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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/frozen-with-jennifer-lee).

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

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** And my name is Aline Brosh McKenna.

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

Now, for the first time in forever Craig Mazin is not here. Craig Mazin is, well, what actually happened to him?

**Aline:** Well, if you mean not here, there are sounds coming from the closet. I think he might be waking up. But he’s not actually in front of a microphone.

**John:** A good hit with a heavy object will knock him out. So, Aline Brosh McKenna, our Joan Rivers, has stepped in to be a co-host. Aline, thank you so much for being here.

**Aline:** You are so welcome. I actually saw Joan Rivers last week.

**John:** Ah! Tell me about Joan Rivers.

**Aline:** Live. And it was amazing. And I’m going to work very blue today and I’m going to do a lot of celebrity clothing fashion stuff, just to add some Joan Rivers to it.

**John:** I think it’s an incredible choice. I have one question for you first, though?

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Do you want to build a snowman?

**Aline:** It’s so exciting that the entire podcast Scriptnotes listenership can watch me tackle someone that I’m a huge fan of.

**John:** Our guest today is Jennifer Lee. She is the writer and director of Frozen and the screenwriter of Wreck-It Ralph. Thank you for being on our show.

**Jennifer Lee:** Thank you for having me. I’ve been a huge listener. Well, I’m a huge — that made me sound huge. I have been a listener for a very long time and love Scriptnotes.

**John:** Well, thank you very much.

So, previously on an episode Craig and I took a look at The Little Mermaid and we did a deep dive on The Little Mermaid and spent the entire episode on that. But we didn’t have the benefit of having the screenwriter of The Little Mermaid here to answer our questions as we talked through things.

So, I just want to sort of dig deep and really talk about the story and the really surprising things in the story, because Aline and I were both talking that there are things you would never anticipate being in a movie like Frozen in the movie Frozen.

And so warning to listeners: we’re going to spoil everything.

**Jennifer:** Oh, that’s so much. It’s so hard to talk about the movie and you can’t talk about the movie.

**John:** Because there’s actually a lot of twists that you don’t see coming in this movie and really starting with the nature of the underlying relationships.

I want to get a little sense of history about when you came into this project, because I know that an idea of doing a movie about The Snow Queen, the Hans Christian Andersen story, had been around for a long time. But when did you first get involved with the project?

**Jennifer:** Well, it had been, I mean, rumor is that Walt Disney wanted to do it way back and there’s a production number for The Snow Queen. That’s all we know. Nothing survived. There were some paintings by Marc David for a ride called The Ice Palace, I think, or The Snow Palace that had The Snow Queen. And throughout the decades people kept bringing it up again and wanting to try it.

And then finally Chris Buck pitched it five years ago to John Lasseter and Ed Catmull and it was just the — it was seductive, of course. The concept of a snow queen is seductive. And then setting it in ice and snow and he right away pitched it as a musical, which Disney hadn’t done a big musical since around The Lion King. They have done songs in, but not what a full musical has to be.

And they green lit it and then it got put on the shelf at one point for a whole year, and then brought out again, luckily. And right when it was brought out again I was writing Wreck-It Ralph. And what we do at Disney is anyone who has dealt with animation is very familiar with this. You screen the film and storyboard for them several times and you get a lot of notes from anyone in the studio. And I was giving notes on Frozen whenever they were doing a screening and they would give notes on Ralph.

**John:** Let’s talk about this. So, you’re watching an animatic. You’re watching the cut together boards for something and this was with temp voices, with real voices?

**Jennifer:** Some of it was temp.

**Aline:** You were not yet working on — ?

**Jennifer:** I was not.

**Aline:** Not yet working on Frozen. You were working on Wreck-It Ralph?

**Jennifer:** I was on Ralph, yes. And we were pretty far into Ralph at that point. When I started giving notes on Frozen I think we were a year out on Ralph. And you go in and sometimes it’s temp voices, like Josh Gad hadn’t been cast but Kristen Bell had been. And she is so amazing. She was one of those rare actors who can do the entire script in one recording.

**Aline:** Wow.

**Jennifer:** And over the course of a day and often we just bring them in in small chunks, but she’s incredible. So, her voice was there. But, no one else was cast. Even Idina, I think they wanted Idina but didn’t know if the character would be the right character for her. The Snow Queen was sort of spinning in this one-dimensional chaos of evilness, you know.

**John:** When you were seeing these animatics, going to these screenings, was it still called The Snow Queen? Had it already moved over to being called Frozen?

**Jennifer:** It was Frozen, when I came to Disney — I came to Disney in, god, when was it? Spring of 2012, no, ’11. I’ve lost all track of time with these two films.

**Aline:** Did the Frozen title come from Tangled? Was it inspired by that?

**Jennifer:** I think to some extent it was just in the fact that it was a great sort of all-encompassing title. But I think — and I’m kind of remembering back to what they’ve said — but the real reason was that they weren’t sure how true to the original story they were going to be. And, in fact, they were a lot farther away from the original story than we even ended up, which is saying a lot, because we’re still mostly just inspired by.

But they knew that the Frozen Heart was going to be there. That was a concept and the phrase, sort of an act of true love will thaw a frozen heart.

**Aline:** That was amazing.

**Jennifer:** That was the hook they had.

**Aline:** That was amazing.

**Jennifer:** Absolutely. And that’s what kind of drove the story. We always knew that there was going to be — and this came right from Chris Buck — that we were going to look at true love in a different way. They weren’t sisters. There was so much that hadn’t been figured out, but that was, I think, really what got the movie going.

**Aline:** When you say look at true love in a different way did you know it was not going to be romantic love?

**Jennifer:** Yeah.

**Aline:** You knew that?

**Jennifer:** Absolutely.

**Aline:** But you didn’t know it was going to be a sister thing?

**Jennifer:** Right. We hadn’t discovered that yet and we knew that Anna was going to save Elsa. We didn’t know how or why. And it was more of a redemption story at the time because Elsa was evil.

But it was a struggle. We were struggling a lot with tone. They were struggling a lot with good versus evil can take over the story. And it was just feeling — it was hard to make it fresh or different. And so they had a lot of problems, but at the same time you could see the potential.

And I had gone in to give notes. As I was winding down on Ralph I was sort of helping on other projects, just giving notes. And that was the first time Bobby and Kristen were a part of it. And we kind of really connected with what we were thinking.

**John:** So, at this point you’re watching these cuts and had Bobby and Kristen already written songs that were attempted in there.

**Jennifer:** They had done two songs which are not in the film. A portion of one, I think, is on like the deluxe soundtrack that you can hear. But one of them, there’s another song that someday people will hear, but it is so far from Elsa and who she ended up being, we found it hard to release it because we kind of, you know, right before you give the movie out — it feels like a betrayal of her, because she was so evil. And it was hard for us because we’re so protective of her as a real person, [laughs], which I guess you get right at that end before you give it to the world, you know.

**Aline:** I know you are trying to go carefully through the process, but I wanted to jump ahead just a little bit, because this idea of who is the villain in the movie is really interesting.

**John:** It’s fundamental.

**Aline:** It’s really fundamental, because sometimes when you’re working on stuff with a villain they’ll push, push, push to make it darker and more stark and less human. And there are sort of several antagonists in the movie, but there isn’t really a single clear bad guy because she is so nuanced and you know her. So, even though she is sort of the engine of the things that are opposing, she isn’t really a villain.

And then there are the other two sort of villain-ish characters, but that’s so interesting. How did that come about?

**Jennifer:** I feel like that was one of the biggest breaks that took the longest to get to. And it was that the story would fall into the same sort of tropes, like you just — it was really hard the minute she became evil it would take over. And, plus, Elsa being the Snow Queen, any time she’s on the screen she owned the scene. There was no secondary character to her. And it became very difficult to balance the two sisters, the story, and Anna as an interesting character. Because Elsa was just, you know, she’s larger than life and she would take over.

And then you’d make her evil and it was like that was the whole film. And one of the things that was a really big challenge for us was we wanted to get to that ending where Anna makes her choice to help her sister. Well, in order to get to that you have to buy into her going to Kristoff and do it in such a way where she doesn’t seem fickle. Like, it was just a nightmare to have to have these parallel stories and to support both in such a way where it’s that surprising but inevitable thing.

**Aline:** Right. Well, the thing you have to do which is amazing is you have to build to both things.

**Jennifer:** Right.

**Aline:** It’s sort of like the end of Casablanca or all those famous — also in that movie Suspicion, in the Hitchcock movie Suspicion they didn’t know if he was going to be the murderer or not, so they had to make the movie so that both endings would work. And that’s a funny thing because I thought, okay, she’s going to kiss him and that’s going to be…I’m okay. I’m all right with that. I like him and he’s unusual and they had a nice courtship and I enjoyed enough about it. And I’m all right with it.

And I didn’t really see another avenue, frankly. So, I was thinking, okay, here he comes and there’s going to be… — And so then that thing which really, I mean, we talked about it on the other podcast, on the live podcast, that was really the thing that just blew my mind. But you did it by — I don’t know how — I mean, I’m really curious how the process affects that. Because I don’t know how you’d get that through a conventional studio process.

**John:** Yeah, I really want to get into the process because this is so different than how most screenwriters would work.

**Aline:** Absolutely.

**John:** Usually you’re not seeing a version of something. There’s no sort of temp version of the movie that you’re trying to make. So, it’s all just the stuff on the page and then you hope it works on the page.

But you got to see something. You got to see something on the screen and say like, well that’s not working. And everybody sort of knew it wasn’t kind of fundamentally working.

So, what is the conversation you have with the people who have been making this thing up until this point to say, “This is what I think you need to do?” Was it a spoken conversation? Did you write up notes? What was your process?

**Jennifer:** Most of it is spoken and it was not me alone. Like once we show a screening, and we’ll show it to a lot of people, sometimes hundreds of people in the studio. A screening, just to give all departments a sense of what we’re doing because building the world is its own struggle in animation and takes a lot of time. So, they have to be working even when the story is not finished.

**Aline:** So, you need to carve out things that they can work on that you know are set.

**Jennifer:** Exactly, like building the environments and the artistry of it and the technology. So, they’re working on that simultaneously. But about 40 of us go into a room for several hours.

**John:** This is called an offsite?

**Jennifer:** That’s not even the offsite. Oh, the offsite.

**John:** I’ve heard legends of offsites.

**Jennifer:** Oh, gosh. I hope to take a break. We’ll go in a room for several hours, you know, John Lasseter is there, Ed Catmull, and all the other directors at the studio. Sometimes some Pixar directors. They’ll come down occasionally. And the other writers who are in the studio. And we will sit there and get bombarded with every note under the sun. We joke, it’s like they take your car apart completely and then they walk away.

**Aline:** They leave it on the lot.

**Jennifer:** And they leave it on the lot. And so you just have to take it. And what you’re looking for really are patterns and you’re looking for sort of what is the — usually it’s you can tell this character is not well developed yet because it’s all about this character: “I don’t know who she is; I don’t know what she wants; I don’t believe her; I don’t care about her.” So, they will call you out on everything.

And then you’ll get the random question of like, “What if there are dogs?” You know, they will say anything.

**Aline:** This is a good thing that I think is relatable to listeners of this which is when you’re in a situation that all writers have been when you’re getting bombarded by notes, if you’re a nice person also you have a tendency to be like, “I’ll do that, and that one, and that one, and that one.” And they’re often so competing. How did you cull that feedback to know, yes, this is right, and yes, this is…

— Because sometimes people are pointing at something and that’s not, it’s like a doctor, their knee hurt but it’s because they have some other really unrelated problem in their arm.

Like, you have to also diagnose, okay, this is what they’re saying.

**Jennifer:** Absolutely. And I think that’s the key. Because what’s also interesting about animation is a lot of studios didn’t have screenwriters traditionally. The story artists together would form the story. And part of it you look at some of the stories were much simpler. What was needed to build a full feature was much more straightforward. And not to belittle them, but just say it was a different time.

What audiences want now is much more complex films and that have what a screenwriter brings. And it has taken a bit to convince animation of that, but luckily —

**Aline:** Had you worked in animation before Ralph?

**Jennifer:** No, not at all.

**Aline:** You had never worked before Ralph. That was your first experience with animation?

**Jennifer:** That was my first. And it was overwhelming coming in because there was this weird feeling of almost like the writer had the least authority in the scope of everything, and yet the writer was the one who had to solve the problems if they couldn’t be solved otherwise by a collective group. And that’s how it felt coming in.

The nice thing for me was that Rich Moore had worked in television. He really believed in the writer and I was working with Phil Johnston as well who is a nice strong, not afraid to stand up for things kind of guy. Taught me a lot. And so you really had to — my first experience with Ralph was a lot of time convincing a group of people that this is what the story needed.

And if I couldn’t knowing that’s not right. I mean, obviously if I can’t then there is something wrong with it. And it was a lot of — I had to trust that I was the one who knew the whole. I was the one protecting the characters. I was the one who that was my job and I had to do that, but then at the same time people would come in with this shiny new toy idea that if it’s entertaining or if it can add something unique you want to try to put it in.

And so you have to be flexible. And Ralph was like the best boot camp ever, but exhausting. And what made Frozen very different was two things. One is we had a very intense schedule. Ralph took about three years to make and Frozen, when I came on we essentially started over and we had 17 months. So, we were in a place of a lot of choices had to be made fast. And were given sort of —

**Aline:** And that can be great.

**John:** That can be great.

**Jennifer:** It can be.

**Aline:** I think it is. Yeah.

**John:** Deadlines are a huge help. But what you’ve described though, the life of a screenwriter is often as much your ability to convince other people or to hear other people and echo back what they’re saying in ways that actually serve the story and don’t serve that other interest. So, most of your time as a screenwriter wasn’t spent with you at a laptop staring at it, “What lines should Elsa say?” It was figuring out these bigger things with other people. And that collaborative nature is crucial.

**Jennifer:** Absolutely.

And I think that to me that was one of the biggest things I didn’t realize coming into the business, but I’m not afraid of anymore and I think thanks to Ralph and Frozen, but I think it’s crucial understanding that I think we — particularly when I work, because I was at Columbia just, I graduated in 2005, and how precious things are. And how dogmatic we can be about “this is my vision, this is what I need to hold onto,” and forgetting the side of it that to make a film is such a big collaborative experience, and there are a lot of stakes, and there’s a lot of money invested, and there are a lot of risks being taken. That if people can poke holes, and they will, it’s up to you to repair it.

And if you can’t, they’ll find someone who can. [laughs] You know, it’s like realizing that the writer’s role is tenuous.

**Aline:** But there also have to be moments where you say, “You know what? I appreciate that feedback, but I know that this is okay the way it is and I want to give this a shot and let’s see how this…”

You know, that’s the tricky balance because I do think most of us who do this were grade grubbers and we want that acknowledgment. And it takes a long time to say, you know, to think with your heart in addition to your head and sort of say to people this is what I feel.

**Jennifer:** But I think what John said, too, is the key, because he’s saying how it’s about convincing and getting better at that. I had an idea for Anna from the very beginning and it took almost a year to articulate it in the right way to get everyone on board.

And once I did, everyone was 100% on board. But what was driving me nuts is I knew it was right for her, but it was not resonating with anyone. And so I knew —

**Aline:** I’m not articulating as well.

**Jennifer:** And part of it is I would try the other things because that’s the nice thing about animation. Because you put it up on reels several times you can try things and say, “Sure, we’ll make her want this,” and then you know that it’s not going to work but it might lead to the answer.

But for me there was a day where I stood up with a little sheet of paper and I had this is Anna, this is what Anna’s journey is. No more than that. No less than that. This is Elsa. This is what her journey is. This is what the movie is about and why I want to make this movie.

**Aline:** Wow. I got a chill just hearing that.

**Jennifer:** But I had to do it. And it’s good when you have John Lasseter on your side, because I had met alone with him first and said, “This is what I want to say.” [laughs] You know, and he was very encouraging. But it taught me a lot about how to say it is just as important as what you’re trying to say. And I like to babble and I think everyone is coming along for the ride and they’re not. So…

**Aline:** Well, one of the things I wanted to talk about formally and maybe this gets you into your John Augustinian pieces of paper that I see here. What I loved, because again, like John, I did not know what the movie was except that it seemed like it would kill some of the family holiday time. And then I was so blown away by it. But one of the things that I think is a lesson you keep learning and is really valuable to people is something happens in that movie right away, right away.

I mean, there is a little prologue with the ice, but something happens with them right away. She almost kills her. Her power is uncontrolled. And you see their relationship and how much they love each other and how much they like to play.

And then something really dramatic happens right away. And people forget about that and you’ll read these scripts where it’s like the thing that happens is on page 18 and you’re just asking so much of people and I thought it was so — you revealed some character, and then something disastrous happened, and then you continued to — and it’s very confident to not lay out everything you have, every card, every piece of silverware on the table.

You introduce them. Then something happens. There’s this amazing narrative event. And then you continue to reveal sort of what’s going to happen between the two of them.

And that was so confident. I just thought breathtaking story wise because that’s a thing that people really — they forget about in stories is that you have to start off with an event that really has pretty big magnitude, you know.

**John:** Let’s start with how the story begins. What I would love to do is just take a look at the movie as it is finished and sort of look at what’s actually up on the screen and go through sort of why it’s working in story and what the goals are. And if we need to sort of go back in time to talk about sort of how stuff happens, but let’s pretend that we’re watching this movie that’s on the screen in front of us and sort of what’s going on there.

The very first shot of the movie is a really strange shot. It’s blurry and you’re not quite sure what it is. And ultimately it’s a saw coming through the ice and it’s people cutting these ice blocks apart. And it’s setting up your world and also the colors of your world. Because you think of Frozen being blues, but it’s actually a lot of pinks. And it very much sort of sets up what the world of our movie is going to be like.

So, we start with a song. The song is Frozen Heart. And it’s not my favorite song in the whole world. And it’s very much a Fathoms Below kind of song.

**Jennifer:** That’s exactly what it is. Yeah, you’re right.

**John:** It establishes the world. And no one remembers the —

**Jennifer:** And the Dumbo song, the work song in Dumbo. Those are two sort of —

**Aline:** I missed completely that the little boy —

**John:** Kristoff and Sven are in there.

**Aline:** I missed it completely. And my kids were the ones who pointed out, “Oh mom, he was there in the very first scene.

**John:** So, in the very first scene we see these men carving up the ice blocks and sort of the idea that you would carve up ice. For some kids it’ll be the first time they see that as a thing that you could possibly do.

But we see this little boy and a cute little reindeer and we think they’re going to be significant characters because they’re adorable. They’re chasing after — but we’re essentially establishing them in the world because they’re going to become important later on.

Then we go to nighttime. We see Anna climbing up into Elsa’s bed. They’re adorable. They’re incredibly sweet. They’re sisters. “Do you want to go play?” That’s when we first learn that Elsa has these powers and it’s just sort of matter of fact. There’s not a big whole talk about it. Just suddenly she’s able to do all these things and that’s just the way of it. Talk me through that process about her powers and figuring out how to explain them in the world. How much you were going to try to articulate what the limits of her powers were.

Also, I’m curious, the decision about when to age them up and sort of how long to keep them kids.

**Jennifer:** Sure. I’ll back up just in the sense of the opening with that song was — what we wanted to establish, we wanted the audience to know is people are going to sing, first off.

**John:** Crucial.

**Jennifer:** It’s like you have to know what this world is going to be.

**John:** This is a world where people do sing.

**Jennifer:** They sing. And then the symbolism of ice. This is going to be — ice is going to be physically here and it’s going to be symbolically here. And so they’re singing this song about sort of beware the frozen heart and this concept that ice is more powerful than men. So, buried in it is a lot of sort of “this is the film you’re going to see” without saying it, you know? It’s just kind of — and then the setting of going up into the Northern Lights and saying we’re somewhere north. And starting to build this world without saying it was important to us.

And also with Kristoff, what’s interesting, we have little Kristoff in there because what I love that I always think if you do watch it again is that in a weird way Anna, the choice that she made that night leads him to his family.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Jennifer:** And that there’s a connection between them, but yet it’s not in your face, but it’s just something that… — Because what I always loved about, particularly Pixar films for me, was that everything just added up. And everything had a special little, “Oh my god, oh my god, wait, and that, and that!” And it was my favorite thing and we wanted to make kind of every time we had a scene trying to say what is that that’s maximum, why is it here. If there’s anything extraneous we got to get rid of it.

But yet adding all that flavor, so that’s why. But to move onto Elsa, it was an exhausting process coming to the simplicity of her powers. At times we had a narration by a troll, who used to have a Brooklyn accent for no reason other than I miss Brooklyn. You know, no reason. But, we had this whole explanation like when Saturn is in this alignment with such-and-such on the thousandth year a child will be born and blah, blah, blah.

And then —

**John:** Ultimately you almost throw it away with one line. So, the line is just like, “Was she born with the powers or was she cursed?. And it’s born with it and that’s the last piece of it.

**Aline:** It’s so great.

**Jennifer:** And that’s it. But I think part of what it was is if anything about us felt like it was like, “Oh, god, like okay, we have to say this,” then we didn’t want to say it. And then also we found the more you explained the more questions you had about magic and the rules. It was like, argh. You know?

**Aline:** That’s so interesting. Having worked on stuff that has that, you drop a tiny seed of that it goes kerplunk, it explodes and takes over very quickly.

**Jennifer:** In a huge way.

**Aline:** So, you have so little of it but it’s so clear. And don’t you find that in the development process people are always trying to get you to explain, explain, explain.

**Jennifer:** Absolutely. Huge. And the first act was really what actually we produced last, except for the scene where Anna meets Kristoff, I mean Hans, in the boat. That was one of the earlier scenes that went into production, but everything else in act one was the last thing that we did.

**John:** Let’s move forward in time so we keep with the narrative of the actual story.

So, Anna and Elsa are playing. Elsa is building all these amazing snow things in the house, ends up zapping her sister. Her sister falls unconscious. Calls her mom and dad. You go and see the trolls and it’s the first sort of time we’re seeing there’s other magic in the world, so it’s not just the human world. There are trolls. There is something else that’s going on out there.

We get the warning about her powers. The one line of setup about her powers, that she was born with the powers. And the caution that they can save her this once, but she shouldn’t use these powers again. And she should be afraid of her powers. And really establishing the central theme of her journey which is to be afraid of who she is.

**Jennifer:** Well, and we always do, like to me that’s the scene. His name is Grand Pabbie, the troll, that he states the theme of the film. He just states it in reverse. He says fear will be your enemy. And in the way he has displayed it meaning fear will destroy you like as an external fear. And it makes her even more frightened. But what’s interesting about Pabbie and Bobby Lopez and I like to be slightly twisted sometimes, and that was one of our things where if you really listen to Grand Pabbie, he’s not telling her to not use her powers. He’s just saying you’re lucky it wasn’t her heart. And we’ve just got to remove it all because if we don’t there might be some left and that could hurt her, so I just want to remove even the memories. Let’s just clean her out.

And he says to her there’s beauty but also danger to your power. So, he’s just laying it out as it is and not saying you shouldn’t do this. But the humans go right there. And that tends to be — and as a parent sometimes you see it, because your instinct is my two children are together. One of them has issues controlling themselves and they hurt my other child. You start setting boundaries. And, of course, in this case it’s more extreme. But, what I like about the trolls is they kind of tell it like it is, but if you read into it it’s really the — if you look at it it’s really the parents making the decision for Elsa that we’re going to live in fear then. We’re going to do exactly what he just warned us about, which is fear will be your enemy, and we’re going to live in fear.

So, and it’s just, I think, a very human thing to do is to go to the negative reaction as the caution.

**Aline:** And the parents never get to learn the lesson.

**Jennifer:** No. Although there’s a whole fan base that has decided they crash on an island and they gave birth to Tarzan actually.

**John:** They’ll come back.

**Jennifer:** So, they die then.

**John:** Oh, that would be perfect.

**Jennifer:** Yeah, but that Tarzan — that’s my favorite of the connections.

**John:** So, one of the biggest narrative asks you make of the audience is that these memories are taken out, and so Anna remembers the joy she used to have with her sister but not that her sister has powers. And then as Elsa sort of essentially shuts the door and sort of gives her sister away, not wanting to hurt her, that Anna sort of loses her sister.

And so I’ve heard criticism both ways. Basically people saying like, well, that’s unrealistic, but I’ve also heard people say like that was my relationship with my older sister.

**Jennifer:** Well, it’s funny because that moment was the — I think every now and then we have to make these decisions where just have to do what you have to do. And I remember the screenwriters of Monsters Inc. and Monsters University, Dan and Rob, they — I was frustrated about dealing with the fact that I wanted to Anna to… — If the girls can’t remember, if Anna can’t remember the joy they had together, then there’s no reason to root for the relationship because it doesn’t mean anything.

But, we have to — if she remembers that her sister has powers people felt that she seemed selfish anytime she did anything for herself or stood up to her sister later. And so they said what I thought, it was the best thing just to get us through, was sometimes you just have to do what you have to do but just make a real point of it and the audience will go with it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Jennifer:** And it doesn’t always mean it. And I’ve always, like, “No, but…but…,” but the moment —

**Aline:** I think the best thing you can do in those situations is, you know, I’ve said if you can’t do it well do it quickly.

**Jennifer:** Yeah, and that’s the other thing.

**Aline:** Just do it. And also what I think people do is sometimes when they reach a narrative thing where there is a big buy they add a lot of corollary details. You just state it. That’s the way it is. She can remember this and not that.

Let’s keep going.

**Jennifer:** And let’s keep going. And that was the best advice just because even if it wasn’t — and I’m never going to think it’s perfect because I’m always going to personally bump on it — everything else went where it needed to go.

**Aline:** Works completely.

**John:** It was a necessary thing to do. And I think you couldn’t have done three of those in a row. We would have lost faith in you and the movie, but you got one and you used it really, really well.

**Jennifer:** That’s what they said. “Here’s your wild card. Go. We’ll buy it.”

**John:** And I think also it segues us nicely into the terrific first song, which is Do You Want to Build a Snowman? Which is both — this is really Elsa’s wish song. One of your protagonists, I’m going to say that — would you consider it a two protagonist story?

**Jennifer:** We do. We joke it’s a little, not to have the gall to say this, but just technically to say this, it’s a little Shawshank-y where it’s Anna’s story but it’s really about Elsa.

**John:** Exactly.

**Jennifer:** So, it is that. We go through her eyes, so she’s technically the protagonist, but the whole time it was that relationship.

**John:** But our heroine gets to sing her wish, which is Do You Want to Build a Snowman? And it’s a really terrific number. And my favorite moment that gave me goose bumps even as I was watching it and sort of like, “Well, that was well done,” at a certain point the mom and dad go off to sail to a foreign place and you see the waves, and you see the ship in the waves, and the waves come up higher and then the ship is gone. And that’s all you needed to do.

That shot plus really great music let you know that they were gone and that they were lost at sea. And you didn’t have to talk about it ever again.

**Jennifer:** But what’s so funny about that, and this is where I think Frozen is in this weird place, all of that wouldn’t — it’s like here is this story that kind of turns some sort of fairytale things on its head, and yet those fairytale things allowed us to do things that we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to do. You know, her falling in love immediately, we buy it —

**Aline:** It’s a trope.

**Jennifer:** Because it’s a trope. The parents dying, it’s a Disney movie. [laughs] And the parents are going to die.

**Aline:** They’ve got to be dead. I find it shocking they’re not already dead. Yeah.

**Jennifer:** And it’s like there are things that we were able to do that we didn’t have to overdo.

**John:** Well, I think talking about tropes and expectations is really crucial because it’s both a princess movie and it’s defeating the expectations of a princess movie, but it has to sort of be the princess movie so it can overcome it.

**Jennifer:** Overcome it.

**Aline:** That’s what David Frankel’s term for this is. It’s the “cake and eat it, too” movie. Where you get to do all the things that are in the genre and then you get to completely spoof and work against them. And that’s a great gift because the genre expectations kind of — the audience likes them but dreads them in a way because it feels expected. And so the fact that you’re also working against them gives you that sense of inevitable and surprising, which is what you’re always working towards.

And, really, that was the thing that blew my mind about it was how many times it does that. How many times you think, “Oh, I’ve seen this before…oh, this is completely different.” That’s what blew my mind about it.

**John:** What’s also fascinating about Do You Want to Build a Snowman is that because it’s a song you can build a longer sequence. So, it’s not just a bunch of little short scenes. And so you can go through a period of many years. You can age the character up and so you go from the little girl Anna to a teenage Anna to the Kristen Bell Anna over the course of a song, which is just remarkable change.

**Jennifer:** What’s amazing to me, that song was cut and everyone missed it so much. And the reason it was cut was the first versions of it were so sad. The whole thing was sad. And it was so — there was so much exposition that we couldn’t split it up. And it was just too complicated. But, nothing was resonating and it was such an important sequence.

You had to establish so many things, like who is Anna, what kind of girl is she. What is Elsa’s life like now? Her shutting her out, what does Anna want? Like you had to do all of this. If it hadn’t been a song it never would have worked. But what the song had — what we had to do, I remember the day Bobby flew out for it, Bobby Lopez, and we sat down and said what does Anna sound like. And then it was the [hums], and then it’s like what does Elsa sound like?

**John:** [hums]

**Jennifer:** And it’s got a little bit of Let it Go in it. And they were two separate things. And they worked with Christophe Beck as well. So, we had Anna’s story, Elsa’s story, and it was different music. So, we were able to start segmenting the storytelling. Then, with the first two first versus really what we were trying to show was Anna’s personality. Even though you know what her want is, the way she would sing into the keyhole —

**John:** That’s a crucial moment.

**Jennifer:** And then how she would throw herself over furniture and that her friends are these portraits. All of that setup is what made us be able to save the song because we were all like “I want to kill myself” by the end of that song because it was so like —

**Aline:** So you made it less sad by making her sort of an imp.

**Jennifer:** Yes. And saying this is the girl that you’re going to go on the journey with. These are things about her that you can laugh in her loneliness, I mean, and that’s very Anna. But that was the hardest, I mean, a lot of songs came and went, but that one was the one we all believed in and couldn’t make work for the longest time. And it was because it was so much. It had to do so much.

**John:** But it ends up being a crucial song later on.

**Jennifer:** Absolutely.

**John:** Because it’s the only song that you really reprise heavily and change the lyrics through new circumstance.

**Jennifer:** Throughout the, yeah.

**John:** So, coming off of that we have the grown up characters, it’s going to be the coronation of Elsa. She is going to become the queen of this place. I’m sure there was talk at a certain point like who the hell was running the kingdom in all this time. There was some sort of regent —

**Jennifer:** Ha! We did have a regent. We had him. He turned into, and I love it because I wrote a character and I wrote it for what’s his name, Louis C.K. I wanted him so badly in the film. I just wanted him in the film. But the first act is so heavy, it’s still heavy. There’s so much in it.

One of the issues with the film, and this jumps to the end for a second though —

**John:** What are you defining as the first act? Are you defining when you she runs off into the mountains is the end of the first act?

**Jennifer:** The end of the first act is, yes, when she goes after Elsa, and right before Let it Go. And Let it Go is kind of this in between, because really the second act starts with Anna, as it should, but yet we have this song. But the end, that last moment where she sacrifices herself for her sister, I remember, Ed Catmull when I started on the film he said, “You can do whatever you need to do the film, anything you want, but you’re earning that moment.” And we still didn’t know how we were getting to it. At that point it was some big battle scene between snowmen. It was such a weird route to get to that moment.

But he said you can do whatever you want, but you have to earn that moment. And he’s like, “And if you do, it will be fantastic. And if you don’t, the movie will suck.” And that’s the only, he’s like, “Bye,” and it’s so him to say that, but I mention that because part of the reason the first act was so hard was because we were telling a much more complex story than really we felt like we could fit in this 90-minute film.

So, everything in the first act was over-analyzed, over-scrutinized. And it’s the maximum it can be without being more. And that meant things like who was in charge — we don’t have time for that. It’s not important to the story so we have to get it out. So, there are a lot of little things like that.

**John:** And that’s a case where I think Disney princess logic actually really helps you a lot, because you don’t have the expectation that anyone actually has to run the kingdom.

**Jennifer:** Yeah. And the funny thing to me. I’m like, she’s 21. Why not 18? Well, because I want Anna to be 18. You know, it’s like those little things that we just had to do to say what matters to the story versus being logical, but it’s hard because you’ve got 15 people who part of their jobs in the story room is to beat on the logic of your ideas. So, that was fun.

**John:** That was fun. But, for the first time in forever the gates are going to be opening up. There’s new people coming here. It’s the first time we actually see a bunch of people. It’s a busy city and you sort of see what the universe is like.

You establish Elsa’s fear. She’s trying to hold the scepter without it turning to ice. She’s worried she’s going to freak out. but then Anna meets the cute boy and they fall in love and they have a very literal meet-cute with a horse and a boat and all this stuff.

At what point did Hans become a villain? And, I mean —

**Jennifer:** [laughs] Hans is a villain from the minute he hits her with the horse, in my mind.

**Aline:** Really?

**Jennifer:** But I am slightly a sociopath, I think. He’s just calculating from that moment. Go ahead.

**John:** But I assumed in the second viewing — first off, I was really surprised at the ultimate reveal that he’s a villainess character. But I thought like I must have misremembered. And so then I watched it the second time through and it’s like you gave us nothing.

**Jennifer:** No, I know. I know.

**Aline:** But you know what? That is another example of “cake and eat it too,” because the truth is some of those prince/princess romances are creepy. It’s creepy how generic those men are. And it’s creepy how fast the princesses fall for them. And it’s creepy that nobody questions it.

**Jennifer:** We buy it. Right. Exactly.

**Aline:** And it is amazing how in those movies often that’s the thing that makes you kind of roll your eyes is like this sort of instant connection. And there is something kind of, you know, if you met those guys there would be something a little too perfect and creepy about them. And so it has that thing where it does exactly what you want the genre to do, but it actually unveils this kind of seamy side to those guys.

**Jennifer:** Well, what’s interesting was it was a big — there was a lot of debate about that, not when to give it away. And John Lasseter particularly really didn’t want to. He loved it so much not to that he would push to the extreme sometimes where my sociopathic mind would break down because I’d be like, no, no, no, he wouldn’t do that because he’s calculating.

So, I had to literally walk through every scene, what’s going on in his head for real, and at least I could — like when he says, the first time when he finds out she’s princess and drops to his knees. Before that she’s just a girl. But the key moment is when she says, “It’s just me.” And he goes, “Just you?”

And that’s like inside he’s going, “Ooh, you don’t think very highly of yourself, do you? Well, I’m gonna…”

**Aline:** Terrific. Great news for a narcissist.

**Jennifer:** It’s all very sick and twisted deep down.

**John:** But clearly he’s a very talented sociopath.

**Jennifer:** He’s very talented. He’s charming. He mirrors everyone. And actually the original story had a lot to do with mirrors. And in many iterations of the story we talk about mirrors and we bring them up. And so I held on a little to that, what Hans is is a mirror as a lot of charming, but hallow or sociopathic.

**Aline:** And she’s also so lonely.

**Jennifer:** She’s lonely.

**Aline:** That it’s like she’s falling in love with her reflection in the pond, yeah.

**Jennifer:** Yeah, exactly. And he mirrors her and he’s goofy with her. He’s a little bit more bold and aggressive with the Duke, because the Duke is a jerk, so he’s a jerk back. And with Elsa he’s a hero.

**Aline:** I really like it because their love song is so quick and so declaratory that I was thinking, “God, I mean, I’m buying this. I’m buying this because I’m enjoying this, but man this is awfully fast.” And then I thought, well, this is just a trope of the genre, so it’s okay. So, I’m thrilled that it turned out to be, because that really is —

**Jennifer:** It’s another song that we had to have and I was going nuts, because to me there was one too many songs in the beginning and I — if you talk about like can’t find your way out, I couldn’t my way out of it. I just couldn’t find a way that we didn’t need everything we had. So…

**John:** Because really For the First Time in Forever and Love is an Open Door, they’re the same kind of song overall.

**Jennifer:** Yeah.

**John:** They’re basically sort of like what it feels like to be me. But there’s the fun cute two-hander. We haven’t seen that kind of thing. Their chemistry was really terrific. You’re establishing sort of what it is. And you’re buying that this girl might say yes at the end of this song. That’s the crucial thing is she’s going to say yes to a proposal.

**Jennifer:** Right. She’s so lonely.

**John:** Because like, yeah, it’s a great idea. This is a fantastic idea. And the luxury you have is that not 20 minutes later someone is going to hang a lantern on like, “Wait, this is a stupid idea. How can you possibly do that?” which they never say in a Disney movie which is so remarkable.

**Jennifer:** Right.

**John:** So, Love is an Open Door, the proposal happens, they tell Elsa, “Oh, we’re going to get married.” “That’s a stupid idea.” She freaks out. Big catastrophic snow icy thing. Her powers are revealed and she runs off.

This is the moment where, I don’t know, I guess Hunchback of Notre Dame has the same quality where like he seems like the villain, the community believes that he is the villain. What was the discussion around this point?

**Jennifer:** It was another scene — the scene where Elsa flees, we call it, there was a lot of debate of that scene and then the one after where Anna goes after her about what needed to be and how much of a monster should she feel like, how aggressive should people be.

And really we ended up giving a lot of it just to the Duke as a representation. And this is where we talk about the villain and not having a villain.

**Aline:** He’s villain-ish.

**Jennifer:** It’s having these antagonistic forces and to us like the real villain is fear. And so what we did is take all the characters and as antagonistic characters they hang off of fear. So, he goes to the ultimate fear, she’s a monster, points fingers. And Elsa lives in fear —

**Aline:** A fear of her own self.

**Jennifer:** Fears herself. And then there’s someone like Hans who exploits it. I mean, he exploits love, too. So, every character plays off of — I should say fear and love. And Kristoff is the honest goods. Anna is fearless, actually, and all her faith is in love but she has to learn what that is.

So, it was our way of creating the constant villainess forces. But we felt like just having the — people could be frightened, but just having the chatter of “Get her!” or something, it just was, it was too complex. And it was too like why are they going right there? Why do they hate her? And just giving it to the Duke just gave Elsa the signal to go.

And from there I don’t think she sees herself as —

**Aline:** Well she doesn’t know what she’s done, which is really interesting.

**Jennifer:** That’s why. Because she doesn’t know what she’s done.

**Aline:** Does not realize what she’s done for a good portion of that. She thinks she’s just going off to hide.

**Jennifer:** [Crosstalk] I think if Anna — if it were much more of an extreme reaction Anna wouldn’t have just thought, “I’ll just go and bring her back.” It would have been too complicated. So, I – just like, just keep it about this moment as the girls being divided and being separated from each other.

**Aline:** It’s gorgeous visually. It’s amazing.

**Jennifer:** Oh, thank you. I will say our head of story, Paul Briggs, came up with one of my favorite things in the movie which is the run across the water.

**John:** It’s beautiful.

**Aline:** Amazing.

**Jennifer:** And turning into ice. And that moment. And that was the second sequence to go into production from the first act was that one because when we had that we were like —

**Aline:** Home run.

**Jennifer:** We were like that has to be it. [laughs] It can’t be anything else.

**Aline:** The sound of the ball hitting the bat heading for the bleachers.

**John:** Let’s talk about Let it Go, because it’s clearly a crucial thing. Without that moment you don’t understand who Elsa is or sort of what her journey is. And what point in the process did Let it Go come to be?

**Jennifer:** Let it Go came in about 15 months from finishing. It was the first song that landed in the film and was in the film. And it was an amazing moment. I remember, you know, we had spent a lot of time talking about Elsa and we were still going on the villain journey, which was killing me to try to figure out how to make that work and then redeem her. And have a love story. I was dying. [laughs]

And we just said, “Let’s talk about who she is. What would it feel like?” And Bobby and Kristen said they were walking in Prospect Park and they just started talking about what would it feel like. Forget villain. Just what it would feel like.

And this concept of letting out who she is that she’s kept to herself for so long and she’s alone and free, but then the sadness of the fact that the last moment is she’s alone. It’s not a perfect thing, but it’s powerful. And they came in with the demo of Let it Go and it’s exactly word-by-word the exact song.

**Aline:** Wow. You’re kidding.

**Jennifer:** Exactly. And we — half of us were crying. And then I just went, “I have to rewrite the whole movie.”

**John:** [laughs]

**Jennifer:** I really, it was — I was just like I’m going to go lie down for a couple minutes. But it was the best thing. We knew we had the movie.

**Aline:** It captures such a moment for girls and women which is sort of the — really is the song where you go in your room and you close the door and you sing to yourself in the mirror, you know, “I’m going to be who I’m going to be. I don’t care about anybody else.” I mean, it really, really captures such a great I think particularly female moment.

I have a question about it which is in the sort of thing where she transforms herself she becomes so sexy.

**Jennifer:** Yeah. [laughs]

**Aline:** And what I had sort of admired up until then was how kind of sporty they were, especially Anna, how sporty she was. And then all of a sudden she was sort of pageanty and she has the slit and everything. Tell me about that.

**Jennifer:** Well, I can tell you. What’s interesting, that actually we did a lot of push and pull. There were two things we were feeling. One is that freedom moment where you strut and you just go for it. And I was fine with that and that was great. There was a lot of pull of, I will say from the guys, of loving her as the — every man in the studio, and some of the women, were in love with Elsa.

We used to joke like just put Anna in a closet. Just push her. There was one shot where someone was like, “Can you push Anna further back, further back?” And I was like, “Just take her off, just get her out of the stick. Just go stick her outside.” Because Elsa was — everyone was seduced by her. And so there was this tug of war I think, a bit, of letting people have a little — people who wanted to have that a little and not be afraid of it, but not make it a sexual statement. It’s more a moment of, for me, it was like you strut and you say nobody is looking, this is what I’m going to — I’m not going to be afraid of my sexuality. I’m not going to be afraid of who I am. I’m not going to be afraid of anything about myself.

**Aline:** But her sexuality is definitely part of it. It’s text.

**Jennifer:** And it’s definitely become, I think what we have found is the reaction to it has been bigger than what we had thought it was. But, that’s okay. It’s a moment that was — so many people worked on it that it was, yeah.

**Aline:** It’s the way she’s walking and the way it’s lit, it feel different. The depiction of the women’s bodies feels different in that moment.

**Jennifer:** Absolutely.

**Aline:** Even before or after that.

**Jennifer:** It’s so funny because also it was animated — half of it was animated by a woman, half was animated by a man. And my favorite thing about it though is the actual model for doing it was John Lasseter. Not a woman. Because we got him — he was so moved by Let it Go. He knew every line and what he thought it meant. And he was a huge help in talking through how we translate that emotional journey, not just with Idina’s voice, but with the animation. And for him he got up and he’s like, “Let’s, all that uptight, bottled up down and her hair goes, and she transforms, and she struts,” and he’s doing it. He’s acting it out.

And so it was really, he was the inspiration which his ironic —

**Aline:** To picture him in that dress.

**Jennifer:** Well, I have a lovely caricature by John Musker of John in that dress.

**John:** Ha!

**Aline:** Oh, you do?

**Jennifer:** Someday maybe I can share.

**Aline:** Oh my god, that’s great.

**John:** Well, what’s fascinating is it’s a sexual outfit, but she’s not actually a sexual character.

**Jennifer:** No, she’s not.

**John:** She doesn’t even talk to a boy other than Hans for a brief second. So, it’s not that she’s trying to seduce a man. There’s man around for her to seduce.

**Jennifer:** But I do think it was a moment that we weren’t hiding from the sexual aspect of it, but it wasn’t the statement, but people have seen it that way so I think we have to own that. Like saying, yeah, it was there.

**Aline:** Also, it’s the story of your older sister is coming into this time in her life and you kind of need to be separated from her because she’s going through things that you don’t understand and that your parents are sort of like that’s none of your business, honey, don’t look at that.

**Jennifer:** That’s true.

**Aline:** And then all of a sudden she’s coming to this flowering and the younger sister doesn’t understand it and there is this divide that happens. I mean, a 12-year-old girl and a 15-year-old girl —

**Jennifer:** It’s huge.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Jennifer:** And, you know, I didn’t want to shy away from — the thing is the original material is actually a lot about sex. And it’s about the sexual awakening.

**John:** Because all Hans Christian Andersen stuff is about sex.

**Jennifer:** I know. It’s true. It’s true. And we weren’t going there. I mean, that’s not the story we were telling, but at the same time I think my whole thing with this film was wanting sincerity. So, even though like I say we take tropes and then we spin them upside down, even in the tropes of sincerity —

**Aline:** You’re not spoofing.

**Jennifer:** Not spoofing. And that in every one of these things there is that mix. And I wanted these girls to feel real. I mean, even Anna’s sort of romantic relationships, it’s like the one with Kristoff, I like at the end that she kisses him first and he asks permission. And it feels a lot more real. But she’s not — I mean, she’s out in public. She kisses him on the dock. Like it’s a little — she’s pushing it. I don’t think there would be one second where she wouldn’t say, “We shouldn’t kiss here,” because that’s not Anna.

**John:** That’s not Anna.

**Aline:** Right.

**Jennifer:** And I think we didn’t want to make these girls uptight, but at the same time I wasn’t certainly trying to make a sexual statement. But it just wasn’t trying to avoid, I guess you could say. But you could tell in the studio there was — the boys loved he I will say. Let’s just say that.

**John:** Let’s talk about Kristoff because we’re just about to meet him.

So, we sort of get into our Romancing the Stone aspect of the journey which is that she hooks up with a guy who can take her up the mountain to find her sister. And so this is Kristoff. He has his reindeer, Sven. Reindeers are Better than People. Does Sven ever talk?

**Jennifer:** Sven does not talk. Kristoff is talking for him.

**Aline:** I loved that.

**Jennifer:** That came…we wanted…because here’s the theory, and this I think came from Chris Buck is you only need one special talking thing per movie, meaning like if it’s all the animals the animals it’s all the animals. But you’ve got a snowman who’s magical and he talks. And it’s like — and then Sven talked, too. That’s where you say you put too magic on top of —

**John:** Hat on a hat.

**Jennifer:** Hat on a hat. But we were saying how do we — we knew we wanted to have him pantomime and things. And you don’t want to not do that in animation. You want to exploit it. It’s so much fun to do. It’s like if you didn’t the animators would just be like, “Why am I even here?” You know? [laughs]

But were just talking one day about confessing how a lot of us talk for our pets. And I’m like, I talk for my cats. And Chris has different voices for his three dogs. And that’s the kind of thing a lonely guy who lived in the woods with his reindeer would do. So, that’s where that came from. And it was just something we hadn’t seen, you know, which is always the hard thing, I think, where you haven’t seen.

**John:** Absolutely. And this is also where we meet our second male character. We met our snowman…

**Jennifer:** Olaf.

**John:** Olaf. I forgot his name. Olaf is his name.

**Jennifer:** That’s okay.

**John:** And Olaf is great.

**Jennifer:** Thank you.

**John:** Olaf is so just odd and cheerful and his song is not necessary in any way, but just delightful. So, his song, In Summer, is one of my favorite things.

**Aline:** Oh my god. I really had one of those, you know, when you’re watching a movie where I’m like I’m really loving this, this can’t get any better. And then it goes into that. It was just…

**John:** It was like a clean South Park moment.

**Aline:** Yeah! I mean, it was unbelievable.

**John:** We have a character who is so deluded about how the world works, and yet is just completely chipper and cheerful.

**Aline:** Oh my god, and I have boys, a 10-year-old boy and a 13-year-old boy, and they just like, wow, when that happened. And just the spirit of him and the comedic strength of him. I just watched them just go like, wow.

**Jennifer:** That’s amazing.

**Aline:** Really magically interesting to them.

**John:** On a second viewing I did look like, well, what if you took Olaf out of the whole thing. And there are ways you could write it, there is a way you could write him out of the movie completely. But yet he provided that extra sort of — that just extra little something that was so important. Because things would get so dark without him to just be happy, and bright, and smiling.

**Jennifer:** The thing about Olaf is he was by far, for me, the hardest character to deal with. And I say that because when I came on, when I went to see a screening, people are going to hate me, when I saw the screening — I wasn’t on the project yet — every time he appeared I wrote, “Kill the f-ing snowman.” I just wrote kill him. I hate him. I hate him.

And part of it was, you know, we didn’t have Josh yet. And that’s a huge thing, obviously. And it wasn’t the scratch artist, he was great, but it was that he was — he wanted to be a shoulder because Elsa had these guards. He was half-good and half-bad. He was acerbic. He was a little, I don’t know, he just was kind of mean at times. And I didn’t know why he existed and I didn’t like him.

**Aline:** He does a funny thing that I don’t think I’ve seen. This is not even a trope that I haven’t seen. He’s sort of doing Mystery Science Theater on the movie from inside the movie, and I can’t think — can you think of anything else like that where he’s sort of doing a running commentary on everything that’s happening?

**Jennifer:** And so what happened with him is we really had to start over and we said sort of how does a snowman think? You go that, like snow is pure, so we started thinking innocence. And that’s what led us to him being sort of a representation of the girls when they were little. That they create this, “Hi, I’m Olaf and I like…” They create the snowman together when they’re the happiest.

**Aline:** He’s that spirit.

**Jennifer:** He’s that spirit. And so when she creates him magically, not realizing he’d come to life, he had to be a kid. And there was a while where we almost had, we were looking at younger, like is it a teenage boy, is it a young boy? But, I think we found just, no, when they built him they built this snow Man, so he’s encompassing what that fantasy play was for them.

**Aline:** But it’s another great fun thing of the genre which is, well, guys, we’ve got to have a sidekick, a comedic sidekick. We’ve just got to do it.

**Jennifer:** And he definitely started as that, totally.

**Aline:** And so give that and given that that is such trammeled ground, you know, every animated movie seems to do that in a different way, I could see that you were looking for ways to use him in ways that he hadn’t been used before, because he doesn’t really deliver a lot of the sort of homilies that you think are going to come from that character.

He doesn’t have that.

**John:** He has no deep well of wisdom that’s —

**Aline:** Which normally that character would. Just to me it’s sort of like an alt comic that wanders into the movie and does this commentary. And it’s funny because I think it makes the movie safer for boys, for sure.

**Jennifer:** Absolutely.

**Aline:** Which is why he’s so prominent in the marketing.

**Jennifer:** We wanted to get to him a lot sooner and have more of him. Obviously for those kinds of reasons. But, again, whenever, and I’m sure you guys find this, too. Whenever you try to force something on, it’s obvious for every second of it that you’re doing that. And he just didn’t belong until he showed up. And he belonged to me, him showing up was the moment for Anna of hope again. It’s that moment of like you’ve just survived this wolf chase. What are you doing? I hope you know what you’re doing.

And they walk ahead and there is everything of why she’s doing it. It’s her sister. I mean, that childhood innocence.

**Aline:** But they also parent the snowman.

**Jennifer:** And they parent, yeah.

**Aline:** So, it’s a big part of their romance.

**John:** It’s a way of bringing them together.

**Jennifer:** Totally. And to me it shows — that’s where you start to see there’s more to this guy. And he is not perfect. He doesn’t try to flirt. He doesn’t try to be anything but what he is, but the more you get to know him then you realize, like they say finally in the Troll song, he’s the honest goods. And I think Olaf helps with that.

So, for me he very much earned his place, and yet I was terrified because he is a character that I think — and Josh thinks this, too, we’ve talked about this a lot. He works when he plays off of other people. That’s just what he is. Because that’s his whole reason for being. He brings joy to other people. He exists because of this relationship. And then when you take him alone he just doesn’t have that same — you don’t feel the same thing. And so it took us a long time because wanted to say, “Let’s put Olaf and make him a host of this, and do this.”

And for us, both Josh and I were like, “We’re feeling wrong about it.” And the minute we add one of the other characters, it’s a joy. And so I love that we figured that out, because it was like we kept trying to say why where for so long did he not work for us and then all of a sudden he did. And it was like he just fits with this group and he is somebody who brings — it’s like he brings joy to other people. He’s not in and of himself some sort of iconic character.

**John:** So, one of the most surprising things that happens next is Anna gets to Elsa, which you sort of think of the quest of the movie, well eventually they’re going to get there and it will all be resolved by then. But at the midpoint of the movie —

**Jennifer:** That’s a good point, yeah.

**John:** They actually get there and they have the conservation and The First Time in Forever and then like things seem like they’re going to be okay.

**Aline:** God, another great tip for writers which is you can just go and do it.

**John:** Don’t delay it. Actually just start it. And it surprises you because you’re not expecting, you know, you establish a journey. So, like, oh, the journey is to get there. And like, oh, but we’re here. And so what else can happen? Well, she can shot in the heart with it and Elsa can refuse to change and shut them out and build an abominable snowman and sort of become more monstrous herself.

She doesn’t attack them literally, but she builds something that does attack them and sort of sends them down, back down a mountain.

**Jennifer:** Well, I think it shows you the part — for me it was like showing you the part of her that is still damaged. And like a lot of us, get damaged by moments in childhood. You know, being free felt wonderful, but she has right in the present “I could kill, I could hurt, and you have to go.” And then that fear takes over so much that obviously it hurts her and then it literally chases her out, in a way, if you look at it that way.

And that’s where you understand that, oh, we’re nowhere near resolving this relationship or, and wait a minute, things are — it’s the side of her powers that say there’s a great danger to them. And we had just done the beauty and we had seen her dangerous as a little child, but it’s still whimsical and accidental, but to see the fact that her emotions could create this spinning storm that hurts Anna you start to go, oh god, what more can she do?

And it is where I feel like her powers become villainess, but she doesn’t. But in having it — what’s interesting is the heart moment, where her heart is struck, was originally in the first act, and it was deliberate. And it was when she was evil and it’s when the girls were divided in a different way. But the whole second act was about Anna trying to get to Hans and to kiss him and then Elsa trying to stop her. And that was the whole second act.

**John:** That would have been a terrible movie. I’m glad you didn’t make that movie. That would not have worked.

**Jennifer:** [laughs] Well, the issue — the biggest thing I’ll say is it was an action-adventure film and that’s not — you can’t make a musical with that.

**John:** No.

**Jennifer:** And so it had to change, but we loved the concept of Frozen Heart, symbolically, and when we moved it to the midpoint is when we were like, oh, we can keep it because we wanted it at some point.

**John:** It’s the right idea, just that wouldn’t have worked —

**Jennifer:** It couldn’t sustain a whole film. That’s what we found.

**John:** So, leaving here we go back to see the trolls again. We see Kristoff’s adopted family and that’s when we realize that this early moment we saw where the boy was looking at the stuff, they actually stayed with those trolls and the trolls are real to him and all that stuff.

We talked about sort of the alt comic who walked into the movie, this is another great moment with Olaf, you know, whispering out the side of his mouth, “We need to get out of here. I’ll stall. You run.”

**Jennifer:** Well, what’s good is that was another John Lasseter moment though. Literally to the point where — because we were saying the joke is — there’s no joke because we know that the trolls are going to wake up. We’ve seen them wake up. And there was a time where pitched sort of you never saw them wake up so when you go there you didn’t know. But it just was like — the beginning is so complicated and it raised too many other questions.

But we said watching Olaf misunderstand we can have a lot of fun. And John Lasseter is the one who literally acted out the side of his mouth. And I caught him in the hallway because nobody was getting it. I’m like, “Could you just do it?” And I videotaped him doing it. And the animator had that and watched that. So, we will all watch it and we see John in that moment. [laughs]

**John:** What I like about this moment, this is the moment when I first watched the film when I realized like, wait, do I want her to end up with Hans, or do I want her to end up with Kristoff? And that’s a strange thing to happen in a princess movie, because a princess movie there should be like one prince that she should be with. It should always be the prince. But there’s this other guy and they’re trying to push these two together.

**Aline:** Again, that’s a trope which is the you meet the perfect guy and then you meet the kind of weather-beaten, not as handsome guy, you meet Jon Cryer — with Andrew McCarthy and then you meet Jon Cryer.

**Jennifer:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** Yes, but when those happen I should have already disliked the perfect guy. I should have already seen his flaws. I should have seen why he’s not perfect. And yet every time that we’re going back to see him —

**Aline:** But Pretty in Pink is a good example because initially she ended up with Duckie.

**John:** Yeah.

**Jennifer:** I knew it!

**Aline:** They changed that. They changed it. And so he was actually — whatever villainous stuff they had with Andrew McCarthy they must have pulled out. But he’s the same thing. It’s that slightly bland, handsome-y guy.

**Jennifer:** Well, what’s interesting about it for us is it wasn’t just about withholding Hans’ reveal. We knew where we were headed, which was her trying to get to Kristoff. But if you feel it too early then you’re just waiting for her to kiss Hans and it doesn’t work. Like you’re just waiting for it, and you’re not invested in it. But so it had to be this slow build where you really don’t feel — in my mind I never quite felt that moment until when she looks back at him and he looks at her through the door, right before Hans.

**Aline:** Right.

**Jennifer:** And the goal was to — it’s coming, but is it?

**Aline:** You don’t feel like you’re ahead of them like let’s just get together already. Yeah.

**John:** But by establishing the expectation in people’s mind that like, oh, she thinks she’s going to have to kiss Hans, but she should really have to kiss Kristoff, you’re not thinking of any other options.

**Aline:** That’s the great thing. You think that’s the twist.

**Jennifer:** You’re not thinking about the…that’s the key. And we needed to feel that —

**Aline:** Double twist.

**Jennifer:** What you need to feel is her feeling something but not quite understanding it so that she doesn’t then seem like, “Well he doesn’t love me, I’ll like him.” What it is is there’s an awakening and you’re sensing it, but it’s not 100%. Because the minute it is it deflated. And that’s what made, to me, the Fjord moment we were headed for so hard. It wasn’t literally until we screened it in June — that was our last screening — so the last change. And Ed hadn’t seen it, because we had done an internal screening but he wasn’t there.

And then we screened it in Arizona for two audiences and he was there. And it was still only half animated, but the story was there. And he came out and he just said, “You did it.” And I went, boom, I mean, not literally, but emotionally I collapsed because — and it was because it was so nuanced. Anything we tried, it’s like you tip it and then it would suck, and then you tip it and it would suck. And it was just like can we build it?

**Aline:** How do you keep your sense of what’s working and what’s not working after you’ve been exposed to the same material so much over time, over time, over time? How do you do that?

**Jennifer:** God. I guess, I don’t know. How do you? I feel like it’s just trust. Because there are things, like for me Olaf was so challenging that I never could get that out of my head as to — never say is this working. I only knew what it needed to be. And I had to have faith and people were reacting right to it. But, I think that — and that’s always a danger in animation because we joke it’s the “Shiny New Toy Syndrome.” You get tired of a sequence and you want to change it because you’ve seen it so many times. But I think it’s a trust of —

**Aline:** Yup.

**Jennifer:** And it’s also a desperation of like —

**Aline:** Also true in comedy. You get sick of your own jokes. And then you start to look for other stuff. And they’re still —

**Jennifer:** And I’m still learning comedy. I mean, for me, I was a dramatic screenwriter. Everything that I’ve done is an independent, my options, nothing was a comedy. And Phil Johnston only worked in comedy, but we worked together all the time.

We met every week in school and then after school even, once we graduated, and we gave notes on each other’s material and we worked on each other’s stuff. So, there was this understanding of each other’s sensibility. But Ralph was the first comedy I worked on and then to have Frozen just me, without him, I was terrified.

And I still, you know, I still can’t — I cringe, I’m freaked out, and so I think comedy is the most insanely hard. It’s the craziest thing to have to do. It’s torturously hard. For me, anyway. I don’t know, maybe not for you.

**Aline:** No, it is. It’s very hard. But I think it is hard when you work on material over, and over, and over again, you have moments of being like, well, I don’t know. I have no idea.

And I’ve definitely had moments on stuff that was good where I tried to cut it, or get rid of it.

**Jennifer:** Oh, I did that a lot.

**Aline:** I saw an early cut of one of my movies and I went back and said, “Well this has to go, and that, and that, and that, and we’re cutting this and that and that.” It’s like I wanted it to be a 13-minute movie because there were only a few things that I liked. And I really admire, there are people who can read a script over again and watch a movie over again with fresh eyes and that’s very hard to do. It’s something you have to train yourself to do. Sort of like wipe out all your associations with something and try and feel it again. It’s tough. It’s tough.

**Jennifer:** I had a hard time. And it was always Olaf for me. He was the hardest. And I think possibly because he is a true comedic character and I’m not comfortable. I can do it, but it’s hell.

**Aline:** So, he improvised “I have no skull and no bones?”

**Jennifer:** No, that I did. I will say I did write that. [laughs]

**Aline:** Okay that, because I had read somewhere that that was improvised. That — if you wrote that — that is A+, A+.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** That seems like it’s improvised. That is an A+…

**Jennifer:** How I could always get around, it’s a cheat I felt like, was because I love and I personally love — state the obvious humor that’s — and when you say it’s like he’s constantly, it’s like he’s doing this running commentary. I just personally like it. In Wreck-It Ralph I did a bit with Felix and with this character Gene.

**Aline:** That’s a joke that’s so good that I laughed through the whole scene. That scene ended and then the other scene started and I was still laughing about that line. When I watched it the second time I realized how much stuff I had missed just because I was so — it’s one of those things where you’re just really in the movie. You’re like so in the movie to be able to make that comment in that moment and to nail that character and have him say that in that moment.

That’s an amazingly funny joke.

**Jennifer:** Thank you. I’ll take that because there would be so many that — and there are a couple that I still would want to pull out and I see them and they fall flat every time. No one laughs. And I knew it and I wished I had pushed. But, what are you going to do?

**John:** Now, a strange thing happens in your musical at about this point. There’s no more songs. No more characters sing their songs. And it’s I guess common in movies where there’s fewer songs. You establish everything and then the action just resolves. But it is a strange thing where like no one sings —

**Jennifer:** It’s surprisingly — oh, go ahead.

**John:** I saw a cut where someone had built a version of Do You Want to Build a Snowman at the very end, like a reprise of it. Did you talk about adding more songs through the end?

**Jennifer:** What’s interesting, we worked with Chris Montan who is the president of music at Disney. He has been there for all the musicals over the years. Lion King. The most major ones, iconic ones as well. And Bobby and Kristen had never done a film before. They had done Winnie the Pooh, but that’s not a full-on musical. And that’s actually traditionally what happens. There are no more songs after the end of the second act.

**John:** Okay.

**Jennifer:** And, I think for me the reason it’s so much more obvious in Frozen is because it’s so song-heavy in the beginning. It’s got one more, maybe two more songs than even the traditional musical does. So, it kind of exposes itself a little more. But the reprise, now, we had a reprise. It was not Do You Want to Build a Snowman. There was a different song that got cut called Life’s Too Short. And that had been the song at the midpoint that became a reprise.

And there was a reprise of that where the two girls are — Elsa is in prison and Anna is in her room alone and they’re singing. But what’s incredible, and this is why — and I love that watching that moment the fans created, but the reason it wouldn’t work for the film where we did it, and I know they put it in a different spot actually.

**John:** They put it with Elsa singing it, yeah.

**Jennifer:** The reason it didn’t work where we put it is it gave away the ending. The minute you retied the girls together the movie was over. So, then —

**Aline:** You need to keep that tension open.

**Jennifer:** You had to keep it. And as soon as she thought about regret for her sister I knew the solution of the film was going to be her sister. And that was — if the solution of the film is buried in the Fixer Upper song when she says, “People make bad choices when they’re mad, or scared, or stressed, but throw a little love their way, you’ll bring out their best.”

Well, that’s the answer to the film. The solution to the problem, but it’s hidden. And it had to stay hidden. But also the issue of had Elsa sung at that moment a lot of us felt it would start mocking itself.

**John:** It would get syrupy.

**Jennifer:** We couldn’t do it. But to do it the way the fans have, I think we can enjoy it because you can always add after the fact and have fun. But, yeah, we did — at least we did talk about it, but it was that fear of —

**Aline:** That is true also with a lot of comedies, the first two thirds or three quarters have a lot of jokes, and then the resolution is a drama.

**Jennifer:** Yeah, yeah. And I think it’s also, too, you’re so invested in the story, that’s when you feel the stop of a song. You go, “Halt.” [hums] It’s like, no, you can’t do that.

**John:** Stop singing!

**Jennifer:** Yeah. And Bobby and Kristen were very conscious of that and we would always do that.

**Aline:** But they also as a tribute to the fact that the stakes were really working so that you’re not really noticing, that you’re so immersed then in what’s going to happen and how it’s all going to work out that you’re sort of okay with being past that, because you’re trying to puzzle out how is this puzzle.

The two things that I think are really great about this movie. One is that you’re sort of emotionally invested, but you’re also thinking, I mean, maybe just writers are thinking, but I’m thinking, “How is she going to get out of this?” There are so many moving parts to resolve in that ending. And so I didn’t really feel the absence of the song because I was so immersed in seeing how is this going to work out. And the emotional/dramatic resolution of a love story, you know, I’ve said this a lot: there are so many love stories in the world that are not girls and boys, that are not a man and a woman. And I think we’re getting better about that.

But, I think people are just always so excited and grateful that there’s something that just isn’t just about idealized romantic love.

**Jennifer:** Idealized. Yeah.

**Aline:** And this is what — almost everybody has a great love story in their family. And those sibling emotions, those sibling relationships are so deep. And almost everybody has that.

**Jennifer:** What was so weird for us with the — not weird, but it was a nice surprise was that with the — everyone we worked with, none of us can remember who said it. We were all in the room together. We all remember being together, and we keep saying you said, no you said it, said the “what if they were sisters?” And I remember that moment so distinctively because that was like when the film mattered all of a sudden to me.

I could not see this movie before it at all. I actually was very —

**Aline:** They were not sisters at all?

**Jennifer:** No, they weren’t sisters until about maybe one screening before I came on is when they tried the sisters. But the first screening I saw they weren’t related in any way. And part of why —

**Aline:** What were they?

**Jennifer:** Part of why Idina was not cast yet is it was more of — Elsa was more of like a Bette Midler kind of character. She was that more iconic older Snow Queen. And they were not related or connected in any way. And it was making them sisters was the first breakthrough I think.

**Aline:** Wow.

**Jennifer:** But what I loved was everyone suddenly could feel it. They could feel the film. Even if you don’t have a sibling, but just understanding that kind of — what you go through with your family is something you don’t go through with anyone, or rarely go through for anyone else.

**Aline:** Right.

**Jennifer:** But you get it. And part of because what happens as a child, you know, to you, that bond as a child even if it disappears you never let it go.

**Aline:** Right. But going back to that sort of subtext that I kind of see with the flowering with the older sister’s adolescence, you do feel when your older sibling goes through that. You feel like you’ve lost them. And as the younger sibling you just feel like, “I’m still here. I still want to be your friend. I know that I’m not wearing the right jeans and I’m not at the cool parties, but I’m still…”

So, I think that people really connect to that feeling of I want to do something. And I have two kids and the younger brother — the funny thing in our family, we are all younger siblings, except for my older son. My husband, and I, and my younger son are all younger siblings. So, that feeling of “let me prove myself to you, let me prove that I can be something and that I can do something.” And Elsa has been dealing with all of these issues on her own. And then the person that she doesn’t want to turn to — she doesn’t want to burden her, but yet becomes her savior. It’s just so incredibly moving.

**Jennifer:** And I’m the younger sister, too. I have an older sister. And she was a big inspiration for Elsa for me, because I think there was a lot of the shutting out. And like you said, it’s not that contrived. It happens even if it’s not for a big reason. It really does happen. And I remember a moment, too. We didn’t become close until I was in my twenties. And it was almost like one day, and I had gone through something very tragic and lost someone, and it was like she looked at me as a human being, an adult, and I became real again to her.

It’s like I’d lost her, and then all of a sudden we kind of arrived at the same place together. And then from that moment on she was like my champion. She was always there for me. And it was — that scene, having to like lose each other and then rediscover each other as adults, that was a big part of my life.

**Aline:** So relatable. So relatable.

**Jennifer:** And I think a lot of people…

**Aline:** So relatable. Really so relatable.

**John:** So, I want to focus on one last moment in the movie which was this reveal that Hans actually is up to no good. How nervous were you the first time you saw that with an audience with kids in it?

**Jennifer:** Oh, I thought they were going to hate me and Chris and hate us. It was a hard thing. Definitely.

**John:** Because it’s such a grown up moment. It’s that thing that I’ve never seen before in a kid’s movie where a character you assume is good completely pulls the rug out from underneath you. And that’s — it’s shocking.

**Jennifer:** What was interesting, I mean, we’ve gotten a couple — there have been a few Op-Eds of people saying how dare we teach as children not to trust anyone and saying good guys are bad. And I’m like, you know, I can’t — part of me is like, okay, I respect that people have that concern.

But for me what I think people always under — they underestimate children. And what we found is when we screen, it happened on Wreck-It Ralph as well and it was eye-opening for me, because you do a screening and it’s a family audience with real little kids and then you do older audiences to see how they react. And for both Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen the kids are like this is the theme. This is what they want. Well, he really loves her, but she doesn’t love him. Well, you know, she didn’t know him. Why would she marry?

And Frozen it’s like it’s about fear versus love. And, you know, well, she just met him and married him. Of course you don’t know him. He could turn out to be horrible. You got to get to know someone.

It’s like they go right to it.

**Aline:** Yes, she’s made that mistake. And the funny is anytime you’ve ever dated anyone who turned out to be a creep, it’s not like in the beginning it was awesome.

**Jennifer:** It wasn’t like he was like, “Ha, ha, ha, ha.”

**Aline:** Right. No, in the beginning he’s actually — the creepy ones almost seem the most charming and the most prince-like. You’ve taught girls an important lesson.

**John:** To me the important lesson is that if you’re unhappy in your life and you’re feeling shut down and no one understands you —

**Aline:** Yes. Yes.

**John:** You’re going to fall for the first guy who seems like he understands you.

**Aline:** Boy, that’s it.

**Jennifer:** Yes.

**John:** And everything is going to seem wonderful and perfect, but it doesn’t mean that he’s actually a good guy.

**Aline:** That’s exactly right. She’s latched onto something for those wrong reasons.

**Jennifer:** And we all do. And I think — I have to say, I mean, I grew up on Disney. I was a Disney kid. Like, I wanted to be an animator. I was an escapist, so Disney was perfect. I could escape right into that.

But, as much as I love them — now I work for Disney — it would have been nice to have the one that says, “Don’t do that.” And for me, I mean, maybe I would have learned it a lot earlier in life and not at 40. [laughs]

**Aline:** I actually have to, when I look at those things, I actually have to force myself to look at the prince as something other than a man or a love story, because some of those movies which are so wonderful, they just are selling romantic love, so over-selling it to a point that you don’t really want to say that to girls.

**Jennifer:** No. I agree. I mean, I have a ten-year-old daughter.

**Aline:** That’s an aspect of the love you’re going to experience in your life, but there’s going to be —

**Jennifer:** I wish someone had said, “Your best friend is probably the one who’s right for you as the guy,” instead of saying, “It’s the hot guy who looks at you those ways.”

**Aline:** Well, you did say that.

**Jennifer:** The saxophone.

**Aline:** You said that to the tune of $765 million so far. And I do think, I mean, one of the reasons I was so elated when the movie was over is it’s just so rare to see a movie that tells a story about women’s lives and girl’s lives that has this other emphasis to it and doesn’t say — you know, she ends up kissing a boy. It’s not, because sometimes you have the other thing which is it’s a very empowering movie about women but they weirdly kind of end up alone and an addict somehow.

And other people go off and have boyfriends, but the Tom-boy heroine doesn’t.

**Jennifer:** Exactly. Well it’s the point of like not wanting to preach or make statements, but letting it evoke itself. And that’s the key I felt like with Frozen because anytime we — and even with Elsa like teetering on is she sexual, is she not, it’s like anytime we — if we had not given her any, too, there might have been that statement of like, “She has no sexuality. That’s a statement you’re making.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Jennifer:** It’s like we’re not making that statement. These are real to us. And it’s like these are real characters.

**Aline:** But that’s a great thing what you said. Another great thing for young writers to hear which is what you tried to go with was sincerity and reality.

**Jennifer:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And saying what is emotionally sincere here. And that is your guide. Not sort of thinking about it from the outside.

**Jennifer:** You can’t. And I used to say this thing, and we talk about in the room when you’re trying to sort of sift through all the notes, or fight for things. The key to me was always like you’re controlling her. Like don’t control Elsa. Don’t control Anna. Because the minute you do, the audience is gone.

Because I always feel that way. I can tell when I’m being manipulated in that the character’s motivations don’t — I don’t buy her. I don’t believe her. Or I feel like she’s turned for the sake of someone else, not for herself. And that’s the hardest thing to do, I think when you are doing something so collaboratively. And it’s to protect — your favorite moment is actually when you hear them go, someone else in the room go, “Elsa wouldn’t do that.” And you’re like, ooh, thank god! We’re here.

**John:** Jennifer, because you’re here I can actually ask you a question that was on my mind from the very start. On the podcast we’ve talked about the Bechdel test which is —

**Jennifer:** Oh yeah.

**John:** The classic statement of the Bechdel test is is there more than one female character with a name. Do these two or more characters talk to each other over the course of the film? And do they talk about something that is not a man?

**Jennifer:** Yes.

Aline : The question here, does it pass the male Bechdel. Yeah.

**John:** Your movie actually barely passes the reverse Bechdel test, which is one of the first things I can actually say.

**Jennifer:** Really.

**John:** Within your film actually as I looked through it the second time, it’s very rare to find, it’s almost impossible to find a scene that has two men with names who talk to each other.

**Aline:** Well, Snowman is a man. Olaf is a man.

**John:** Oh, I guess we count Olaf as a man.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Jennifer:** I guess if you count him.

**Aline:** Yeah, but otherwise.

**Jennifer:** Then it passes, but, yeah.

**John:** There’s a little moment at the very end of the story where they are throwing Hans and the [Briggs] and they talk about —

**Jennifer:** Yes. They talk about the brothers.

**John:** The brothers. But that’s the only time other than… — If Olaf really counts…

**Jennifer:** Do they have to be alone onscreen, because I’m like maybe the bargaining with Oaken, but Anna is there, so I don’t know if that counts.

**Aline:** She can be there. They just have to —

**John:** Or they’re talking about like going off to get Elsa, or something like that, so they’re really talking about a girl.

**Jennifer:** No, right, that’s true.

**Aline:** That’s thrilling.

**John:** So, it almost passes the reverse Bechdel test which is just fascinating. Or it fails —

**Aline:** Fails.

**John:** It fails the —

**Jennifer:** The thing I will say is that completely just happened to be that way. I have to say that even I didn’t remember. I know I’m like, I just assumed we were going to pass because we had two female leads, but I hadn’t thought about it through the whole thing until I was like, oh god, did we pass? But I never thought of the reversal.

I was happy that we were doing a film like this where it is two female leads. And there was a point where there was that concern of like is there anything in it for the boys, but people just really got around the girls and the story.

**Aline:** We also have to talk about the big snow monster.

**Jennifer:** Marshmallow. That’s his name is Marshmallow.

**Aline:** Which the kids enjoyed also. It gives you some of that.

**Jennifer:** What’s interesting about him, and this talks about sometimes you’re asked to do these weird, almost impossible things. Is there was a test done with the Snowman chasing them, and it was just a test to learn the animation. We were so late in production, I mean, this movie was so tight. There was a time where they said, “Do you think you can make that scene work? So actually use the scene, because we might not have time to animate.”

And I was like, oh god, and it was that scene.

**Aline:** Amazing. Oh my god.

**Jennifer:** So, I wrote it in and I found a way —

**Aline:** It’s like you’re juggling six balls and someone gives you a banana.

**Jennifer:** Yeah. And we had to reverse into how Marshmallow would fit and why Elsa would make him.

**Aline:** Wow.

**Jennifer:** And Olaf was a bit of an anchor with that. She’s like, if I can make that, I can make this. And if you won’t leave, I will make you leave. And so he’s kind of — we had to make him a bouncer, but then it had to be Anna who pissed him off or it would make Elsa too mean.

So, there’s all this stuff, but the funny thing was at the end of the day we had to actually go back and reanimate because we had changed Anna’s character so much that it was driving me insane. Because the first, the test version which went out at some point, and I was like, “No!” is Anna is at the edge of the cliff going, “Oooh,” you know, scared, holding her hands together. “He’s coming! Hurry. Hurry. No, I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go.”

And that was the —

**John:** That’s a different character.

**Jennifer:** An Anna version way back. And I was like it doesn’t fit in the film. If she’s fearless she can’t do it. So, we had to reanimate it anyway. [laughs] And they did it, though. But by that point luckily we had done much better in production than we thought we were going to do. We had scheduled a lot of redo’s that —

**Aline:** That you didn’t need.

**Jennifer:** That we didn’t have to do. So, that allowed us to do it. But I remember begging for that moment I guess.

**John:** It all turned out pretty well.

**Jennifer:** Thank you.

**Aline:** I think we can agree.

**John:** This was an amazing conversation.

**Jennifer:** This was so fun, thank you.

**John:** This is our longest episode over.

**Jennifer:** Oh my god. See, I told you I can talk. I just —

**John:** Well, between you and Aline, we got a conversation covered. But thank you so much for coming and talking. And, Aline, thank you for being our amazing guest host.

**Aline:** I’m thrilled.

**Jennifer:** Thank you for having me. This is so much fun.

**Aline:** I hope it’s creepy that John and I have probably seen the movie twenty-five times combined. [laughs]

**John:** We have kids. That will be our excuses, that we have kids.

**Jennifer:** Thank you.

**John:** So, like all of our episodes, if you want to know about things we talked about, Frozen, oh, and thank you for putting the script for Frozen up online. That is so terrific and I’m so glad that people do that these days.

**Jennifer:** I love that, too. I love getting to read them myself, all the scripts.

**John:** So, we will have links to stuff about Frozen and the script to Frozen up on johnaugust.com.

If you are listening to us on a device that supports podcasts, like your iPhone, you can find us on iTunes. We are there. Just search for Scriptnotes. And we will be back next week with a normal episode featuring Craig Mazin.

**Aline:** I’m going to get Craig out of the closet now.

**John:** All right. I heard him stirring there a little bit. So, we’ll let him out.

**Aline:** The drugs are wearing off.

**John:** All right. Thank you again, so much.

**Jennifer:** Thank you so much.

**John:** Bye.

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) and [124](http://johnaugust.com/2013/qa-from-the-holiday-spectacular)
* Jennifer Lee on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1601644/) and [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Lee_(filmmaker))
* [Frozen](http://movies.disney.com/frozen)
* The [Frozen final shooting draft](http://waltdisneystudiosawards.com/downloads/frozen-screenplay.pdf)
* Let it Go [in 25 languages](http://video.disney.com/watch/let-it-go-in-25-languages-4f06e85c30ce6b18db34b461)
* Our episodes on [Raiders of the Lost Ark](http://johnaugust.com/2013/raiders-of-the-lost-ark) and [Little Mermaid](http://johnaugust.com/2013/the-little-mermaid)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Matthew Chilelli

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/positive-moviegoing).

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

**Craig Mazin:** Hello and welcome. My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 119, the Positive Moviegoing episode of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

And we are so lucky because we have our very first guest, the sort of guest who set the template for a guest on Scriptnotes would be like. Aline Brosh McKenna is here in the studio.

**Craig:** Woo!

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** Woot-woot-woot!

**John:** How are you, Aline?

**Aline:** I’m doing well. I’m doing very well. I’m happy to be here.

**John:** Now it’s almost Thanksgiving. Do you have big Thanksgiving plans for you and your family?

**Aline:** We don’t. I don’t cook. We go out to dinner.

**John:** How very nice.

**Aline:** It’s great. I really love it.

**Craig:** [Long Island accent] “I don’t cook.”

**Aline:** No, it’s too much for me to do.

**Craig:** “We go out to dinner.” Where can you even go?

**Aline:** [Long Island accent] You got to set up the order.

**Craig:** Where do you?

**Aline:** We go to a lovely place in the mountains near Malibu where they cook game and you eat game.

**Craig:** Oh, you don’t do the normal Jewish thing of just Chinese food? [laughs]

**John:** I thought that was only Christmas?

**Aline:** No, that’s Christmas. Christmas is Chinese food and a movie.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** What are you doing, Craig?

**Craig:** We have some friends coming over and another lovely half-Jewish, half-super not Jewish family in La Cañada. And we are going to have an excellent Thanksgiving. We’re going to be making all of our own food. I’m cooking multiple desserts and side dishes. And the, actually, you should know this guy, John. I mean, you don’t know him, but you should meet him. He’s great. His name is Josh and he does lighting design for operas and musical theater. He’s worked down at La Jolla and up at Santa Barbara Opera House and Minnesota. And he’s a cool guy.

So, anyway, we’re having a combined Thanksgiving and —

**Aline:** I love that Craig, who lost a titanic amount of weight, is the expert pie and cake maker.

**Craig:** Ain’t that the way it goes?

**John:** I, too, am having a bunch of people over for Thanksgiving. I’ll be making pies. I’ll be making the turkey. It’s the one day a year that I sort of go back to the full Martha Stewart mode. My former assistant Dana Fox and I, she and I every day would watch Martha Stewart Living, back when it was the filmed show, not that horrible live before an audience thing. Back when it was the true Martha Stewart. We would watch it. And that’s the day that my inner Martha Stewart comes out and I cook hard.

**Craig:** Mmm. I know. I love cooking hard. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Today, on the podcast, we are going to be talking about a lot of topics. Aline brought two. I brought one. Craig brought one. But first we have to talk about the Live holiday show. We are recording this on the Wednesday that the tickets went on sale and I think we’re kind of sold out. We’re not fully sold out, but a lot of people are coming, which is great.

The live show is December 19. It is at the LA Film School. It is a benefit for the Writers Guild Foundation. There’s a few tickets that have been held back. So there’s a chance that even if we are completely sold out on paper we will be releasing some more tickets. So, do follow us on Twitter and we may announce that there’s still some more tickets left.

But out lineup for the show is incredible, including Aline Brosh McKenna.

**Craig:** McKenna!

**John:** Derek Haas.

**Craig:** Haas!

**John:** Kelly Marcel.

**Craig:** Marcel!

**John:** Richard Kelly.

**Craig:** Richard Kelly!

**John:** Rawson Thurber.

**Craig:** Thurber!

**John:** Franklin Leonard and Lindsay Doran.

**Craig:** Leonard and Doran! Leonard and Doran, I think, was a great boxing match. Wasn’t that — ?

**John:** Yes, it’s a classic —

**Craig:** Was it Doran? Well, it was Durán, but anyway, I’d like to see the two of them fight. Money is on Doran.

**John:** I think the fight is going to be epic. So, that will be a fun show.

But, today on the show we’re going to talk about four topics. Aline suggested we talk about outline failure and why it’s important to befriend other writers.

I want to talk about this article about going broke in your 50s.

**Aline:** Oh, you sent it to me. I should have read it. I didn’t read it. You’ll tell me what it is.

**Craig:** We’ll summarize.

**John:** We’ll fill you in on the details.

**Craig:** “I don’t cook. I don’t read.”

**Aline:** [Long Island accent] I order. I order.

**Craig:** “I order.”

**John:** And Craig wanted to talk about positive moviegoing, which I’m not even sure what it means, so Craig start us out. What is positive moviegoing?

**Craig:** Well, it’s this thing I’ve been thinking about lately because this is the time of year when all the so-called “good” movies come out. And a lot of them are actually good movies. But I noticed that there’s — I think it’s just we live in a time of snarkiness and suspicion and nobody seems to want to like anything. People a lot of times go into theaters with their arms crossed, especially in Los Angeles. We’re all in the business. And I think people go to movies and they’re already — they’re demanding to hate them. And they’re prejudging them. And you could do it for — you name any movie and I could just sort of come up with some pretext for hating it.

And so what I really have been trying to do is when I go to movie to go wanting to love it. And accepting everything about it for at least 20 minutes. So, I don’t care what happens in the first twenty minutes. I am on board. I will accept it and I will attempt to enjoy it as best I can. I will give myself to the movie.

And then at some point, okay, you know, listen, sometimes you just don’t like movies. Sometimes they disappoint. Sometimes they anger you because you hate them so much. And that’s okay. I’m not denying that that can happen. But I’ve really been trying to just give myself over to movies.

So, I went and I saw The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. And I went in, just gave myself to the movie. And I loved it. And I think I would have loved it anyway, but I think it helped that I wasn’t judging. I just decided nobody else goes to movies to judge. Why do we go to movies to judge? Can’t we just enjoy them?

Anyway, that’s my thing, positive moviegoing.

**John:** So, what you’re describing is almost like — I can picture the body language of it. It’s like you’re sitting down in your seat. You’re not crossing your arms in front of you saying like, “Okay, impress me.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** You’re saying, “I’m here. I’m eager to be entertained. I will follow you wherever you go. And take me on a journey.” That’s the message you’re trying to send to this movie.

**Craig:** That’s right. Sort of like meeting somebody at a party and they start to tell you a story. You’re standing there. So be nice. Listen to it. Give it a shot, you know. I just get so depressed when I see people ripping movies apart before they even see them.

**Aline:** Yeah, I agree. I think it’s easy to hate things and to bag on things. I think it’s just, it makes people feel fashionable and intellectual. And it’s harder — it takes more effort to go out there and say, “You know what? Even if it wasn’t perfect, even if things aren’t prefect, sometimes things that you love are the imperfect perfect thing.” But going in there with an attitude of like, “I’m going to enjoy this. I paid my money to enjoy this, not to find something that I can sit down with my friends later and pick to shreds?’

**Craig:** Yeah. And it will happen that we will encounter movies that infuriate us. And we will pick them to shreds. And we will pick them to shreds. And if you’ve earned that experience, so you’ve earned it. But there is something to be said for letting yourself be entertained and not attempt to make yourself feel better by pushing a movie away.

And frankly even the feeling that, okay, it’s not perfect. Yeah! [laughs] How often does that happen? You know?

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, movies win Oscars and people go, “Oh my god, that piece of crap won an Oscar.” Perfection is irrelevant, you know.

I almost think, okay, mistakes aren’t really mistakes. It’s just, you know, no more than I got from here to there on a road and it was a really enjoyable journey and there was a pothole. It’s just part of it.

**Aline:** And I also think it’s very Christmas-y.

**John:** It’s very Christmas-y.

Now, on some level are we talking about expectation? Because I find that a lot of times the movies that I enjoy most were the ones where my expectations were not set too high going into them. And that’s why I love to see a movie during its opening weekend before everyone has sort of told me what I’m supposed to think and feel about it.

Because when I come into a theater with a set of expectations, nothing can surprise me. And I’m sort of preconditioned to think this is how I’m supposed to feel about this particular entertainment.

**Aline:** Yeah. I miss the days of just going to see a movie and knowing nothing about it.

**Craig:** Right!

**Aline:** My parents would drive us to the Paramus Park, we used to call it the Millionplex. It had 14 theaters. And they would just drop us off there and we would see the 7:30, whatever it was, and just be happy. That’s how I saw Pee-wee’s Big Adventure which, you know, pleasantly surprised us. We laughed. Fell out of our chairs laughing.

We also saw Yor, The Hunter From the Future that way.

**Craig:** Yeah. Good one.

**Aline:** And just you don’t have that surprise anymore. You’ve been so inundated with media before you go to see a movie now, that I miss the days of just thinking like, “I just want to see a movie. Let’s see what’s out there.” I miss that.

**John:** Yeah, I remember seeing 9 to 5 that way. So, I was a kid dropped off at the theater and the theater we were supposed to go to — they dropped us off at the wrong movie, essentially. So, we saw 9 to 5. I was far too young to see 9 to 5, which is the best way to see 9 to 5, because they’re smoking pot, and having sex, and all these things.

**Aline:** Stringing people up.

**John:** I also remember in college going to see, we ended up seeing The Handmaid’s Tale because the other movie we wanted to see was completely sold out. We had no idea what the movie was. And that’s so incredibly rewarding when you sit in, the only information you have is what the filmmakers are giving you frame-by-frame as the story unfolds.

You had that experience of positive moviegoing because you weren’t preconceived with what we were supposed to feel. There was no expectation about what to —

**Aline:** And you haven’t checked a review aggregator that’s giving you 60 opinions before you even set foot there.

**Craig:** Yeah, or your Twitter feed, or comedians teeing up. Or whatever, anything. Or even articles that are insisting that it’s the most important thing of all time.

It’s funny. 9 to 5 was the first movie I think I saw, I was dropped off to see on my own. I remember it was like a weird triple date, like a weird triple fifth-grade date. What were our parents thinking? But, you know, I really make an effort now when I sit in the movie theater before the movie starts to blank my mind completely. I just say, go ahead movie, ride all over me and let’s see where this goes.

**John:** Some of my favorite experiences are actually like when you see the three trailers, or the four trailers, and then like the real movie starts and you’ve forgotten what the movie was that you’re supposed to — you have to check the ticket to see what movie is this. Oh right, it’s the Muppets! But it is very exciting.

Now, let’s talk for a second as filmmakers, as screenwriters, is there anything we can do in those opening pages or in the opening minutes of a movie to get people in the positive moviegoing experience. What is that like from our side as writers to hopefully foster that good spirit?

**Craig:** Well, I do have one thing that lately I’ve been tending to do, and that is write a credit sequence. It became out of fashion. All movies — well, originally movies used to have these opening credit sequences that includes even the credits that we now call end credits, you know, where there are logos and rosters of people. But then the standard opening credit sequences, that became out of fashion. And for a long time all the credits went in the back of the movie. So, you just started the movie.

I really like credit sequences. I like opening credit sequences. The opening credits for Mitty are beautiful. And I think that that helps kind of get everybody situated and in the mood. So, I’ve been doing that lately.

**John:** I will also write credit sequences in movies where I feel it’s appropriate. More than anything I try to make sure that the reader and therefore the viewer feels confident. Like, trust me, this is going to be a ride that you will enjoy taking with me. You’re going to feel rewarded and smart on this journey. We know what we’re doing. Everything is going to be okay.

And I mean that shows up in sort of your word selection on those first pages, but also just making sure no one is confused in a bad way in those first pages. Making sure that there is — if it’s a funny movie, you need to have something funny happen really quickly, so everyone sort of gets what the world of your movie is.

**Aline:** My husband has a thing where we’ll go to see a movie, and sometimes movies take forever just to get going, and he’ll turn to me at some point and say, “When does the movie start,” 20 minutes into the movie. Because sometimes it just seems like, especially because we do know what movies we’re going to see, it does seem like if you’re taking 15 minutes to get us acquainted with what we’ve seen on the poster, that makes me a little itchy.

And I think our attention span for that has probably changed a bunch, too. But I think it’s great to see if you can get to the heart of the matter so the audience knows what movie they are seeing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I think that’s a great segue to a talk that you proposed, which is outline failure, because what we’re really talking is the structure of the story and when things are happening. And structure is really when stuff happens. So, talk to me about outline failure and what you mean by outlines failing.

**Aline:** Well, you guys I know have talked about outlining a lot on the show, and it’s always very interesting, and it’s something that people will always ask on panels and such is about outlining. And I think we all outline in different ways. But I think — I don’t really know any writers who don’t outline at all, or few.

And some outline after the fact. Some write a draft and then outline. But what I think is interesting is I do do outlines. I try not to do written outlines, submit written outlines, because I find that people get bogged down in the details of a written outline. But I do spoken — I will pitch an outline and I will pitch an outline to everybody. And before I start writing I tend to try and pitch an outline to as many people as I can, the producer, the studio, anybody who will listen to the outline so that I can tell it like I’m telling a story.

And often when you’re telling it you realize, oh, that’s not good, or that’s boring, or this patch needs to go here or there, or that doesn’t make sense.

But what never ceases to amaze me is, you know, it’s one of those phenomena when you’re writing which is you want to try and break it down into math. And you want to break it down into cards. And we all want to feel like we have control over it. And it never ceases to amaze me that you’ll outline something, you’ll go see six people and pitch to them, you’ll put it on cards, you’ll sit down and start writing, and it’s usually page 65 is where it happens, where you start looking at your outline and you’re thinking, “This is crazy. Like why did everyone let me do this? Why didn’t everyone know that this is riddled with flaws and the character has just changed on a dime for no reason.”

I’ve always contended that 70 to 90 are the rocky shoals, the rapids, where your movie either comes together and moves out into the next plane, or you start to realize that you’ve got some inherent flaws. But what is really fascinating is you can’t really tell until you write it. And as long as I’ve been doing this, I have found some outlines I’m going through, congratulating myself, and just thinking, “Wow, I really planned this out.” And some I’m thinking like, “Oh, I don’t know.”

But, at some point you always get to a point of thinking like, “Who are these people who I work with who allowed me to think that these were good ideas?” You actually get angry. And I don’t really know, I don’t know what the cure for this is besides writing through there. And I think it’s funny, because I just moved, and it’s kind of a similar process. You think, you know, we’re going to put the couch there. We’re going to put this ottoman here, we’re going to put this here. And then you show up and you put it there and you’re like, “This is hideous. This is ten times too large. Why did anyone think this was going to fit here?”

And I guess it just shows planning is — it’s just plans. And so you really do feel like you go into a war, you top off your canteen, you take as many weapons as you can, and then you get there and the enemy has gone on the run and gone into the bush. They had flying robots you didn’t know about. And all of a sudden you have to change your game plan. That’s one of those things that kind of separates the way I write now from the way I did in the beginning which was in the beginning I would really get very disheartened and think, “Why has this happened? What is the critical flaw in my process?”

And now I just accept, you know, okay, we’re experiencing some problem with the hydraulics in the outline. And need to make adjustments on the fly. And sometimes that process of trying to figure out why your outline has crumbled beneath you, often those are the critical — that’s the critical passage where you find out what your movie is really about, because 70 to 90 is where you’re sort of on the upslope to figuring out what problem is this person really solving. What problem is this character really solving? And you may have the wrong problem. And you may have the wrong thematic. And sort of that’s where you figure it out.

So, I’ve learned somewhat to try not to beat myself up about it, but for those out there who are staring out their outline, ripping their hair out, it happens.

**John:** I’m outlining something right now, and I do find that as I go through previous episodes of trying to outline these movies I will have so many beats figured out so precisely in that sort of first half of the movie, and then there’s a stage in which I’m just sort of like waving my hands and saying, “And then we get to this last thing.” And it’s that hand-waving section that you’re like, there’s really no connective tissue that’s getting me from that point to that point. And if characters are having to make these big jump transitions that don’t really make sense — you find characters who are doing things because I need them to do that, not because it’s the natural thing for them to do.

**Aline:** That’s a really good point. And I think Craig has talked about this, too. When you pitch a movie, let’s say you pitch for 15 minutes, you probably spend nine minutes on the first 35 pages. And one of the other rookie mistakes I would make is you end up, the first part of your script is like a finely scrimshawed piece of bone that you have added all these details to. And then when you get to 50 it’s like, “Yeah, and then some stuff happens, and then some other stuff happens.” And that’s endemic to the storytelling most of the time is spent on the setup.

**Craig:** Well, this is why I outline actually. I don’t outline for the beginning of the movie, or the first half of the movie, because you’re right — I think we have an innate sense of the world we want to build and the person we want to put in it. And what the problem is. And that big wrecking ball that comes through the wall that changes everything.

I outline specifically to avoid the hand-waving section. Really, I will spend most of my outlining energy on page 60 to page 90 because I won’t start if I don’t know how the movie ends. I can’t start if I don’t know how the movie begins. But, that are right in there, that’s where you’re absolutely right, Aline. That is where all the gunk, the sub-textual character gunk starts to burble out. And the character as we understood them is breaking down dramatically and violently and then being put back together again by themselves.

It’s a scary area in every movie. And if you do it well it’s the best part of every movie. So, that’s why I outline.

Now, that said, of course — you know, we write a screenplay and then somebody has to go make it a movie. Well, that experience of turning a screenplay into a movie is a bit like the experience of turning an outline into a screenplay. And somewhere along the way the experience of doing it starts to change how you feel about it and what you understand about it. You have to remain flexible. And you can’t afford to let your outline become your boss.

The fact that other people don’t see these pitfalls and can’t warn you about them is not shocking is it? I mean, if you didn’t see it, what were the odds they were going to see it?

**Aline:** So, let me ask you a question — oh, sorry.

**John:** What Aline describes though in that process of pitching things, that is the natural way you pitch things. And you pitch very much like the setups of everything, and then you sort of rush through the other things. And that’s just the natural way you pitch things. So, that’s what you’ve been doing as you’ve been describing these projects to people is that stuff. And it’s natural to sort of rush over to the other things. But the mistake we often make for ourselves is not realizing like, “Oh, you know, I did rush over all those things. I really haven’t figured out what some of those moments are.”

And so while there’s technically an outline for what those beats are that happen here, they’re not nearly as fleshed out and nearly as focused as the rest of it is.

Also, I think what you said at the start that’s really key is that sometimes the only way to know how to write something is to write something is to write it. And it’s like you’re trying to write the screenplay before you’ve written it, and it can only be a rough approximation of the journey you’re going to take. It’s like you have this map that’s showing you how to get from point A to point B, but you really don’t know where all the mountains and all the hills are and where the rivers are that you’re going to have to get yourself around.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** So, you have to allow yourself the luxury of saying, “This is not what I thought it was. Given where I am at, what is the most interesting way to get to the places that I need to get to next?”

**Craig:** Yeah. And, you know, to me an outline is really good for a couple of things. It helps you organize your work, which matters, because you’re not going to get done otherwise. And the other thing that it does is keep you from being absurdly self-indulgent. We all have a tendency to be absurdly self-indulgent. We’ll just wander on. And when people say, “Well, I don’t really write my scripts. My characters write them for me.” Shut up! You write them. Don’t blame it on your characters when you’ve just spent 40 pages blithering.

That’s you blithering. And outlines help keep us —

**Aline:** Well, one thing, sorry.

**Craig:** Go ahead.

**Aline:** You guys don’t interrupt each other. I’ve noticed that.

**John:** We’ve gotten much better about being able to do that not interrupting thing. But, no, go.

**Aline:** Now you have two-thirds Jew, so.

**Craig:** So much Jew. We’re at peak Jew.

**Aline:** One thing that I’ve learned to do to avoid the scrimshaw, the first act scrimshaw, and I know Craig doesn’t do this, but after I have the outline I will write the whole script very quickly. And I will write like an 85, 90-page draft as quickly as I humanly can, to test. And what I’ll do is hop into scenes and I’ll see how I feel hopping into those scenes. And that’s the best way for me to test the outline is to hop into scenes and think, “Oh, there’s nothing happening here. No one is speaking in here. Oh, I’ve walked into a room and everyone is silent.”

So, I go really fast and I test the whole outline by building a very kind of provisional popsicle version of the script. And then I go back and I add my sheet rock and my paint and my ottomans. I do it that way. I build it in layers. And I know some people don’t do that. Some people build it good all the way through. But for me, to test the outline, I have to get all the way through the story.

**John:** Yeah. I’ve always wanted to do what James Cameron would do with the scriptments, which essentially is a very long outline that’s basically all the scenes but without the dialogue. I’ve always wanted to be able to be the person who did that. But the dialogue is by far the most fun thing to write, so therefore I always want to write that. I feel like I don’t really know the characters until I hear them talking to each other.

**Craig:** Interesting.

**Aline:** I don’t know if the story is going to work until I know if the characters will talk. And that’s what I think, for me, is the difference between an outline and a screenplay. You know, you think this is going to be a good scene, and then you get into the scene and you realize, like this has happened to me where I had an outline where there were two characters who were in opposition to each other for a good amount of the story. And that stuff was easy to write because they had a lot of conflict and countervailing points of view. And then there got to a point where I had them align their interest, and man, every time that happened that was like stabbing the inflatable.

I would just get to those scenes where they were supposed to both be pursuing something, and you know, the air, you just audibly hear the air go out of the movie because these characters didn’t have any interpersonal conflict. So, I ended up reconfiguring the outlines so that their interest continued to be at odds until 105 or something, so that I would maintain that conflict. But in the outline phase it seemed like, “Why not? They team up, they become a team here. That makes sense.” And I really didn’t know until I got into those scenes and they could not speak to each other. They had nothing to say. They were saying like, “This looks good. Yeah. This looks good.”

**Craig:** That sounds like great work.

**Aline:** Great scene.

**John:** There’s nothing less dramatic than agreement.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Just like, “Sure. That’s great.” They might as well be sitting back, reading the paper together.

**Aline:** “We should get the bad guy.”

**Craig:** “We should. Let’s do it.”

**Aline:** “Good. Let’s do it.” [laughs]

**Craig:** “Let’s do it. You want lunch?” Yeah, I want lunch” “Let’s have lunch first and then we’ll do…”

By the way, I do these —

**Aline:** “Pizza?”

**Craig:** I am the scriptment guy. I write scriptments. Because I love writing dialogue, so again, I feel like if I know exactly what the circumstance is, and I feel comfortable in it, then I get to have the fun of writing dialogue towards something that I think is correct. You know —

**Aline:** That’s the other great thing when you’re writing comedy, about comedy, is the test of your outline is whether people start saying funny things. If they’re not saying funny things, something is wrong with your scene.

**Craig:** Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong!

**Aline:** Mm-hmm!

**Craig:** Flying robots. I’ve been counting all of your metaphors. We’ve got furniture, flying robots, hydraulics.

**John:** Scrimshaw.

**Craig:** Scrimshaw.

**Aline:** That’s a big one.

**Craig:** Bone. Layers of construction.

**Aline:** Inflatable.

**Craig:** Inflatable. But my favorite is flying robot.

**John:** So, this project I’m working on right now, because I’m working on a spec, and Aline, you just finished a spec. I’m actually at the stage where I’ve written some scenes and I’ve paused for a second because I’ve realized like, oh no, there’s going to be trouble ahead.

Where I fundamentally — I have some mission creep happening, where the story was getting bigger than it should sort of — than it wants to get. When Richard Kelly was on the show last week, he talked about that with his movies, Donnie Darko, and you could definitely see mission creep happening in those things.

I’m trying to make something lean and it just keeps getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger. So, I’m trying to sort of whittle back at the outline stage right now.

So, for the thing that you wrote for a spec, did you pitch to a bunch of people first and describe it, or was this an entirely internally-generated process? Did you outline on paper first?

**Aline:** Well, what I’ve done is I’ve written something that I want to direct. And it’s pretty specific to me. And so it was something that I mulled for a really long time. And there was a lot of freedom in not, you know, because I don’t often write just for myself. So, there was a lot of freedom in not having to be accountable to — making the process whatever I wanted the process to be.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**Aline:** So, I probably outlined it a little bit more loosely. But I did find a producer to work with after I had sort of an idea of what it was and what the basic structure was. Because I worked with a director once who said, we were having a meeting and he said, “You know, I think with my mouth open,” meaning he knows what he thinks as he’s saying it. And I’m very much like that. And so for me I needed and I like to have collaborators that I can talk to.

So, I found a producer who would work with me on spec, because I need to do that process of telling a story. But that said, it was really great to be able to just make adjustments, attack, and move however I wanted to without feeling like I was accountable to — as accountable to an outline. It’s good.

**John:** Let’s segue to our next topic, which you brought up also, which is why it’s important to be friends with writers. Because my recollection, and my early days in Hollywood, I was friends with a bunch of people who were starting out in Hollywood but they weren’t necessarily writers. I went through a graduate film program, so everyone was trying to become a producer, a film executive. Some people became writers, but I didn’t necessarily seek out other writers. What is your history going —

**Aline:** Well, I feel really strongly about that. I mean, and I think that people sometimes misunderstand what the idea is. The idea is not to be friends with writers who are going to network for you, or who are cool, or who are writing, or who are employed. That’s not really the critical thing. The critical thing is to have friends who do what you do and are engaged in the same kind of work that you are.

And I have, you know, a couple of my writer friends are from the very, very, very beginning of our career before we had any success or barely any work, and we don’t have work places in the way that, you know, my husband works at a mutual fund. He has a workplace. He has coworkers. We just, we don’t have that. Even when we do for a specific project, they’re just for that specific project.

My ongoing workplace, my Cheers, my group of people that I check in with are my other writer friends that I talk to on the phone periodically, or have lunch with. And we’re kind of —

**John:** Aline, you talk on the phone?

**Aline:** I talk on the phone.

**Craig:** Who talks on the phone?

**Aline:** I do.

**John:** Wow.

**Aline:** And so we can check in on what we’re doing and say, “Hey, I was working on that. What do you think of this? Is this a good idea? What do you think of this person?” That network is invaluable. And you will grow with these people.

So, it’s less important to seek out people who you think are going to connect you with a job and more important to seek out people whose process you find productive. And Gatins refers to it as lab partners, you know, finding a lab partner who does their homework and has a neat notebook is important. And then —

**John:** I don’t think Gatins has a neat notebook. I think Gatins’ notebook is one of those folders that he’s like sort of half colored in as he fell asleep.

**Aline:** But it’s so —

**Craig:** Gatins’ notebook is like — it’s like a folder that you open up and it looks like it’s full of stuff, and you open it up and there’s nothing in there.

**Aline:** But it’s brilliant. It’s so brilliant.

**Craig:** It’s all in his head.

**Aline:** And it’s like a workbook where he didn’t do any of the math, but around the margins are those amazing drawings and thoughts. He’s a good example. He’s a great lab partner.

And also something another friend of mine said, which is easier said than done, we were talking about having your friends read stuff. And I said, “Who do you go to for that?” And he said, “It’s very simple. Send it to someone who roots for you.”

**Craig:** Perfect. He’s exactly right.

**Aline:** And I don’t know. It was like something I hadn’t really thought of in quite that way, because I think we all have friends that we love, but maybe we have other friends who we think root a little harder.

**Craig:** You mean to say, “Maybe some of them are rooting against us.” That’s what you mean to say. Which I think is real, by the way.

Listen, it’s human. It bums me out, but I sometimes sense it. Same thing about the positive moviegoing, you know.

**Aline:** I have the opposite of that which is I really like everyone around me to be really successful because I think it makes me look better.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly.

**Aline:** And it gives me more names to drop. But, sometimes it’s even on a specific project. Sometimes you can have a friend who is really supportive but they don’t like an idea that you have. Like I remember when I was — there was a friend that I had that I pitched him a few things I was working on, and one of them he just thought was a terrible idea. And so that’s not somebody who I would ever go to and say, “Do you want to read this?”

So, it’s just find somebody who really wants to see you do well, or find someone who really roots for that specific project, because that’s positive moviegoing. You want to share your work and share your career with people who are going in with the best possible intentions.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**Aline:** And we generate enough of our own schadenfreude towards ourselves in this process. You don’t really need it from other people. But finding people who can be your — and I have lots of friends who are producers, and executives, and agents, but your writer friends — and actors too — but your writer friends understand your struggles and your travails and they can really be there for you. And, you know, I think if you look around you can find people to kind of link arms with. And you will all come up together.

**John:** My friend, Andrew Lippa, who did the music for Big Fish, he has this group of composers, lyricist and composers, and they get together once a month and they have to show the work that they’ve been working on. So, as a group they have to perform the thing and like they talk about it, which just seems amazing. And there are obviously screenwriter groups that can do the same kind of thing, but it’s different to show your written pages versus actually performing something. And there’s a trust element that kicks in.

You were talking about you might have directors, or producers, or other people who can read your stuff, agents, but all of them have some vested interest in maybe how they’re going to associate with this project. The great thing about another writer is the writer is just the writer. Like they’re not trying to take your project. They’re not trying to do anything.

While there’s still sometimes that, it’s not even schadenfreude, but that realization of there’s only so many musical chairs and that sometimes you’re competing for the same spots, in general we can be very supportive of each other because we’re not trying to do the same thing. We’re all working on our own projects.

**Aline:** Yeah, and it’s interesting, because I know you guys have talked about this too, but the three of us all met at different phases in our careers and —

**John:** We should talk about how you and I met, because that’s a strange version of how you and I met. So, let me try my recollection of it, because I’m really kind of curious to hear your version of it.

So, Aline and I met on the phone because I was coming in to rewrite a project that she had written as a spec, correct?

**Aline:** No, I wrote it on assignment for New Line. And then John rewrote it and he cold called me and said, “I want to make sure it’s okay with you that I’m rewriting this.” And I said, sure. And then John did a draft of it, never to be heard from again that thing.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** John, you killed her movie.

**Aline:** [laughs]

**John:** I probably killed her movie. So, the backstory —

**Aline:** But that was definitely, John was like, you know, they were bringing in the big guns and I got pushed down the stairs. And John was the first person — I think might have been the first person ever to call me and do the gracious thing.

And I remember, I was outside on my deck and I remember he said, “Is it okay with you if I do this?”

**John:** And I remember you also saying like, “Well, somebody is going to do it, and I’d rather you do it than somebody else,” which is honestly the reality of most of the situations. The answer is not going to that they’re going to go back to you, the original writer.

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** If they’re looking for another writer, they’re going to hire another writer, so you want the writer who actually has the ability to make the movie be good and not ruin the movie.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** So, those are the situations you want to have. That was a strange project because the reason why I was able to get a hold of you is because we both had John Gatins as a friend. And so I called Gatins to get your number and said like, “Is it going to be cool if I call?”

**Aline:** Oh, that’s nice.

**John:** And so it was this movie that you wrote that I really liked. It was just a really good idea. And suddenly Dustin Hoffman was attached, and so I went to this lunch — this crazy lunch — with Dustin Hoffman. And suddenly like, well, this is a movie, and then it just…disappeared.

**Aline:** Yeah, it got complicated in that way. Those things do. But, we — you meet at different. Wait, so we already knew each other, and I knew Craig already when the strike happened. But the strike was really the thing where writers really connected in a different way. And I think it was sort of the convergence of the strike plus the internet. And all of a sudden people really got to know each other in a way that I had not experienced previously in my career where, you know, people really know each other now in a different way than they ever had before.

And I really think it’s for the good. And I always find it funny when you’re talking to an agent, or an executive, or a producer and you say, “Oh yeah, I talked to so-and-so about that project. Oh, yeah, she did a draft on that. So-and-so is directing it.” And they’re like, “How do you know that?” And it’s because, I think, we know each other more now than we did.

**Craig:** We know more than they know sometimes. We know so much more than they think we know. We talk to each other… — You know, I have a lot of writer friends. I like writers and it’s been a wonderful thing for me for the last, I don’t know, six or seven years to get this coterie of writers around me that I admire and that I trust and that I can learn from.

And we share and talk about everything. And I think we do so in a way that is informed by our experience of being safe with each other. That over time we haven’t screwed each other over. That the narrative that we just kind of feed off of each other and compete with each other and undercut each other is essentially bullshit. And that, in fact, we are supportive of each other because the pain that we feel is the most salient thing about the job we do.

So, when we see somebody else feeling it, naturally we just want to help them. I have found — there have been a couple people here and there, but for the most part I have found screenwriters to be incredibly generous and incredibly empathetic, and sweet and encouraging, to me at least.

**Aline:** I’ll tell you a good story. I had, on this spec that I was working on, I wanted to give it to somebody who didn’t know me and didn’t know the situation and didn’t know anything about it that I could give to, who I really respected. So, I gave it to a writer who I really, really respect but don’t know super well. I mean, I maybe hung out with him a dozen, no, half a dozen times. And I sent him the script and then I didn’t hear from him for awhile which is always the thing where you’re like, “Oh god, he hates it and he can’t figure out how to tell me.”

And then I get an email from him that says, “Look, my dad was sick, he was in the hospital. And so I’m just about to read the script.” And I was like, oh no. And then a couple days go by and I get a set of notes, seven pages of notes —

**John:** Wow.

**Aline:** That are the most amazing thoughtful, heartfelt —

**Craig:** You’re welcome. You’re welcome.

**Aline:** [laughs] Well thought out. Just, you know, including like, “Page 26, you could be doing this. Page 43, you could be doing this.” And written in this way that was like, you know, sometimes you get notes from people and it’s like they’re fighting what the movie is. And this was just a writer understanding like, “Oh, this is what she’s trying to do. You are trying to do this. Let me help you. You’re trying to get to such and such a place in five hours. Let me give you the best directions on how to get there.”

And I was so moved when I got that notes document that I was in my office that I like — tears sprang to my eyes. I know how hard it is as a writer to turn your attention from your own imagination and delve into another person’s script. And that he would do seven pages of these incredible notes really blew me away. And it’s professional camaraderie. And, man, the more of that you can find the better. And it doesn’t have to be somebody famous or — it can be, you now, if you’re 23 years old, it can be somebody else that you know who wants to do this, who will read your stuff and put their heart into it.

**John:** Well, it’s also back to the issue of as writers we want movies to be better. And so when I’m advising on projects at Sundance or other places, everyone’s like, “Oh, that’s a tremendous amount of your time that you’re spending.” It’s like, yes, but it’s a chance to make kind of movies better. It’s a way to sort of see what a person is attempting to try to do and help them get to that place that they’re trying to get to.

And so seven pages of notes is above and beyond the call. That’s terrific. But really only a writer could do that. Because only a writer could understand what you were trying to do and provide specific ways that you could sort of get to that place.

**Craig:** You know, I would also say that only a writer can convince you that you’re any good.

**Aline:** Right. That’s interesting.

**Craig:** I had a very nice experience. You know, I started writing a novel a couple of years ago. And, honestly, I wrote two chapters and then stopped, mostly just out of fear that it wasn’t going to be any good and that I wasn’t any good. And I’m no good. And, blah, blah, bah, rotten tomatoes.

**John:** Dennis Palumbo?

**Craig:** No, it’s not Dennis Palumbo. It’s actually, I gave it to Kelly Marcel because she asked to see it. And she’s a really good writer. And she loved it. And, you know, I have to believe that. I can’t — it’s not the same thing…

When we give screenplays, or we give our work to people that are employing us, they’re just as overly optimistic as we are. Everybody is rooting, rooting, rooting. But you always wonder.

Or you give it to somebody, you know, some producer, or agents, or coverage. Well, who’s doing coverage? I don’t know who they are. But if a writer reads something of yours and says, “This is good,” then you need to believe it. And we can’t get that from anybody else.

**John:** Yeah. You want that response of, “I’m so happy for you and also a little bit jealous.” That’s the best feeling you can get as a writer is when another writer says, “This is great and I wish I had written it.”

**Craig:** You know what’s so funny? That’s exactly what she said?

**John:** Aw.

**Craig:** She said, I actually think she used the words, “I’m a bit jealous.” And then, see, but now I have this other task master that’s making me write this book, which is terrific, you know, terrific, because we also need that. We need somebody, we need a lab partner.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** We need a lab partner.

**John:** And as we wrap up this segment on the importance of writers being friends, we also need to credit Aline because during the strike, I agree that the 2008 strike was a big game-changer in terms of especially feature writers knowing who each other are. You organized these events that would happen during the strike, or like these drink events where we would all get together and sort of mingle. And it was my first chance of actually getting to know faces with names of some of these people.

During the strike you were assigned to different studios where you were supposed to be doing picketing. And because I am the palest person on earth, I would picket at Paramount Studios from 5:30am till 8:30am. So, it would be dark and I wouldn’t get sunburned. And I loved that group of people I was hanging out with. But everyone else was at different studios.

And so the events that you organized, and there were three or four of them, were terrifically helpful because just suddenly all these names that I’d seen in the trades are suddenly in front of you and you’re talking about and a lot of what we were talking about was the strike, but you’re also talking about the work, and you’re talking about how to make things better.

**Aline:** But it came at a critical point. People were really, you know, if you try to do those mixers sometimes it’s hard to get people to go. But people were really wanting to be with other writers then and talk about what’s going on, and what are we going to do, and nobody was working.

And so that really, and you were able to organize them over the internet really quickly, send out an e-vite to hundreds of people. And so there were a lot of people who I knew their names but had never met them. And we all kind of really got to know each other during that experience. And it was a really tough… — And people had really varying opinions was the other thing. And a thing that always amazed me was people were really all over the map about what they believed about this, but by and large people were able to, the camaraderie of being screenwriters kind of overcame people’s different point of views.

**John:** I would say there were different point of views on the strike and sort of what we should be doing on the strike and how long it should go and what we should be fighting for. But a common point of focus in terms of like what our profession is, and sort of what our job is and what our craft is, and so by focusing on the feature writers who are usually completely in isolation, bring thing together, it was a way for us to identify ourselves as a group. Because usually we’re not a group the way that TV writers are often in rooms together and sort of know each other.

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** It was a way for us to actually know who these people were.

**Craig:** We also, there’s a certain kind of way that screenwriters interact with each other that is unique. And I love it. And it is a very talky, chatty, low tech, low fancy environment, almost always. We don’t do it the way other people do it. There are few screenwriters I know that sort of love to glam it up and throw parties at nightclubs and stuff like that, but for the most part it seems to me we’re at our happiest when we’re talking somewhere where we can hear each other. And that’s fun.

It’s a nice, real way to be in Los Angeles, a town where just around the corner there’s some place that has convinced you is important and you have to go inside. And if you can’t get inside, and who do you know inside, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, and there we are with our jeans and our sweaters and our cigars and our wine and we just — we’re able to be real with each other.

**Aline:** And I will tackle people. I mean, it’s funny, because I won’t do this with any other, you know, I won’t do this with actors, or directors really, but if I see a writer whose work I admire, I mean, I did a panel with Peter Morgan in 2006 and I was so excited he was going to be there. And the video of me is like, you know, a running back approaching, of me literally taking guys and grabbing them by the nape of the neck and chucking them out of the way to get to Pete. I was so excited to meet him.

And I got to him and I was like, “Oh my god, I just came to this thing so I could meet you.” And that moment someone said, “Let me take your picture.” And there’s a picture like 30 seconds after Pete and I meet, and I look like I’m standing next to Santa Claus. I’m so excited to be meeting Peter.

**Craig:** Well that’s, I mean, John, who was my Peter Morgan in Austin?

**John:** Oh, it was Breaking Bad, it was Vince Gilligan.

**Aline:** Vince.

**Craig:** Vince Gilligan. I mean —

**Aline:** That thing, when you meet somebody whose work you so admire.

**Craig:** It’s everything. It’s everything.

**Aline:** It’s so amazing. And I will tackle people. And Kelly Marcel just moved to town —

**Craig:** Did you tackle Kelly Marcel?

**Aline:** I tackled her at the Mr. Banks thing. And she’s new to town so she doesn’t know a lot of writers. And I was like, oh, there’s people for you to meet.

**John:** There’s a mixer in your future.

**Aline:** Right. Yeah. And she went to Austin which is a really good way and, you know, one thing I would say is go to an event like Austin. If you’re somebody who is starting out, and again, we just did not have stuff like this when we were starting out and I would have been there tackling people. But, you know, go to these events where there is going to be other aspiring people and you will find people that you connect to, that you can pitch your movies to, that you can talk about what they’re working on.

You don’t have to be connecting to the fancy people. You can be connecting to people who are exactly in the same stage that you’re in.

**John:** Yes. Everyone grows up together. So there’s lateral things where you’re reading their script, and if you love their script, keep reading their scripts, and keep helping them out, and they will reciprocate. And you will find your people, but you have to sort of look for your people because it’s not you’re a professional football player where you’re just going to be around professional football players.

**Aline:** That’s right.

**John:** You are always going to be isolation unless you choose to make yourself not in isolation.

**Craig:** And don’t be judgy. Don’t be judgy. Don’t think that your friends have to be the fanciest writers in the world, or the most successful writers in the world. Don’t let that get in the way. You — when you fall in love with another writer, you’re falling in love with a kindred spirit and a fellow mind who understands you, who can help you and you can help you and you can help them.

There is no better feeling — the only better feeling than being helped is helping. How is that for Christmas?

**John:** So, our last thing I want to talk about today is an article that Nima had sent me, but I actually people linking to it, too.

**Craig:** Here comes the downer!

**John:** It’s a downer, but there’s a bright side at the end of it, too, kind of, or a brighter side.

**Craig:** Little bit.

**John:** Little bit. So, this is a site called priceonomics. It’s about David Raether who is a WGA writer who was a writer on Roseanne. And so he started Roseanne when he was already in his 40s or 50s, so he’d moved from the coast and got a job writing on Roseanne. And wrote on Roseanne for several years and was doing pretty well. He moved up through the ranks of Roseanne.

During the time he was writing for Roseanne he had a wife and eight kids. And eight kids is a lot of kids.

**Aline:** Mm.

**John:** And at a certain point his marriage was starting to fall apart, so after Roseanne he took a two-year hiatus and sort of got his marriage back together and got his family situations settled. Moved to a more affordable school district so the kids could stay in that. And then started to go back to writing and to go back to try to find a television job and had a very difficult time finding a television job, which is a common thing you hear all the time which is that gap that happens between, you know, when you’re a writer in your 50s it’s harder and harder to be employed, especially if you weren’t the top showrunner person. It gets harder and harder for that middleclass person.

So, David Raether had, you know, a $500,000 nest egg, which sounds like a lot of money, but that very quickly disappeared. He ended up losing his home. In the article he talks about sort of the process by which the sheriffs come and sort of evict you from your home. And his marriage fell apart. His kids ended up moving in with other families. He ended up homeless in a van. And sort of like what it is to hit the bottom there.

And not bottom that we’re used to. We’re used to like drugs and alcohol, or some other sort of internal crazy that pushed you to the bottom. This was just like the floor just fell out from underneath him. And so the article continues on with sort of how he started working again and sort of getting jobs off Craigslist and ghostwriting things for people who couldn’t write stuff. And eventually sort of building his way up so he’s in a more stable place right now.

But it’s really, I think, a useful thing for us to talk about, especially going into the spirit of Thanksgiving, which is to be not only thankful for the things we have in front of us, but also to be mindful that when things get bad it’s maybe not quite as bad as it seems. That even this guy will say that as bad as things got, once you recognize that you can be homeless and you’ll be okay out of it, he’s like much less fearful about sort of the things that can happen.

So, a couple things I think we can talk about with this article is, first off, that gap year, what he describes as the gap years, that time when you’re no longer sort of employable, but your pension hasn’t kicked in. Because this is a guy who has a WGA pension. So, when he turns 65 he’s got that pension and he’ll be fine. But the problem is he’s not 65 yet.

**Aline:** Can’t you take it earlier?

**Craig:** Yeah, a little bit earlier, but at some point they start hitting you with a lot of penalties and things.

**Aline:** Okay.

**John:** I think you essentially lose it if you start drawing down too early.

**Craig:** There’s a specific minimum age you need to hit, but it’s a really bad idea to dip into it.

**Aline:** Oh, I see. Got it.

**John:** In the beginning of your career, in the middle of your career, as you start to recognize that you’re sort of at the tail end of your career, what are sort of the financial decisions you make? Because I see a lot of people who sell a spec and think like, “I have a million dollars. I’m a millionaire. I’m going to start living like a millionaire.” And don’t seem to recognize, no, you’re not a millionaire. There’s no such thing as a millionaire, really, and you need to buy a more sensible car.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, let me, [laughs], let me do what I do. Just for a moment. I promise I won’t be too mean. There’s a lesson that I drew from this that I have internalized anyway. Which is, you ain’t your job. You’re you. Your job doesn’t make you qualified. Your job doesn’t make you deserving or entitled of anything.

I want to point out something interesting about this guy, and I don’t mean this in the spirit of kicking somebody when they’re down. I’m very happy that he’s pulled himself out of this circumstance. But, he was not in the entertainment business. He was not a television writer. He was not a screenwriter. He had paid none of the dues that people pay for many years in this town to earn those jobs.

He was a casual friend of Tom Arnold’s. And he decided to write a spec script for Roseanne, once it was a hit, and send it to Tom Arnold. And Tom Arnold, who is apparently a very gracious man and likes his friends, said, “Awesome. I’m getting you a job and you’re going to work here.” And when I read that all I could think was, oh, how the people in the room at Roseanne must have felt about that. Like who is this? Are you kidding me?

My point is not to say that he doesn’t deserve to be in that room. He may very well have been the best writer in that room. My point is that just because you have a job as a writer doesn’t mean that you have now broken through some magical thing where you’re a professional writer for life. You’re not. You’re a professional writer right now. And it can go away for me, for you, for any of us, for any number of reasons.

So, you have to protect and save against that. You certainly can’t be so proud and so delusional to think that you can disappear from the one single job you’ve had as a writer, you can disappear for two years and then come back and everybody would just want to give you a job. Even if the market were great, nobody other than Tom Arnold has ever hired you to write before. It just seems so delusional to me.

Please, important lesson here. When you get your big break, it’s not a break. There’s no breaks. You’re going to have to re-break, and re-break, and re-break. It never ends. It never ends.

The other thing is I feel like the story is missing information. I really do.

**John:** It’s apparently a shortened version of like the book. So there’s actually a much more elaborate book that sort of talks through everything that happened. So, what information did you want to know, Craig?

**Craig:** Well, I feel like when you are a married person with a wife and eight kids and a job, and then your life is dismantled to the extent that you are separated from your wife, separated from your children, some of whom go to live in another country and you end up in a minivan, that there are additional circumstance beyond, “Huh, can’t find a gig.”

Whether it is substance abuse, or mental health issues, it seems to me like we’re missing some information here, because things just seemed to happen in this story and I’m not quite sure why. And there are also a lot of things that are available for people that he doesn’t seem to be taking advantage of. So, I don’t know. I was just a little suspicious about the whole thing. And a little concerned when I read it. there was a whiff of flimflam about it.

I may just be a terrible person.

**Aline:** “A whiff of flimflam.”

**John:** Oh, it’s a very good whiff, though. Well, let’s talk about sort of the, I don’t know, the safety net of it all, because one of the challenges of being a screenwriter is that your income is inherently unstable. And so you cannot predict how much money you’re going to earn the next year, which is a challenging thing.

Now, Aline, your husband has a normal job. And so is that comforting in any way, where like there’s a steady income regardless?

**Aline:** Yeah, well he doesn’t just have a normal job. He works for a mutual fund, so he’s very conservative. So, we plan very conservatively. But, you know, there are two things that when I can see them in a writer I get a little uncomfortable. One is writers who really love to write. When you run into people who just love to write, and just I love it, I look forward to it, it’s so enjoyable. That always sends up red flags for me.

My people are the ones who are like, “Ugh, it was hard.” You know, of course you have moments where it’s wonderful, but it’s work. It’s really hard work. And I think people who don’t complain about writing concern me. And then also people who just if you have that attitude of like, “I got one gig. I’m set,” it’s not that, man. It’s getting — everybody has to go out and get a job —

**Craig:** Look at the Jews fighting the Christmas spirit. We just can’t deal with it.

**Aline:** You’ve got to go get a job. A couple times a year, you’ve got to go back out there. No one is set. So, sometimes you do meet people who get some kind of foot hold, some kind of toe hold, and they seem to feel like they’ve made it through some sort of pearly gates, and it’s just not like that. It’s a hustle.

And I really look at it in a lot of ways as being an entrepreneur. And when you’re an entrepreneur, you know you’re going to have good times and not so good times. And you better take — here’s another metaphor for your — you better take your acorns and put them in your tree trunk.

**Craig:** And your flying robot.

**Aline:** And your flying robot. You better take that flying robot and get it some acorns, because this —

**Craig:** When did you become Dan Rather? I don’t understand what happened?

**Aline:** It’s a very cyclical business. And I just think you’ve got to keep your head down and do your work, but you’re not owed anything. There’s so many people who want to do this. So, I say all of this having not read the article because I did not do my homework.

**John:** When I first got paid, my first scale assignment, which was for How to Eat Fried Worms, and then the second thing was A Wrinkle in Time, I would have a spreadsheet. And on that spreadsheet I would track how much money I had and then I would month by month figure out this is what my rent costs. This is what I pay for these different things. And I would sort of watch the money trickle down. So, I could plan ahead, I could see ahead eight months to see like how much money I would actually have.

And that’s a very sobering exercise that’s so useful, because I could see like I cannot be buying anything beyond the bare essentials I need to live, because otherwise I could just run out of money.

**Aline:** I’m just picturing John in his 20s, which everybody else like lying around on dirty sofas, and John somewhere looking at his spreadsheet.

**Craig:** With like that little visor? [laughs]

**Aline:** [laughs] Yeah. And the armband.

**Craig:** With glasses. Right, the armband. And that adding machine that you have to go Ka-chunk to.

**Aline:** Sleeves rolled up. His friends are all like, “John will buy us the beer guys, seriously.”

**John:** I did not buy a bed the first two years I lived in Los Angeles.

**Craig:** Two? I think my first bed was my fifth year.

**John:** Yeah, so that’s the thing. We’re basically saying don’t buy a bed. And don’t put your money underneath.

**Craig:** Don’t buy anything. Don’t buy anything!

**Aline:** My friend, Jeff, always had this thing which is your evolution as an adult is how far your bed gets off the floor.

**Craig:** [laughs] That’s absolutely true. It’s true.

**Aline:** You basically start off sleeping on the floor. And then you get a futon, which is like five inches from the floor. And then you get a futon frame.

**John:** A frame. Nice. Classy.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes.

**Aline:** Which is 11 inches off the ground. And then at some point you buy a bed frame, but it’s not upholstered or anything. It’s just one of those —

**Craig:** It’s that metal thing.

**Aline:** It’s that metal thing with the feet.

**Craig:** That they give away. Yeah.

**Aline:** And the next thing is you actually get a mattress into a bed. But you’ve got to be — really think like an entrepreneur. And just to go on a side topic for a second, I know you guys have talked with bewilderment many times about why there aren’t more women who do this. And it is easier to understand with directing because the raising of children is not very compatible with being on movie sets. But I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why there aren’t more female screenwriters and I think it’s this aspect of being an entrepreneur.

You are really running a small business which is you. And you have to put yourself out there every day and wear your sandwich board of like, “I’m interesting. You’re going to listen to me.” And I think that women are attracted to things where they can demonstrate excellence in a somewhat prescribed fashion. That’s why women are killing men in colleges and graduate schools.

But screenwriting is not like that. Screenwriting is a lot like you’re starting a business of making flavored pistachios.

**Craig:** Here we go. Ice cream. Here we go.

**Aline:** [laughs] Flavored pistachios, I don’t even know where that came from.

**Craig:** Flavored pistachios.

**John:** Well, I can see the movements. I thought you were going to go for some Etsy kind of thing. I thought you were going for some crochet —

**Aline:** Or like, yeah, macrame, squirrel hats. I went back to squirrels.

**Craig:** Macrame squirrel hats. And you girls with your flavored pistachios.

**Aline:** [laughs] But you got to go out there and like be an entrepreneur and save your money and really put yourself out there. And I think that it’s not a thing that we encourage women to do from childhood is to really say like, “I’m interesting…”

**John:** Well, I wonder if culturally we have a different expectation about men in their 20s, it’s expected that you are broke, and you are sleeping on couches, and that your life is a disaster, but you’re doing all that stuff and so eventually you’re going to break through. And we perceive a woman who is doing that as being a failure. Because that’s not a viable way for her to proceed.

We are more worried for that woman than we are worried for the equivalent man in the 20s who is living that sort of marginal lifestyle. Is that true?

**Aline:** I don’t know if it’s that. I really think it’s about when you’re coming up as a writer, like I remember I ran into a friend from high school and I had just started being a writer, and I had maybe sold one thing.

And we were at a party and somebody said to me, “What do you do?” And I said, “I’m a writer.” And he looked at me and he said, “Do you really tell people that?”

**Craig:** [laughs] Cool guy.

**Aline:** And I thought, you know, I really — it takes a leap of faith and a confidence in yourself to say, yeah, I’m a writer, I have something to say. Because essentially what you do as a writer is you say, “Listen to me. That’s the very first thing you do.”

**Craig:** Well, that’s, and I wonder if this is something in terms of the gender thing that women are trained by the world around them, if not by their parents, to not aggressively go after what they want because they themselves have an inherent desirability. That they are instructed to essentially play hard to get and to let things come to them.

**Aline:** I don’t know. Maybe in a — I really think it’s an adjustment on that which is to go out there and say what you have to do at the beginning of your career which is I have nothing to prove to you that what I have to say is valuable except this: what I believe, my voice, my sensibility, my humor, my intelligence. And it’s just as good as anyone else’s. Probably better than someone else’s. You’re going to listen to me. I’m going to sit in a rom. I’m going to command your attention for 20 minutes.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** I’m going to go outside the box. There’s no format for this. You know, it’s a very unscripted kind of unplanned thing.

And what I want to say to women who are listening, and I was talking at a thing at UCSB and what I didn’t know, what I didn’t understand, when I started I thought you had to know people and you had to network, and you had to do all these things which I was really — how was I going to do that? My parents were first generation immigrants. They don’t know anybody. There was no uncle I could call. There was none of that.

**Craig:** “Aline. I don’t know anybody who can help you.”

**Aline:** Right So, I had to really take that. And what I didn’t know is you’ve got to have the goods, be good at what you do, serve that apprenticeship of becoming good at what you do, but you also have to say, “My point of view is valuable. Listen to me. I have something to say.”

And I do find young women, younger women, they just do it. They just, you know, I’m working with this young comedian. She makes these YouTube videos on her own. She pays for them on her own. She’s a great DP and she writes songs and she just does it.

And I think that it really is changing and that young women have now unmitigated access to media. They don’t have to audition for anyone. They can just write their blog, or do their video, or put it out there.

**Craig:** Sisters are doing it for themselves.

**Aline:** They really are. But what I would say is if you’re trying to get into Hollywood screenwriting, which is a more Mandarin, closed system, you have to bet on yourself. And part of betting on yourself is saving money.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**Aline:** It is. Because every penny you save is money you can spend giving yourself time to write that great script. And that’s why I was really cheap when I started was just, you know, I know that if I get paid, if I can hold onto this check, if I can stretch this check as long as I can, that’s more time that I can spend working.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And if you get your first check and you blow it, you’re going to have to go and get that job which is going to be distracting and exhausting.

**John:** I hear you.

So, let us get to our final thing tonight which is our One Cool Things. So, who wants to start? Craig, do you want to start?

**Craig:** Yes. Because mine is incredibly short. Scroobius Pip. My One Cool Thing is Scroobius Pip. Look ’em up on YouTube. Awesome.

**Aline:** Okay. Wow.

**Craig:** Scroobius Pip.

**Aline:** Wow. Never heard of that.

**Craig:** Look ’em up.

**John:** Actually, I do know what this is because you had linked this on Twitter and Kelly Marcel had pointed it to you. And it is perhaps the angriest song I’ve ever seen.

**Craig:** Ever! It is this song called You Will See Me. It’s the angriest song I think that has ever been written.

**John:** So, what’s great about the song is the first half is so inspiring and it’s like, “Yeah, yeah!,” and then it just goes too far in that way that’s just wonderful.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah.

**John:** Most despotic people were probably like really great and driven and you wanted them to succeed until they went just way too far.

**Aline:** Oh, that sounds great.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s sort of like, you know, I Will Survive turns into I Will Kill All of You. Everyone I see is going to die.

It’s remarkable. And it’s so smart. It’s so smart. It really does make You Oughta Know look like a love poem.

**Aline:** Oh, I can’t wait.

**John:** So, we’ll put a link to that in the show notes. My One Cool Thing is a book by Keith Houston called Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks. I’m reading it right now. It’s great.

And so it talks about a lot of things like, you know, the paragraph symbol, like where did that come from? And like the crosshairs, and daggers, and asterisks, and all those little strange things. Well, who made that stuff up? And there’s actually a history behind all of those things.

Sometimes the word is made up, but an example is like we think about the paragraph symbol as like, oh, it’s like a P, it’s like a special P. But it’s actually not a P at all. It just sort of ended up looking kind of like that. And actually it’s a crossed C with another line beside it. it’s all different than sort of how you would think.

**Aline:** Between this and the spreadsheet, you’re really not James —

**Craig:** Sexy!

**Aline:** Yeah, I was going to say.

**Craig:** Sexy!

**John:** As a type nerd, I was very excited that this book —

**Aline:** Or just a nerd.

**Craig:** Actually, I did think of you. And I’ll try and find the link to this, because it was such a you thing. I can’t believe I didn’t send it to you. I read an article. For a long time people have been struggling to try to denote irony in text.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And, I don’t know, maybe you saw this article where there was a guy hundreds of years ago who invented an irony mark.

**John:** And that is covered in this book.

**Craig:** Oh, it is?

**John:** It is.

**Craig:** And it just never caught on. Nobody wanted it.

**John:** Nobody wanted it. There’s also a whole chapter on the interrobang, which is the question mark and exclamation point at the same time.

**Craig:** Oh, interrobang.

**John:** Which ultimately is just not that necessary? You put the two things together, we got it.

**Aline:** In emails.

**John:** Emails. Yeah.

**Aline:** Have you guys talked about treadmill desks?

**John:** No, so let’s talk about treadmill desks.

**Aline:** Oh, okay, well that would definitely be One Cool Thing. So, I had a GeekDesk, which I think I got the nod from you on, the GeekDesk, which is you can adjust the height. So, I was writing standing up for awhile. And that was sort of okay, but you get into a lot of slouchy, uncomfortable positions when you’re standing.

And so my friends, Susannah Grant, took the leap. She had also bought the GeekDesk at my recommendation, so we both had those. And then she took the leap and got the TreadDesk which goes under the GeekDesk. And then you’re walking and you’re writing.

And it’s really embarrassing and stupid to look at, but what I really like about it is that I’m a kind of gregarious, like to be busy person, and so a writing for me, a long day of writing, I will eventually feel like — ooh, analogy — I will eventually feel like a raccoon with its foot in the trap.

**Craig:** What?!

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** We got to have somebody, please somebody out there illustrate every single one of these that she’s done in this episode.

**Aline:** Oh, that’s good. So, I would feel so trapped by the end of the day. And there’s something about being on the treadmill where you feel like even if I’m — on those days where you feel like I’m not crushing it, at least you feel like I went for a walk today. I did something reasonably healthy. So, I’ve enjoyed it.

And then I emailed Susannah the other day and said, “I’ve taken it to a terrible place,” which is I’ve taken it to dancing.

**John:** You’re dancing on your treadmill desk?

**Aline:** A little bit. So, I think this is going to lead to traction.

**John:** Yeah. It’s could be dangerous. So, your treadmill desk, essentially you’re using your normal standing desk, but then there’s a very flat treadmill that goes underneath it.

**Aline:** Right. They make this thing now. And it’s TreadDesk. You can find it if you Google TreadDesk, you can find it. Because that was the thing. I couldn’t find one that didn’t have the big —

**Craig:** But you can’t write like that?

**Aline:** I do.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** You go very slowly.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s a nightmare.

**Aline:** Yeah, you go slowly. And you know what it’s really particularly good for? It’s not great for fine point editing, proofing, where you want to really find, but what it’s really good for is after you’ve gone through a script and you’ve written a bunch of notes to yourself and you’ve written a lot of notes in the margin, that’s what it’s really great for, when you’re implementing stuff that you’ve written by hand. It’s really — like if I have something due, there was a week where I had something due on a Friday and I walked 18 miles that week.

**Craig:** Oh my god.

**John:** That’s a good week. I do the same thing with my iPad and the normal treadmill, iPad with the keyboard. And so I can do things like first passes on blog posts. Just doing triage on emails. It’s great for that kind of stuff.

Then when you actually sit down to really focus, then you’re really in writing mode, which is good, too. So, it’s a change in state.

**Craig:** I just like to walk around, outside, and enjoy God’s splendor.

**John:** Yeah, we don’t believe you at all, Craig Mazin. We know you far too well.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** You have more to say?

**Aline:** What?

**Craig:** Nah. [laughs]

**John:** All right. If you would like to send a question about vocabulary choices or analogies for Aline Brosh McKenna can make for us, you can write to ask@johnaugust.com.

**Craig:** That Aline.

**Aline:** I covered a lot of animals today.

**Craig:** Yeah, Aline. Like two squirrels fighting over a flavored pistachio raccoon.

**John:** What I really want is a Christmas Tree. I know you’re Jewish, but I really want a Christmas Tree with all these ornaments of the metaphors you used.

**Craig:** And Aline Tree. That would be cool.

**Aline:** I love it.

**John:** Aline, are you on Twitter?

**Aline:** No.

**John:** No. Aline is not on Twitter. But I’m on Twitter, @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

Our podcast that you’re listening to right now is available on iTunes. And so if you’re listening to this on iTunes and have not left a comment, it’s great if you do that because that helps people find the show. So, you can subscribe there.

We enjoyed having Aline Brosh McKenna on our show today.

**Craig:** As always.

**John:** Aline, thank you so much for coming by.

**Aline:** You’re most welcome.

**John:** And we will get to see you again on December 19th.

**Aline:** Woot-woot! Oh yeah!

**Craig:** Woo!

**Aline:** And that’s when we’re going to have our drink and a half.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Yes! We will have a drink and a half. And, no, I’m not drinking that foul eggnog.

**Aline:** We’ll see.

**John:** So, I’m not really clear based on this new facility we went to, I’m not clear that there’s going to be a bar bar. But if nothing else we’ll have a flask.

**Aline:** I’ve got a purse.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** And I’ve got a purse.

**Aline:** All right, guys. Thank you.

**John:** Thank you guys. Happy Thanksgiving.

**Craig:** Happy Thanksgiving.

LINKS:

* [Aline Brosh McKenna](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0112459/) on IMDb, and her [first](http://johnaugust.com/2012/the-black-list-and-a-stack-of-scenes), [second](http://johnaugust.com/2013/how-screenwriters-find-their-voice), [third](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode), and [third-and-a-half](http://johnaugust.com/2013/101-qa-from-the-live-show) appearances on Scriptnotes
* The [Scriptnotes Holiday Show](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/scriptnotes-holiday/) is sold out, but follow [@johnaugust](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) and [@clmazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) to be the first to know if more tickets are released
* [John Gatins](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0309691/) on IMDb
* [What It’s Like to Fail](http://priceonomics.com/what-its-like-to-fail/) on priceonomics
* [Scroobius Pip](http://scroobiuspip.co.uk/) and [You Will See Me](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OS4W3OCESY)
* [Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0393064425/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by Keith Houston
* [Irony punctuation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation) on Wikipedia
* The [TreadDesk](http://asoft11239.accrisoft.com/treaddesk/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Kris Gotthelf

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/talking-to-actors).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 107 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, I think you’ll be excited by this, but I went to my first Rosh Hashanah service this last week.

**Craig:** Ooh! And how boring was that?

**John:** It was actually not boring at all…

**Craig:** What?!

**John:** …because it was conducted at the Neil Simon Theater…

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** …by Andrew Lippa who is now an ordained interfaith minister.

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** So, it was kind of awesome, but also really strange, because I realized as I’ve been around Jewish culture a lot since moving to Los Angeles but I’d never actually seen even on film a portrayal of what the Rosh Hashanah service was like. And it’s a little bit odd.

**Craig:** It’s a lot a bit odd. Did they blow the Shofar?

**John:** They did. The Shofar being the sort of curved horn thing, which you tweet, actually tweet is the wrong word for it. Really, it’s like you —

**Craig:** Oh John. “A curved horn thing that you tweet.” You are so Christian.

**John:** Oh, yes, [laughs]. So, what is the Shofar meant to represent? It’s not a horn. What would you call it?

**Craig:** It is. In fact it is a ram’s horn.

**John:** So therefore I’m correct and it is curved.

**Craig:** It’s just the way you said it. “It’s a curved horn.” It was just very goyisha.

**John:** All right. That’s fine. So, anyway, it’s a thing that you are meant to…

**Craig:** Blow.

**John:** …blow. But tweet is actually sort of the right word. It implies it’s a high sound. It’s not a high sound at all. It’s sort of a horn blowing sound, kind of.

**Craig:** Fancy that. [laughs]

**John:** But it is a very specific rhythm for this part of the thing.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And then that part of the thing.

**Craig:** Tekiah. Teruah. Yeah. There are I think three different ones. There’s [imitates horn sounds].

**John:** And it’s supposed to be nine, but you really can’t count.

**Craig:** And then there’s one that goes [horn sound again]. Basically goes until the old men run out of breath. And it’s like a competition to see who can last the longest.

**John:** Yeah. I found the whole thing just absolutely fascinating.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s silly.

**John:** But wonderful. And, of course, it was an abbreviated thing because we were literally doing this in the upstairs lobby at the Neil Simon Theater, just like an hour before they had to completely clear everything out so we could have our opening night. So, it was a really busy, jam-packed day. But it was a great way to start a jam-packed day.

**Craig:** Now, do you have people that are going to be observing Yom Kippur which is sort of the important part of the holiday?

**John:** Yes, we do. So, it’s going to be a… — We’re smack dab in the middle of the Jewish holidays for Big Fish, which is traditionally like not the time you would want to do this, but it actually worked out very well for us because we’re the only show trying to open now.

**Craig:** Oh, good. All right, competition.

**John:** Let’s talk about the show that we’re actually recording right now, which is Scriptnotes, which is mostly a conversation about screenwriting.

**Craig:** And things that are interesting to screenwriters.

**John:** And so maybe that’s a Broadway show. But, and you, Craig Mazin, you stepped up today because two of our three topics are Craig Mazin topics.

**Craig:** I can do it. I just need — I just need someone to believe in me. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] And we all believe in you, Craig.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** So, the topic that I would like to propose today is the difference between intention and motivation. And words that are often sort of combined but are actually probably more useful if we can keep them apart and really think of them as two separate things.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** And the topics that you brought to us today are?

**Craig:** Today I want to talk about sort of a screenwriter’s guide to working with actors, because no matter what level you are working at you need to work with actors. And then just a sort of a techie thing, I thought it might be fun to talk about your “onset rig.” What you need as a screenwriter on set in terms of just stuff to be able to do your job effectively.

**John:** Those are good topics. I feel like we’re going to have a good, strong podcast today.

So, I wanted to do just a little bit of housekeeping first. You are coming to New York City yourself for the live Scriptnotes show.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And we’re very excited to have you there. I kind of thought it was sold out, but they actually released the very back rows of the theater, so now we actually have — as we’re recording this podcast — possibly 40 seats. So, if you are still interested in coming to the October, sorry, September 23 recording of Scriptnotes Live in New York City, you should try to come. And you should try to get a ticket.

**Craig:** I just think it’s amazing that you can sell this — you, I mean we, I suppose — sell these things out. How many people are in this — how many seats are available?

**John:** This will be significantly bigger than the LA version. So, this is 300?

**Craig:** Oh, boy! Well we better have something to talk about.

**John:** We will. So, we’ll have you and me and Craig Mazin, uh, you’re Craig Mazin.

**Craig:** That’s me. That’s also me.

**John:** It’s very late. It’s late recording. There will be you, and me, and Andrew Lippa.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And a piano.

And so we will be talking about writing with somebody and sort of that writing partner process, specifically writing musicals and that whole shared process, the nine-year journey of Big Fish. But there will also be some singing of songs. Andrew Lippa is actually — that’s what he does for a living. But I will do this because I made a bet that I would do this. And you will do this because you have a song you want to sing.

**Craig:** Is he going to be able to play my song?

**John:** Yeah, he can play anything, Craig.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** That’s not going to be an issue.

**Craig:** Is he good at the piano? [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Yeah. The guy who wrote the Broadway show, is he good at the piano?

**Craig:** Does he know how to work a piano?

**John:** Yeah. He’s competent at that.

**Craig:** He’s no Seth Rudetsky. That’s all I can tell you.

**John:** Oh, no. No one is Seth Rudetsky.

**Craig:** No one!

**John:** Second bit of housekeeping, there will be another opportunity to see me and Craig doing Scriptnotes Live at the Austin Film Festival.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** The Austin Film Festival is at the end of October. We don’t know the exact dates of when our different events are going to be, but there’s two — at least two Scriptnotes things happening there. We are doing a live episode of the podcast. It will be you, and me, and Rian Johnson, which will be kind of great.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** And they’ve promised us a big space this year, not a small space.

**Craig:** And not at nine in the morning. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. Last time was at nine in the morning. That’s too early for our listeners. So, it should be a great fun prime time. So, if you’re coming to Austin and you’re coming to the film festival, come see us there.

We’re also talking about doing a second panel workshop thing that would be focused on the Three Page Challenges. If you have a Three Page Challenge that you would like us to look at and you are going to be attending the Austin Film Festival it would be great for you to put that in the email to Stuart saying, “Here’s my Three Page Challenge and I will be at the Austin Film Festival,” because we would love to be able to bring those people up on stage with us and talk with them about the three pages they have submitted.

**Craig:** Yes. That sounds like a lot of stuff in our immediate future.

**John:** Yes. A lot of live speaking. So, the topic I want to talk about today is the difference between intention and motivation. And I sometimes hear them used as the same term, which is fine. I’m not going to be prescriptive. You don’t have to use exactly the words I like to use. But I think they’re actually somewhat different concepts and I want to talk about how you as a writer might use these words to best effect.

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** When you talk about a character’s motivation I tend to think of that as the big general who is this person in their world, in their life, and how is who they are in their world and their life and what their aims are reflected in your movie, or in your story.

So, a motivation might be attempting to make peace with his father. A motivation might be greed. It could be something like simple thematic kind of motivation, but it’s an overarching this is what they’re aiming for.

A lot of times in screenwriting we talk about what is the character’s want versus the character’s need. Motivation, you can think of it being the general umbrella category of what is the character going for. What is the character’s overall aim? Generally it is a character, but specifically in a story.

Do you use that term the same way?

**Craig:** I don’t at all.

**John:** Great. [Crosstalk]

**Craig:** I think of it as being a clear line. The way I like to think of that is motivation is why a character is doing something. Intention is what they want to achieve by doing something.

**John:** Oh, so we’re using these terms differently. I think it’s great that we’re having this conversation.

**Craig:** I think of characters, like for instance, I’m motivated by jealousy. My intention is to make you feel bad. Do you see what I mean? That’s sort of how I do it.

**John:** So, I use intention in a different way. And I use intention as a very granular what is a character attempting to achieve in this specific moment. So, intention to me is a thing that can happen in a scene or a sequence, but intention is a very specific “in this moment.”

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** And so what is this character’s intention as the scene is opening and how has the intention changed based on what has happened in the scene?

At any moment I think in a scene you should be able to freeze/pause, and look at each character in the scene and figure out what their intention is. And, if you can’t do that then maybe you need to rethink how the scene is working, because if a character is just there because they’re just there something is not ideal.

**Craig:** Yeah. I like to think about this weird line between why I’m doing something and what I want to achieve, because it’s a way to make characters interesting if you can — if the audience understands why they’re doing something and also can see how when it translates into “and therefore I want to achieve this,” something has gone wrong.

It’s interesting to watch characters be motivated by things and then have these strange intentions because of it.

**John:** Well, I would say another distinction I would try to make is motivations tend to be a little bit less concrete. They are bigger picture things and they’re not necessarily actionable. And intention should be more actionable.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And intention should be something you can see that they’re literally trying to achieve. And you can actually see did they achieve their intention or not achieve their intention.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** There’s a test to it. Like are they doing what they’re trying to do? Even if their intention is like “I’m trying to relax and read my book on the couch,” that’s an intention. And if they’re being prevented in that intention they have reason to be upset.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, even if it seems like a passive intention it’s a thing that they’re trying to do as the scene unfolds.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Do you use a different term for what I’m talking about for like what they’re doing in a scene?

**Craig:** No, because I tend to think that these things can be looked at in a macro way and in a micro way, so within a scene there’s a motivation and there’s an intention. And within a movie there’s a motivation and an intention.

If you look at a character in a very big global sense, you can see plenty of movies where the intention doesn’t change at all, or changes multiple times throughout the movie — what it is the character is trying to achieve changes.

But, it is a rare movie where the motivation never changes and it is a rare movie where the motivation changes more than once or twice, because what motivates somebody is fundamental. And because it’s fundamental, we like to see what’s motivating somebody change. That’s part of what’s built into the arc, the so-called arc of the character is the why they’re doing things changes. “I used to do this for money, but now I’m doing it for love,” in a very big, broad way, right?

But, because it’s such a big deal to fundamentally change your point of view, to change it two, or three, or four times starts to water the character down to mush.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, I like to think of characters as their big internal motivations changing at least once but not more than once, so once, right? I think that’s what I mean. Changing once.

But intentions can change a lot or not at all. And sometimes it’s interesting to watch a character whose intention remains exactly the same throughout the movie but the motivation changes for it. That’s interesting.

**John:** Yes. I would also say that a lot of times you think about this with like sort of very classic hero’s journey kind of stories, but Erin Brockovich is a movie that somehow leapt to my mind as we were talking through this is that Erin Brockovich, you know, if you watch her general motivation in that film, as my recollection of it, is she wanted to achieve — so she wanted to achieve something. She wanted to sort of rebuild and restructure her life. She had these things — she wanted to be a different kind of person than she was and be perceived as a different kind of person than she really was.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But her intentions moment by moment are often very much about the case.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And about like getting these people on this porch to trust her and to let her into their lives. And so it was a good example of writing that you can see the overall arc of what she was trying to do, and the actual detailed plot of what’s happening moment, by moment, by moment doesn’t feel like it’s actually hitting that thing, but it always is sort of hitting that thing. What she’s trying to do, literally getting into that door, or getting this next person to take her seriously is reflected in the bigger goal of hers, to be a different person.

**Craig:** Yeah. I totally agree with that. And that’s where I think you want intentions to constantly be changing in relation to the sort of micro intention should constantly be changing. Watching characters shift tactics is a change in intention. Okay, my intention is to intimidate you. Okay, now my intention is to appeal to your better nature. Okay, now my intention is to make a deal with you. So, these exchanges make human interactions interesting.

But my motivation in that scene probably doesn’t change at all. My motivation is because I need this.

**John:** Yes. Your motivation will change as a result of many scenes or many encounters that have nudged you in that way.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, and again, it’s so tempting to think about, oh, intention is something that the hero has, or the main character has, but I really would stress that it’s something that you should be able to pause and look at everybody in that scene and understand what their intention is. Even like to some degree that guy who’s in the background past, sort of the extra who is going from this way to that way, well why is he doing that?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And sometimes you’re just really trying to — really you’re just trying to make the frame not be so empty, but when you can possibly have a reason for why that background pass is happening, the world feels more real.

**Craig:** Agreed. Everything should be motivated. And you can tell sometimes in movies things aren’t motivated for what we call organic reasons that are reasons that are true to the story and the world around it. They’re motivated by external reasons like wouldn’t it be cool if…

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** …car went kaboom. And sometimes it is cool. But, better to see if you can’t make it cool and also motivated.

**John:** Yes. I’ll also say intention is one of those terms you’ll hear actors say a lot, because if you look at what an actor needs to do it’s trying to create the reality, moment by moment, of what the character is trying to achieve in this specific moment.

It’s like an actor in a scene can’t be responsible for the overall arc of the character and all that other stuff. That’s the responsibility of the script. What the actor can be responsible for is, “Is the way I’m interacting with people around me believable for this character? And believable for what this character is trying to have happen right at this moment?”

**Craig:** Well, that’s a good segue I suppose into discussing actors because you do hear that famous, “What’s my motivation?” or “What’s my intention?” all the time. And I think that writers are either scared of talking to actors, particularly when they’re famous and well-established, or they’re just clueless about how to talk to actors. And they don’t understand what actors do.

And, so they blow it all the time. I’ve witnessed it over and over. So, I figured we could talk today about how you and I go about talking to actors and helping them do their jobs better and maybe also, hopefully, they’re helping us do our jobs better.

**John:** I think it’s a terrific conversation. So, do you want to frame this in the context of you are the writer but not the director on the project?

**Craig:** Yeah. I think so. And it’s not that directors don’t have to deal with this all the time, too. They do. But there’s something interesting — there’s an interesting thing between writers and actors just as there is between writers and directors. There is an awkwardness that is around the fact that the writer has seen the movie, has created the movie, has done a thing that has brought everybody together to make the movie, and everybody is a little concerned about it, because there’s a lot of power in that act. And everybody understands that they now have to go and perform it and capture it.

And in doing so, things are going to happen. Even if everybody really wants to stick very, very closely to the script, things are still going to happen. And everyone, I think, initially is wary of a writer who is going to stifle or attempt to quash what could be some happy accidents. And so much about performance in particular is about being in the moment and natural which requires the opposite of a screenplay. It’s a very difficult thing to do — take something that is static and fixed and present it as dynamic and of a moment and extemporaneous. Very hard to do.

So, the first bit of advice that I have for writers when they’re talking to actors is something to think about before they talk to actors, before they walk up to an actor or before they even consider it. And that is to appreciate what these people have. You may not like the way they talk about your script. You may think that they don’t understand the script at all. You might be right. That happens sometimes.

But you also have to acknowledge that if it were you, the movie would be awful, and not because you’re not a big star that people didn’t know, but because you’re not a good actor, and because your face doesn’t belong on film. There are faces that belong in movies and there are faces that don’t. It’s not even a question of beauty. There are some remarkably odd looking faces that have had amazing characters. But there is a magic that is both internal and external to being a movie star.

So, stop for a moment and say, “Let me give this person the respect they deserve for having something unique that I do not have. And let me then also ask myself is it possible that maybe there’s a little bit of magic there that is not just the result of a roll of the dice but some craft, because it is craft. So, start from a place of respect.

**John:** Yes. My general advice that I’ve been using the last couple of months is assume good intention. And so whenever someday says something that’s like kind of offensive to me, I stop for a second and think, “Well, you know what? They probably meant that not at all the way I heard that and they actually meant that in a positive way.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And I find a lot of conversations with actors can be like that way because they’ll say like, “This doesn’t make sense, or my character would never do this.” And, they’re wrong, because the character — I know the character really well. I was all the characters before they were those characters.

But, they’re saying that because they are feeling that they cannot actually achieve this thing here, or they can’t get from point A to point B in a way that is going to make sense for them on film. And if it’s not going to make sense for them on film, it’s not going to make sense in the finished product.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** So, they’re asking you for help. They’re just asking you for help in a frustrating way.

**Craig:** They are. And sometimes you may find yourself feeling like, “Well, why am I always the one that has to sort of not throw a tantrum?” You can throw a tantrum if you want. It’s not going to get you very far in the world.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** And I don’t really think of these people as throwing tantrums. I think that when an actor says, “Well, my character wouldn’t do that,” they mean my character, meaning me playing this character wouldn’t do that. And they’re right. Their character wouldn’t do it. You wrote a character that wasn’t their character, it was your character, and now it’s their character. And it has to go through their brain, their mind, their memories, their abilities, their character wouldn’t do that.

There are two great fears that I remind myself I think all actors have all the time. One is that they don’t understand how they’re supposed to play something, which is terrifying the way that it’s terrifying for us when we don’t know how to write something. And the other great fear they have is of being embarrassed. And the embarrassment that you suffer as an actor is so much more profound, public, and visible than the embarrassment we suffer as writers.

So, when an actor, this is great — I’m glad you brought that up. Because when an actor says, “My character wouldn’t do this,” take it seriously. And then explain as best you can what you were going for without shackling them to what’s there. And just say, “Well, forget what’s there. Here’s what I was going for and here’s what my reasoning was. And let’s just have a discussion.”

A lot of times just by talking it through it comes around to the smallest thing. The smallest thing. And you walk away thinking, “That was all about that?!” Yeah, okay. So it was, but they needed that. And god knows we have enough of our own foibles that we can’t really afford to point fingers at others.

**John:** The other thing I would stress is remember that you’re talking to — you’re usually talking to them about specific moments and specific scenes. And your answer as the writer can never be, “Because we need this to happen here or to do this.” You can never talk in terms of the story, because the story is not interesting to the actor. The actor is trying to focus on what they do in this moment.

So, generally, you’re going to be focusing on what is the journey of this character in this moment, to the next moment, to the next moment, and it has to seem like the character is in control of all these things and that the character is not doing something because the movie needs him to do it.

**Craig:** And that’s bad writing anyway if that’s what you — you know, that’s embarrassing for you to say, “Well, I know it doesn’t make any — really, it’s not necessarily connected to character. We just need to because we need that thing/explosion to happen, or we just need you to say that so we can be able to walk through the door there. It’s bad writing.

**John:** Well, yeah, but no, it’s not necessarily bad writing. Because, to be fair, there are times where we are cutting out of scene on a specific moment because that cut was going to give us power to get to the next thing, but the actor doesn’t feel that because the actor sees like, “But I would say this, and I would say this, and I would say this.” And you’re like, yes, you would, but the scene has already cut by that point.

**Craig:** Oh, I’ve never really had an experience where that was going on. Sometimes when actors ask to go a little longer in the scene, I think it’s perfectly fine to say great, do it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** If you know you’re getting the scissors in earlier, go nuts. [laughs] You know, to me, also, being a good editor and being able to edit in your mind will save you some battles that you don’t need to fight.

**John:** Yeah. But that’s honestly, that’s the luxury of being the empowered writer who is allowed to sort of say that, “Oh, you can keep going on.” So, if you’re saying like, oh, you’re going to keep improving after this point, but if the writer is now being expected to make a scene go longer than it would ever possibly be, and to have to defend that longer scene to the director, to the producers, to everybody else.

**Craig:** Oh, no, no, no. That’s where you go to the director and you’re just like, “Look, they want to just keep talking. You want me to just write this to make them feel good and we’ll just shoot a little bit of it?” Which, you can do.

I mean, I have to say, I’ve actually never had this come up. That’s never come up. I mean, usually because a responsible actor has read the script, knows what’s coming next, understands things. And that’s really also the director at that point should be stepping in to sort of defend his cut, because ultimately that’s what we’re talking about is transitions and cuts.

**John:** In general I found one of the most helpful processes to this part of getting the movie ready to with you have the script, you have the actors, is to get everyone in a room and read the script aloud at least once.

**Craig:** For sure.

**John:** Because that way you know that every actor at that table has at least heard the whole movie once. Because otherwise actors will focus on the scenes that they’re in and really won’t have a good sense of what the rest of the movie is. And so not only will that make them understand why those scenes are those scenes, but they’ll also know like who everybody else in the movie actually is in a way that’s very, very helpful

**Craig:** Right. I do agree with that. I think every movie should have that read through, even if you just do — I think on Identity Thief we just did a read through really with Melissa and Jason. And that was fine.

**John:** That’s fine.

**Craig:** We didn’t need to do like all the side parts. As long as those two understood everything and that I was able to hear it and then go, by the way, the other thing is you have to, when you start to hear your actors, they’re now the cast. They will be those characters forever. Forever.

So, you have to listen now and you have to go back and you have to adjust to fit the way they are doing it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And don’t be tight about that. Be okay with that. The intentions, the motivations as we discussed, don’t have to change. Your structure, all of the dramatic import is there. It’s just the expression of it, because ultimately — you know, there’s this really funny audio clip on the internet of William Shatner berating some poor director that he’s recording some voiceover for.

And so he’s doing this voiceover. It sounds like it’s for a museum or something about exploring the galaxy or something. And the guy says, “Well, I was kind of hoping you’d do it a little more like this, more like that.” And William Shatner goes, “Well, how would you like me to do it? How do you hear it?” And the guy makes the terrible mistake of doing it.

**John:** Oh, no, never a good idea.

**Craig:** And Shatner is, “Oh, is that what you want? Okay.” And then Shatner does an amazing impression of that guy doing it and it’s awful. And while Shatner is a terrible person for doing that, [laughs], he does have a point which is, “Hey, I get that it’s not the way you heard it in your head. I’m not in your head. I’m not you. I’m me. I’m the movie star. Maybe there might be value in the way I’m doing it. So, perhaps you can help adjust the way I’m doing it, but still make it the way I do it, because I’m me.” And I think there’s wisdom in that.

**John:** There is. One of the things that has been most interesting about Big Fish is that unlike movies or a TV show where obviously you’re going to film it once and that actor is that character, it’s all the same, ideally in a Broadway show the Broadway show should be the same Broadway show no matter who is actually playing those parts. And that’s been a fascinating thing is that we’ve had moments where an understudy has to go in, or someone else has to go in, or we just have to fill in for whatever reason. So, it’s that balance between tailoring it for one specific person’s voice and making it something that can be played by a range of people.

**Craig:** Well, it’s funny, my son and I have been listening to Fiddler on the Roof lately a lot. And so, you know, I started with the original Broadway recording, which for me is the superior recording with Zero Mostel. And then we started listening to the Topol version, which was the London cast, which I hate. But I know a lot of people like Topol. I do not.

And it is remarkable how you can see that the part was very difficult for somebody who wasn’t a — for lack of a better word — a New York Yiddish theater troupe kind of actor to do. The jokes are very kind of old school Yiddish jokes. And Topol is Israeli and just doesn’t get them. He doesn’t get the jokes, you know? It is interesting to see how that translates so oddly.

I mean, the other thing is I was watching — I finally got around to watching the movie version of Les Miserables. And there are just so many choices where I went, whoa, that was weird.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, forget the directorial choices, just the actors the way they performed it, the way they chose to inflect things and approach things. It was just like, “That was weird.” But, you know, when you sort of think about it, do you think, well, the idea here is this is my A cast, and eventually they will go away one day, if the show is a hit, and it goes on and on. Eventually they will go away and a second refreshed cast will come in like they have for instance for Mormon.

And the idea is that that second cast coming in should be essentially copying the first cast?

**John:** That is a very interesting question and sometimes you would love to have copying, where essentially one person sets the template and the next cast, person cast in that role, does the same thing and sort of hits the same beats and inflects things the same way and it’s just like you’ve slotted in the clone for somebody.

But other times that’s not the right choice and a different energy is a fascinating great energy.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, two recent things I can say about this is I saw Wicked when it first opened ten years ago, it was still in previews ten years ago. And then we took our daughter to see it last week and I loved it both times. The first time I saw it with Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, and this last time it was with new actors, and the Elphaba was a very different characterization than I remember from when I first saw it, when I first saw Idina Menzel do it. But I really dug what she did. She made some really strange sort of nerdy choices that were kind of great for it.

And the woman playing Glinda, she was terrific also, but I could not see that without seeing Kristin Chenoweth. I felt like Kristin Chenoweth and that Glinda role were fused in a way that is very hard to separate. And I’m sure you could do a Glinda that didn’t do any of Kristin Chenoweth’s stuff, but it feels like it would be really hard to.

**Craig:** Well, I wonder if maybe for musicals it’s a question of time as well. You know, like Mormon, this is the second cast. They’re still in their kind of — it feels like the first run of it, still. So, it’s kind of like, here, we’re letting those guys off the hook but we still have a few people that are in it like Nikki, oh geez, I’m blanking on her last name. I apologize. But she’s still there from the original cast, so it’s still kind of like the original show. So it just copied those guys.

But if it comes back, or if it keeps going, if it’s eight years down the road let’s just change it up because it’s going to get stale. And, of course, if you revive something, change it up just to be interesting.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Well, anyway, that will be a good problem for you to worry about.

**John:** These would be luxury problems that we have to think about how we’re going to — what we’re going to do as we recast.

**Craig:** Luxury problems.

**John:** And, honestly, it is a thing that comes up because right now we have Norbert Leo Butz playing the lead, and he’s phenomenal. And he’s a terrific actor, and a terrific dancer, and a terrific singer, and to find somebody who could do all those things as well as he does is going to be terrifically challenging. But that’s, again, luxury problems.

**Craig:** Doogie Howser. That’s my vote.

**John:** So, let’s segue to our third topic here which is sort of on the set writing and sort of what that kit is because that’s all I’ve been doing the last two months is making those changes day by day and creating those pages for what’s actually happening. So, I’m curious when you’re doing the Hangover movies, what is your setup — ?

**Craig:** I got it so I got a real system there, because the Hangover movies take us to some strange places obviously, whether it’s hot and muggy and traffic-y Bangkok, or I’m in the middle of the desert somewhere. And the truth is the writing never stops, so there’s a couple of things that I think about. One is, what’s my equipment that I need, and two, what’s my process, so that I can be as efficient as all the people around me.

So, first, let’s just talk about stuff, because — this is probably less important for theater because you’re inside and it’s theoretically air-conditioning, but for movies you could be on rocks, you could be on water, you could be anywhere.

You want to have a very rugged laptop case, something that can take a little bit of a beating. You don’t need one of those Alienware moon laptops. A regular laptop is fine. But you do need some stuff. You probably want an internet connection. It would behoove you to have one. A lot of movie productions now have WiFi bases that they broadcast from the generator truck and elsewhere so you can hook into that. The signal is iffy a lot.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, the other option is to get one of those little Verizon USB thingies that pick up a cell signal. And hopefully you can have one or the other. You definitely want a couple of USB thumb drives. Those become super important when you can’t necessarily email stuff back and forth. You want a good portable printer. There are a bunch out there that are lightweight. You want to be able to print either wirelessly or back it up to print via a USB cable. And you’ll need some paper, of course. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy there, just some paper.

The printer should be small and it doesn’t need to be super fast because you’re never going to be printing out lots of pages. The most pages that will be printing out at a time? Probably three, because that’s about how many pages you’re shooting on a day, unless you’re shooting in India and then it’s seven, so it’s not that big of a deal. Right? It’s portable better than huge.

When you — if you are going to be an onset writer, then what you want to do is find your First AD pretty early on before the movie starts and say, look, we’re going to be doing some writing day by day. I don’t need much. All I need is this. I need a cart that I can put my laptop on. Obviously I need a chair from props. They make those little foldy chairs. I need in the morning just as a matter of routine I need the electricians to hook up power to the cart and I need a power strip duct-taped to the cart. So, it’s just a cart, a seat, and a functioning power strip. That’s all I need. I’ll take care of the rest. [laughs]

And they can do that. They can do that anywhere you go. Once you have your cart, your power strip, you can do whatever you need to do.

**John:** So, do you leave your portable printer on the cart?

**Craig:** I do. You can leave stuff on the cart and they’ll just pack it up on the truck and then bring it back the next day and they will appreciate the fact that it’s not this massive laser printer, but an eight pound piece of plastic that fits on the bottom of the cart.

All of your charging cables and all the rest of that you put back in your laptop bag. Your laptop you take with you. All that stuff you take with you. I usually leave — on the cart I leave the printer and the paper, the ream of paper. That’s it. Everything else goes.

The cart is usually the domain of the video playback guy, so be very nice to him and be good friends with him. Usually the cart is part and parcel with the producer area or a secondary thing. If you’re not going to be part and parcel with the producer area then you just need a secondary cart. That’s it. And you get one.

**John:** That’s awesome. Craig, I’ve actually learned a lot from that because I’ve never had to do that kind of stuff. And so the times that I’ve been writing on set I’ve generally been back in the trailer, because I’ve not been on the kind of things where I’m going to be generating a new page literally five feet away from where that thing is filming.

I’ve always been able to go back to my trailer to do stuff.

**Craig:** Yeah, I find that when you go away, just be going away you open the door to other people solving problems, and some of them aren’t people you want solving problems.

**John:** I hear you.

**Craig:** The fact that you’re there, present, typing — everybody lets you do it. [laughs] Then you print it out. Now, the other thing that I find very useful for film production is, and I would do this on the Hangover movies, before each day, when I would get in in the morning, you know, somebody hands you sides which is just your little miniature page printed up version of that day’s work. So, let’s say you’re doing scene 120 today and it’s three pages, so here’s three little mini pages.

And I watch as the director and the actors talk about blocking and all the rest and if there are any questions for me, I’m there if that should happen. Once that’s over, there’s usually at least an hour where they’re in hair and makeup and the crew is lighting the set, or the location. That’s when I go back to my cart, open up my laptop, and then I go into my document and I pull out the day’s work. And I make a new document that’s just Day This for that day, and that thing.

Because, I don’t have these little sides-y things in my computer. And I don’t necessarily want to be making constant changes in the master script, because a lot of this stuff you’re not issuing as official, “official pages.” So, I’ll do it just as a side document. And then at the end of the day I take the side document that was finalized and I paste it back into the master. And eventually I get to a point where I’m like, okay, if you want we can issue a whole bunch of changed pages or not. It depends on how that production works.

**John:** So, on scenarios like this when you are making some changes to this little document, is it mostly in consultation with the director before the actors come back to set, or is it once they’ve come back and they’ve started kind of playing around in the scene and you figure out who’s actually going to say what, when, and how you’re going to move stuff around?

**Craig:** Kind of a crapshoot depending on the day’s work. So, on some days they would come back in and it wouldn’t feel right and we’d take a break and Todd and I would sit and work on something. Some days Todd and I would work on things while they were in that hair and makeup session and get it dialed in. Sometimes we would just come up with some alt lines when we were doing coverage and so we would work on those.

So, you just stay flexible within the day’s work. And you’re always there to do what you need to do. And just be flexible. So, the last thing you want is to have anything getting in the way of you being able to deliver work to wherever you are, whether it’s on a boat, or on the top of a building. I’ve been on both of those, or, you know, in a field, or in a desert. I’ve been in those. You want your rig so you can do your work.

**John:** Now, I want to make sure that listeners understand that what Craig is describing isn’t actually typical for a lot of screenwriters in that I’ve never had to do that and I’ve had a lot of movies made. And I’ve been the writer on set on those movies to the degree that there was a set to be a writer on. But at most I would sort of like answer a question or talk about the next day’s shooting work. But was very rarely involved in any rewrites on what was actually happening that day.

**Craig:** You’re hearing of it more and more. I’ve been doing it like this for a long time. I don’t know why, it’s just for whatever reason this is how my life and my career has gone. But, for instance, I know that Chris McQuarrie did it on World War Z. And, I’m trying to think of somebody else who I know was in the trenches on a movie. I know Chris Morgan does it on the Fast & Furious movies.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** So, people are doing it more and more. And I wasn’t able to do it on Identity Thief. I would have liked to have been able to do it. But for that what happened is I would usually get calls about, okay, tomorrow’s work, or next week’s work. And so then I would send those so there would be kind of a — all right, well, when you wake up in the morning the elves will have made you pages. That kind of thing.

**John:** That’s usually the case of what I’m facing is that as something comes up in the schedule that’s about to shoot and there are issues about it, then I’ll have those conversations and do whatever needs to get done. But, for a movie like Go I was there for every frame shot, but it was literally like, “You’re going to shoot what I wrote.” And that sometimes works out very nicely, too.

**Craig:** For sure. I mean, the thing about the Hangover movies is they weren’t my movies. I was a Johnny Come Lately in the trilogy anyway. And I wrote them with Todd. So, really, it was about being a co-writer and a partner to him. And since he’s the director, he can rewrite anything he wants. [laughs] And he’s a writer. So, then it was just about sometimes the two of us.

And, you know, sometimes it was really hard and sometimes it was great. Sometimes it was fun. I remember one scene, I just remember the two of us sitting on like a piece of scenery on a soundstage with a laptop and it was one of those moment where you’re like, look at us, we’re like movie guys. And there was another day where we were struggling with something and we got in the golf cart and drove around Warner Bros. until we figured it out. And that was another, look at us, this is like right out of a movie about how they make movies.

Most of the time it was just me at my cart, with a cup of bad craft service coffee, banging away.

**John:** Yup. To give a quick version of what the theater equivalent of that is, so we go through two stages. Obviously we are writing, just me and Andrew Lippa, doing all our stuff and performing for the producers for a long time, but once we’re sort of — our equivalent of being onset is in the rehearsal hall which is where we sort of go through and we stage the whole thing just with temporary props and rehearsal clothes and not the real anything, and in that, you’re trying to get what you wrote to actually make sense on the stage, but there’s constant adjustments based on what’s actually going to be possible or when you can get somebody on or off.

For that, I have my little MacBook Air. There’s a printer down at the edge where I can print to and I will generate new pages. Usually we’ll put out pages at the end of the day, and so we’ll reflect what we have done that changed today, and what we want to change — the stuff that’s going to effect tomorrow — and so I will print out those pages. Director Susan Stroman and I will go through and we’ll agree that these are the real pages and that changes the master script. And that’s a big difference from everything that we do really in film and in television where because that’s now the template for how we’re going to make the show from here on out…

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** …everything has to be reflected in the script or else it just doesn’t actually happen. And it’s not just like the actors need to know their lines. That script is also what all the cues are called off of. And so if one line has changed, that could affect the music department, the lighting department, projections, everybody else.

**Craig:** It’s so different, yeah. Because in movies and in TV when you finish your day it’s like you’ve eaten food. It’s gone. It’s eaten. It’s not coming back. You’re not doing that again. It’s onto the next. And when you make changes in a show like this that’s meant to be performed over and over, it’s never eaten. It’s always there. Like an embalmed body, it’s always there.

I have a question for you. Do you ever feel this inner pull? Sometimes I feel it and I always shut it down because I think it’s bad news. But this little voice that goes, “Don’t you just want to be done?”

**John:** Absolutely. It’s the inherent unfinishability of theater that is both terrific and really maddening. Is that there’s no post-production because you’re never actually finished. And so we will open the show on October 6, and that will be the end of probably writing for this version that’s on the stage right now.

But then there will be immediate conversations about all of the other versions we have to do. So, god-willing, we wanted to stage this somewhere else, we’d have to be able to figure out how we’re going to do that. And every department will have challenges about how we’re going to do that. Are we going to be able to have this large of a cast? Are we going to be able to have this kind of set? If we don’t have this kind of set, what would make sense?

We have a giant USO number in the show. And will that make sense in Europe? Probably not. So, there may be some real fundamental changes that I’ll be making on the show and I’ll probably be writing some version of it the rest of my life. And that’s maddening to some degree, not just because, oh, I love this project, but having to continue to rewrite this project keeps me from writing the next thing.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm. Yeah. And even just on a small basis, even on things that are finishable, there’s that feeling sometimes of let’s just do — let’s stop trying to do things to it. And, you know, there is such a thing as over-writing and there is such a thing as getting bored with your own work and hurting it by working on it too much. But more often than not the more willing you are to entertain even the craziest suggestion, the better off you are.

You just have to be willing to not look at that pain as pain.

**John:** Yes. I mean, the luxury we have is that we have a test screening every night. So, we get to know every night how is it working.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so you can polish and refine it in ways that are very difficult to do in a movie. In a movie you can do your test screenings, and maybe you can do some reshooting, but like you’re not going to vastly change things.

We have vastly changed the first act from Chicago to here and it’s a much better show for it. And we could do that because we could do that, because we had the resources, we had the time, we had the stamina to actually like rip things apart and put them back together in a better way. So, that’s a great luxury.

So, I, too, am a fan of cheap printers. It’s really remarkable how cheap printers have become. The ink jet ones, the printer is essentially disposable because the ink cartridges cost more than the actual printer does.

**Craig:** I know, it’s sick.

**John:** But Nima Yousefi who now works for me found on Amazon this really amazing Brother HL printer that’s $70. It’s like a laser printer that’s actually surprisingly fast. So, I have that in my apartment here in New York and that’s the printer I use here as I’m generating stuff, so like we’re putting out new pages tomorrow so that’s been my test printer for that.

**Craig:** I can’t recommend the printer I was using on The Hangover because I hated it. I hated it. It was a Canon. It was crap.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I was angry at it all the time.

**John:** But there’s something lovely about putting something on paper once just to make sure it’s looking right. But most of what you’re going to end up doing is going to be emails and Dropbox. And that’s why an internet connection is so important.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s a big help. I mean, if you, for instance, need to quickly — sometimes they’re waiting — sometimes what happens is you watch the scene, everybody works on the scene together, me, the director, the actors, we all come up with a version. And what I’m doing while we’re doing it is I’m writing it on the sides in pen. And then we get it, and we’re happy, and we’re good.

Now, okay, they’re all going to do five minute touch-ups, and then we’ve got to shoot. I’ve got to go type that so that they have it, so they can read it, because no one can read my scrawl and it’s only on one little thing.

So, now I type it up really quickly, I get it right. Now, how do I make, okay, it’s a scene with six people. It’s three pages. I’ve got to print out 18 pages. How quickly can I get that done, you know? So, sometimes it’s easier to just email it to the production trailer and have them run it over.

**John:** Yeah. The thing I found very useful about theater is that index cards are heavily used. And so on an index card if I change a line I will write it in pen on an index card and hand it to the actor directly if it’s something where we’re literally changing the line in front of the actor, or I’ll hand it to Stroman, the director, for like this is what the new line is so that before there’s a new page there’s at least a card that reflects what that new line is.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Index cards are sort of one of the main forms of documentation in this part of the business.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** So, Craig, I think it’s time for our One Cool Things.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** And my One Cool Thing is, again, I feel like I’ve cheated on you a little bit because I did another broadcast. But I just did KCRW’s The Business, which is a great podcast. I know you don’t listen to other podcasts, but it’s a radio show and a podcast hosted by Kim Masters.

**Craig:** I’ve done that before.

**John:** Ah, in that case you’ve been in that little crazy basement at Santa Monica College?

**Craig:** No, I did it by phone. I phoned it in. Literally phoned it in.

**John:** You literally phoned it in. Dan Jinks and I went and did an interview with her about the business of making Big Fish and sort of like the whole process and how that all works. And I was reminded that I never actually I think hyped that podcast or that show on the air. And it really is a terrific look at sort of mostly how Hollywood functions. And she takes one or two topics each week and really sort of drills in with interviews.

She does this sort of news recap with John Horn of the LA Times. And then Darby Maloney who is the producer and editor of it just does a terrific job distilling stuff down.

You and I when we talk, it’s just this sort of raw, unfiltered, people blathering, but this is a much more carefully crafted thing. I would highly recommend it.

**Craig:** But our raw, unfiltered blathering is remarkably well organized. Do you ever read the transcripts of our podcasts?

**John:** Sometimes it really does seem like we were, you know, we planned it.

**Craig:** That we were reading off of sheets of paper. We’re really good at this, John. We’re really good at this.

**John:** Oh, we’re incredibly good.

**Craig:** So good.

**John:** Although, one listener did email in this last week pointing out that my elocution, my diction has taken a nosedive.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** And it’s honestly true. And I hear it myself even as I’m doing this now. I am so tired, Craig. I am zombie tired. And today was supposed to be — we’re recording this on a Sunday — was supposed to be my day off, but then we had six hours of meetings.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So, it has not been a day off.

**Craig:** Well, I think it’s terrific that you are using the euphemism six hours of meetings to describe your obvious alcoholism.

**John:** [laughs] That’s really what it is. It’s all a desperate cry for help.

**Craig:** I had a six hour meeting with this bottle of rye. Uh, you’re a drunk. There’s no other possible explanation for “inneresting.”

**John:** Yeah, I’m drunk at —

**Craig:** All moment. Constantly drunk.

**John:** Either drunk or I’m from Colorado. Those are the two choices.

**Craig:** Is there a difference?

**John:** It’s attitude.

**Craig:** It’s altitude sickness. Well, I have a Cool Thing this week that was, as are so many of my Cool Things, recommend by a Twitter follower. But this one really has the potential to be awesome. It’s almost there. It’s not quite there yet, but they’re working on it. It’s called writerduet.com. It is free. And the idea of writerduet.com is to provide functionality that already exists in Final Draft and Movie Magic.

Well, what would be so cool about that, you ask. Well, the functionality in Final Draft and Movie Magic, that is to say the ability to write and collaborate with another writer via an online connection is offered but it doesn’t work in either software. It has never worked. It is insane. The way they’ve set it up and what they require is ridiculous. It will never work.

So, what one of those companies should have done but failed to do years ago was to setup a server and make it web-based and allow people to upload a script, an existing script, to that, or to begin to write an existing script in that service. And to do it collaboratively a la Google Docs.

And that’s what writerduet.com has done. They do accept PDF and FDX imports. I’m not sure how they’re converting the PDF to text. Perhaps they’re using some form of your Highland. I don’t know.

**John:** Perhaps.

**Craig:** Ripping you off. I’m sure you’re immediately hitting —

**John:** No, it’s absolutely fair. I think, I kind of believe they may actually be using Fountain as their underlying, because I have heard of the service. I will Google them after.

**Craig:** And it works. So, I tested it with my assistant and the two of us worked and it worked. And it was good. It’s a little slow, a little kludgy here and there. There’s some things that they’ve got to work out. And when I uploaded a full Final Draft script, a full 115 page script, my browser got really slow, to the point of just not being usable.

So, I mentioned that to the developer and he said, “Okay, got it. I’m going to work on that.” And I find that these guys do work on these things and they do make them better.

So, I think if you’re interested in something like this and you at least want to poke around at it, it’s the future, I think. I think this is where things are going to go. Writerduet.com.

**John:** Fantastic. I will point out that several writers I know do use Google Docs for exactly this purpose. And they just use Fountain. They use the plain text markup language in Fountain to do it. And that works great for them, too. So, it’s nice that there are multiple places trying to do the same things and try to do them a bit more smartly than the big behemoth apps.

**Craig:** Yeah. Agreed.

**John:** Cool. Craig, thank you for getting me through another podcast.

**Craig:** You did it. You did it, buddy. Hang in there. I’ll be there soon. And, [sirens in background], oh, and look, the sirens are here. That means it’s time to sign off and say goodnight.

**John:** All right, Craig, thank you.

**Craig:** Thank you, John. Bye.

**John:** Goodnight.

Links:

* [Shofars](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shofar) on Wikipedia
* [Submit your Three Pages now](http://johnaugust.com/threepage) and let us know you’ll be at the [2013 Austin Film Festival](http://www.austinfilmfestival.com/)
* [The William Shatner recording session](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfDHIqmUUMs)
* [Brother HL2230 Laser Printer](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004H1PB9I/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) on Amazon
* John and Dan Jinks on [KCRW’s The Business](http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/tb/tb130909john_august_and_dan_)
* [Writerduet.com](https://writerduet.com/) lets you collaborate in real-time
* Outro by Scriptnotes listener Kurt Kuenne