit and making me believe he was playing that kit. I mean, obviously he was playing it to some extent but not all of it.

**Aline:** I just also want to talk about two things which are not really on this topic. But one thing I — because I’ve been watching so many movies recently, there’s two things that I know we’ve talked a lot about on the show. I really noticed that your movie’s just got to be about something. It has just got to be about something. And one of the reasons Whiplash is so successful is because it’s just — it’s about that idea of what will you sacrifice to be successful. You know, how much will you bleed, what’s it worth, where you’re going with it. You know, what’s the ultimate for that. It’s just about one thing.

And then the other thing is the thing Lindsay Doran talks about a lot which is what is the relationship here? And it doesn’t mean that that relationship needs to be in every scene or all scenes but, what is the relationship outcome that I’m rooting for?

And I find that when movies don’t work for me, it’s one of those two things. It’s like who did I care about? What relationship did I care about? And also, why did I watch this? More than anything, I think I’m willing to forgive so much narrative shagginess, but if I don’t know what the movie’s about and if the filmmaker doesn’t know what the movie’s about —

**John:** You feel it.

**Aline:** And it devolves into what I call a “stuff happens.”

**John:** Hm-mmm.

**Aline:** We’re trying to keep it G, a “stuff happens movie”. And I think that the movies that have really been — we have an enormously good crop of movies this year, and I think if you go through them, you could pretty easily, even a non-pro, could tell you pretty easily what they were grappling with thematically.

I think Imitation Game is a really good example of that. It’s really about do we need outsiders, what’s the value of an outsider, how it’s difficult to be an outsider, who’s an outsider, and what their value is, and how we treat them. I think all the movies that have really worked are about something clean thematically, and I know we’ve talked about that so much on the show but, can’t be stressed enough. Know why you’re telling this story.

**John:** Great. All right, it is time for our One Cool Things.

**Craig:** You know what, John, I don’t have a One Cool Thing, as always. So, Aline, you’re taking my One Cool Thing.

**John:** So my One Cool Thing is a thing called Scannable by Evernote. And it’s so, so slick. And so Aline is here in person so I can actually show it to her on my phone. But what you do is if you have a document that you want to scan, so like it could be a receipt, it could be something you hand-wrote, it could be a letter. You just open the app, you aim the camera on your phone at it, and it scans it, it senses that it’s a page of paper, and it scans it and saves it to Evernote, or you can send it to somebody.

So, so often, I’ve had like just something I just don’t want to lose, and so it’s like written down on a piece of paper. I can just aim this app and record it and save it to my Evernote. It’s a really sick, smart system.

**Aline:** I don’t use Evernote.

**John:** You can also save it, send it in an email, you can send it —

**Aline:** So it turns it into type?

**John:** No. It turns it into a picture, essentially.

**Aline:** Oh, okay, okay. Because I have this thing that scans documents and turns them into what looks like pieces of paper.

**John:** Yeah. So this is just a slick version of that.

**Aline:** Okay.

**John:** I’m going to show this to you right now. So we’re actually just going to scan a page of Whiplash. So I’m holding this up here.

**Aline:** All right, okay.

**John:** And it’s going to see —

**Aline:** Oh, so it’s like a credit card thing, where it’s looking to see —

**John:** Yeah. It’s looking for a piece of paper.

**Aline:** Right. Oh, there we go. Wow! Whoa! That’s much better than the thing I have. That’s amazing.

**John:** So the tagline for this is, “That’s much better than the thing I have,” by Aline Brosh McKenna. So it’s really slick, and so because I hand-write first drafts, usually what I’m doing is if I’m away some place, I write on paper and I do a scribbled pass first which is unreadable by anybody but me, then I write a cleaner version which Stuart types up.

And so that clean version, I’ve been taking photos on my iPhone and then sharing them with Stuart just by sending him the email that — this is much slicker. It will go right into —

**Aline:** Will we eventually have something that will take that document and put it in a screenplay format?

**John:** Probably. Yeah. It definitely — if it was a typed document, it could easily scan that. That’s really simple. My handwriting will never be perfectly scannable.

**Aline:** Right. Some day.

**John:** Some day. What are your two One Cool Things?

**Aline:** I have two Cool Things. I’ll do them really quickly. Are you watching The Comeback? Did you watch Season 2 of The Comeback?

**John:** And so I have two episodes left of The Comeback. So I did not love the start of it, and then it got so good.

**Aline:** My mind was blown. I agree the season took a little while to get rolling. And then once it gets rolling, it blows my mind. And I’m actually in that situation where I’m jealous of you because you haven’t seen those last two. The last episode is one of the best episodes of anything I’ve ever seen.

And someone was just telling me yesterday that they had read something about how Valerie Cherish is one of the most nuanced characters of the last ten years and I love that season so much, the end of that season particularly, so much, I went back and watched Season 1.

**John:** Wow.

**Aline:** And it is so prescient. That show blows my mind. So if you still have not seen it, I would recommend starting with Season 1. But if you watched Season 1 and you don’t quite remember it, finish Season 2 and go back to Season 1. It is sublime.

**John:** Yeah. Honestly, I was stalling because I did not love the first couple of episodes of this new batch. They were setting stuff up, but I also feel like they could have maybe made some cuts. But then suddenly it got to this moment where she finally just like unleashes on this one producer and like just really speaks to this thing like, you are awful, terrible people and, you know, you can’t keep doing this to me.

And it was just such an amazing monologue that was great. Because so often that show is sort of making fun of her and she’s sort of half-aware of the joke and she’s sort of not half-aware of the joke. But when she finally just like opens out, it was just great.

**Aline:** Part of what makes her so nuanced to me is that line where you’re not quite sure how much she understands. But the other thing is, it’s kind of one of the very few things, if not the only thing I’ve ever seen about Hollywood that is dead-on accurate. It’s how it’s done.

And when I went back and watched Season 1, it’s like obviously Lisa and Dan worked inside that world and they have it dead to right. I mean, it is just everything from the table read to the — it really sent chills as how accurate it is.

**John:** I love the script supervisor in the show is Winnie Holzman, the writer of Wicked.

**Aline:** Is that right?

**John:** She’s the script supervisor. And it’s like that can’t be. That’s Winnie Holzman!

**Aline:** It’s beyond. And then the other thing, my friend, just an exciting day today because Jason Hall, who got nominated for Best Adapted for American Sniper today, is an old, old friend of mine and an old friend of John Gatins. Actually, much closer, very close friend of John Gatins. And we picketed together in 2007. He was on our picket team and he was just kind of, he had been an actor and his writing career was just starting to take off then. He was making his first movie.

He was just about to get married. Now he has a bunch of kids and he’s got this Oscar nomination and he’s really one of just the good guys of the Guild. He’s just a really smart, really cool, really funny, really interesting guy. And the story of how he got this movie made and what he went through in terms of getting to know Chris and getting to know Chris’s family is riveting.

And so, he has spoken about it in a couple of places. He wrote an article about it for Written By. But just so happy for Jason Hall. It’s one of those things where I feel like it’s a big win for us all in a funny way. And you know what? Great, great noms this year. I thought everyone was great. He’s just an old buddy of mine and I’m very happy for him.

**John:** That’s awesome. So we’ll have a link to some articles about Jason Hall’s story getting into American Sniper and links to all things we talked about on the show notes today. So you can find the show notes at johnaugust.com/scriptnotes.

If you have a question for Craig Mazin, you can tweet at him, he’s @clmazin. I am at @johnaugust. Longer questions, go to ask@johnaugust.com, that’s the place to send them. Aline is not on Twitter so you can find her on Instagram?

**Aline:** No.

**John:** No. Don’t even look for her on Instagram.

**Aline:** Nope. You can find me by going to Craig or John’s Twitter and asking them a question.

**John:** And we will hand-write it down and send it over on a passenger pigeon to Aline Brosh McKenna.

**Aline:** I’m thinking of going retweet only. Thoughts?

**John:** Oh, that would be fun. Yeah, that’s nice.

**Aline:** Do people do that?

**John:** Yeah. You can do that.

**Aline:** Are there people whose Twitter feed is just retweets?

**John:** Yeah. There are.

**Aline:** Is it irritating?

**John:** No. It’s actually just fine.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** You can do it. Where you’re just endorsing something —

**Aline:** Yeah. Or like, something that really strikes me as funny.

**John:** So you actually probably read Twitter but you don’t actually have an account. Is that correct?

**Aline:** Yeah. Exactly. I read Twitter but I don’t ever tweet but occasionally you find something on there that’s such a gem that you want to retweet it.

**John:** My friend Ryan Reynolds, I can just say his name 15 times this episode, he’s finally on Twitter. So there have been all these fake Ryan Reynolds accounts. So he finally got on Twitter because he was sort of forced to. At a certain point they just like come to your door and say, “You are now on Twitter.”

And so I was trying to give him advice about sort of how to do it and I basically said do the least possible because basically anytime you say anything as a celebrity on Twitter, it just gets blown up beyond all proportion. You just have to lock that down.

**Aline:** It’s sort of the same rule as email, and then some, which is if you’re thinking, “Uh, should I?”

**John:** The answer’s no. Yeah. It’s always no. If you are on iTunes and you’re listening to this in iTunes or you happen to stumble by iTunes, please look for us on iTunes — Scriptnotes — just search for us, and leave us a rating because that helps other people to find the show.

While you’re on iTunes, you can download the Scriptnotes app, which is a way to get to all the back episodes in the premium feed. It’s $1.99 a month if you want to get to all the back episodes and bonus episodes, including our friend, Simon Kinberg.

The show is produced by Stuart Friedel. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli, who often does our outros. I’m not sure who the outro is this week but it’s going to be great. If you have an outro that you would like to put at the end of our show, you can write in to ask@johnaugust and just give us the link to where we can find that outro.

Craig, Aline, thank you so much for being on the show.

**Craig:** Thanks.

**John:** And Craig, bye, good luck with all.

**Craig:** Thank you.

Links:

* [Aline Brosh McKenna](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0112459/) on episodes [60](http://johnaugust.com/2012/the-black-list-and-a-stack-of-scenes), [76](http://johnaugust.com/2013/how-screenwriters-find-their-voice), [100](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode), [101](http://johnaugust.com/2013/101-qa-from-the-live-show), [119](http://johnaugust.com/2013/positive-moviegoing), [123](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-holiday-spectacular), [124](http://johnaugust.com/2013/qa-from-the-holiday-spectacular) [152](http://johnaugust.com/2014/the-rocky-shoals-pages-70-90), [161](http://johnaugust.com/2014/a-cheap-cut-of-meat-soaked-in-butter), and [175](http://johnaugust.com/2014/twelve-days-of-scriptnotes)
* [Raphael Bob-Waksberg Breaks Down Comedy’s “Default Male” Problem](http://splitsider.com/2015/01/bojack-horseman-creator-raphael-bob-waksberg-breaks-down-comedys-default-male-problem/)
* [Writers on Writing: Simon Kinberg](http://scriptnotes.net/writers-on-writing-simon-kinberg)
* Read the Whiplash screenplay [on Weekend Read](http://johnaugust.com/2015/weekend-read-for-your-consideration)
* [Evernote Scannable](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/evernote-scannable/id883338188?mt=8)
* [The Comeback](http://www.hbo.com/the-comeback#/) on HBO
* [Jason Hall in WGAw’s Written By](http://www.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=239550#{“issue_id”:239550,”page”:12})
* [Ryan Reynolds](https://twitter.com/VancityReynolds) is now on Twitter
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Rajesh Naroth ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))