Search Results for: book rights

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to episode 697 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, it’s a new round of how would this be a movie? We’re going to look at four stories in the news and examine their cinematic essences. In our bonus segment for premium members, let’s talk about kindness, Craig. The quality I feel like we’re undervaluing and sometimes confusing and conflating with other things is niceness and politeness. Kindness is different.

Craig: Yes, it’s sort of out of fashion, isn’t it?

John: Yes, it is. I think it’s an evergreen value. We’ll talk about kindness.

Craig: Sure.

John: Most crucially and fundamentally, we have big news today. We are officially announcing the Scriptnotes book. Long spoken about on this podcast, but it is now available for pre-order starting today as you’re listening to this podcast.

Craig: It’s an actual book.

John: It’s an actual book. You’ve seen the PDF of it in this typeset.

Craig: Oh, yes. The book is an object you could now hit somebody with in the head. It’s real.

John: It’s real. I don’t have a physical book in front of me, but underneath the laptop here, there is a copy of the German edition of Arlo Finch. That is the size and dimension of the book.

Craig: Perfect.

John: That’s what it’s going to feel like.

Craig: It’s a real book. For a long time, we bemoaned the state of screenwriting books. Yes, I think of all the screenwriting books on the shelf, at the store, the virtual store, I think ours is the best. I really do.

John: I genuinely do too.

Craig: Yes.

John: Our book is 43 chapters.

Craig: 43?

John: Yes.

Craig: But they’re short.

John: Yes, they’re short, but they’re important chapters.

Craig: Great bathroom book.

John: Yes, great bathroom book. It says so in the book that if this were to become your bathroom book, we would no higher flatter.

Craig: Thrilled.

John: Absolutely. 43 chapters, 335 pages. Responsibility for this, we have to acknowledge. It fell upon Drew Marquardt, our producer, Chris Csont, Megana Rao, our former screenwriter and producer, and Halley Lamberson, who was our former intern. They wrestled through a thousand hours of transcripts to pull chunks together to figure out what this was and then get it into a prose form that is not me talking or you talking, but it’s us talking, which was a difficult thing to do.

Craig: It’s like a duck press. Are you familiar with the duck press?

John: Tell me about a duck press.

Craig: It’s a little disgusting, but it’s very French. Duck press, you basically can put duck inside of this and squeeze. It’s like a huge lever and it squishes [crosstalk] all the juices out. It basically pulls out the most basic, concentrated form of script notes. We’ve put it through the duck press.

John: Oh, okay.

Craig: Certainly, you deserve acknowledgement. You’ve done a lot of work on the book.

John: I had this fantasy that between the four of them, they’d be able to get a written tone that feels right. Now I did have to run my fingers through everything and do it.

Craig: I deserve no credit, other than the fact that I talked for a lot.

John: You did talk for a lot.

Craig: A lot.

John: You created credits on the front of the book.

Craig: Listen, talking is really important. It is the essence that comes out of the duck press.

John: Let’s talk through what is actually inside the book. We have the topic chapters. There’s 21 of them and there’s guest chapters, which are 20. Should we just read through them one by one sort of what the chapters are, so people know what they’re going to be getting?

Craig: Sure, that’s quite a few chapters. We’ll talk about the top. My goodness, 21 topic chapters. I’m almost tempted to just rattle these off to overwhelm people.

John: We’ll alternate.

Craig: Oh, you want to alternate?

John: Yes.

Craig: I love it. The rules of screenwriting.

John: Deciding what to write.

Craig: Protagonists.

John: Relationships.

Craig: Conflict.

John: Dialogue and exposition.

Craig: Point of view.

John: How to write a scene.

Craig: Locations and world-building.

John: Plot and plot holes.

Craig: Mystery, confusion, suspense.

John: Writing action.

Craig: Structure.

John: The beginning.

Craig: The end.

John: How to write a movie.

Craig: That’s a good one. Pitching.

John: Notes on notes.

Craig: What it’s like to be a screenwriter.

John: Patterns of success.

Craig: Appropriately, a final word. John, that covers everything.

John: The goal was to cover the craft and the business. It’s more craft at the start and it gets more business towards the end.

Craig: Great.

John: Just the psychology of what it feels like to be a screenwriter. You’ll recognize some of these titles within titles of episodes, but nothing is basically just one episode, except for how to write a movie is very much your talk that you gave at Austin, which you did as an episode, which is in prose form.

Craig: It’s basically, you can just go boop with that one. I can see how a lot of different episodes have been combined and refined into these things. It is true that it’s impossible, really, to listen to all of the episodes of Scriptnotes at this point.

John: People do it.

Craig: It’s impossible to do it in a way where you would retain everything. This is pretty awesome that you could just go, or here, read this and then start listening to the show for the next 5,000 episodes and see where we go.

John: Published by Crown Books. One of the things that makes me excited about being at a big publisher is they have a whole academic arm, which is just about getting the book into universities.

Craig: Oh.

John: That feels good, because I feel like for a film student, this is a thing that you could use in a class.

Craig: Are they going to do that thing where they charge $5,000 for the book in a university?

John: No, it’s the same price as it is a list.

Craig: What is that?

John: It’s just nuts. It’s a special academic edition or something.

Craig: What do you mean? My God. What a scam.

John: What a scam.

Craig: Going back to the Scott Frank discussion, but we also have these amazing guest chapters where we boil down the best hits of so many great people that we’ve interviewed.

John: One of the fun things about the guest chapters was finding ways so that they are interacting with the chapters around them. If we’re talking about a certain topic, they’re generally related to that or there’s things they’re saying that are-

Craig: It’s like there’s a Segway man.

John: Built into the book.

Craig: Making sure– yes, makes total sense.

John: All right, let’s go through who our guests are.

Craig: All right. We got Christopher Nolan.

John: Michael Schur.

Craig: Lulu Wang.

John: Lorene Scafaria.

Craig: Sam Esmail.

John: Greta Gerwig.

Craig: Justin Simeon.

John: David Koepp.

Craig: David Benioff and Dan Weiss.

John: Damon Lindelof.

Craig: Rian Johnson.

John: Christopher McQuarrie.

Craig: The Daniels.

John: Aline Brosh McKenna.

Craig: Lawrence Kasdan.

John: Eric Roth.

Craig: Seth Rogen.

John: John Lee Hancock.

Craig: Mike Birbiglia.

John: Mike Birbiglia and Ashley Nicole Black.

Craig: What a lineup? Except for Mike Birbiglia, that is an incredible lineup.

John: Yes, just really all-stars and Mike Birbiglia.

Craig: Also- [laughs]

John: He’s so angry right now.

Craig: No, but he’s just like, okay, guys. I could see his face like, huh-huh, okay. We love Mike Birbiglia.

John: We love Mike Birbiglia.

Craig: Maybe more than anyone. When I say more than anyone, I don’t mean more than anybody else that’s on our show. I mean more than anyone on the planet. I mean more than his wife loves him, his child.

John: The shrine you have in your house to him is just a little bit creepy at times, but also, the way you pours the milk, it works.

Craig: A lot creepy all the time, but you know what? Love him.

John: Love him. There’s two special chapters. There’s a deep dive on Die Hard.

Craig: Oh, great.

John: We have that. It’s both our initial conversation and our subsequent conversation with one of the screenwriters of it and an oral history of Scriptnotes with Julia Turner. Remember that 10th anniversary episode?

Craig: Sure.

John: From behind the scenes.

Craig: Oh, yes. Great Julia Turner.

John: The book is available now for pre-order. If you go to scriptnotesbook.com, it’ll lead you to the right bookstores for it.

Craig: When will it actually be on sale?

John: If you pre-order now, you get it December 2nd.

Craig: Oh, this feels like a good Christmas gift.

John: It does feel like a good Christmas gift. You could order for yourself or tell your parent to order it for you.

Craig: Right, or tell your spouse, your partner.

John: Yes.

Craig: Honestly, if you are partnered up with a dork, they’re going to want this probably.

John: Yes.

Craig: That’s very cool. I hope it’s a hit.

John: I would say it too. It doesn’t need to be the out-of-the-gate runaway bestseller, because it’s an evergreen title. There’s always been screenwriting, the fact that it’s not going to go out of date.

Craig: No, nor will it be the hot read over the Christmas break.

John: Would it be great if it were though?

Craig: Yes, sure. I’m not expecting to land on the New York Times bestseller list, but I think at a minimum, now there’s a book that’s worth buying. If your kid is interested in screenwriting and they’re in high school and they’re starting, this is just a simple, easy one. What does it cost, John?

John: The U.S. version I think is $32 or $35.

Craig: That’s reasonable.

John: Yes, and the U.K. version, I’m not sure what the final price is.

Craig: £400.

John: £400. It’s U.K., Australia, New Zealand. They all get one version. It’s largely the same. It’s like the format is slightly different.

Craig: Just colors has a U in it?

John: No. We’re actually not doing any text changes.

Craig: Oh, good.

John: Keeping it American.

Craig: Good.

John: Good. Good, but the cut of the book is a little different. We actually had a phone call, a Zoom about this. Basically, their printing prices just don’t work the same way.

Craig: Interesting. Still Gutenberg-ing it?

John: That’s what it is. That’s how it fits. If you are a listener and you are pre-ordering it today, thank you so much. If you send your receipt for it to Drew at askjohnox.com, we will send you something. We’re not quite sure what that’s going to be, but we’ll send you some of the extra thing for you having pre-ordered it.

Craig: Oh, that’s nice. Cool.

John: Cool.

Craig: Like an object or?

John: I think it’s going to probably be some sort of video of something. Some sort of acknowledgement and a thank you for your pre-order, which is nice.

Craig: What if there’s 10,000 people that pre-order it?

John: Drew’s going to be really busy.

[laughter]

Craig: Oh, Drew, Drew.

John: The other thing you can help us out with, if you are a listener of the show, we are going to be doing some press as we get closer to the time. We are making a list of, what are podcasts we can go on? What are live shows we could do in certain places? There’s limited availability, but there’s things we can do. If you have a podcast or a publication, you think like, oh, John or Craig or both of them should talk to them about this, also, email in to Drew and let Drew know, because we’re trying to get together that schedule for things.

Craig: Fun.

John: Fun. Cool. I will be talking more about this at the Austin Film Festival, but for today, just order your book.

Craig: Yes, we’re going to the Austin Film Festival, fantastic.

John: Scriptnotesbook.com.

Craig: We’re back.

John: All right. Our marquee topic today. How would this be a movie? Craig, can you recap this segment or set up the segment for people who are not familiar with this?

Craig: Sure. In this segment, we take some stories that have been in the news. Sometimes they’re news stories. A lot of times they’re essays. Sometimes they’re actually quite technical. One of them is today. We ask ourselves, okay, if we were running a studio and someone said, oh, we just bought the rights to this thing, how would we make it into a movie? This scenario plays out in studios every day, five days a week, year-round.

John: Absolutely happens in studios, but also happens with producers. Producers are reading, they’re talking to their assistants, their creative executives, there’s this thing, what could this be? Who would we get to write this? What does the actual movie feel like if we’re going to try to do this?

The four things we picked today, three of them are about sort of difficult personal things, and one of them is about a big scientific thing, which is a palate cleanser. Let’s start with A Mother’s Revenge. There’s several articles we could link to for this. The one we’re going to link to is in Slate. It’s as told to Christina Cotterucci, but it’s actually a first-person interview that’s been turned into prose form. It talks about Charlotte Laws, and she has a 24-year-old daughter named Kayla whose email was hacked.

Kayla had a topless picture in her email, which she never sent to anybody, but when she sent it to her computer to save it through her email, that topless picture ended up on one of the most notorious revenge porn sites, isanyoneup.com. Hunter Moore, who ran that website, called himself a professional life-ruiner.

Craig: Great.

John: He put that out there. The mother, Charlotte Laws, wants to get the picture taken down. She calls the FBI, tells her to file a report, so she takes it on herself. She calls everyone, including Hunter’s mother, trying to get this picture taken down. After nine days, it’s finally taken down. They think they’re done, but Charlotte continues to take on the cause of bringing this revenge porn website to justice and take down Hunter Moore.

Finally, the FBI does get involved. Hunter attacks Charlotte online. Anonymous steps in to dox Hunter, and Hunter is ultimately arrested.

Craig: Everybody doxes everybody.

John: This is the account that’s told the slate. I’ll also put a link in the show notes to a Guardian article that has a little bit more on the Hunter side of it all. Craig, what did you take of this situation, this place, and is there a thing about her specific story that’s interesting to you? Tell me what you’re thinking about.

Craig: Yes, this feels very sort of modern Erin Brockovich. A parent or an individual who isn’t necessarily empowered within the justice system, takes it upon themselves to force everybody that is to pay attention to something that’s a real problem. There is also a don’t mess with mom vibe to this, which I love. It is also interesting because it begins when this initial crime occurs. It’s 2012, so it’s a different time.

John: It’s a different internet.

Craig: She actually makes a really interesting point here. There is a ripple effect from what she did. One of the things that we’re always looking for when we’re saying, okay, like how could this be a movie, is how is it relevant? It’s relevant because the work that she did starting with this one picture, which in modern terms almost seems quaint.

John: It does.

Craig: One topless picture? I feel like everyone has everything [chuckles] I don’t.

John: Yes.

Craig: It’s like, it’s so much out there.

John: In a world of AI generated fake images.

Craig: Right, but because of that one picture and her, I think, brave pursuit of justice, eventually laws are created. There were no laws anywhere. Now there are laws in all 50 states against revenge porn.

John: You can imagine the end title card of the movie. It’s like, this law is now the law in 50 states.

Craig: Yes, and it’s got a great villain. You would have to figure out a little bit more about the villain, just so it’s not– I mean the thing is, from her point of view here, she’s talking about this, Charlotte Laws is relaying the story. From her point of view, she literally describes him as a monster and portrays him as such, and it sure seems like it from this account. Of course, as writers, we’re like, but who are you, Hunter? Why are you doing this? Who hurt you? To sort of just figure out who the other person on the side of this is, without taking away the villainy, it’s just really just more like making a real character.

It’s funny because sometimes I think in real life, people are mustache twirling villains. It’s just that we don’t like them as much in our stuff.

Great crusade at the heart of it. I’d want to also dig in a little bit more of the daughter because she almost seems like a prop

John: What was interesting is that she’s 24 years old, which seems like if it’s a 16-year-old girl, an 18-year-old girl, then you feel different. A 24-year-old girl, I–

Craig: Things have changed, man.

John: Yes, but I wonder about the agency of Kayla herself and the degree to which her, and that’s actually an interesting point of conflict, the degree to which it’s like, no, it’s done, mom. It’s like, no, it’s not done. It’s like, stop dragging my name into this.

Craig: Yes, and I don’t know how that all went, but it does seem like the relationship there has to be figured out, because it is a part of it and it is a question. Naturally one would say, oh my God, maybe mom, stop, but as long as you could make everybody a bit rounded and no one’s too much of a white knight and no one’s too much of a mustache twirler, there is a pretty interesting story here. Now, it’s small.

John: There’s a Lifetime movie version of this. I think there’s a bigger version of this too. It’s a question of, can it get up to an Erin Brockovich? I’m not sure it can.

Craig: Erin Brockovich was trying to save lives and did. Where this gets interesting is, and she mentions that, there is a woman who’s a victim of revenge porn who commits suicide. Then you start to get real about it. I think the relevance really is now for parents who are struggling to figure out how to deal with this with their own kids, because this is the new playing with matches.

I think people would connect to it, at least parents would, but it feels like you’re going to have to either go all the way over into indie zone or mainstream. I could see a nice, shiny Netflix thing for this. [crosstalk]

John: Netflix makes sense for that too. We’re talking about this in the Erin Brockovich mold where this is based on a real person. We would likely get the life rights to Charlotte Laws. Basically, you’d want to have some ability to portray her and there’s a question of how you can handle Hunter Moore and to what degree, you don’t need his life rights, no. You don’t want his life rights, but there are going to be liable concerns about what you’re saying about him. You have to be able to back up everything you’re having him do with reality.

Craig: Doesn’t seem like it would be a problem, because in real life, he did all of this. He left a public record behind, like a trail of posts and tweets and all the rest and emails, and so forth and he was convicted. As far as those concerns, it’s as close to a layup as you’re going to get.

John: Now, if you were to do the fictional version of this where you didn’t have to use any of the real people’s stuff or you weren’t using any of the real people’s stuff, I think elevating Kayla over Charlotte and having the girl herself take the initiative in this thing feels probably right. It feels like it’s the more direct way to handle this in the sense of coming into ownership of your own story. Because in taking these photos yourself and then having them laid out there, you’ve lost the narrative and sort of reclaiming control over your life feels like an important version, if I’m not bound to reality.

Craig: Sure, you could absolutely argue that the value of the fictional version comes down to, I’m going to punish the person who punished me. Revenge against the revenger. Also curious, his site was a revenge porn. It didn’t seem like it was revenge, he didn’t even know Kayla. I think that also, there is something unique about mom going out there fighting on behalf of.

John: It doesn’t show in this article, but the other article, she’s physically small. She’s like Kristin Chenoweth’s size, and that feels right too.

Craig: Always interesting. There is something just about how powerless you can feel as a parent and how I can see as a mom just how fierce you can be. That is sort of the thing that makes this special, I think.

John: I think you’re right.

Craig: But in a fictional version, I think you have to make it about more than just, I’m trying to get a picture down, I’m trying to remove a topless picture. There has to be– in reality, she says years into this process, or it was months or years, it was quite some time, somebody out there committed suicide. I think this is, in a fictional story, that would be something you would realize very early on had already happened, perhaps more than once, which I’m sure is true, so that you understood this isn’t just about taking this picture down. It’s about taking this person down before they hurt anyone else.

John: Going back to the mother at the center of this, is thinking about her as a character, independent of this event happening, where is she starting from and where is she going to? How is this difficult process leading her to a better place or leading her to what they are, essentially? What is it that she is achieving independent of the outcome?

Craig: That’s a great point. You need there to be something wrong before this picture ever ends up on the internet.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: Where I would start probably is relationship with daughter. I think if there is a flaw there, because what happens as a parent is you start to feel responsible for everything your child does, and in a story like this, you want to feel like, if only I had been a better mom, and for somebody to say no, but that there is something that is off in that relationship that her pursuit of justice exacerbates, until finally it is confronted and healed along with taking down a criminal.

John: All right, that’s the first one, and I think that feels like there is a movie to be made here.

Craig: Yes.

John: Someone’s going to write in and say like, oh, this actually did become a movie and we didn’t even know. Probably.

Craig: Oh, sure.

John: All right, next up, this is from another Slate thing, it’s in a Dear Prudence advice column. The title is, “Help. My husband’s manic pixie past has become a full-blown threat to my sanity.”

Craig: Here’s what this woman writes in. “My husband and I have been married for 10 years and generally have a happy marriage. He tells me marrying me was the best thing that ever happened to him, but there’s one thing from his past that is threatening to drive me insane, and it recently got a whole lot worse. I’m still deeply jealous of his feelings for his high school friend, Kate. For lack of a better word, she’s his manic pixie dream girl. We’re all on our 30s, but she still acts about 22,” I love the specificity of that, by the way, “and he’s utterly charmed by her. She lives a few states away, so we only see her about once a year, which is the only thing that keeps me sane. Kate is bright and charming and has about a million friends, so doesn’t have much time for my husband anymore. The second she gives him a crumb of attention, he drops everything.

We recently had a party, and she called him in the middle of it,” I love this part, “drunk and bored. He answered and then abandoned our guests to talk to her for 40 minutes. They never dated, but he had a thing for her all through high school and college. Their dynamic seems to be that he will give her money,” money?, oh, boy, “attention, whatever she wants, and she will give him attention when she feels like it.

Last year, we went on vacation together, and she got trashed and pulled me aside to tell me she was uncomfortable with how often he texts her and some of the things he says to her because she likes me so much, and I deserve better. Then the next day, she didn’t even remember having the conversation. What can I do about this?” Then I’m going to add in parentheses, (What can I do about this unbelievable, messy hurricane of a human being?)

John: What I love about this setup is that it has all the characteristics of romantic comedy, but from the Bill Pullman perspective. Basically, our letter writer is the Bill Pullman in a classic Meg Ryan romantic comedy.

Craig: The Baxter.

John: Yes, The Baxter. I think there’s a really interesting setup here. Obviously, you don’t know any of the specific people in here, but that idea of there is a woman from my husband’s past who, on the surface, is super charming, but I recognize how dangerous she is, and that is a threat. To what degree is she overreacting or underreacting? No one is being evil here. The villainy is just people behaving their own natural way.

Craig: Dangerous women have been a staple of cinema since they invented film, and there’s a good reason for that, because dangerous men have been a staple, dangerous staple. We are fascinated by people who are dangerous. Now, dangerous men tend to be violent. Dangerous women tend to be manipulative and cruel, at least that’s how we portray these things in film.
When it comes to situations like this, everyone goes immediately to being close and fatal attraction. It’s the ultimate, but we all have run into people like this.

John: Oh yes.

Craig: We all know somebody like this.

John: It’s also Jolene. It’s the Dolly Parton song, “Please don’t take my man.”

Craig: Sure.

John: The letter writer is questioning her own relationship, her own value to her husband, and the husband is giving her reason to be suspicious. If you take the sex out of it, if you take the, oh, he’s going to leave his wife for this woman, it’s like the annoying best friend who shows up and takes over everything, that’s annoying, but it’s not a threat to the marriage. It’s the, oh, this woman, if she decided to, could flick her fingers and take it over.

Craig: There’s the modern character of the simp, and the whole concept of simping. This guy’s a simp. He’s simping for this lady. Where this lady gets evil to me is when she gets “drunk,” and then says, “By the way–“ She’s going to play both sides of this marriage, because it seems to me like Kate enjoys chaos. You know like that game show they did on Saturday Night Live, What’s My Name?

John: Oh, it’s so good. Yes.

Craig: Then he goes, “Why do you do this?” He goes, “In a word, chaos.” That’s what some people, and they are fascinating people, they are bright and charming and smart. They don’t wake up in the morning deciding to do evil, this is just how they are. Figuring out how to deal with these destabilizing influences in your life is a challenge.

John: Let’s think about, [crosstalk] if it’s a movie scenario, who is the central character? Is it the letter writer, is it the husband? Is it the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, is it Kate? I can see good arguments for each of them. If it’s the husband, then it feels like, then it’s a rom-com, and he has to decide to leave his wife.

Craig: It is slightly rom-com-y. I could see a movie called The Simp. One of the things that’s interesting about situations like this is that the husband clearly has some stuff that needs fixing also, but it is almost certainly in the realm of self-esteem, some sort of damage.

John: If they’re in their mid-30s, it could be that early midlife crisis. He’s yearning for his youth where this girl was in his life more. There’s that aspect of it.

Craig: It’s possible.

John: He wants to feel handsome and attractive.

Craig: There’s something that Kate does for him that he needs to figure out, because it’s not anything real. People like Kate are drugs. They’re fentanyl. They’re not actually lack of pain. A story about a simp figuring out why he’s simping and losing the people that– That concept and that phenomenon, that’s a great title for a movie, by the way. Somebody should just make The Simp. Right? That’s a pretty good title. [laughs]
I could see people going to see that one. Who do we want in this? It’s got to be somebody younger.

John: It’s not Paul Rudd. It’s somebody younger.

Craig: Way younger, yes. Like?

John: It’s not Jesse Eisenberg.

Craig: No. He’s too old too now. We’re too old to know who it should be.

John: Yes, but it’s that guy.

Craig: It’s that guy.

John: Yes.

Craig: It’s that concept.

John: It could be his story. What kind of movie is it, though? Is it a comedy or is it a drama? What does it feel like? If it’s a drama, there’s a Chekhov’s gun there, but it’s not going off yet.

Craig: It’s a comedy, and of course–

John: It’s an act of comedy that we haven’t made.

Craig: Yes, exactly. Yes, it’s an uncomfortable comedy. It’s a cringe comedy. Obviously, the poor woman who’s writing in here is listening to us, perhaps. I doubt it, but she might be going, she didn’t write it to us, she wrote it to, you know, saying like, “No, this is not a comedy, this is my life. I’m crying all the time.” We’re sorry. We’re just trying to make a movie.

I do think that the phenomenon of that will-o’-wisp leading the simp off into– It’s The Sirens, right?

John: Yes, it is.

Craig: It’s a classic. Actually, the whole male simp thing is underexplored, I think, because those are the people we cheer for. Just could you love yourself enough, so that you wouldn’t follow this ding dong? That’s where we’re going.

John: Just to raise the issue, I think it probably is a movie rather than a series because it needs to get resolved, and if it’s not resolved, it’s going to drive you crazy. I could imagine this being an episode of an ongoing series where this central guy and this woman comes back, and that becomes the source of tension within an episode, and you have to close that character off and get rid of her.

Craig: Yes, in the old days of sitcoms, there could absolutely be a character that shows up once a season and everyone’s like, “Uh-oh, here we go again.” She blows into town, makes this one-side character, in the B-story insane and he promises he won’t do it again and then next time he does. I could see that.

John: All right. Third article here. An all-fan remarked about gold bars that secretly recorded upended his life. This is Brent Efron’s boring Tinder date who wanted to hear all about his work at the Environmental Protection Agency, so Mr. Efron talked. If only he’d seen the hidden camera. This is an article by Lisa Friedman writing for the New York Times.

The summary is that this guy is 20s, Brent Efron, goes on a Tinder date with this guy named Brady, who seemed to only want to talk about his job at the EPA. At the time, Trump was on the campaign trail promising to target climate change funding, so EPA was fast-tracking grants. Brent comes up with an analogy that the EPA was a cruise ship that hit an iceberg; they need to launch its lifeboats right away. Then he says, “It truly feels like we’re on the Titanic and we’re throwing gold bars off the edge.”

It turns out that Brady was an operative for Project Veritas and was secretly recording the conversation and posted the video online. The political right seizes upon the phrase “gold bars” and uses it to cancel EPA grants by the current administration. Brent lost his job, and as the article is being written, he’s trying to find his footing again.

Craig: I think he quit his job, because the odds of him continuing at the EPA after January 20th were pretty slim. We truly live in the stupidest timeline. This is dumb. Project Veritas, it’s funny, the opposite of Project Veritas is just everything.

[laughter]

Those people, the Trump people, don’t care. They’re like, “Yes, that’s right. I said it. Ha ha ha. LOL.” Then Project Veritas because people on the left, I guess, the concept is that they are more virtuous before they get trapped.

John: The entrapment thing is what’s so pernicious and makes me feel so gross about this.

Craig: Yes, it does.

John: Brent did nothing wrong. It’s that feeling that you cannot trust anybody in any situation. It echoes to me with the first story, in terms of just being fundamentally wrong, the violation that happens, the violation of trust that happens. Even though it is just a blind date, being secretly recorded is so invasive.

Craig: Yes, and of note, this took place in Washington, D.C., which does not have the consent law. You can do a one-party recording, which is creepy. I could see a version here that is also a romantic comedy.

John: Oh, sure.

Craig: The romantic comedy here is a guy goes on a date. He’s basically been baited into this by this other guy who’s working for Project Veritas. The problem for the Project Veritas guy is he’s starting to fall in love with him. You have to have it over a couple of dates, but he’s starting to fall in love with him, but he’s already got this footage that is the Project Veritas people have and are going to release.

This gold bar thing, it’s actually the most amazing analogy, in that it’s that blue dress, gold dress thing. If you look at it one way or the other, and obviously we know what he meant. What happens if Brady actually falls in love with Brent? What do you do now, Brady?

John: Is Brady even gay? Was the whole thing I set up from the very start, we don’t even know.

Craig: Oh, in this story? No. In reality? No way, because they also go after Brent for being gay. That’s all lumped into the same. I don’t think Project Veritas employs a lot of people on the LGBTQ spectrum.

John: Open the gay folks.

Craig: Oh, yes. Good point. They don’t employ a lot of open gay folks openly.

John: Openly, it’s a lot of work there.

Craig: Openly.

John: This is reminding me a little bit of Michael Clayton as well, where it’s just like, okay, this is a situation that happened. A question of timeline and what is the span of time of the movie? This is probably the inciting incident, but this could actually be deeper into a thing, and is this once part of a larger crisis? This could be a beat in a larger story rather than the main thing.

Craig: Yes, and one thing about this, and it comes up in the story about revenge porn as well, is it’s hard to dramatize viral moments.

John: It is.

Craig: Because we all experience them privately in our home, looking at our phone for five seconds, laughing about it through text and moving on. These viral moments are so ephemeral, and portraying them can be really sweaty. Anytime a movie’s like, and then it goes viral, just because you said so? No one knows why things go viral.

John: It ends up being a lot of cuts to cuts to. I’m thinking of the Ben Platt musical, Dear Evan Hansen, which has a viral moment that happens, but you get a song underneath that helps show what they build and they grow, and it’s organic, too.

Craig: It works on stage much better than it works on film.

John: It does.

Craig: It’s just the nature of that, because you can use your imagination, theater of the mind from stage, and then in a movie, you’re supposed to see stuff, and suddenly it’s, what else can you do, but cut to a lot of people looking at their phones and extras, like pointing at their phones and saying, “Look, I didn’t even know about this. It couldn’t have been that viral.”

John: I think it’s one of the things that was devastating to this guy and a small space, but also just think about what’s happened in the last six months. You can’t track anything.

Craig: No, but I do feel, on a personal note, very bad for Brent. He seems like such a sweet guy.

John: He seems like a sweet guy, and also, you can’t Google his name without that’s going to come up first.

Craig: In a way, I think he’ll be okay.

John: I think he’ll be fine, too.

Craig: You know what, Brent? I think you’re going to land on your feet, because you didn’t do anything wrong, as he says. You know what? That’s how I know he’s a good guy, because he repeats this theme a few times, like, “I didn’t do anything wrong,” which tells me that he’s been thinking, did I do something wrong? It’s that, I think good people tend to overestimate their own culpability in things, and bad people underestimate it.

John: My takeaway from this is, I think what happens to Brent is potentially a good first 10 pages of something that’s actually not the story at all.

Craig: What it hacks.

John: Yes, it’s a setup, but it’s not the engine of the story.

Craig: It’s not the meat.

John: Finally, let’s talk about the unseen fury of solar storms.

Craig: Boom.

John: This is Henry Wismayer writing for Noema.

Craig: Noema.

John: Noema.

Craig: Yes, that magazine we all read all the time?

John: 100%.

Craig: Great website.

John: Great website, really well done. This is about scientists at the Met’s Space Weather Observation Center who watch sunspots, solar flares, and solar storms, and they’re speculating on what threats space weather could have on our world. Space weather.

Craig: Space weather, somewhere, Roland Emmerich just sat up and went, “Huh?”

John: Yes. I was definitely like, Geostorm. It feels like that.

Craig: That’s very Geostorm, which was Dean Devlin, by the way, not Roland Emmerich.

John: Oh, I’m sorry, but they–

Craig: Roland Emmerich’s producing partner decided, I can also direct, and then Geostorm occurred. Boom. Storm is geo.

John: Yes, in 1861, there was what was called the Carrington Event, which was sightings of the northern lights were reported as far south as El Salvador, just 13 degrees north of the equator. Then, the southern lights, which I wasn’t even sure was a thing, came up all the way to San Diego. What happens is there’s a little flash and then just giant bright lights happening and things that would normally be just in the very poles you’re seeing everywhere.

Craig: It knocked out a lot of telegraph lines, but then weirdly, there were some Morse code telegraphy lines that were powered mysteriously by nothing.

John: Yes.

Craig: The insane amount of electrons and radiation and crap that the sun can barf on us in one of these massive– it’s like a volcano on the sun going off, basically. Back then, knocking out some telegraph lines, must have been very annoying for a day or two. Unfortunately, now, unplugging the world.

John: Essentially, our satellites have very little defense against this kind of stuff. It’s very hard to defend against that stuff in space. On the ground, we can do some stuff just to protect towers and certain things, but it’s expensive. As we’ve learned recently, people, if they have the choice not to spend money to do a thing, they won’t do a thing.

Craig: Even if they do, this is the weak link syndrome. It’s just one section that isn’t working quite right and the whole thing collapses. We would be flattened by one of these things. It wouldn’t be the end of the world. You can turn everything back on, but it’s going to take a bit.

John: It’s going to take a while because stuff burns out.

Craig: Yes, and people will have to walk outside and talk to their neighbors.

John: Obviously, the supernatural or in this case, natural, but a big giant event happens, the world and everything that’s upended is a staple in our big cinematic universes and in our series where things are happening where, in the pilot episode, something big changes and fundamentally society is altered by it. What’s interesting about this is that it’s not a zombie attack. It’s not a plague, and no one is hurt directly by it. Instead, it’s just all of our stuff is messed up for a while and the systems are broken, kind of like systems were broken during the pandemic, which is just we couldn’t do the normal things. Our supply chains get messed up.

Craig: But we could talk to each other.

John: We could talk to each other, which was crucial.

Craig: I’m still marveling at the fact that video conferencing sort of got figured out right when we needed I, which is amazing. There are plenty of movies where things happen and people can’t rely on the normal systems anymore. Typically, those movies portray people as horrible. This article suggests that people would be horrible and that very quickly things would descend into riots and violence.

John: Because we’re used to a very centralized media system where we just return our TV and we get the answers to things.
Craig: The centralized media system is the thing that seems to be causing problems more than ever before. Taking social media out of the equation, the question is, would it actually go well? I would argue that in a lot of places it would go well. That deprived of the ability to feed off of conspiracy theories and nonsense, no, people will not be running outside to shoot each other and take each other’s stuff. They will try and help each other.

That’s not to say that things won’t go wrong in certain places. They would. There would almost certainly be looting. That’s typical, but looting is not shooting people in the head. I guess the question is, how would this be a movie? My instinct would be very small character study of a tiny neighborhood where everybody has to suddenly meet each other for the first time, which would be interesting.

John: There was a movie that I met on over at Paramount. This is 15 years ago. It’s not an active development. It was centered around essentially peak oil, but essentially, if I’m remembering this correctly, and I don’t know if this is part of my picture or part of the underlying IP, was that basically a microbe had gotten out that had basically just ate oil and just destroyed all the oil. Basically, all the gas, all the oil just went away and society falling down around that.

Craig: Saving the planet.

John: Saving the planet, sure. Dead two sides of one coin. It’s just so interesting because 15 years ago, that was really scary. If that happened now, it’s like, yes, it would be bad, but we’re so much better. We just have the technology to deal with this, like how we had Zoom when the pandemic came.

Craig: Yes, there’s a, I wouldn’t call it anywhere like first tier Stephen King novel of his many, many novels, but I did enjoy reading The Dome. I don’t know if you-

John: Oh, Under the Dome, yes.

Craig: Was it called Under the Dome?

John: The CBS edition of it was called Under the Dome. There was a series.

Craig: Oh, they made a series of it? This is Dome-like.

John: A town that gets cut off from everybody else.

Craig: Exactly. That’s what an EMP would do to a small town. Now, in a city like ours, everybody would be talking to everybody, and we would figure stuff out. It would very quickly become who’s on your block, because that’s who you can quickly talk to. If the phones aren’t working and the computers aren’t working, you’re talking to the people you can actually see. That means people near you.

I think a lot of people would probably, like here where we live in our neighborhood, I could imagine in a situation like this, that we all decide, hey, we’re going to all stay in one person’s house for two days and then we’re going to all go to the other person’s house for two days. We just don’t want to be alone. We can be together and play games or whatever, and hope to God the food doesn’t run out. John, you could bring all of your guns.

John: Not having grown up in the South, I was not aware of hurricane parties, but friends were talking about hurricane parties.

Craig: I could see that.

John: Essentially, you know there’s a storm coming, you kind of know we’re going to lose power, but it’s not going to be so bad.

Craig: How would this be a movie? Avoiding the obvious, oh my God, and then someone like, “Well, you’ve got to get to so-and-so to turn the blah, blah.” I don’t think it’s a movie.

John: I think your approach to, this is the excuse for a hangout movie that otherwise wouldn’t happen, a snow day kind of thing, it’s a potential way in. I can see the pilot getting ordered for this as a series and what happens and the collapse of it all. I just don’t think it’s a successful ongoing thing.

Craig: No.

John: I guess wrong about things. There’s always this Netflix series that I can’t believe that anybody watches that, and it’s in its fifth season.

Craig: Who knows if anybody’s watching it, though?

John: They know somebody’s watching it.

Craig: I guess somebody must be watching it. We say this so many times. At this point now, I’ve given up even being ashamed. People are like, “Have you seen so-and-so?” I’m like, “I haven’t even heard of that.” They’re like, “What?” I haven’t heard of it.

John: I was talking to a 21-year-old woman in front of my daughters, and she’s like, “Oh, my dad loves Pretty Little Liars,” which is the most YA thing-

Craig: That’s so crazy.

John: -you obsess with.

Craig: At least I know about it. I know about that. That counts.

John: I know because it’s a good title, and that’s why I know about it.

Craig: It’s like every now and then, I’ll see something of so-and-so renewed for its 19th season. I’m like, “What? What is that?” Happens.

John: Happens. Let’s do a recap of our four movies here. I think we’re saying a Solar Storm’s, unless we want to make Geostorm 2, it’s probably not a big movie. It’s an interesting premise, at least. It’s a kickoff.

Craig: Yes, it could be used as a plot point.

John: Another thing I’ll say is, if you wanted to do a historical thing where we don’t know scientifically what’s actually happening, the fact that we suddenly have Northern Lights everywhere in a older scene would be spooky.

Craig: It would be a cool way if you’re doing– instead of the frogs raining down in Magnolia, the sky explodes.

John: The sky explodes. The Offhand Remark About Gold Bars, so Brian Efron, I think we think that is a setup to a different movie, or it’s a smaller beat in a bigger Michael Clayton-y story.

Craig: Agreed.

John: My husband’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl. You think there’s a simp movie?

Craig: I think there’s a simp movie. I think there’s a simp romantic comedy. That whole concept of simping, I think, is sad and true, but also funny.

John: Go back 20 years, and you put Seth Rogen as that guy.

Craig: Michael Cera.

John: Yes, totally.

Craig: I’m sure Michael Cera’s like, “Thank you, guys. Thanks. Thank you for putting me right there on the top of your simp list, you jerks.”

John: Finally, Mother’s Revenge, I think we both agree, is the most movie movie in the sense of an Erin Brockovich-y story about this specific thing and what she was able to accomplish against good odds and the fact that there’s a compelling villain figure in it.

Craig: Yes, it’s going to be a Netflix-y kind of thing. It’s going to be a streaming movie. It’s not going into theaters. I can’t imagine.

John: I think you’re right. Cool. Let us go to a listener question.

Craig: All right.

John: This is Brendan, who’s asking, “Way back in Episode 30,” good Lord, “John and Craig discuss emerging technologies like Avid’s ScriptSync and then speculate about when computers can auto-assemble a film and a near future dominated by “screenwriters and teams of robots.” Craig jokingly advocates for scanning actors and making movies “like a factory.” You were joking you were saying?

Craig: I was joking.

John: “Although Craig is obviously riffing here and isn’t serious, it occurred to me how that is now the future we live in. How has your optimism regarding perspective filmmaking technology changed over the course of your careers?”

Craig: So far, so good. Meaning, let’s talk about not perspective. Let’s talk about the things that didn’t exist when we were in Episode 30 that now do exist. So many of them are so great. We’ve talked about lots of them on the show. There have been tremendous advances in all sorts of things, the fact that we don’t need to use film anymore and things still look beautiful.

John: We still have the choice to use film, but–

Craig: Some people can choose to use it. There’s great arguments as to why it’s fully unnecessary, but–

John: You don’t need to email us.

Craig: Yes, don’t email us, Christopher Nolan. We get it. We know. All those wonderful things that we can now do in editorial, things that streamline stuff. There are also things that are frustratingly still stuck in 1990s. A lot of screenwriting software. The stupid schedule we get that the ADs use is still horrible. There are a lot of funky things that we’re still dealing with.

John: I think we recognize that. We still recognize that it’s because institutionalized systems are hard to change because everyone is used to a thing. Because of the weird freelance way we work, it helps to have standards, but those standards are holding us back.

Craig: It’s not exactly a massive marketplace for people to want to innovate in because it’s for 1,000 people and not 10 million. Perspective filmmaking technology is horrifying. Here’s the thing. I choose to not be horrified. I don’t like it. I see what’s going on out there. The question is, really, is that stuff a strange dead end unto itself? Is it actually going to do these wonderful things that people say? I think it’s not. I’m just going to– if I’m wrong, I’m wrong. Surely I will be assassinated by AI for this, but it feels to me like it is an increasingly elaborate dead end of stuff. It’s like every time I see, it’s like, “Look what it can do now.” I’m just like, “Yes, but I don’t like that.”

I’m not optimistic at all. I don’t think things are going well I think in part because all the attention and all the money is fixated now on AI and not on things that might actually make our lives easier as human beings.

John: Yes, I would say I’m not as optimistic as I was before. I also want to put things in context of where I think I was at in Episode 30. I went to see 28 Years Later, which I liked a lot. It took me back to 28 Days Later, which was shot on DV. It was like it looked so messy, but it was like that was the aesthetic it was going for. They had that choice to do it. It didn’t mean that all movies suddenly got shot on DV. It was a unique one-time thing. This time they were shooting on iPhones. It was a deliberate choice to do those things.

I think to where I still have optimism is that I think we as filmmakers and as companies that make films still have a choice about what it is that we want to do, and what technologies we’re going to use, and what technologies we’re not going to use. We can recognize what we’re giving up by swapping in technologies that are “good enough.”

I had a conversation this past week about a potentially very expensive tentpole movie. The producer’s like, “If we wait a year, I think some of those VFXs are going to be less expensive to do. I had to say, that’s probably true. That’s probably some of the things that would have cost $10 million, might cost $7 million or $5 million with time. That I can see. I’m torn based on what I feel because I don’t want to spend $200 million on visual effects. I just don’t think that’s a great use of money and time. We can make more movies. I’m recognizing that money spent on visual effects is largely being spent to pay people to do visual effects.

Craig: I think that depending on the visual effects you’re doing, it can really go directly to people when you’re dealing with smaller visual effects houses as opposed to some of the large ones, which overhead and all the rest of it, those are big businesses. Yes, it’s true. There are things that are happening in the visual effects space that will be invisible to us. We won’t know why some things are happening faster and better. The answer will almost certainly be AI because those things are probably quite rote.

John: We didn’t talk about it on the podcast, but maybe it was two years ago now, science fiction film, The Creator, visually gorgeous, but also cost so much less than anything it costs because the director had a sense of how to do things on a budget in ways that were smart. No one’s knocking spending less money on a movie, but it becomes a question of AT what point are we making a movie or not making a movie based on a budget, which we know is the deciding factor so much of the time.

Craig: I guess the long and short of it is, here we are at– what episode are we on?

John: This is Episode 697.

Craig: 697. We’re in Episode 697. 667 episodes later, we definitely scan actors. That’s something we do, but we do not make movies or [unintelligible 00:48:07] the show like a factory.

John: [inaudible 00:48:08] yes.

Craig: In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It is as painstaking and laborious as it has ever been. Maybe even more so because the audience has come to expect a certain scale for so many things. If you’re aiming for that quality segment, oh man, it’s expensive. It is exhausting. We’re not quite– yes, I’m not very optimistic that it’s going to get easier.

John: One of the things that has changed if you talk about scanning actors is, yes, we started scanning actors, and the actors unions pushed back against it. There are now more rules about what you can scan, when you can scan, and how you can use it, which feels appropriate.

Craig: The way we have scanned actors was already in line with what SAG wanted and got, which is we scan an actor for this show. We don’t use it for anything else. We really just use it if we need like, “Okay, in this shot, we’re going to change your face because you’re on fire.” Then we have it, but we don’t scan actors so that we can replace actors. I don’t know anybody that is.

John: I think the times we have heard those issues being raised where an actor will argue like, “I was not in that episode, but my face, it has me saying something.”

Craig: That would be bad.

John: It would be bad. I think we need to raise a stink when that happens.

Craig: I do acknowledge that Hollywood is full of jerks. Then there’s para-Hollywood, which is the worst place of off-Hollywood Hollywood where there are no scruples. There are absolutely people right now who are the same schlockmeisters that always existed, who used to say, “You don’t have to worry about safety. Just throw them in the car and light it on fire.”

John: Absolutely.

Craig: Yes. Right? Those guys are like, “We don’t need to get it. Just get me an AI thing that sounds like them, and it’s good enough.” We’re going to have to be dealing with cockroaches forever. We always have, we always will.

John: To the degree I’m optimistic, I feel like we will acknowledge and wrestle with these situations as they come up and we’ll set some standards or practices around them. Sometimes it’ll be comfortable, sometimes it’s really, really uncomfortable, but we can’t pretend they’re just not going to happen.

Craig: No. Ultimately, there will become some sort of understanding of how to ethically employ AI within the human artistic pursuit. Right now, no one knows what the hell that would be. No one. Everyone is either guessing, or is terrified, or is way too excited.

John: That’s why I think we need to have smart people who are actually working in those fields right now having the conversations about what it is because otherwise, it’s going to be made by businessmen.

Craig: It’s ultimately businessmen that will– if we have a prayer, it’s going to be because the businessmen align themselves with us because AI is attempting to eat everyone’s lunch. I don’t know why Hollywood continues to miss this simple fact. The technology industry despises ownership of information. They hate it. They hate ownership of information. They hate ownership of content. It disgusts them. What they love is being the people you pay to go get everything. They don’t want you as a– you write a song, they don’t want you to own that song. They want somebody to pay them to play that song for them. That’s what technology wants, and they will forever undermine the basis of what makes Hollywood tick, which is ownership of artistic expression.

John: All right. Let’s do our one cool things. My one cool thing is a piece of technology that is in front of Craig right now. It is called TRMNL.

Craig: TRMNL?

John: It is this very minimalist e-ink display. You buy it off of usetrmnl.com, and you can set up for what things you want it to display. It’s just a simple website, and you can have it display the weather. I have right now displaying how many days until the Scriptnotes book comes out.

Craig: 136.

John: As we’re recording this. You can set up your little dashboards. It’s fun for nerdy gadgeteers like me. It’s just like a very good version of something that I just wanted and the fact that someone made it was great.

Craig: It can display anything?

John: Anything.

Craig: It looks like it’s a nice little side thing for D&D.

John: Totally. It switches between screens, but it updates itself once every 15 minutes. The reason why it does it so slowly is because it goes for six months on a charge.

Craig: I’m thinking, you know how for some players, their action economy, how they’re supposed to do and the things that they can do, they forget. Especially as you level up, it gets more and more– to have a flowchart-

John: Oh, totally.

Craig: -would be very cool to have. I just want everything to be about D&D, but it’s like this thing’s adorable. I love that it’s called TRMNL with no vowels. It’s TRMNL.

John: TRMNL.

Craig: TRMNL.

John: If you are curious about a little device, so it has a stand, but you can also hang it on a wall.

Craig: How much does it cost?

John: Let’s take a look. I think that was–

Craig: TRMNL.

John: TRMNL.

Craig: It looks like the kind of device that wants to make you happy like in the Toy Story world. It’s really sweet.

John: The version you’re seeing, it’s $139. They come in different colors. There’s a limited edition, which is $154. I got the developer one, which is a little bit more expensive, so I can program my own dashboards.

Craig: Developers. Developers.

John: Developers. Developers. I like it. It’s not going to change my world, but I do like it.

Craig: I love that. We should throw on a link to Steve Ballmer doing the developers, developers, developers speech just because–

John: It’s incredible.

Craig: It’s the greatest thing of all time.

John: It’s an early nerdy meme. I just love it.

Craig: It’s just insane. It’s wonderful. My one cool thing this week, you want to talk about nerdiness?

John: Please.

Craig: John, I’ve gone back in time approximately almost 20 years back in time with Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered.

John: I remember playing Elder Scrolls way back in the day. Talk me through which one this is so that I don’t get confused.

Craig: Elder Scrolls IV is the one before Skyrim.

John: Okay.

Craig: This is back when they made these games not once every 30 years. Skyrim came out in 2011.

John: I think that was maybe, actually, the first Elder Scrolls I played.

Craig: Okay, yes. That was the first a lot of people played. That’s 14 years ago. We still haven’t seen six. They’ve said maybe there will be one and no one knows what’s going on with it. I think maybe I want to say four years prior to that Elder Scrolls IV came out. If you didn’t play it, it was excellent.

It was the first Elder Scrolls I played. I didn’t play Morrowind. I hadn’t played the prior ones. I didn’t know anything about that world. I think it was the first Bethesda game I played. It’s outstanding.

They’ve done that remaster thing, which they’re remastering stuff from 2013 now. I’m like, go back to the 2000 and aughts. What I love about the way they did it is they didn’t remaster it so it doesn’t look like– it’s still those janky faces. It’s like that weird– but it just still looks really good. I’m playing it on the Steam Deck, and I’m having a blast. Because it’s been– what year did Oblivion come out? 2006. Just shy of 20 years. I don’t remember anything from 20 years ago. This is awesome, but–

John: The fact that you can play it on a handheld device now too is great.

Craig: It’s so cool.My daughter was just four, and she would sit on the couch and watch me play Oblivion. We have these great memories of her getting so excited when there would be trouble. I’d say, “Oh, the music’s changing. There’s going to be trouble.” Then she was like, “Find trouble, find trouble.” It was just a great game. John, do you play the Bethesda games?

John: I played Skyrim and Fallout a lot, yes. Most of them have a very similar mechanic.

Craig: Absolutely.

John: You’ve complained about that that they’re a little too similar.

Craig: Starfield is where you start to feel, A, it’s really getting old. No people when you talk to them should not look directly into the lens of the camera. That’s insane. B, compared to Oblivion, which is essentially 20 years old, Starfield is empty. It is devoid. Oblivion is packed with so many people, and so many stories, and so many places to go and things to see. When you go into a town, there’s, I don’t know, 18 houses in one district that you can knock on a door and talk to people. Starfield is like five people live in this city. I don’t know what’s going on, but I would urge Bethesda, look back, look back to your roots. I’m having an absolute blast.

John: That’s great. I’m glad to hear it. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes. On top of your games. Birdigo, which is the game that I made with Corey Martin, which is a cross between Wordle and Balatro, is going to be out this week. If you are listening to this episode as it comes out, take a look for that on Steam as well. You can put that on your Steam deck.

Craig: You guys are pumping stuff out left and right.

John: Yes, more stuff coming.

Craig: Factory.

John: Nothing could top the Scriptnotes book, which is available for pre-order.

Craig: Nothing today? Today.

John: Today.

Craig: It’s happening right now. People, it’s happening.

John: Adam– I’m going through the– Boilerplate, people can just pull up on their phone right now scriptnotesbook.com and pre-order the book.

Craig: Just-

John: You can pre-order it from-

Craig: -pre-order?

John: -your local bookstore through bookshop.org or through one of the big services, whatever you want to do.

Craig: We’re not going to judge you.

John: Do what you want to do.

Craig: Do what you want to do.

John: Do you. If you live in the Los Angeles region, we are planning to do live shows for the book on the week it comes out. Just still pre-order it. If there’s an extra book you get there, you can give away one of your copies of your book.

Craig: Listen, if you get eight or nine of these, then just think of everywhere you go, just hand a book out to someone.

John: Do you have more than one bathroom?

Craig: Yes. It’s a great way to tip people.

John: Absolutely. Not to replace– give them money– Then, also–

Craig: -then also be [unintelligible 00:58:08] here.

John: Yes, absolutely. Listen, I know you are a waiter. I know you are a valet, but you’re also probably a screenwriter. Here’s a book for you.

Craig: Great job.

John: Great job.

Craig: It’s a great way to get punched in the face.

[laughter]

John: Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Nick Moore. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnaugust.com. That is also a place where we can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com along with a signup for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. You’ll find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes. We have t-shirts, and hoodies, and drink wear. You’ll find us at Cotton Bureau.

You’ll find the show notes with all the things we talked about today on the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you to all those premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net. We get all those back episodes all the way back to Episode 6. What did I reference?

Craig: 30.

John: 30, yes. Bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on kindness, scriptnotesbook.com. Order your book and send Drew at ask@johnaugust.com the receipt from that, and we’re going to send you something. I don’t know what that’s going to be yet, but it’s going to be fun.

Craig: Amazing.

John: Craig, thanks for a good show.

Craig: Thank you, John.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right, Craig, I want to talk about kindness.

Craig: Shut up, John.

John: It could have been from, Into the Woods. I think I may have heard that [unintelligible 00:59:34] recently like, “You’re so nice. You’re not good. You’re not bad. You’re just nice.”

Craig: “You’re not bad. You’re just nice.” It’s one of my favorite lyrics.

John: It’s so good. He’s a very nice prince, and he’s nice.

Craig: It’s the last midnight.

John: Yes, so good. Kindness is not niceness, and it’s also not politeness. I just wanted to separate that out both in terms of the real world, but also how we’re thinking about our characters. I think so often we have characters who we think about as being good, but what is it that they’re doing good? Do they have a good nature? Are they friendly? Are they helpful? Is their niceness transactional? I think kindness has a non-transactional quality to it that I think is a crucial distinction.

Craig: Yes, nice almost implies not nice. It’s absence of trouble. “Oh, you’re nice.” Kind does imply deeds.

John: It implies action for sure. It’s not just a good spirit. It’s not pity, because pity can make you feel condescending. Kindness is not pity. It can be related to love, but you can be kind to somebody you don’t love. You can be kind to somebody you despise.

Craig: Nice is seeing somebody crying and saying, “Hey, are you all right?” and they’re like, “Yes, no, I’m fine. I’m fine.” You’re like, “Okay, just checking on you.” Kind is sitting down with them and going, “How can I help? Is there a way for me to help?”

John: Exactly. Compassion would also be recognizing someone else’s pain, but not doing anything about it.

Craig: Kindness implies an attempt to connection, going out of your way. Nice people can ignore trouble. That doesn’t make them not nice. It just means that they’re not bad.

John: There is a CS Lewis quote talking about how your goal is not just that someone is happy, but they’re better on a deeper level. There’s comforting, but that comforting isn’t necessarily kindness. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. There is an aspect of that that is actually a little bit true that you have to speak to the actual truth of things and not just paper stuff over.

Craig: Then think of the great Tennessee Williams line, “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers,” meaning the things they give me, the way they take care of me. It’s an interesting thing to think about is, characters who are kind oftentimes feel they don’t have main character energy-

John: Yes, I think you’re right.

Craig: -because they’re mentors, they’re the neighbor, they’re grandma, priest, buddy.

John: To some degree is that because I think of kind people as having completed an arc or being a little self-actualized. I think there’s something about that feels a little complete about a kind character and they have to learn to do that. There’s situations where I’m thinking of Cinderella who is kind, but she’s also— she starts the story just really weak and disempowered.

Craig: Cinderella is not a good character. Cinderella’s character is victim. That’s it. She’s a perfect person who is kind to the animals. She is a victim of mean people. Then a fairy godmother just goes, “Boop, boop. Have a great night.” She’s like, “Okay.” Then the prince is like, “Love you.” Then she wins.

John: There’s no great arc. There’s no–

Craig: No, it’s a fairy tale. It’s a fairy tale designed to punish the wicked as many of them are. There are morality plays as and apparently stepmothers were a huge problem in like 1500s Germany.

John: I’m not trying to steel-man stepmothers [unintelligible 01:03:24] some other issue, but I think they were actually much more common back in the day of when women died in childbirth all the time.

Craig: Sure, but why were they so mean?

John: On some genetic level, isn’t it the right choice to push aside your husband’s previous children so that he will spend his time and energy on your children? That’s a Hansel and Gretel.

Craig: It must’ve happened quite frequently, or it just happened to the Brothers Grimm.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: They just had a horrible stepmom and they were like, “Well, what should the villain be this time? Can we do stepmom again?”

John: Yes. I think we can do a little twist on it.

Craig: I don’t think we’re done with that.

John: Take her to a witch at a candy house.

Craig: Yes, let’s do that. That’ll be great. What about in this situation? Also stepmom. The problem with the archetype characters like Cinderella is they’re pointlessly kind to the extent that we don’t really care. We’re looking for main characters who are kind, who are almost punished for it in a way. Not that they started victims. They help someone. I’ve seen this in comedies. You help somebody and then you can’t get rid of them. Now what do you do? It’s that kind of thing.

John: Yes, it is. It is that kind of thing. I wonder how kind end up being both-

Craig: Sort.

John: Sort-

Craig: Type and-

John: -and characteristic. The etymology of that, that’s probably fascinating, but–

Craig: Yes, let’s look it up.

John: All right.

Craig: Here we go.

John: All right.

Craig: Here we go. There’s only one way to find out. Before the 12th century, it just all comes from middle English kinda from old English kind, akin to old English kin. Oh, okay.

John: Oh, so it’s coming from kin. Okay, great.

Craig: It’s like how you would treat kin in this kind way. You would treat them like family and also it’s family. It’s of a sort. That actually makes a ton of sense.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: I like the idea of kindness as treating someone not family-

John: As family.

Craig: -as family, as kin.

John: Absolutely. It’s recognizing the shared experience of this and being able to put yourself— It’s beyond empathy, because empathy, again, is just compassion, seeing a thing but actually not doing a thing.

Craig: This is more like I’m forging a connection with you that I don’t need to, but I will.

John: Altruism, I think, is just more of a platonic idea. It’s a general approach to things, but it’s not specific to it.

Craig: This is why etymology is great.

John: I think it is actually a good example. It’s like, “Oh yes, that’s right.”

Craig: This is why you look things up.

John: Yes, look things up. That’s a lesson we’ve learned after–

Craig: Way to go, [unintelligible 01:05:57]?

John: After 679 episodes. We could just wonder about it, or we could just look them up.

Craig: We’re at 697. What happens at 700?

John: We haven’t–

Craig: Does the ball drop? What happens?

John: We haven’t discussed what should happen. I don’t know. It’s three weeks away.

Craig: Oh my God, this is a lot of pressure.

John: It’s a lot of pressure.

Craig: Although it’s a weird. 750 is a number, right?

John: 750 is a bigger number than 700.

Craig: 750 is insane.

John: Yes.

Craig: That’s a real number.

John: We’ve got a year to worry about that.

Craig: That’s DCCL. That’s exciting.

John: I’m impressed that you were able to pull that off in your head, Roman numerals.

Craig: Standard puzzling thing. Oh, that’s right. You’ve got to know Roman numerals. Got to know them.

John: All right.

Craig: John, I’d like to thank you for being kind.

John: Craig, I’d like to thank you for being kind as well.

Link:

• Preorder the Scriptnotes book!
• Send your pre-order receipt to Drew at ask@johnaugust.com
• A Mother’s Revenge as told to Christina Cauterucci for SLATE
• Charlotte Laws’ fight with Hunter Moore, the internet’s revenge porn king by Carole Cadwalladr for The Guardian
• Help! My Husband’s Manic Pixie Past Has Become a Full-Blown Threat to My Sanity, Dear Prudence column for SLATE
• SNL’s What’s That Name
• An Offhand Remark About Gold Bars, Secretly Recorded, Upended His Life by Lisa Friedman for NYTimes
• The Unseen Fury of Solar Storms by Henry Wismayer for Noema
• TRMNL
• Steve Ballmer: Developers
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
• Birdigo
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription
• Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
• Craig Mazin on Instagram
• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by Nick Moore (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: This is Episode 560 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, we’ll discuss how writers should think about visual effects, both from a creative and budgetary perspective. One of us, Craig, has a lot recent experience in that area.

Craig: Oh boy, do I.

John: We’ll also chat about books, specifically should screenwriters be trying to get the options on them themselves. We’ll discuss formal and less formal arrangements for book options. In our Bonus Segment for Premium Members, we will discuss nightmares. Not metaphorical nightmares like Harvey Weinstein, but actually nightmares occurring during sleep.

Craig, this is your first glance at the topics we’re going to be discussing today. How do you feel about it?

Craig: I feel strong. In particular, I really like this idea of talking about visual effects from the writing point of view, because whether writers realize it or not, they are now as integral to the storytelling process as, I don’t know, lights or microphones.

John: Fundamental. You have lights and microphones upon you, because you were at the Comic Con-

Craig: Segue Man.

John: … presentation panel for Mythic Quest. Craig, how was Comic Con?

Craig: I have no idea, because here’s how it went for me.

John: Tell me.

Craig: Rob McElhenney, he said, “Hey, can you come host this thing? We’re flying down real quick into the little mini San Diego airport. I said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” We fly into the mini San Diego airport. That’s a 35-minute flight. That’s enjoyable. There’s a car. The car takes you to hotel. Then you go from hotel to the back entrance of Comic Con, through the massive back area where the garbage is and the delivery is at. You get herded into a little pen. It’s actually a rather large room. A lovely time before the thing chatting with the cast, who are all wonderful. Then you go on stage, you do this thing. If you’re watching, if you do watch it, I don’t know, on YouTube or something, please understand none of us could hear each other. The microphones are so echoey on stage. I would ask questions and then sort of know what people said.

John: Is that why everyone’s smiling and nodding a lot, but there’s no flow to things?

Craig: Yes. It was horrible. We all did our best. Afterwards, we were just laughing. They’re like, “We kind of understood what you were saying.” I was like, “I kind of understood what you were saying, but I couldn’t ask any follow-ups, because I had no idea really what your answers were.”

John: Wow.

Craig: I did get to have a lovely moment with Danny Pudi where we recreated his wonderful viral moment where he told Larry King, “Larry, I’m on Duck Tales.” That was fun. People really seemed to enjoy it. The word from the crowd was that they enjoyed it.

John: Great.

Craig: We were happy about that. Then we all went to dinner and left. That’s what I saw of Comic Con, a backstage garbage area.

John: It was like Hunger Games, and you were just the noble family coming out there and seeing the Hunger Games but didn’t have to participate in any of the Hunger Games.

Craig: I did not participate in the Hunger Games. I know that there will be some sort of conventioneering in my future. That’s for sure. I would like for it to be a little bit more of an experience than I had there. That was very much a Seal Team Six, get in, get out kind of deal.

John: Love it. Next piece is news and follow-up. Craig, when you need to refer to someone’s credits, where do you look at their credits?

Craig: I go to IMDb.

John: I have been going to IMDb for 20 years. Actually, my very first answering your questions about screenwriting happened on IMDb. I used to host a little column weekly on IMDb. I believe IMDb is a great resource that should be treasured. At times, I’ve been frustrated with IMDb, because they’ll make changes to the layout. It’ll just be broken and stupid. I made an extension for Safari at one point that I called Less IMDb that made it prettier and made it work better. This is credits for John Logan, classic credits. Describe what you’re seeing here.

Craig: It says Filmography, and then just a list of blue linked credits, but the television series have sub-credits of episodes. That’s what it has.

John: This is what you’d expect to see. They give you the option now where you could see the preview of the next version of IMDb, what they’re going to be doing. It’s going to be huge improvements, right? This is how credits are going to be shown now. This is the same credits for the same writer. Tell me what you’re seeing.

Craig: Now I’m seeing mostly the one-sheets for those things in chunks, without much information. I guess it’s all the same information. It’s just more visual. I don’t know, it’s all weirdly laid out in a way that makes no sense to me, because it’s a grid.

John: It’s a two-column grid. You can’t tell order of things. Are you supposed to go left to right, or is it going down the bottom?

Craig: It looks like it’s going left to right, top to bottom, which is standard for say a meta-crossword but not necessarily the way our minds are trained to work for this.

John: No. I think it is disastrous, and it’s a really, really bad idea. I’m trying to publicly point this out and maybe shame them and get them to rethink what they’re doing here, or at least make it an option to get back to a normal list view, because this is disastrous. This makes life much harder when you’re like, “What has an actor been in? Oh my God, I don’t want to look at all the posters. I just want to see a list of their credits.”

Craig: Here’s a question for you, as a Webster. The information that IMDb includes is not proprietary. It’s all based on publicly available credits, obviously. Could one create a better IMDb, meaning the layout is better, and simply use a scraper to just start going through IMDb, pulling all the crap out of information, and then re-presenting it in a much nicer format?

John: That would be copyright violations out the wazoo.

Craig: Really?

John: Yeah, it is.

Craig: Why?

John: While it is public information, the accumulation of that and curation of that is a service that IMDb is actually providing. You would run into so many problems there.

Craig: Really?

John: Yeah, you really would.

Craig: If I go, “I want a program that goes over to IMDb and pulls out John August’s credits.”

John: Yep.

Craig: Your credits don’t belong to IMDb.

John: Absolutely true.

Craig: Why can’t I do that?

John: I believe that if I were creating a scraper that went to one person’s thing and scraped out all the stuff, that would not be problematic. If I went and created a bot that went and scraped all of IMDb, which is what you really want to do, that is problematic, because-

Craig: Really?

John: … not only am I taking their copyright information, I am-

Craig: What? What copyright information?

John: The organization of all their credits and the curation of those credits to make sure that they are accurate.

Craig: I don’t think that that’s copyrightable. I just think that they’re simply going through publicly available information and vetting it that it’s true. That doesn’t mean it’s… They didn’t write it.

John: I believe there are problems there. Actually, when I was a summer intern at Universal, my job was to enter stuff into Universal’s own equivalent thing to IMDb. It’s a giant, giant pain in the ass. We were literally looking through Variety and putting credits off of Variety.

Craig: The labor does not necessarily equate to copyright. I would say that this sounds like what we need is for one of our brilliant listeners, perhaps an attorney and/or a Webster-

John: Webster.

Craig: Or a Webster attorney.

John: Oh my God, can you imagine if Webster were an attorney?

Craig: Oh my God.

John: Webster, the little-

Craig: Please can we go back to 1987-

John: Emmanuel Lewis.

Craig: …and write the Webster attorney show?

John: Oh my God, so good.

Craig: Webster at law.

John: So good.

Craig: God, I’d watch that. It would be so good. Megana, do you have any idea who we’re talking about?

Megana Rao: No, I’m Googling Webster right now.

Craig: There we go. Emmanuel Lewis-

John: Emmanuel Lewis.

Craig: … is wonderful. Back in the day, there’s an actor named Gary Coleman, and he was the star of Different Strokes. People who are my age or John’s age just loved Gary Coleman. He was very short. He was short in fact because of a disease. He didn’t have dwarfism. He was just short. His growth was inhibited. While this made him wonderfully valuable for a television show about a cute kid, it became problematic for him as he grew up. Then of course, once he grew up, they need to find another Gary Coleman, and they landed on Emmanuel Lewis, who also was incredibly small, I think again because of a disorder. Emmanuel Lewis played Webster.

John: I don’t even really remember the full conceit of Webster. Was there a butler involved in the show somehow?

Craig: I don’t remember a butler. I just remember that they went as close to Different Strokes as they could, like, “We’re going to take a Black kid and put him with a white adoptive father, and then we’re going to do it again. In fact, change as little as we can possibly change.” You were able to do stuff like that. There was no Twitter, so people couldn’t destroy you within seconds. Oh, Webster. Let’s get Webster back.

John: Webster attorney comes in here and he figures out that you could actually scrape IMDb and put it in a better format. Maybe there’s some version of that that can happen. Honestly, you can also go to Wikipedia, which is genuinely a public service that has this stuff, but it’s just not as thorough and accurate as these other things are, and things don’t link through the same way that IMDb does. I want to make sure we don’t lose what is great about IMDb in this mad quest to make it prettier or make the trailers more accessible.

Craig: IMDb is Amazon’s bad advertising platform. That’s what it is. I think it’s a mess. I hate going on IMDb, by the way. I hate it. I can’t find anything. It used to be that you would put somebody’s name in and you would get everything. Now you have to look for all filmography or you just see the things that they want you to see. It’s a mess.

John: The plugin that we used to make for it, which we actually had to sunset it because it kept breaking because they kept making other changes to it, did make it better on desktop. It couldn’t help out on the web because it’s really an app now. The app isn’t as bad as the web version is, but still it’s frustrating.

Craig: That’s the other thing is if I’m looking at something on IMDb on my phone, it screams at me to use the app and takes up half a page, demanding that I use the app. Why? Why do they need me to use the app? Tell me, from an app guy point of view.

John: Because they built the app. Also, because they can hold you inside the ecosystem better and longer, they’ve discovered, if they are keeping you in the app. That’s why.

Craig: There we go.

John: There you go.

Craig: There we go.

John: Speaking of keeping people in the ecosystem-

Craig: Segue Man.

John: … let’s do some follow-up on Netflix. We’ve talked about Netflix and that they had disappointing earnings, and everyone was up in arms. Their earnings weren’t as disappointing as people expected, so they’re maybe not so screwed. This last week I read an article by Dave Karpf on his Substack talking about re-framing what we should think about with Netflix. I thought it was really helpful, so I wanted to put a link in the show notes to this.

What Karpf is arguing is that we started to think about Netflix as two different businesses. There’s this actual business, which is a subscription video service, and it’s the imaginary business, where it’s a competitor to Apple and Amazon and one of these giant things. What he points out is that Amazon can sell you more and more stuff every month. There’s no ceiling to how much they can sell you. Same with Apple. They can sell you new products. Facebook and Google can sell more ads off of you. Netflix can make about $120 a year off of you, and that’s it. There’s a cap to how much Netflix can make per person. That’s the reality. Netflix may want to say that they’re competing against video games and other things for your attention, but really, they just need you to not cancel the service. When it comes down to that, Netflix will be fine.

Craig: Netflix has a pretty obvious challenge. They became what they are, because they were the streaming service. Now they’re many streaming services. It’s not merely that they are competing with the other streaming services. It’s that the other streaming services took the stuff that Netflix was using to make itself into Netflix. That is to say the library of everything. Very famously, Netflix ran all the episodes of Friends, and people would become obsessed and subscrobe. Subscrobe?

John: They subscrobe.

Craig: That ought to be a word. They subscrobe.

John: It totally could be a word.

Craig: They subscrobe to Netflix.

John: We’ll look it up on Google Ngram Viewer, and it’ll show that subscrobe began rising in late 2022.

Craig: They subscrobe, and then of course, Warner Bros pulled Friends away, because HBO Max now has Friends. What does Netflix do? They spend an insane amount of money to essentially invent a library out of thin air. Some of that library is wonderful. I think like anything, lots of it may be preferably not so wonderful.

John: Any of these streamers would kill to have a Stranger Things, to have-

Craig: They do.

John: … Squid Game.

Craig: They do. That’s the thing. They all have something that people love. The trick is they also have passive income from these massive libraries that generate money over time and have so for hundreds of years. No, a hundred years. The biggest issue I think that Netflix is struggling with is they only do one thing. It doesn’t matter if Amazon takes on some water in a particular quarter over Amazon Prime. They’re also selling everything to everyone. They also are hosting 50% of all the world’s websites and etc, etc. HBO Max is part of a larger empire that includes Warner Bros and all sorts of other things. Similarly, Disney Plus is part of a corporation-

John: It’s part of Disney.

Craig: … that has hotels and cruise ships. Basically, everybody has a network, a publishing business, cruise ships, theme parks, all this stuff that has been built over decades, and Netflix doesn’t. If there’s a downswing in streaming, Netflix will suffer disproportionately. That’s just how it goes. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I have no clue, other than to say that I think that Netflix is either going to have to charge more or spend less or both. From my simple layman point of view, I don’t quite understand how they’re supposed to do stuff otherwise.

John: They’re already going to be spending less. They’ve already announced that they’re going to be spending less.

Craig: There you go.

John: Or they’re going to be spending differently. They’re spending probably more on local productions, which probably makes sense for them, because it helps them grow in markets that they want to grow in.

Craig: You mean local to different areas like-

John: Sorry, so local to India, local to-

Craig: India. Local to Korea. Local to, got it.

John: Great. That’s really good for those markets. They are going to have an advertising-supported tier. I don’t get that. I don’t think that necessarily makes sense. They will also probably raise rates at some point. They’ll also crack down on password sharing. I think my takeaway from this is, listen, they’re probably not going to be the giant juggernaut that they were, but they’re also going to be fine. They’re not going to go away tomorrow.

Craig: No, I don’t think they’re going to go away tomorrow, but I do think that at some point Netflix does become a very tasty target for acquisition, only because, look, they have so many people that have subscrobe over time. The issue is, if they are struggling to keep their business model going without a massive and beloved library, but they have this terrific brand presence and loads of subscribers who subscrobe, if I were a streaming service that maybe wanted some of that, I would just snatch it up. Easy to say snatch up Netflix. This is a company that’s worth so much money. It’s worth billions of dollars, as in $50 billion less than it was worth a half a year ago, I think, which is incredible.

John: I think that really gets down to the distinction between what its actual business was and what its imaginary business was.

Craig: There you go.

John: That’s why it was valued, like an Apple or Amazon. That was probably unrealistic. It was unrealistic.

Craig: That is the one area where I never understood, people’s belief in Netflix’s imaginary business. I just never understood it. I read this article. I think it’s really good. I think it comes down to a very simple thing. For all the glitter and smoke, Netflix needs people to subscribe and keep subscribing. That’s it. Simple as that. Nothing else matters. They’re losing subscribers. After last week’s… Let’s see. We had a Q2 earnings report. Netflix was predicted to lose 2 million subscribers, but it only lost 1 million subscribers. That’s still a lot, where everybody else is picking up subscribers. If your big victory is you only lost 1 million, that’s not good. A million subscribers, that’s a lot of people. Jeez, Louise.

John: The other point Megana and I were discussing is that their strategy of all at once releasing and binge releases, that fundamentally does not make sense in a world where you want to keep people subscribing to your service.

Craig: I can only talk about it from a creative point of view. Of course, like anyone, I have binged shows. Of course I have. From a creative point of view, as somebody that makes a show, I would be so bummed out to just dump. They can say binge or whatever. I call it dumping. Just dump the whole thing there. I think also from a creative point of view, a lot of people have started talking about the tyranny of this algorithm and a sense that it’s all a bit synthetic over there. This season of Barry had a great condemnation of the algorithm and the way the algorithm runs things. It’s a bit terrifying.

I’ve talked to other showrunners and writers whose shows have been canceled. Netflix really won’t tell them why, because also Netflix doesn’t show you any numbers. They’ll just show you matrix readouts of little green digits that don’t make any sense. They will show you bar graphs where your viewership is compared to other people’s viewership, but they won’t show you what the other bar graphs represent, which is awesome. I would love to do that. I just would put that on a placard. “You’re this little thing, and these other things are larger bars. What are those bars? Stuff. Anyway, you’re fired.” I don’t know. It’s amazing.

John: I think the real takeaway here is that Netflix is basically the Scriptnotes podcast, the Scriptnotes Premium feed. Just like the Premium feed, we only get money when people continue to subscribe to the Premium feed. We try to keep our churn down. The difference is, while they’ve lost a million subscribers, we grew subscribers month to month, year to year.

Craig: If we lose a million subscribers, I have a huge problem.

John: We’re in real trouble.

Craig: You’re in real trouble, because that means we had a million subscribers. Then we’d really have to talk. John, it’s so weird, over last few years you’ve bought seven houses.

John: It is crazy what that-

Craig: What’s that about?

John: Residuals. Residuals, man.

Craig: It’s residuals.

John: You write a Charlie’s Angels, those residuals keep coming.

Craig: Look, I want to say to all of the people who do listen to us who work at Netflix or people who write for Netflix, I’m not Netflix-bashing.

John: Not at all.

Craig: I want as many healthy employers as possible. Netflix is this 800-pound gorilla. It did essentially invent the modern streaming business. I want it to succeed. I want there to be as many healthy employers as possible. I do think that Netflix has engaged in some not so wonderful practices that have had a deleterious effect on the way writing is done and the way product is made. I certainly don’t want them to die. Hopefully, they can figure this out, right the ship, and perhaps get us back to the practice of encouraging good shows. Taking some risks would be nice, and paying writers more, in a more transparent way, because Netflix also invented the “we’re not telling you how many people watch your show” method.

John: Agreed. Let’s talk about making those shows. Our main topic here came from Matt Byrne, who’s one of my former assistants, who actually is working on a Netflix show for Shondaland.

Craig: Great.

John: It all fits together nicely. Megana, could you read us Matt’s question?

Megana: Matt says, “I’d love an episode on understanding and approaching special/visual effects. I feel like it would be empowering to understand the menu and cost of everything, from adding leaves to treats to change seasons to creating massive scale space battles, empowering both from the earliest stages of writing, knowing what scale you might be able to achieve appropriate to the project, and also when it comes to fighting for or adjusting scenes during all stages of production.”

Craig: Such a good question.

John: Such a good question from such a good writer. Craig, you’ve gone through this a lot I’m sure on your show. Even just in times when you’ve been Zooming, I can see in the background of your shot, oh, that is clearly visual effects things you’re talking about. That is a prop that you’re having to figure out is that entirely digital. Talk to us about, on your show… Maybe start back to as you were starting to write your script for things. How much were you thinking about visual effects? How much did that visual effects thinking change over the course of actually shooting your show?

Craig: You have to think about it constantly. There are certain things that as writers we are free to ignore. We’re free to ignore budget and any of that stuff. It’s probably best that we don’t. We have a general sense that if I say, “Look, I want to shoot this show on a real boat on the water, and I want the boat to be on fire for real, and I want this and this to happen,” you understand this is going to cost a lot of money. It’s going to take a lot of time. It’s going to be difficult. Similarly, we should have a general sense of how visual effects work will impact our budget and the work that’s done.

You’re constantly asking your visual effects supervisor, is this better than doing it practically, meaning for real, or not? By better, we mean will it look better and will it cost less. Those are the big variables, look better, cost less. Sometimes it will look better and cost more. Then you have to make a choice. If they say this will not look good, it will cost a lot but it won’t look good, that’s also something you need to know. When you’re designing sequences, particularly large ones where you know you’re going to be doing world building or putting characters in a position where you’re not simply able to create it, you need to then talk to that person about where there are these landmines that you the layperson might not be aware of. Little things can suddenly jack up the price and make shots very, very complicated.

By and large, if characters are moving in front of something, and whatever that thing is needs to be a visual effect, even if it’s just a building or a sky that looks different, you want them in front of a blue screen, because that helps the visual effects department essentially have nothing but those people. Then they can put other stuff in. If you don’t, now they’ve got Roto, which means going through frame by frame and cutting them out. The expense goes way up. You’re always looking to avoid Roto-ing, if you can.

You are also, as much as possible, encouraged to have real elements from which to build visual effects around. If you’re lighting something on fire, if you have a building that’s burning, you want some real fire. You want to work with the special effects department to create practical fire, even if it’s not engulfing a building, because that would be unsafe, but some controllable fire that gives the visual effects department something to work with like natural light and sourcing. It gives the cinematographer a chance to work with real light as opposed to imagining what digital light would be doing.

All of these questions will inform what you do. At some point you must be ready for people to come to you and say, “We can’t, for the budget we have or the time we have,” or you get to choose this or this. Then you need to make your choices. You can’t get caught in the game of turning into an accountant for your own show. You don’t want to be the guy that just wins the victory for saving the most money. No one cares in the audience. On the other hand, you can’t be someone who doesn’t give a damn, because in the end, you’ll only hurt yourself.

John: I was talking with a showrunner this past week about a project she’s working on. She was talking about how even in the writers’ room she will sometimes be nixing ideas, just saying clearly on a budget level, on a visual effects level, that is going to be an idea that is going to kill us. It’s going to take away too many other options we need to have for the show. Those are hard things to do. It’s only with some experience, having made other things, she could see, okay, that is going to be problematic. I know that it’s going to be too expensive for the value we’re going to get out of it. I want to be able to save money to do this other big thing that is going to be better for the show. Those are tough calls to make. She has some experience, but it’s tougher if you’re a brand new writer who’s never been through that kind of production experience.

Craig: It is. You need to constantly ask questions. It’s probably better to check before you kill something, because there are times where between the art department, which is responsible for building the real sets, and the visual effects department, which was responsible for building things that aren’t there in reality, a solution may occur. Very important to us that we did a shot in Chernobyl where we see this power plant worker emerging from the exploded building to see that he’s actually outside. The roof is gone, and we can see that we’re exposed. He’s walking in front of this stuff. The production department built this environment up to a line. The line was basically where we would see someone moving. The person would never move above that line. Everything above that line gets replaced. At that point, you don’t need a blue screen above there. They can just digitally wipe it out and replace it, because nothing’s moving in front of it.

That concept of set extension is fundamental now to writing. If you can, in your mind, start thinking about creating these large places that don’t exist, but stage the scene in such a way that your real characters are moving in front of real things up to a point, and then the rest is set extension, that may be cost-effective. That may be more doable than you think.

John: The other classic thing you’d see in addition to set extension is when doors are opened, the space beyond that door. You’re on a stage, and so therefore the door is not looking outdoors. You’re putting a green screen, a blue screen behind there to replace that background, the window behind that door, so that the interior stage set actually feels like it’s the real exterior location.

Craig: We do that always.

John: That’s fundamental. Let’s talk about these from the very start decisions about where this show is going to be set, because visual effects is also going to determine what locations you’re going to be picking or even where you’re going to base your show. You based it out of Calgary, presumably because it gave you enough real visual stuff, the things you needed for your show, but you went in knowing that there’s going to be times where we’re going to have to replace backgrounds. We’re going to have to put trees where there aren’t trees. We’re going to have to put mountains where there aren’t mountains. How early on in the conversation or even as you were writing were you thinking about, okay, given what I’m going to have in Calgary, what other choice am I making on the page?

Craig: We were pretty far in on the writing before we landed on shooting in Alberta. Alberta wasn’t informed primarily by the writing. I think it’s good to start with dream. Let’s go ahead and dream our story. Then someone can say, “Look, here’s are the environments we have where we basically get free visual effects.” The Canadian Rockies is free visual effects. They’re amazing. These beautiful landscapes, they’re very… This is where they shot The Revenant. It’s gorgeous. That stuff is incredibly valuable, especially in stretches of your story where you know you’re going to be out there in the wilderness. Now you have wilderness. Where you think, “I’m going to need to create a bombed-out post-apocalyptic city,” those don’t exist. Then it’s simply about finding some locations that you feel gives your characters enough to be standing on and moving through, dressing that around them, and then talking about how the set extensions work from there.

You’re absolutely right. You need to be talking about that from the beginning, because there are things that are easier than other things. As writers, we don’t always know. I can’t tell you how many times I will walk over to our visual effects supervisor, who has been with us since prep, through shooting, and now here in post-production, to say, “Hey, difficult or hard to do this?” Difficult means time and money. He’ll say, “No, that’s easy.” Sometimes he’s like, “That’s actually harder than you would think.” There are times where I’m like, “I did not anticipate that.” You just don’t know. I will tell you that when you’re shooting, so many people who are invested in keeping the day moving will say to you, “We can fix that with visual effects.” They can do that. They can erase that. They can do this. They can do that. Then I’ll turn to our supervisor and say, “I’m being told that that’s easy.” He’ll go, “Ah… ” I’m like, “Okay, it’s not. Let’s fix it now.” Try and fix as much as you can now.

I think we should have a visual effects supervisor come on our show, and we should talk through the fundamentals of how visual effects are done, not the exciting stuff like spaceships blowing up, which is actually easy, but the really boring stuff, the stuff that basically you don’t know is happening, the invisible stuff. That’s really important for us as writers to know about.

John: On a show like yours, is the visual effects supervisor the person who’s also deciding, “We’re going to do a practical and we’re going to supplement it,” or is there a second… Who is responsible for getting the people together to talk over where this is going to split? Is it the director? Is it the line producer? Who’s involved with that conversation?

Craig: Everyone. The director, the showrunner of course, the physical producer, the visual effects supervisor, the visual effects producer, who’s handling the budgeting for all that and then the bidding, and the art department. Very important that the art department, the production designer is working hand in hand with the visual effects people, because that’s where digital and reality meet, and trying to figure out where the line is and what the best way of skinning the particular cat is. Everybody comes together and agrees we want to do this thing, but there are times…

Early on, there was a sequence that Neil and I were talking about, and it just became outrageously expensive to do and wasn’t necessarily… The part that was expensive wasn’t the part that we loved. Those are great targets for re-conceiving. Just do it in a different way, because we’re not going to get massive amounts of love and adoration for the fact that, I don’t know, whatever it is is happening in the background. It’s not important. It comes down to creative judgments. The creative judgments are set against the backdrop of what things will cost and how hard they’re going to be, just like everything else that we do. Knowing your options, crucial.

John: Let’s move on to our second topic. This is a listener question. Megana, can you set us up?

Megana: Travis wrote in and asked about optioning a novel. He says, “The novel is an old bestseller from a well-known writer, but one of their minor works. After weeks of back and forth with the author’s publisher, then being forwarded to their agent, I’ve learned that the rights are available. However, in my last email from the agent, they simply said, ‘We’ll look forward to hearing more about your interest.’ Now I’m feeling a bit naïve. I just assumed they would give me their terms and I could take it or leave it. Do they want me to present an offer? It is extremely amateur for me to ask if they have a standard agreement or what their asking terms would be for an option? Should I contact an entertainment attorney and get them to draft a proposal? To further complicate things, I’m currently in the process of signing with a manager. Should I wait until that is finalized and get the management team on board for the option?”

Craig: Why would you ever talk to an attorney about something as complicated as this?

John: As optioning. Craig, have you ever optioned a book?

Craig: No.

John: I have optioned one book. It was a good experience. Ken Richman, my attorney, ended up doing the option agreement. The short version of it is I read this book, I loved it, I reached out to the author. No one else was chasing the rights at this point. I said, “Hey, could I option this? I’m not sure I can get this set up, but I think I would love to try.” He said, “Sure.” It was a very low-cost option, a couple thousand dollars for 18 months or beyond. I never ended up doing anything with it. I let the option lapse. Still friendly with the author. It was my first time optioning a thing. I’m not sure I should’ve optioned it. I want to talk about what options are, but also what options are for somebody like Travis.

Craig: First let’s just say we’ve talked about options before, which is essentially you control the ability to make a movie or to essentially turn one thing into another, adapt the work into another work. You control that for a certain amount of time. Nobody else can turn that novel into something.

John: It gives you the option to buy out the rights to something. Rather than paying the full purchase price, you’re getting a hold on those rights for a period of time.

Craig: Exactly.

John: Eighteen months is common, but it could be a different amount of time.

Craig: I’m going to give you $500 for the right to buy your car within the next 6 months. If I don’t buy the car within the next 6 months, you’ve made $500.

John: The right to buy the car for a specific price.

Craig: That’s right.

John: That’s really crucial too.

Craig: Exactly. I’m going to give you 500 now. Within the next 6 months, if I give you 5,000, then your 1999 Toyota Tercel is mine. By the way, do not spend that much money on a ’99 Tercel.

John: Although in this car market these days, it’s all crazy.

Craig: I will say, Travis, you’ve answered your own question. First of all, certainly when they say, “We’ll look forward to hearing more about your interest,” what they’re saying is, “What are you talking about here, buddy? How much money you want to give us?” Why would they give you a term. Oh, no no no no no. No no no no no no no. You tell me. What do you want? You called me. How bad do you want this thing? That’s what they’re wondering is… If you are super interested in this and you have a lot of money, you take the first shot.

What that means, of course, is that you’re already outclassed, because that’s a business, and you’re not. Yes, you need an attorney now. Anything you say at this point they could turn into a warrant of something important. You’re not warranting anything. You’re just trying to find out what this costs. You need an attorney to do all your talking for you. Ideally, that attorney would have a decent sense of what these things generally option for based on market comps. Your manager may also have a sense of that. I don’t think you need to wait for a manager necessarily. I also don’t think that you need to option this at all.

John: I don’t think you do either. Let’s talk through a little bit more options and then get into why Travis probably shouldn’t be optioning this. Whenever you’re setting up an option, what your attorney will be looking to do is set up what are the terms of the option agreement, how long does it go, is it renewable, which is crucial, can you keep renewing it at the same price, keep that option going, what the price is for the option, it could be a dollar classically or it could be a lot more than that, what the final purchase price will be. That might be contingent on what the budget for the actual movie or TV show is. Three percent is common, but it could be a big range. I think the one I optioned, it was 3% of the budget. What rights are you optioning? Is it just the film rights? Is it the TV rights? Is it stage rights? Is it everything? You’ve got to be specific about that.

This is also crucial, as someone who’s had books where people tried to option. Does the author have any controls? Does the author control anything over casting or director approval or script approval? Those are things that are going to be in this first option agreement. That’s why you’d have an attorney do this, if you were to try to option this book, which I think we’re both saying you probably shouldn’t.

Craig: I don’t see what the great value is here. It doesn’t sound like it’s something that a lot of people are chasing. If you write a script that other people are interested in purchasing, if it’s a studio, and you say, “Look, it’s based on this novel, and the rights are available,” then the studio will be like, “Oh, okay, we’ll just go get those,” because they’re going to have to get them from you anyway. You wouldn’t lose any leverage, because they’d still want your script.

John: Two choices Travis has here. He could go back to them and say, “Fantastic to hear. As I sit down with other producers, I’d like to bring this up as a thing I really would very much want to write.” That is an indication, “Hey, don’t be shopping this to other people.” As I go in and have my general meetings at places, there’s always this thing like, “Hey, what do you want to write? What are you interested in?” I can say, “There’s this book that I really love. I’ve talked to the author, and the rights are available. Here’s how I’d do it.” You get someone else to buy the rights for you. That’s a possibility. Could they swoop in? We’ve had other listeners on the show who have said, “I mentioned this book, and someone else bought it and scooped it out from under me.” Could that happen to Travis?

Craig: Yeah, it could.

John: Yeah, it could. It could. Absolutely.

Craig: It could, but I don’t think that… Let’s say you option this thing for a standard term, which is about a year and a half. It’s pretty typical. If you don’t sell this within a year and a half, and somebody else wants to do it, then they’ll just sell it to that other person. The odds of you going from no script to something in a year and a half is not strong.

John: Travis could also decide to write this script based on this book without controlling the underlying rights. That’s risky, but it does happen. That script will at least be a writing sample for Travis that he can show out on the town if he doesn’t control the underlying book. Maybe it turns out great, and somebody wants to buy the script and the book. They can do it. It just becomes a much harder thing to set up and sell that way, just because the rights holder is going to say, “Great. You bought that script, and you want the rights to this book? Great, now they cost $5 million.” They can hold things hostage.

Craig: I agree. I think you probably don’t need to get this deep into it. First start writing and see if you even want to do it. That’s the other thing. You haven’t written anything yet, so who even knows?

John: We have a follow-up question here from Hannah that I think ties in well.

Megana: Hannah from Minneapolis asks, “For loose adaptations like 10 Things I Hate About You and Taming of the Shrew or Clueless and Emma, do you need to obtain rights for the source material? I’m thinking no exact lines or character names, but modernized versions of the characters and plot. The book I have in mind was written in 1920 and is not in the public domain.”

Craig: Hold on. She switcheroo’ed us there.

John: She did.

Craig: You started with a thing that was in the public domain, a thing that was in the public domain, a thing that was in the public domain. If it’s in the public domain, you don’t have to worry about it. If it’s written in 1920 and it’s not in the public domain, then you do.

John: It could be simpler. To say loose adaptations, strict adaptations, for things in public domain, you could do a very direct adaptation. You don’t have to worry about any of that stuff. Just do what you want to do. If it’s in the public domain, it’s in the public domain. It is free for you to use. This book that she’s thinking about that was written in 1920, that’s not in the public domain, it’s going to be in the public domain really soon. It’s not going to be forever before it becomes public domain. If it’s not public domain now and you want to be working on it, I’d think about what is it about that book that is appealing to you and is there a way you can do something that is like that but is not directly based on it, because you probably can. Just don’t take it directly.

Craig: No exact lines or character names is not necessarily going to save you from copyright infringement. The question that will be asked is would the people who do control the rights to that book, I assume an estate, would they recognize in your work that you have adapted their work? One of the rights that copyright infers is a right to make derivative works, including adaptations. If it’s recognizable as an adaptation, you got a problem, because clearly you’re pulling more than just an idea. If it’s not recognizable as an adaptation, then I guess the question is really are you adapting the book at all.

I think John’s making an excellent point. The book was written in 1920. Odds are, unless the book was written by a seven-year-old, that this is going to be in public domain soon enough, because public domain essentially is conferred by a particular period of time after the death of the author. I don’t know which book it is. Generally speaking, when you’re getting back into 1920, you’re talking about 100 years ago, see how you do.

John: The F. Scott Fitzgerald books are becoming public domain now.

Craig: Agatha Christie books are going to start going to the public domain. There’s already the very first one. I think a few more will be following.

John: This is also the point in the podcast where we remind people that our copyright laws and our extensions of copyright laws are bullshit. Things should be public domain much sooner than they currently are.

Craig: They are constantly changing. Basically, every time Mickey Mouse approaches public domain status, the copyright in the United States seems to get extended again.

John: Kick that can. Maybe we’ll just let Mickey Mouse just have eternal copyright and let everything else go. I don’t care about Mickey Mouse. Fine.

Craig: I don’t care either. I don’t even think Disney cares. At this point they’re like, “Whatever. Whatever.”

John: We have one short question here on shorts. Megana, do you want to take this one?

Megana: Leah wrote in and said, “I’m a filmmaker who lives and works in Los Angeles. I’ve been fortunate enough to find a financier to fund a few short films of mine. I love making short films. They’re fun, rewarding, and meaningful. Most importantly, my cast and crew are paid decently. I’m using short films as a way to hone my skills as writer/director/editor and as a calling card for features. When I get more established in the feature and TV world, I don’t ever see myself not doing short films. I’m astounded by how many directors and writers who have, quote, ‘made it’ don’t make short films. At a certain point, is filmmaking a job instead of art? Is asking a director or writer to do a short film the equivalent of asking an off-duty dishwasher to do the dishes? In essence, why am I not seeing more short films from P.T. Anderson, Greta Gerwig, or Debra Granik?

Craig: Because they don’t want to do them. Just a wild guess.

John: My first instinct is because they don’t have to make them, so they’re not making them. Then I think about maybe it’s just no one’s asking them to make them. When I think of filmmakers who actually do shorts, they’re usually for a purpose, like New Yorkers asking Wes Anderson to make a short film about something.

Craig: An ad, usually.

John: Basically an ad. That’s the thing is advertising videos, other stuff like that become the equivalent of short films. That’s why big directors will do those rather than do a narrative short film that is just a reason to make it. I think it’s because, at least in the US, there’s not really a market for short films, there’s not really a purpose for short films, other than as calling cards. Once someone has made it, they don’t feel the urgent need to make a calling card.

Craig: Ultimately, when filmmakers make films, they are looking for an audience. There isn’t a tremendous audience, at least in the US, for short films. People don’t necessarily seek them out. It may be fun, rewarding, and meaningful to you, the filmmaker, Leah, but they don’t seem to be fun, rewarding, and meaningful to most of the audience. It’s just a fact. People just don’t go seeking them out. They don’t love them. They tend to like episodes of television which are… Certainly half-hours are like many short films. Or they like full features. That’s what they prefer. That is also how most of us were raised culturally. That’s how most of us think, including P.T. Anderson, Greta Gerwig, and Debra Granik. I think your premise is that everybody loves them, so why aren’t we making more of them, and I dispute your premise. I think you do, which is wonderful.

John: That’s great.

Craig: I think you should keep doing it. That’s fantastic. When you say, “I’m astounded by how many directors and writers who have, quote, ‘made it’ don’t do short films,” you mean like almost all of us? At that point you should not be astounded. At that point you should just think, “I’m into something that’s sort of niche,” because that’s what it is. John and I don’t do short films. Also, a lot of writers don’t write in that format. If you’re a non-writing director, there’s also just a lot less material out there for you.

John: Craig, I’ve done two short films.

Craig: What?

John: I’m actually really proud of both of them.

Craig: Which ones?

John: I did God, which was my initial thing with Melissa McCarthy.

Craig: I thought that was The Nines.

John: No. God is the short film I did before Go, with Melissa McCarthy.

Craig: Pre-Go.

John: That set up Melissa McCarthy. Incredibly helpful for me. It was a calling card, really useful for that.

Craig: Was that when you were in school?

John: We’d shot Go. It hadn’t come out yet. I used the short ends of film left over from Go to shoot the short film with Melissa McCarthy, who was delightful.

Craig: It was called God?

John: It’s called God. You’ve never seen God?

Craig: I love the fact that you made Go, and then you were like, “I have some extra film and the letter D.”

John: “I will add it on there.” Craig, after this, literally, you have to watch it, because I think you’ll find it delightful.

Craig: I will.

John: It’s literally the first time you’re going to see Melissa McCarthy on film.

Craig: God.

John: God.

Craig: God, writing it down.

John: You will understand me better after watching this short film. I made a short film during the 2008 writers’ strike, which was a premise pilot for a series we never ended up shooting. It’s a short film, but it’s also a pilot.

Craig: It’s a pilot.

John: It’s a pilot. It’s a web series pilot. I’m also reminded, back on Episode 287, my One Cool Thing was this short film called Vale done by Alejandro Amenabar. I thought, “Wow, I don’t understand why this short film exists with Dakota Johnson, but it’s just absolutely delightful.” Then a listener pointed out, “No, it’s actually an ad for the beer they’re drinking in the short film.”

Craig: Bingo. There’s been quite a few of those. Martin Scorsese has made one. Every now and then BMW will hire some wonderful filmmaker to make a 20-minute thing. Anyway, point being, Leah, keep doing what you love. That’s important.

John: 100%.

Craig: The fact that you’ve been able to find financing for it is wonderful. I’m hoping that there is, even if it’s not a massive audience, it is a dedicated audience to your films, but I don’t think your premise that other people are somehow missing out on something wonderful is correct. If you love that, you do it. If other filmmakers don’t, they do what they do.

John: Exactly. It has come time for our One Cool Things. I have two One Cool Things. First off, for screenwriters, if you listen to this podcast and enjoy people talking about screenwriting, you’ll probably enjoy Jonathan Stokes’s little video series called Raising the Stakes, where he talks about stakes in movies. The series of videos is about different themes on stakes in screenwriting things. Take a look at them. They’re delightful. They’re on YouTube. If you’re a person who plays video games, which is a lot of people who listen to the podcast, you might enjoy Stray. Have you heard of Stray?

Craig: I have.

John: I’ve been playing it. I think it’s just delightful. In it, you are a stray cat who is wandering through this post-apocalyptic, empty city. You’re just a cat. You can do cat things. You can’t talk, can’t do anything else. You can scratch against trees. It does a really good job with the controller and using the rumble in the controller and also the speaker, to really make it feel like you’re doing the things that you’re doing, which I was impressed by. I just really like it. I also like that the cat cannot miss jumps. If it looks like you can jump on it, you can jump on it. If you fall, it’s because there’s a narrative reason why you’re supposed to fall. Cats are really good at jumping and landing. It just has perfect jumping.

Craig: I’ve been looking at that one. I think I might grab that myself. I’ve been playing Cyberpunk 2077, a game that I purchased when it came out, played for about one day, and went, “WTF this POS.”

John: So broken?

Craig: It was so broken. The very first quest line just wouldn’t function for me. I was like, “I guess I’m stuck.” A guy I follow on Twitter named Hutch, who’s a big professional gamer, was mentioning that he’s been playing it lately and that it’s way better than he thought it was based on all that, the disastrous launch. I was like, “All right, Hutch, I’ll go back in.” I’m playing it on a PS5. It is fixed. There’s been a few glitches. I’m not going to lie. There’s been a few moments where I’m like, “Oh, come on,” and yet still it’s been a lot of fun. I’m about halfway through the main line. It’s a lot of fun. Tip of the hat.

John: Great.

Craig: It started so poorly for me way back when, but I’m enjoying Cyberpunk now. That’s not my One Cool Thing. My One Cool Thing was actually sent to us on Twitter by a guy named Daniel Green, @dgreenmusic. It’s not a new thing. It’s an older video from 2017, which seems like it was yesterday but in fact was five years ago. It is a video called How to Make a Blockbuster Movie Trailer. It’s fantastic.

John: It’s really good. I think we have discussed it. I think it’s worth a rewatch because it’s really, really good.

Craig: It’s so good. It just nails every single moment. Why I think it’s important to actually watch this thing is to see behind the curtain and realize how easy it is to manipulate us and also how strange it is that we don’t immediately notice how repetitive and imitative these trailers are to each other.

John: I think it’s terrific. By the way, Craig, you know Dan Green, because Dan Green was your accompanist at the New York live show.

Craig: Oh, that Dan Green.

John: That’s Dan Green.

Craig: He’s wonderful. Thank you, Dan Green. Thank you for being my accompanist when I sang on Broadway. That’s a very, very stretchy fact. I was on a Broadway stage, not in a Broadway musical. I did sing. Dan was my accompanist. He’s wonderful. I remember he had just gotten married, I think.

John: He’s still happily married.

Craig: Fantastic.

John: They have a kid.

Craig: Wonderful.

John: He’s running some half-marathons. We’re proud of Dan. Love it.

Craig: Thank you very much for sending that in, Dan. That’s great.

John: That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Craig: You know it.

John: Our outro this week is by Adam Pineless. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin, I’m @johnaugust. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s where you’ll find transcripts and sign up for our weeklyish newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts and hoodies, and they’re terrific. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. You can sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all of the back-episodes and Bonus Segments, like the one we’re about to record on nightmares. Craig, Megana, thank you for a fun show.

Craig: Thank you.

Megana: Thank you.

[Bonus Segment]

John: Craig, do you suffer from nightmares?

Craig: Suffer is a strong word, but I certainly have them.

John: You encounter them. Megana, are you a nightmare person?

Megana: Oh yeah.

John: Are you a nightmare person.

Craig: Megana is such a nightmare person.

John: A nightmare person.

Megana: On all levels, I’m a nightmare person.

John: Megana, I’m guessing you do have nightmares, because you are the most easily startled person I’ve ever met in my life. I think they’re probably related.

Craig: Megana is really easily startled.

Megana: Yeah, I am. It happens in my sleep too.

John: Not good. Are there circumstances that you can trace back to, “Oh, I’m having nightmares because of X, Y, or Z,” or is it just random for you?

Craig: Why do I feel like this is definitely a robot trying to learn about human behavior? “Tell me about these nightmares.”

John: “Tell me about feelings.”

Craig: “How do they function?”

Megana: I think that’s what’s so unsettling about it is that they just come out of nowhere. Sometimes I’ll be feeling really good about things, and then I’ll have this horrible nightmare. Sometimes I have really realistic where I’m having conversations with people that go terribly, and then I wake up and I’m so mad and upset at them. It was a total lie. Do you guys experience that?

John: I absolutely do. I’m a very vivid dreamer. I feel like probably my time in dreams is much longer than my time awake. I feel like I have whole other lifetimes in dreams, in an Inception way. Luckily, very rarely do dreams because actually scary nightmare situations. They can be annoying dreams, but I rarely get things where I’m scared for my life.

Craig: As life goes on, I feel like I either have fewer nightmares, or when I have them, I have a general sense of… It’s not that I’m fully aware that I’m dreaming, but I know it’s not real, whereas when I was a kid I would have nightmares all the time. They were very vivid. I believed them. They were terrifying. I would even have repeat nightmares where it was the same one. As I was in it, I knew that the bad thing was going to happen. Happy that I’m out of that. I think in part it’s a function of a vivid imagination and a mind that has just creative… I think creative minds come up with really interesting and terrifying nightmares.

John: I’m always surprised in dreams how complicated and how thought out they are. Sometimes they feel plotted in a way. Dreaming is your brain doing its maintenance cycle. It’s cleaning out all this stuff. It’s rewiring things so that you’re trying to create logic that isn’t necessarily going to be there. I am struck when it does feel like it has a story and a plot and things are moving forward in ways that would happen in real life.

Craig: Megana, are your dreams incredibly thorough and complicated?

Megana: Yeah. Then sometimes I’m like, “Damn, I just wrote a movie in my head.” Then I try to write it out, and I’m like, “Oh, this is garbage.”

Craig: Garbage. It’s another garbage movie from a nightmare person.

John: Getting back to scary things happening at night, have either of you had sleep paralysis, where you wake up but you cannot move?

Craig: I have not.

John: I’ve had it.

Megana: I have had it a couple of times.

John: My experience was it was the absolute scariest thing, much scarier than a scary dream, because it will generally happen if I take a nap, because I’m not generally a napper. I kind of wake up, but I don’t fully wake up. Then I cannot move any part of my body. I’m aware of some dark force is usually just beyond where my feet would be. I can sometimes see the thing. I could feel it. I cannot move. I cannot speak. Eventually, I’ll be able to get some sort of gurgling scream out and Mike will wake me up.

Craig: Gurgling scream.

John: It really does feel like you’re just trying to force the thing out and you cannot do it.

Craig: Wow. You’re lucky you’re not married to me, because I would just watch you. I would see gurgly screams, and I would just be like, “Interesting.” Like Christopher Guest in Princess Bride. “Fascinating.”

John: Recording starting on a phone, videotaping the whole thing.

Craig: “You seem to be caught in a nightmare.”

John: Megana, was your experience of sleep paralysis at all the same?

Megana: Yes, that feeling of trying so hard to scream or to move, and then also just the feeling that there was someone else in the room that I couldn’t see, but they were just right out of the corner of my eye, and I’m trying to look for them.

Craig: That’s me.

Megana: Just recording us screaming.

Craig: That’s me watching.

John: What I’ve read, and I think last time it happened it was successful, is the only way out of it is you have to relax out of it, and eventually you will fall back asleep and your body will come back out of it. It’s really tough to chill out when you feel like that.

Craig: I had a nightmare last week. I will spare you the details, because as we all know, nothing’s more boring than hearing somebody describe their dream. There was one moment that encapsulated my fear. It was a dream where I was driving, and it turned into a car crash. I was driving, for whatever reason, I understood that I was, A, drunk, B, driving backwards, and C, the car was turning towards the right, but my eyes could only look to the left. I understood I was going to crash at some point, but I didn’t know when that point was. That was the scariest thing of all, just not knowing. Then the crash happened. I was fine. I woke up. It was no big deal.

John: A common thing for me is that I do wake up right before the actual injury would happen. I never feel the actual impact of it. I wake up in that, so I’m not feeling the actual pain.

Craig: This whole dream thing, it’s really weird, the concept of it. It’s bizarre. Just our bad brains barfing out neural crap.

John: As I look at my dog sleeping here, he has dreams too.

Craig: Of course.

John: I see him chasing and barking.

Craig: So cute. Little twitches.

Megana: I also had a question for you guys, because I had had a nightmare, and then I was trying to talk myself down in the middle of the night. I was like, “Okay, self-soothe.” I was like, “How did my parents help me deal with this?” Maybe this is why I’m so bad at dealing with nightmares, because it was awful. My dad would sit me down, and he would be like, “Megana, think about logic.”

Craig: Oh, Dr. Rao. You know what I would do? My daughter would have the full-on night terrors when she was young.

John: Night terrors where she wakes up screaming and [inaudible 00:59:31].

Craig: What would happen is she would walk out. I was staying up late working. She would come on out of her room. She was in tears. I would understand, okay, she had a terrible nightmare. First of all, I would make her go pee, because that’s 90% of it. I would put her back to bed. I would make sure to spray my anti-monster spray, which is the opposite of what Dr. Rao did. What Dr. Rao did was just deny your feelings, just invalidate your experience completely, and not help you at all.

John: Craig, where do you get the anti-monster spray?

Craig: I would tell her that it was quite expensive and it was precious, and I had to keep it hidden and safe, just so that it was always there. Of course, she understood there was no monster spray, just as she understood there was no monsters. Nonetheless, again, unlike Dr. Rao…

John: You were validating her feelings.

Craig: Validation and soothing. I would say, Megana, what you ought to do next time you wake up from a nightmare is just spray some anti-monster spray around you.

Megana: Maybe I’ll do that, get some lavender aromatherapy spray or something.

Craig: No no no no no no no. You don’t understand. You hold an imaginary thing in your hand and you shh. That’s how you do it. I don’t understand what you thought… The lavender was not going to work. You need monster spray.

Megana: I see. You weren’t even holding anything.

Craig: Lord, no. If I had been holding something, she would’ve been like, “That’s not going to work.” You need to understand that there’s something supernatural in my hand that’s going to work, and therefore it must be invisible.

Megana: I see. I see.

Craig: God, you’re a nightmare person.

John: Thank you both.

Craig: Thanks.

John: Bye.

Megana: Bye.

Craig: Bye.

Links:

• Craig went to Comic Con 2022 to Moderate a Mythic Quest Panel
• Will Netflix be Alright? by Dave Karpf
• God John’s 1998 short film
• Stray Annapurna videogame
• Raising the Stakes videos
• How to Make a Blockbuster Trailer
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• John August on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Outro by Adam Pineless (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.