Search Results for: book rights

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hey, this is John. Today’s episode has even more swearing than usual, so if you’re in a car with your kids, this is a standard warning about that.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to Episode 657 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Deadpool & Wolverine has become the highest-grossing R-rated film in history. Today on the show, we welcome back its co-writer, producer, and star, Mr. Ryan Reynolds.

Ryan Reynolds: Oh, hi.

John: Welcome back, Ryan.

Ryan: Hi. Very nice to be here. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

John: Last time you were here was early pandemic and it was you and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. We talked about the fourth wall and sort of tapping on that glass. Looking back at the transcript, I think really what happened is we were all so smitten with Phoebe Waller-Bridge that we didn’t really ask you a lot of questions about stuff. We were mostly just staring at Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

Ryan: I could just spend the rest of my life just listening to Phoebe Waller-Bridge, just insight, ideas, just like the level of acerbic, gorgeous wit that pours out of that person is pretty special.

John: Yes. She was fantastic. You know What? She’s not here today, so it’s all about you.

Ryan: Well, wow.

Craig: You’re just as pretty. I’m absolutely lost in your beglassed eyes.

Ryan: Thank you. Thank you. Yes. I still got it. God, that’s good.

Craig: Oh, boy, do you have it–

John: I thought we’d talk about your approach to Deadpool, really the character and the franchise as an actor, as a writer, as a producer, and really get into how you get movies made because, Ryan Reynolds, you’re actually really good at getting movies made. Your ability to will something into existence is impressive and I think it started with Deadpool. That’s your first producing credit. The ability to go from an actor who is cast in a movie to a force who makes a movie exist is something I’d really like to talk to you about.

Then in our bonus segment for premium members, I want to talk about the non-film stuff you do because I think one of the things that I’ve enjoyed seeing you do over the last 10 years is make a bunch of stuff that doesn’t have to be a movie or a TV show, but it’s related to some brand that you control. My gut instinct is that it’s not about money, it’s just about the chance to make a lot of stuff, and I want to talk to you about that.

Ryan: Great. Very exciting.

John: Cool. Let’s go all the way back to Deadpool. When were you first aware of the character? When did that first cross your mind, like, “Oh, Ryan Reynolds. Deadpool. That’s a thing that I should be thinking about?”

Ryan: That’s a good question. I think it was 2004, someone sent me– I believe it was Toby Emmerich, sent me a Deadpool comic. In that comic, I appeared. My name appeared. Somebody asked what Deadpool looks like under the mask, and he said he looks like a cross between a shar pei and Ryan Reynolds. They intentionally left the Y out of my last name, I think for legal reasons or some sort of– I believe it was Joe Kelly who did that particular issue.

That was the first time I became aware of it. I just thought it was really interesting to read about this. Forget about the humor side of it. I thought it was interesting to read about a character who seemed like they were in a low to high-level militarized shame spiral over their life and their circumstances, but also was aware that they were in a comic book, which to me just added this whole other completely bizarre layer. That’s how I got into it. That was my first introduction to it.

Craig: When you read that first, did you have that instinct that this character, with its tone, was– there are things sometimes as writers, we get things, and as actors, I can only imagine this is true as well, where you go, “Oh, not only do I know how to do this. This is actually easy. This is the pitch I hit the hardest. This is going to be fun because there’s no wind resistance here. It’s just naturally in me already.”

Ryan: I mean a little bit. I’ve always loved acknowledging and playing with cultural landscape in many ways. I think that is a trait that you could superimpose onto Deadpool in that world quite easily. I don’t like how– You know when you see a TED Talk and you see, they come out and they go, “Here’s how I did it. Here’s how I knew.”

“Early on, I felt this.” It’s a really slow-motion car accident to self-gratification and giving yourself basically a public pat on the back. I find that frustrating because I don’t believe that anybody– if they do, God bless them. I don’t know that anybody was just like, “I see this as clear as a bell.” It’s so easy to mythologize that “I spent 10 years every day pushing this movie up the hill, trying to get it made because I was the only one who believed in it.”

And that’s just simply not true. I loved it. I thought that there was something really wonderful to do there. At the end of the day, many of us, I can’t speak for all of us, many of us are just fucking winging it. I knew there was something I could do there the whole thing, the whole picture. I didn’t see exactly how it could slot into the modern movie-going experience or even comic book movies. At that point, when I first read it, most comic book movies were quite serious or they’re at least starting to trend that way.

I think Deadpool’s always been unusually benefited by timing. Deadpool 1 was a curiosity. It was a natural underdog. It showed up at a time when it reached a sort of apex level of self-seriousness in that particular– I don’t know. Some people don’t call it a genre, but I do.

Then Deadpool 2 is a fast follow. I’m very, very proud of Deadpool 2, up until this last one, it was my favorite of them. Then, of course, Deadpool and Wolverine, I think, again, very lucky to slot in at the exact right time.

Craig: I believe Deadpool called it a low point.

Ryan: A low point. Yes. The dip. Deadpool called it the dip. Yes. “He’s joining in a low point.” It was really all these little things… It’s luck. I didn’t write Marvel Jesus as a commentary on where the studio was at this exact moment, but it came around at the right time and it was– Yes.

John: Let’s wind back, though, a little bit because the idea of you as a superhero was not unexpected. At the time that Toby Emmerich sent over this Deadpool comic, had you already done Blade Trinity?

Ryan: No. Sorry. I was on set.

John: On Blade Trinity, you were meant to be a supporting character who ended up getting a sort of bigger role as things went along and you had what’s now the classic Ryan Reynolds wit. You were commenting on the situations that you’re experiencing in ways that felt new and fresh and you were the best thing in that movie.

Ryan: Well, I don’t know about that but–

Craig: No. I do know about that. That’s absolutely true. The side note was not only shocked to see Blade in Deadpool & Wolverine, I was shocked to see Blade. That was pretty startling. The history of that, of Blade 3 is out there. Yes. That was pretty eye-opening and a testament, I think, again to, I don’t know, your ability to manifest things. That’s pretty remarkable.

Ryan: I mean come on. What about redemption and culture and storytelling? Redemption is one of the greatest engines, I think, of emotion and storytelling and all kinds of stuff. I felt like that character, in particular, never got that third act, that moment to– particularly, if you think about Wesley Snipes, the guy’s a movie star. He’s just a thousand-billion-watt movie star. And charisma in spades. Yes. I don’t know. I was just grateful he said yes. I wasn’t sure that he would say yes. It was certainly a nerve-wracking phone call, cold calling him out of the blue after 20 years.

He was a dream. He was just an absolute dream. I feel like I get goosebumps even talking about him, seeing him break the frame in the movie, that first moment, and seeing that with thousands of people at Comic-Con who are all seeing it for the first time ever, I don’t know that I’ve ever felt anything that was that beautiful. I remember thinking how lucky I am to be any part of this, let alone Deadpool. It was just such an amazing moment, not just for me, but for everybody.

Craig: Yes. I love Ryan Reynolds.

Ryan: Oh, come on now.

Craig: No. I do. I do.

Ryan: Welcome to my TED Talk, Craig. This is how I did it.

Craig: I can’t help it. It’s just it’s the Canadian humility. Canadian humility is a special kind. It really is. It’s a beautiful thing.

Ryan: It’s a fine line between the humility and just self-loathing, unabashed self-loathing, unregulated. Yes. Horrible.

Craig: Yes. I know a little bit about that.

Ryan: Yes. Sure. We all do. Right?

Craig: Yes.

Ryan: That’s how we know how to type.

Craig: There you go.

Ryan: Yeah. The whole thing’s been a pretty wild journey, but I don’t want to derail us from– I think you had a question about how sort of at the beginning of it all or–

John: Before it became even conceivable that you were going to do a Deadpool character, because that was a very fringe Marvel character. It wasn’t sort of like the next thing on the plate for them to try to do. I was writing Shazam over at Warner’s.

Ryan: Oh yeah.

John: I remember we had a conversation.

Ryan: I remember. Yes.

John: Yes. I remember having a conversation. It’s like, “Well, we need somebody who feels like a superhero, but is actually funny, can play like a little kid.” “Oh, we should do Ryan Reynolds.” Ryan Reynolds wasn’t a big enough star at that point, which was so incredibly frustrating.

Ryan: Shazam is such a great– it’s big. You get to do all that. I just love that character.

John: Yes. There’s a different universe in which you did that. Instead, you got to play a version of this character in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I remember when you were getting ready to go off and do that, and you did all the sword practice, then you went off to Australia, and it was a frustrating experience while you were doing it, but it was a chance to play this character. How do you think about that? You had very little control over that manifestation, but there was a chance to play that character.

Craig: To play a character, named that character.

John: Named that character. Yes. That was roughly related to it.

Craig: Specifically without the one thing that made that character interesting. That was the weirdest thing of all. It’s the most verbal character possible, and they’re like, “What is–?”

Ryan: “We should sew his mouth shut.”

Craig: Yeah.

Ryan: I would say it’s more of like, you could characterize that whole era as observations in a scarcity mindset. This business is so transactional, and particularly for me at that point, it was incredibly transactional. The idea that somebody says, “Hey, you can play this character. If you ever want to have a shot at bringing it to the big screen in the way you want, then you should probably do this.” You think, “Oh, I don’t know. This isn’t quite the way I hoped it would ever be, but I also don’t want some other guy to go do it.” Next thing I know, he’s in a red body condom, and he’s running around and having all the fun, so I said, “Yes.”

At that point, too, I’d been learning a lot, because I’d been on some pretty, I don’t want to say chaotic sets, because immediately, people think like people with attitudes and assholes and all kinds of stuff. But there was a propensity for some of these bigger movies to just have this scary sort of middle think sometimes, and it’s like so many people weighing in with so many different ideas and opinions, and everything gets washed out. Any kind of idea you really had to grow in the story sort of gets strangled and killed early on.

I remember sort of seeing that a lot during that period. X-Men Origins: Wolverine did two things. One, I really saw how hard it is to make these bigger movies with so many different characters and studios and opinions and ideas. The other thing I saw was how– Hugh Jackman left the biggest impression on me on that movie because he was so accessible, so kind, obviously so talented, so charismatic, but everything about him was just the genuine article. He was so authentically unique and that he was– everybody felt seen by him. It was incredible leadership.

You don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We’ve all been on big movies that are hard to land the plane. I was blown away that somebody could be a movie star on that level and still have so much humanity. It was a nice time for me and my life and my arc to see that kind of person out there in the world. I was grateful for that.

John: You’re both going to be very surprised because I’m going to try a sports metaphor here.

Craig: Whoa.

John: Let’s see how this goes.

Ryan: Whoa. John August. Jesus. Wow.

Craig: Okay. Let’s buckle up everyone here. Here we go.

Ryan: It’s going to be like cricket or something or–

Craig: It’s going to be a hockey ball going through a baseball.

John: I’m going for American football here. This is really a dangerous one for me. I would say that the lead actor in a film, like the number one on the call sheet, ends up being like the quarterback of the team. Everyone sort of looks for the quarterback. They’re not the coach. They’re not the person who’s ultimately calling the shots. They’re not the manager. They don’t own it. They’re not deciding how the whole franchise is going to run, but they’re the person who’s going to set the tone in terms of how we’re going to get this stuff done.

I’ve seen so many movies that have gone better because there was somebody in that lead slot who really got it and sort of could make everyone feel like this is the spirit of how we’re making this movie. And so many productions where it’s all gone south because that number one on the call sheet was just not a good quarterback and people couldn’t look to them for inspiration. So I feel like– You talked about Hugh Jackman, that feels like what he is doing because he’s not generally the person who’s producing the film. He doesn’t have the overall vision for the thing, but he is the right spirit behind it.

Ryan: Yes. I feel like that’s very, very spot-on and astute. I think that what happens more than anything, even just outside of the creative part of it, is that number one on the call sheet that creates a language and a disposition around that movie that will be the experience. It’s a bit of that, Maya Angelou, “Believe in the first time…” That first day or two or that week, exactly how this is going to go.

We’ve all been there, too, where the number one is aptly named. You just kind of, “Ugh,” everything starts to fall apart and you feel this weird toxic thing starts to pour down. Then, the next thing you know, number 52 on the call sheet like having a similar sort of disposition to number one. They’re all seeing the validation of that. Everybody’s seeing like, “Wow. All the energy goes around to the person who’s difficult or hard to work with.”

Maybe that’s a short-term, I don’t know, hit of endorphins for someone. I’m not really sure, but the long-term effects of the movie is always just stifled and shit. Nobody’s able to really say what they’re hoping, how the story could evolve. If you can’t talk to somebody that you’re working with and feel like they’re willing to step outside of whatever agenda they have, I don’t know, you’re dead on arrival. If you’re not dead on arrival, you got really lucky, I think.

Craig: Obviously, you’re number one on the call sheet, and I would imagine all the time now, but certainly, for Deadpool, when you come in there with this knowledge that you’re the Hugh Jackman, essentially, and you have people looking up to you now, even the day players that might murder you, which is hysterical, what do you do?

You were talking about the idea of people, other actors coming to you and talking about how to elevate the story. Or talking about story at all, which, by the way, is so exciting for me to hear, that anyone’s talking about story as opposed to other crap. How do you welcome your cast into that, and how do you set the tone for them?

Ryan: Well, it starts with casting. You got to go cast the people that you know and trust and feel like they’re going to show up for you and show up for them. But running a set that feels safe is hugely important to me, but not for the reasons you might think. It’s a very selfish pursuit because I want everyone to feel amazing and safe and that they can speak up or voice something that concerns them or something that inspires them or just have that idea that this is a collaboration.

Filmmakers shouldn’t just be reserved for a director, a producer, writer, and a star, among a few other names on the poster. Everyone’s making the movie. I would sit at Pinewood and look at these fourth-generation craftspeople building things on those sets. The level of expertise and talent that has been handed down to them and that they’ve also refined and put their shoulder behind and grown is like it’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. I never get tired of that. I never get tired of working with hyper-competent reliable people.

Whenever I have conversations like this, I think, if you could say one word for the kind of person that I think is capable, not every time, nobody bats a thousand, but is capable of making stories that resonate and stories that really work in culture, it’s conscientious. I know that’s such an unsexy word, but people who are conscientious, I think, just excel. One quick little clue that somebody’s conscientious is the dumbest and simplest one, they’re on time. They show up on time. They feel like they’re literally 30 seconds late, but there’s a bit of a, “Ugh. I let myself down.” I don’t know. I never get tired of that, of working with people who live that way, and it bears incredible fruit when you do that.

John: Yes. So Deadpool is your first producing credit. This is the first time where your name is appearing on it. This is your production that you’re overseeing and to have all these values and hopefully get them to come about, but I want to talk to you about getting Fox to say yes, because there was this idea of doing a Deadpool movie. You shot test footage. You had a script together, but you couldn’t get over the starting line there. What was the conversation about trying to do a Deadpool movie and how did you finally push it into existence?

Ryan: It was right in a– everything crashed into this intersection of Green Lantern and Deadpool. I was really hoping to get a Deadpool movie greenlit, and it just was so slow and just not happening. I think the edict at the studio at that point was that they did want to do it, but they just didn’t want to do it yet. They wanted to service these other X-Men characters, which I understand. It’s easy to tell the story in a binary sense that it was them against me, but I also understand how those things work.

I remember sending emails to Fox saying, “I think I’m going to end up doing this other–“ this goes back to what I said earlier. Every actor, every performer, everyone in our industry, writers, directors, producers, there’s always a little scarcity mindset. We always think, “I’m fucked. I’m never going to do this again.” If I don’t act now…

Green Lantern had come around and I had auditioned for it, I don’t know, four or five times at this point, and it was really getting to the finish line. That was when I was saying, like, “Please, is there any chance that you–“ it was a bit like a romantic comedy at the end. “I won’t walk down the aisle with this person if you just blink twice,” and they didn’t blink twice.

I went and did that and then, somehow, some way I was able to– I had already shot the test footage for Deadpool and after Green Lantern and all that debacle, and you think, “How am I ever going to pull out of this?” The test footage ended up on the internet, and boy, that’s what got it greenlit, only because that was the first time I really saw the power of how social media can persuade an entire studio to say yes to something like that.

Craig: It’s not surprising to me that they were– I have this saying that there’s a million ways to say no and only one way to say yes in Hollywood, and the only way to say yes is money, and everything else is no, including soon, or not yet, thinking about it, all is no.

It’s not surprising to me because Hollywood, particularly Hollywood over the last, I would say, 20 years, has become terrified of anything new and obsessed with anything that is established. Deadpool was a comic book, but it wasn’t a comic book that most people knew. The only way it would work is if it were a rated R, which superhero movies are not, ever.

Ryan: No.

Craig: The humor violated all of the self-important, self-serious storytelling principles that were powering not only the resurgence of the superhero genre but movies itself. The entire industry had now become lifted by the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That was what every– other studios lost God knows how much, trying to make other cinematic–

Everyone lost their fucking minds. You are saying, “I would like to do one of those things, except it’s R, and it’s fucked. It is dirty. It is so dirty I get pegged in it.” That’s how dirty it is. I talk to the screen. I violate every single principle of what would get you to say yes. The reason they said yes is because they never really had to say yes. They got a freebie. They got the audience to tell them, “No. No. No. We got it. We’re good. Go ahead. Go ahead. Give it to us,” which is incredible.

I think the reason other people don’t try to repeat that is because they can’t, because if you leak test footage, there’s a 99% chance it’s going to be shredded apart. That particular footage got right to the heart of something that people didn’t know they needed. That’s what I think what I love about this character and this– fuck the word franchise, this series of movies the most, is that it was satisfying something in me that I didn’t know I wanted. You guys do this so well. I want to ask you about this, specifically from a writing point of view, how to satisfy the basic needs of redemption stories, love stories about, in this case, what it means to have significance and matter in your life.

Fairly heavy things. Again, I’ve said it on this show many times, I cried at the end of Deadpool 2. And somehow, work those into this mesh of both plot that makes sense, by the way, which is more than I could say for most superhero movies, and this insane tone. How do you marry those things that seem, at least to me, to be initially incompatible?

Ryan: That’s a lot to unpack.

Craig: Yes. Start at the beginning.

Ryan: Let me start with one thing that just popped into my head, which is that, yes, there’s a lot of cinematic universes and all that stuff. I don’t think that any of these movies that we know and love right now exist in the way that we know and love them. I’m not saying everyone has to know and love them. Without Blade, I know that’s a weird thing to pivot back to, but Blade, in 1998, I think Stephen Norrington’s Blade beget, obviously, that becoming a franchise. It was rated R. They did all these things first, and they don’t typically get a ton of credit for it. I mean it was the first–

I think you even saw “Bullet Time,” which is actually something that actually really started a couple of decades before in various iterations. In Blade, used in pop culture in that way, and it was mind-blowing. Then Matrix, of course, really refined it and made it what it is.

That sort of gave way to the X-Men Universe. The X-Men Universe gave way to the MCU. Then all these things sort of happened. You just said something I thought that was very interesting, which is that when people get to witness or feel something that they love but just maybe didn’t know they loved, or for me, it’s seeing Wesley Snipes in Deadpool & Wolverine break that frame, I feel like some people missed him and were clear about it. I think some people missed him desperately but didn’t know they did until that moment. That’s the greatest– that just takes me out at the knees every time.

I love storytelling like that, but then, also, to sort of talk about studios saying, yes. Well, okay. We get to make this. We’ll say yes to this even though we didn’t really have to say yes to this. We got this backdoor insurance plan. They still didn’t really believe in it. I’m not trying to romanticize it or anything, but the budget was $58 million for Deadpool 1, which sounds hefty and should be plenty to do anything. No. It was brutal.

But you said one other thing, which I thought was interesting, is that it was a character that people didn’t really know. I saw those two things as actually, or at least I came to see those things. I want to be careful because I hate that sort of, “I saw it this way.” But I came to see that truly all the greatest lessons I ever learned were on that movie. Necessity is the mother of invention. Too much time and too much money really will annihilate creativity in a lot of ways.

The fact that we had so little forced us to– I remember Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and I, who we broke the story for Deadpool 1 at a lunch at the Chateau Marmont in LA, in one lunch, setting the entire story, and it never changed. Then we had to sort of change some of the set pieces from this huge action set pieces to like a sequence in Deadpool 1, which is 12 bullets, which is Deadpool has 12 bullets, there’s 30 bad guys on the road, so he yells out, “I only have 12 bullets, so you’re going to have to share.”

We have to find this way to get through all that stuff. Suddenly, the audience is hooked into the idea. Deadpool, who breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience often, has already let them know that Fox is fucking cheap, and they’re never going to give us even a remotely close to a normal budget, even of their worst X-Men movies.

We have to make do. It really allows authorship for the audience, too. They feel like they’re a part of something. They feel separate from the studio. It’s like the same reason when you make a commercial. It’s like if you– audiences are smart. If you let them know, and they freely admit that they’re watching a commercial to sell a product, they will jump into that story, and they will share that story much sooner than if you’re trying to be sneaky and manipulate them and make them cry and do all this other stuff. Then at the end of it, a Tide pod show up in the middle of your screen, and the logo, it’s a little harder.

I was lucky that they felt like they were on board with this pretty early on. That was where I really fell in love with marketing, because it was– when you asked early, you said that they didn’t know who the character was. Rather than give away all the assets in commercials and trailers and stuff, we really did our best to hide everything and just start writing marketing spots. I stole the suit and I kept it with me. I still have it downstairs.

We just started shooting stuff and really trying to get the audience to be a little bit more fluent with the character, the tone, and the vibe, without actually showing them chunks of the movie. That was just a lesson that has never stopped giving. You guys have all both worked on massive projects and massive movies, and you know that at the end of the day, you don’t– there’s never enough time and there’s never enough money no matter what it is that you’re doing.

We all think asymmetrically, though, when our back is against the wall. We are experiencing enormous constraint, and that’s when just the best possible shit happens, and it happens over and over and over again, and it’s something I will never get tired of.

John: Jesse David Fox wrote a good book this past year on comedy, and he came on the podcast, we talked about it, but he actually had a note about Deadpool, and he says that “Deadpool is a bouffon, a classic French figure who connects to their audience, not through radical vulnerability, like a clown, but by mocking the audience members and the work they’ve come to see.”

It’s that sense of like you are watching a movie, and we’re all watching a movie, and you’re able to make fun of the people who are sponsoring this movie and enjoy the process of picking apart this thing that we’re in. The other thing which is so strange about Deadpool that I want to talk to you about is, since you’re wearing the mask most of the time, and it really covers your whole face, it’s not like Batman where it’s just the cowl and you can see the rest of it. We can’t see your reactions. You had to, as an actor, I want to talk about sort of the physicality you have to bring to it in order to play an emotion that you would otherwise play on your face. Then how did that also impact the writing? How did it impact scenes that you were doing since we cannot see your face?

Ryan: Okay. First off, I would disagree with the first thing you said. I don’t feel like Deadpool mocks the audience and the people paying for it. I believe, and perhaps I’m defensive of it, but I believe that Deadpool, I believe it is clown work.

All of it is clown work. Your hands, the way everything moves, this may be something that actually limits my ability to perform, but I’m very camera-aware. I can look and watch the assistant cameraman put a lens on, I can see what size the lens is from far away, I know exactly where he is right now, I don’t need to ask him where if it’s a cowboy, if it’s here or here, and I use the space.

If you ever watch like every prima painting with Tony Zhou, there’s one particular special he does on Buster Keaton called The Art of the Gag. The Art of the Gag is like basically, to me, is a college course that runs four minutes long. It’s just so– I’ve always loved this about Buster Keaton is that his physicality, how he tells a story with every square inch of his body and every square inch of the frame and how we hold that static frame. It can always be a bit of a tricky conversation because you want–

Obviously, you want your DP who’s forgotten more about photography in the last hour than I will ever know, but I want him to feel completely free and know what to do. I also love a static frame. I really don’t want to move the camera, just leave it there because I believe things are funnier in a static frame. We feel less like the camera’s telling us what to feel or what to move.

Craig: Bless you for this. Bless you for this. Static and wide.

Ryan: Right? It’s just the go. I don’t–

Craig: Throw a 27 on and, yes, just let me go. Comedy, that’s comedy. The camera shouldn’t be in the way. I completely agree.

Ryan: Yes, and a long, long lens either. If we’re going to go close, I don’t want that either. I don’t want this movement that’s like– a little bit is okay. I get a little crazy about that and try to tell the story. Then the mask, I find so much more freeing than being unmasked. Of course, Deadpool, when he takes his mask off, he has another mask underneath, which is a prosthetic makeup job.

The mask has always been very subtly animated by Wētā. In every one of the movies, we do it this way. I’ll give you an example for the last movie, where Shawn Levy and I would be sitting in the edit room and say, “Okay. That’s like in the movie. We’re going to lock that. We know that.” Whereas we’re locking reels toward the end.

I will then take my camera phone, film my face saying every line in that sequence as it appears on camera and send it directly to Wētā in New Zealand. They will come back with the mask, just subtly animate. That helps a little bit, gives us a little bit extra, but you don’t need it. The movie works just as well sometimes without even that. When we test it, the reactions are without them.

Craig: It is an amazing thing that just to tie it back to writing again, that the way the character is written to be so verbal, the blank mask in front doesn’t– You’re right. It actually not only does it not get in the way. I think in a way it helps in the way that a static frame helps. It takes some of the other stuff away and lets you just listen to the words.

As writers, this is very exciting because sometimes, when we’re making things, I’ll see someone perform something that I wrote and I think, “Oh, you said it right, but your face was doing another thing. Let’s go again.” There’s something about removing all of those things. I talked to with Pedro Pascal about this in The Mandalorian. It was like a weird freeing thing to just talk. I think it helps Deadpool specifically because he is so verbal.

Ryan: Also just to touch on the writing part of it, which I know is really why we’re here. I tend to– and people think I’m an improv guy, which I am a little bit, but I write everything. I write all my alts. I have sometimes up to 20 alts for one joke. I’ll throw, “Here’s five alts for Hugh, here’s 10 alts for you, here’s 2 alts for you, or even three.” I love that part of it. It’s not improv.

In terms of the writing, because Deadpool only works if there’s something about it that is anchored in emotion. It’s easy to forget the emotional part of those movies, but it always has to be anchored in something tragic and awful or something generally not as existential except for the last one.

For me, to express micro facial expressions, I have to use my voice, which is weird. I need to tell the audience a story and I need to– it’s almost like how a pitcher can put real junk on a ball. You have to just– it’s this very tiny, tiny little adjustment, but it makes all the difference in the world. I love that. I love that challenge. It’s something that you never ever finish. I’ve never walked away from one of those movies. Even just when we locked, when Shawn and I locked this movie, I’ve never been so depressed. That last reel locked and all the possibility was gone and that was it. That was three years. There it goes. Yes. It’s always a tough moment, but I love the challenge of it. I’m addicted to it.

John: I want to talk to you about alts and ADR with the mask on. You have the ability– you could change lines at any point. How much does stuff tend to move from what you shot on the set versus what’s in the film that we see? Related question, you say you might have 10 or 20 alts for a line. Where are you keeping those? Are those in the main script or do you just have a separate sheet that goes with the scene and say, “Hey. These are the alts”?

Ryan: My notes section. Yes.

John: All right. Notes on your phone?

Ryan: Notes and then I put them in script, too. Maybe I’m just a little type A. I don’t like the page count getting out of control. I don’t like the– as much as I try to, we try to do the– What’s it called? The command D where you get dialogue that’s side by side and stuff.

Craig: Dual dialogue.

Ryan: Dual dialogue. Sorry. Yes. I do a lot of that [chuckles] because I also love it when people talk over each other. It feels real and fun. I’m always shocked when that’s met with resistance, which it is sometimes people are like, “Well, no. You have to– My line, your line.” I’m like, “Yes, but not that– it’s like old school. I speak, you speak.” You’re like, Howard Hawks– Everyone was speaking. I’m pretty sure the gaffer was yelling in the middle of the take. I love that.

The alts are generally hidden in my phone and I sometimes don’t get to all of them. Then it’s just fun. You live with something in the edit for months and then you go, “Well, you open the bin up again. What’s over there?” You’re just like, “Oh, that’s so fun.” Then you put it in and it’s– everybody feels reinvigorated again.

Then you asked me about, oh, the amount of ADR. There is some less than you would imagine. Things don’t land at– for some reason they did work better when they were just happened on the day. Then I will do a lot of ADR though and change certain things to accommodate exposition or something you might’ve missed. Boy, the mask is incredibly handy for that.

Then there’s a ton of stuff that happens from pre-production into production and then certainly in post where you both know this better than anybody, but you try to not just listen to your script and your shot list and you try to listen to the movie. If you listen to it, it yells at you, and it tells you all these different things.

If you have an ability and it’s one of the reasons I fell in love with Shawn Levy, working with him, is he’s obviously an incredible storyteller who can do it in all kinds of different genres, but he’s great at pivoting and I love to pivot. I love to do it in a way that is responsible and adherent to the budget and our clock and our schedule. It doesn’t feel like a runaway train in any way, shape, or form. That touches a little bit on what we were talking about earlier where I was on some chaotic large sets and I never wanted to be on one of those or author a set like that.

Showing up with a complete draft is super important to me. I know a lot of comic book movies get where they’re like, “We don’t have a script yet, but we’re going to start shooting. We’ll figure it out. We’re going to shoot plates after every shot and we’ll–” That to me is just like a throat– I have a forest of ulcers in my stomach. I just don’t– I cannot do that. I come with like contingency plans, all kinds of stuff. If we don’t get this actor, we don’t get that, we can go this way, this way. A lot of different drafts, tons of writing, but I love it.

Craig: That’s producing. You’re also describing how producorial you are. Lindsay Doran said that the primary job of a producer is to protect the intention of the screenplay and all the other producers laugh at her. “Oh, no. It’s to–“ I don’t know, accrue wealth like dragons and sit on it. I think she’s right. It sounds like that’s exactly what you’re doing, which is making sure that within the reality that you have, which is money and time and people, that you can protect the intentions of the screenplay up until the point you’ve gathered all the footage, at which point now that’s the screenplay, protect the intention of that, move those pieces around as they want to make them sing–

Ryan: And knowing what’s important. I think it’s like if you can create a moat around what’s really important in the movie, everything else seems to work out. The thing both Shawn and I are most proud of in this whole movie isn’t the box office necessarily. We had a day and a half of reshoots in the whole movie. I’m so proud of that. I just feel like I want all the– it goes back to like my– when I was young and just the shittiest student on earth. I never got an A or a gold star. This is like one thing with Marvel where I was like, “Well, Dad, Are you proud of me, Dad? I did the thing.” It’s so sad and pathetic, but I’m really proud of that, that part on time, on budget, and a day and a half of reshoots. It’s like, yes, just feel like Shawn and I both landed the plane exactly how they were hoping.

Craig: Well, it worked and it’s great. I texted Shawn. I actually saw it last night because we wrapped on Friday. That was my life. Then my reward was going to see your movie and Melissa and I just sat there howling. We weren’t in a packed theater. Sometimes, when you go see a comedy and you’re like, “Oh, there’s not that many people because it’s a weird time of day and it’s four weekends later or whatever.” It’s not as– It was totally funny. I didn’t care. I was laughing my ass off.

Ryan: Shawn is such an inherently optimistic person and I love that about him. If there’s one thing that he and I both try to put in everything that we’ve done is just an absence of cynicism and really that feeling of like really just trying to throw the best possible fastball of joy we can muster. He’s so good at that. I felt like I found the dance partner I’ve waited for my whole life.

Craig: Well, that’s amazing.

John: I’d love to talk about the Marvel of it all because the first two Deadpool movies are made for Fox. Fox had its own sort of offshoot of the Marvel Universe and then Disney buys Fox. It was a question of like, “Well, what the hell happens to Deadpool?” You can’t imagine Disney making a Deadpool movie.
When did those conversations started? I remember you and I chatting about like, “Oh, Feige wants to do a thing, but I don’t know if it’s going to work.” How did that actually all come about? When was the sit down and say like, “Okay. I’m going to do this movie and here’s the idea for doing this movie.” How did that all come to pass?

Ryan: Boy, it was the slowest-moving train ever. Disney bought Fox and then there was obviously a period of limbo after that. With some speed, I was sitting in Kevin’s office though at Marvel and talking. I had a pitch for him. It was a Deadpool & Wolverine movie and it was the Roshomon story that I had been working on with Scott Frank.

Kevin just didn’t see it. He was just like– Now I think I know more, which is that there was a lot of different licensing issues that were really challenging at the time that nobody really wanted to say out loud. So he just summarily said, “Look, that’s never going to happen. Logan’s dead. Let’s move on.” I had a way to do it that didn’t disrupt that timeline, but didn’t matter. I had a lot of meetings with Kevin. Kevin is like the– I’ve never met anyone as genial, kind, nice, engaged, just really genuinely warm and wonderful human being. You could sit in his office for an hour and a half. You could walk out to the lot at Disney, and you’d be like, “That was the best meeting ever.” Then you get halfway to your car and you’re like, “Nothing happened. Wait. Nothing. There’s no directive. Wait. What’s happening? What am I supposed to–? I thought–?” It was a weird thing.

Then finally it just eventually found its footing. I’m a very lazy writer. I don’t like writing. I’m not you guys. It’s much more of a gift I think that you guys can just sit down and crank something out. It takes me a while to get into that rhythm where it’s actually productive. I tend to– I’m not a good enough writer to just bang through something quickly. I can lose days on one paragraph, and then I can suddenly get 20 pages out in a day, it’s just like you just– it’s such an awe– I don’t know how– One day, I went– I don’t want to bore because you guys have probably covered this in many, I guess–

Craig: Oh, we’ve bored everyone.

Ryan: –I would love to hear more about that. I want to know what your tricks are because I have those moments where I just– everyone’s like, “No. You got to move on. You move through. You just–“ and I can’t.

Craig: Ryan, we’re never giving you our tricks because you have nearly everything. You want the one last thing that we have. We’re never– Never. Never.

Ryan: I don’t blame you. I’m pseudo-retired now anyway so that’s fine. It’s fine. I’m done. I cranked out quite a few little treatments and different things. At one point, one of my favorites was just– I did a short before Deadpool 2 called No Good Deed, which I thought was fun, just wrote this little short shot at– with Dave Leitch. It was amazing. Loved doing it. I wanted to write another short now that Disney bought Deadpool and I basically–

It was just Deadpool in a room interrogating this old, old man. We don’t know who he is but we slowly come to realize that he’s the hunter who shot Bambi, Bambi’s mom. We keep going. You think like any minute of Deadpool’s just going to take this guy’s life in the most grotesque way. By the end, you just realize that Deadpool’s just a huge fan. Remember having that wonderful call with Alan Bergman and Ellen Horn just saying like, “No. We don’t mess with Bambi.”

Craig: That’s great.

Ryan: I was like, “Okay. Good. No problem. I got it loud and clear.” The fun story would be that working with Disney and Marvel throughout this was insanity and tested the limits of taste and all kinds of stuff for them and for us. It was the opposite. Once we actually locked into it, they were awesome.

John: Things like the TVA, your movie wouldn’t make sense if there weren’t the multiple universes and the Timeline Variance Authority, all that stuff, which is established in the Loki TV series. You needed to know about that. Is that a thing where they came to you like this is a framework for how this could fit in?

Ryan: Yes. They gave us a bunch of different avenues. I knew I wanted to do a movie that touched on and commented on and played with the multiverse because I knew that was the only way I could have Wolverine/Logan in the movie without disrupting or hurting the legacy and the, I think, the beauty that Mangold, Michael Green and Scott Frank had created on Logan.

It was really this idea that you have an anchor being, that anchor being is dead. Deadpool, obviously, as diluted as he is, thinks the anchor being was him. He’s fine. But then, of course, we find out it’s Logan. That to me was a way of respecting everything that they did while still having our fun by starting the whole movie off in an action sequence using only his bones as weapons.

Craig: Well that’s a really interesting lesson about– that I would probably push into the world of parody where you are taking something that you love and respect. Then gently making fun of it because you love and respect it. It also lets the audience know that you’re not fucking around. There was something about that opening sequence where it was like, “Hey, look. This guy died but like always, they didn’t really die because this is the young and the restless.” It just goes on forever, some multiverse. Starting with that I thought was a great way to establish tone.

John: Yes. Close the chapter, too.

Craig: Yes. To respect it, acknowledge it, and then definitively say– I thought it was really important to definitively say, “Hey, guys, that’s not the wolverine in this movie.” That one’s okay. Your experience of that movie not changed because we’re not dealing with that. That guy died. Man, what a great way to start. I just thought it was so smart.

Ryan: Set to Bye Bye Bye, too, which is just– the words of that I just love, that was the real motivation to use it. It was just like, “Bye-bye.” Goodbye.

Craig: Yes. Goodbye.

Ryan: That’s done. Now let’s move on to this other thing.

Craig: It’s so done. In fact, just in case you were wondering if we were going to take this skeleton because Marvel does this all the time and put it in the reanimated juice. You did literally just shredded apart and used it to kill people. The finality of that and the– like I said, the respect. It’s a weird thing to say, “Oh, digging up a character’s dead body and shredding it apart and using it to kill people is a sign of respect.” It clearly was.

Ryan: Oh, man. We are reverent of everything that– If you meet a couple and they’re just exceedingly cordial to each other and polite. You’re like, “Oh, what’s wrong there?” They take, you bust each other’s shops a little bit, then you’re like, “Oh, okay. Now I believe. You guys do like each other.”

John: Well, the other set of bones you’re dealing with in this movie is the bones of the Fox-Marvel movies. They said the whole legacy of all those movies that came before, which weren’t dismissed, but were not treasured at the moment. That the actual end credits really go back through a celebration of what those movies were. Of course, the Chris Evans joke that we were assuming that this one character is actually the character he played before. How early in the pitch process were you talking about this celebration of the forgotten Fox characters?

Ryan: Pretty early. Chris Evans was Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick’s idea. It was just genius and never changed and that was set in stone from the jump but I really wanted to steer away from the MCU. “Here’s all the new toys in the MCU. Instead can we find a way to eulogize this whole world?”

So much of what ended up in the movie was based in what was actually happening, which was that Disney bought Fox. They said, we want Deadpool. We don’t want anyone else. No one. They can all get fucked and we’ll figure them all out later. I felt like, “Well, hold on. You can keep your MCU. I want my friends. I want my blind owl. I want Vanessa and a Colossus and all these other– I want them.” It was really tricky. Again, I think it might’ve been a rights licensing thing when I look back at it.

I really struggled with that. That actually ended up becoming the impetus for the entire story. It became an allegory for Disney buying Fox was what the TVA was. “We’re going to prune your universe but we only want you because you’re special for some reason and we don’t want anybody else.” It was so fun to just– again, that necessity is mother invention thing, just use what’s actually coming at you and find inspiration in that. That’s what pushed the whole story forward. Then this idea that both myself, Shawn Levy and Hugh Jackman, all three of us, our entire careers we owe to 20th Century Fox.

That’s where these things happen again. There’s no master plan. You’re like, “Well, let’s plop…” In the void, there’s relics everywhere. There’s just shit all over the place, Easter eggs, all kinds of stuff. What if we put the huge 20th Century Fox logo and it’s sticking out of the ground in the back?

John: A Planet of the Apes reference?

Ryan: Yes. That pushed us toward more of this larger eulogy of this world and these characters that are a bygone era and tipping our hat to them and saying goodbye to them in a way that you just normally couldn’t in any other kind of movie. Then even the end legacy reel that plays to the Green Day song at the very end was like– I was sitting at Petersham Gardens, someplace in London on an off day shooting, and I heard that song, and then it just–

I had already been thinking like, “I need to find a way to pay off the logo that’s in the ground.” Otherwise, it’s just going to look a sight gag for the movie, and I want it to mean something and it didn’t. This is just probably the worst way to be writing a screenplay or a story, but you’re sitting there hearing that song, it’s like, “I wonder if we could get the rights to all the different performers and people who had brick by brick built that universe?” Having Chris Evans morph into flame, and then reappear as Michael B. Jordan’s Human Torch and then have that wonderful jump from James McAvoy to Patrick Stewart and back. It was really fun. We had that cut and put together maybe five days after that. We were–

John: That’s great.

Ryan: That was just as we were coming back from the strike where that happened.

John: Now, Ryan Reynolds, you’re very good at making movies. There’s other people who are good at making movies. No one is better than you are at promoting a movie. I want to just wrap up this Deadpool segment by talking about the months-long promotional push you did for Deadpool.

It was just remarkable. It wasn’t just a world tour. We’ve seen other performers do that but you actually just– you made the promotion of the movie and event in and of itself. How early were you thinking about that? How much was it a plan that was codified versus you just figuring out on the go what the next thing is to do?

Ryan: So much of all of our jobs is listening. You listen to culture. The water cooler is digital, so you’re sitting around it, and trying to gather what you can gather. Two things that, maybe this never happened, but we wanted a less is more approach. Disney has one of the most sophisticated promotional mechanisms and systems that can just perforate any part of the world at any time. That was wild to witness and learn from.

Everything we were trying to orchestrate at Maximum Effort, which is the company that does the production and marketing, was a bit of a love letter to the same thing that made me so nervous in the screenwriting. Again, I’m one of several writers on this movie, but the thing that I was most nervous about was making sure that Hugh and Wolverine were taken care of. I always thought if we fail that, even in the slightest misstep, we’re fucked. Once we got that on the screen in a way that we felt moving and honest, then the marketing came around with that too.

A lot of the pieces were directed at Wolverine and how special this moment is for him to be here. Also, there’s a line in the movie where I say to him right at the end, I say, “I’ve waited a long time for this, team-up.” He looks back at me and I say, “You were the best, Wolverine.” It’s not even Wade Wilson talking to me, it’s me talking to Hugh. I have waited a long time for this, team-up. You will not find a bigger Hugh Jackman champion and fan than me. He’s a person, but also a performer. You guys must have had this a million times in your life, where you write something for someone you idolize and adore, and then you see them take that and make it so much better than what you put on the page. At least for me, what was on the page.

There’s a speech that’s a bit sort of mirrors the movie, most of the things I make have some element of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles in them and John Candy. There’s little Easter eggs everywhere in the movie. I’m holding the Canadian Mounted book in all three of the movies. There’s a speech in the van where he just tears that pool in the asshole. It just goes in this monologue. Hugh thought it was hilarious because in that one scene, he had more lines than any other Wolverine movie he’d ever done.

To watch him perform that, and there’s a moment in this screen direction at the bottom of that scene, where it’s like, “a flicker of regret may or may not have glanced across his eyes, but if it was there, it was gone before we even registered it.” To see him do that with his eyes, where I’m two feet away, it was so far beyond what I could have done as a performer in that moment. I just got to be a fan, and Deadpool is, of course, quiet for the first time ever and just shuts the hell up, and then finally says, “I’m going to fight you because it’s the only thing you can.” Now our roles are completely reversed. He’s the merc with a mouth, I’m the one who wants to fight.

The marketing was always in service of that feeling. I just felt it was so auspicious that he’s here in this suit and we have this unique opportunity in this moment to come together and have this experience. Much of the marketing was based on that. The fun that I have with Hugh in real life is the fun that I have with Hugh in a promo tour, except we don’t bust each other’s balls as much in real life as we do out there. We’re more like two elderly ladies staring at the sunset trying to eat a sandwich, talking about our feelings and our hopes and our worries. I have a genuine love, and he has a genuine love for me. I’m happy to be able to say, and that’s what we put on display really because it was the easiest thing and most honest thing.

Craig: It was fully on display. There’s this idea that you should do the things in your movie that only your movie can do.

Ryan: Wow, I love that.

Craig: Again, I stole that from Lindsey Durand. This is the greatest.

Ryan: So great.

Craig: I think that that holds true for marketing as well, that you should sell the things that only you can sell. Otherwise, it’s just what everybody else has. What you guys have is both the unique aspect of Deadpool, his mouth, his comedy, rated R, and breaking the fourth wall. In here, it was also the relationship. As I talk about relationships on the show all the time, I don’t believe that characters exist without them. I think characters are defined by their relationships. That relationship is so wonderful, and you had it, and I think in this sense, it stops being selling. It is more like sharing.

When you have something that you love, that works, that is something only you have, then you’re just sharing it with people. Like you said earlier, it’s almost like you’re not pretending that it’s marketing.

Ryan: No, but they know. People are smart.

Craig: They’re smart.

Ryan: Yes, they know right away. Hugh and I just feel like maybe it’s not a good, I don’t know, but we were just like, let’s just go be us. Let’s go be how we are. Some of it was really, we talked about our vulnerabilities and some of the marketing. It wasn’t even marketing, it was just interviews, but then the marketing stuff would be a little bit more thoughtful in terms of like, how do we represent the movie best, not just us? It was multi-tiered and I thought really interesting.

Anytime you do want to be in such a full-throated global way, which is not often, I can’t remember the last time I did all of those countries and travel all the way around the world. It’s just pre-COVID, you did it once in a while, but even then, not that much, but you just learn so much. I just learned so much about how that world works and these machines. I learned so much from watching Disney and how they operate. Nobody does it better. It’s easy to pat ourselves on the back and go, “The movie made a billion whatever,” and all that kind stuff, but I don’t know that we could have done that at many other studios. They’re just really good at what they do, really creative, smart people.

Actually, a lot of the marketing people are from Fox. They’re the ones that we had on Deadpool 1 and 2. A lot of the same folks, so it’s nice to have that familiarity in the shorthand.

Craig: 20th Century Fox, one of the great brands of all time. Kept alive by Deadpool.

Ryan: Yeah, I don’t know.

Craig: It’s incredible.

Ryan: How funny, though, that like that was the one that came and helped. Disney, they’re not exactly having a bad year, but it’s just nice to see movie theaters fill up. It’s nice to see drive-ins fill up. It’s like a wild to see that sort of– I read an article a long time ago that talked about the in-theater experience as collective effervescence, and it stayed with me forever. It’s almost like a drug you just can’t find anywhere else, where we’re all having the same experience at the exact same moment. There’s some endorphin hit that people get from that, that communal experience that stays with them and really elevates all of their vitals. I always love that idea that we’re in a movie theater all together and we all have this great experience.

Craig: It’s like a good mob. It’s a happy mob.

Ryan: Yes, but everyone’s so fucking divided, too. You go into a movie theater and like, I don’t care what color shirt you’re wearing. I don’t care about your politics, any of that stuff. It’s like sports and films, and those kinds of collective effervescent moments are those, to me, are like the only real glimpses into what’s left of our humanity.

It’s nice to feel like we can have this thing where we’re all having this great moment, and we all can agree on this thing right now. It’s pretty special.

John: As we’re wrapping up talking about marketing, I want to bring us back to that number one on the call sheet thing. Because so often in marketing, you’re sending out the star, you’re sending out the number one on the call sheet to go and promote the movie. Yet it’s so tough, if they’re not actually invested in the movie, if they can’t talk about the actual making the movie that you can, it’s just such a challenge to go on a late night show and they’re supposed to be talking about themselves and the movie, and be selling. It’s this weird thing we ask our stars to do is to both be an incredible actor, but who’s also an incredible marketer. It’s this weird thing we’re requiring of our top talent, is that they not only be Meryl Streep, but they also be a salesperson.

Ryan: I think it’s probably we ask more than that even. You also need to be an expert on whatever social issue we bring up in this moment. You need to be able to speak eloquently and empathetically about this thing. It’s not for the faint of heart, that’s for sure. I don’t know how some people do it. I’m always scared of interviews, anything, even this, 20 minutes before my stomach was flipping upside down.

Craig: Really?

Ryan: Yes. Craig he’s vile, he just snacks on others pain.

Craig: Here we go.

Ryan: Yes, right.

Craig: Destroying the myth.

Ryan: You can’t feel unless you’re hurting.

John: The final draft episode where he destroyed final draft and the Ryan Reynolds one where he just ripped Ryan Reynolds.

Ryan: Those are the ones, those are the ones we love. The idea that you people have to wear all these different hats and stuff, it is tricky, and I don’t know how. I’ve had a very different experience with fame than I know some people that I know and work with. It was an aggregate for me, it was very slow and it wasn’t like some overnight thing. I don’t know how a young actress or a young actor who’s funny just suddenly, and then– for actresses, much more so. I don’t know, that is a very, very tricky and hard landscape to navigate on any level.

John: This past week with Chappell Roan coming out and saying, “Listen, these are the boundaries I’m setting with my fame and how I want people to approach me.” It’s so interesting to me to see a young star recognizing, this is the thing that’s going to happen next and this is how I want it to happen, and we’ll see what comes next.

Ryan: I love that self-awareness exists, but there’s also a pretty clear road map. You can see the field ahead and where some of the pitfalls are, but it takes a lot of, I think, a great deal of self-examination to be able to speak about it like that.

Craig: Probably, being of a different generation, I just feel like there’s something about a generation that grew up with this stuff, understanding how to use it to define themselves, set boundaries, and talk about the boundaries. Now the boundaries are a discussion.

For me, happily, I only have to go through this press convulsion once every two years, basically. I just go into like a Walter Cronkite kind of space. I think my job is to be informational and non-objectionable. It’s basically my job to try and survive this without saying something that becomes a headline.

Ryan: Let me ask you this, though. One thing I will say that definitely differentiates us is that I can go to a press tour, and I can go do sometimes 40 interviews a day. But you could lay awake at night and go, oh man, I had that brain fart moment where I said that thing that I shouldn’t have said, and I wonder if that’s going to ruin me? We ask a lot of people on those things. You think, I’ve done that dozens of times, and I know everyone I know in this industry has also experienced that dozens of times, and it’s terrible.

Craig: It’s Russian roulette. I only have to pull the trigger every now and again. Actors are pulling the trigger constantly because, as I’ve said many times to my wife, when we go to these events, like red carpets and premieres and stuff, no one cares about me, this is all for the actors. We go to the Emmy Awards, this is not for me, it’s all for the actors. They’re selling ads on the backs of the actors who are famous, who people want to see.

And so you’re right. Those interviews are so much more high stakes. You have to be an A-plus student every single time. They’ll try and get you, and it is pretty amazing. You, in particular, you’re genuinely nice. It’s Canadian. Why am I saying you’re special?

Ryan: It doesn’t matter if I’m genuinely nice. It doesn’t matter. This business, you have to understand it does this. I have a question for you two that I’m dying to ask, if you’ll humor me, and I know I’m supposed to be the interviewee. A lot of times, I do a ton of writing on a movie like this. People would love to emphasize my contribution to that, more so than my fellow career screenwriters, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, certainly Zeb Wells, Sean did his fair share as well. How do you guys find that? I find that screenwriting in Hollywood is a pretty thankless experience. A lot of writers I know feel like it is such a deeply underappreciated craft that without it, obviously, just fuck all of an industry, but how does that sit with you guys? You can cut this out because it’s your show, but when you’re lying awake at night, are you thinking like, fuck me? Why is that? Why does that happen? Why is the director celebrated so much or the star celebrated so much whereas it’s–?

John: I’ll start by just talking about Charlie’s Angels. Charlie’s Angels is a movie where I came in there, I muscled it into being at up to a certain point, but ultimately, you’re marketing that movie off of the stars, off the vibe, off the feeling of it all. So I can feel really good about my contribution to it, but I recognize that it’s not my thing. To contrast that with something like Big Fish, I wrote the whole thing. That’s all my story. Tim Burton directed it and there’s stars in it, but it feels much more like my thing.

I think it’s recognizing that there’s going to be stuff that is fully yours, that you can feel an ownership over, and there’s going to be things where you are there to service a greater need, a greater product that’s beyond that.

Listen, can it suck sometimes to be a bit invisible as a screenwriter? Yes, but is it great sometimes to be invisible as a screenwriter? Absolutely. I can dodge some of the stuff that’s coming my way and I don’t have to be worried about everything I say or do because it’s not my responsibility to go out there and promote the thing. The work is the work. It’s not me as the personality.

Ryan: You’re also the one who’s alone in the room in the dark doing this thing that no one else does. Everyone else gets to be out in the light together collaborating and popping off.

It’s just such a difficult job. I guess I’m also curious, how does it work with television? Which is, I think, sometimes more of a writer’s medium. Does television feel, for you guys, more rewarding than in the wake of something being successful than necessarily like a film?

John: Craig is nodding there, yeah.

Craig: It’s not even close.

Ryan: Chernobyl is a different for you, right? That’s a totally different–?

Craig: My job was no different in a sense. I’d been working in movies for, I don’t know, 20 years and I had gone to a place where I was intimately involved in the creation of the script, of course, because I’m writing it. Then also working with the studio to who should direct it? Who should star in it? Okay, now it got shot, how do we edit it? Can you help with editing? Can you do this? Can you do this? Can you do this? Then no one can know, that was part of the deal of screenwriting and features is, hey, listen, no one can know.

I had conversations where somebody called me and said, “You need to tell them this, but they can’t know that you knew before they knew, so you have to figure it out.”

Ryan: Oh, my God.

Craig: Part of your job as a screenwriter and features is to be a second class citizen on purpose, to be intentionally a second class citizen, to eat it, so that directors and actors feel good. Now in television-

Ryan: Jesus Christ.

Craig: That’s just the fact.

Ryan: What are we doing?

Craig: I don’t know. I honestly don’t know because then I went to television and they were like, “Here, we make a golden idol of you, and pray to it every morning. I’m like, I think that’s probably a little too far because — the show runner.

In television, everybody sort of looks to me as the guy. In features, everybody said, “Just make sure that you never get perceived as the guy, that’s the most important thing.” I don’t understand it. I don’t think it makes any sense. Yes, of course, television is more rewarding because who wouldn’t want the golden idol? As opposed to get in the back room and just work in quiet.

Ryan: Coming from sitcom, it was like they were the gods. Getting that writer’s circle, the huddle was my favorite thing in the world. I learned so much just watching these guys hit the ball back and forth.

Craig: It’s weird in features, for some reason, everybody will say, “Well, you know it’s all about the script.” But the screenwriter, is nothing to them.

Ryan: It’s emergency harvestable organs.

Craig: Yes, and it’s just, if we don’t like what this one did, get us another one. In fact, even if we did like what this one did, get us another one. It’ll make us feel better.

Ryan: Or, how dare they ask for their value in this negotiation?

Craig: Exactly.

Ryan: I see that all the time.

Craig: All the time. Then the director is afforded an amount of leeway that is so shocking because as screenwriters in features, we are noted to death, and then a director comes along and says, “Oh, by the way, I want this to be a musical.” They’re like, “Oh, my God.”

Ryan: Oh, God, no, no.

Craig: “Yes, go for it. You’re the director.” I’m like, “What the fuck? What the fuck is going on?” The fact that in features, a writer and a director that work closely together, that love each other and care about each other, that’s where magic happens.

Ryan: I agree.

Craig: I loved working with Todd Phillips. You loved working with Sean Levy. John, I’m sure you loved working with Tim Burton. There are these little covalent atomic structures that occur. When that happens as a feature writer, who gives a shit who gets the credit? It doesn’t matter who gets the credit. You just want to do something that you can go, oh, that was fucking good.

Ryan: Also, that applies to every department. If everyone feels like they’re authoring something, their contribution is, I know it’s a cliché to say, but you just see, everybody just puts out the best work they could possibly put out. It’s also just a joy along the way. Even the fucking studio. The idea that you go, we have this notion that all the way back, if you read Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, or any of that kind of stuff, where everything’s, “Fuck the studio. We’re going to do it our way.” Well, they’re kinda paying for the whole thing, they’re the road you’re using to tell this entire– and I found that it’s like to collaborate in a way that, doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything. Collaboration, though, in its spirit, will get you so much farther than obstinance and trying to headbutt everyone into your way or the highway.

Craig: It’s too hard. It’s too hard to make things anyway. To make things while you’re in a fight with someone is nearly impossible. I need to have a good relationship with the people that I make something for at HBO. I have to.

Ryan: Me too, or I lose the whole magic, too. It’s dead.

Craig: It collapses because also, I wake up in a terrible shame cloud and when any kind of mommy or daddy figure disapproves of me, I begin to wither.

Ryan: So do I. We all do, and then it goes away.

Craig: I don’t know. Not John. I really, honestly, I think-

John: Oh, no. I want mom and dad to be proud of me, too. I’m a grade grubber at heart as well. I want that praise, that affection.

Craig: Good.

John: You go through this business enough, you know not to necessarily expect to, and so you have to find other ways to make yourself feel happy, even if that’s not for a day.

Ryan: See, right there, that kind of wisdom right there.

Craig: Which I don’t have access to, though.

Ryan: No, not even. That’s the the most. I grew more in that one sentence than I have in months.

John: Let’s do our One Cool Things.

Craig: Sure.

John: My One Cool Thing is The Onion. The Onion is, of course, the legendary newspaper, the parody, just the smartest weekly bunch of headlines and stories that are just so ingenious. I remember getting the physical copy, but also getting The Onion books and just devouring them. Of course, all online media went through a huge ups and downs over the last couple years. They’ve now been sold to these people who actually seem really smart and good, who are doing a great job with it.

It’s a $99 a year physical print subscription you can get to support The Onion. I’m going to point to an article by Nilay Patel writing for The Verge, where he talks with these people, Ben Collins and Danielle Strle, who are the new CEO and chief product officer of The Onion, about the little details of how do you buy a publication and how do you get stuff moved over, technically? How do you change the website to make it all make sense? These people seem super, super smart. I’m really optimistic that they’re going to have something great come out of this that’s preserving, really, the spirit of The Onion for the next, 20 years or more, hopefully.

Ryan: The Onion’s so daring, too. You see a headline from The Onion, you’re like, Jesus, you really want to? They went, yes, send.

John: There was an Onion story about you guys just, I think, two weeks ago that was actually just pitch perfect. It was savage but in a way I think you’ll really respect. If I can find it, I’ll text it to you.

Ryan: Please send it to me. I don’t mind. I’ve had a few. I’ve been having my knees taken out by The Onion. I feel like it’s an honor, too. That’s actually one of my versions of legacy media now. That is a legacy proper.

Craig, you got one, or how does this work? I forget.

Craig: Yes, sure, I’ll be quick with mine. It’s sort of in celebration of you, but also of the last year of my life. I want to tip my hat to British Columbia and to the City of Vancouver for being my home, my playground, and my creative space for so long. Listen, none of us dream of going to Hollywood to then get on a plane to go to Vancouver, right? Or Australia, or Budapest, or London. We come here because, look, it’s this lot and it has all the big boxes and we can shoot in those, and then we go. It doesn’t work like that.

The fact is because of money stuff, which I don’t understand, they’ve explained tax rebates to me so many times and my brain just shuts down, but I can’t, right? Then the question is, where do you go, and where will home be? Vancouver’s just a fantastic city. Both the city and the province were incredibly welcoming to us. They let us do things they didn’t ever let anybody else do. I’m very thankful and grateful to that city for being my home and professionally, for letting us make an insane television series there. It was a joy. Yaletown, that was my spot. I love Yaletown. That was my jam.

Ryan: Great walking city.

Craig: Amazing.

Ryan: I’ve spoken with my wife dozens of times over the last 10 years about finding some way for us all to move there again. It’s just the best. It is the absolutely best.

Craig: It really is beautiful. So many of our crew, of course, were from B.C. I’d do a speech when we rapped. I don’t know, when you rapped Deadpool, do you do a speech to the crew and everything?

Ryan: Yeah, yeah. I get real nervous about those things, though. I get real terrified, but I do, yes. I push through it and say something, yes, of course.

Craig: I don’t mind public speaking, but I cried so hard. I’ve just been crying lately. That’s my thing now in my 50s. I guess all the tears that I didn’t allow out of my face until I was 45, they’re there. Now they have to come out and wrap speeches.

Ryan: That’s why you’re going to see 100.

Craig: That’s a blubbering 100, that’s what I want. I just want to be mostly tears. Tears and a little bit of skin.

Ryan: I want like a Norman Lear kind of sunset.

Craig: Oh God, wouldn’t that be something?

Ryan: Sharp as a tack.

Craig: Oh yes.

Ryan: He’s funny.

Craig: You’ve got the hat. Everybody knows you.

John: Oh yes, everyone loves you.

Craig: You stay you, and then one day, the light switch goes off.

Ryan: It still looks like Norman Lear. It’s just like 100 years are great.

Craig: Exactly. Nothing changed. He got a little smaller. He probably lost an inch. That was it. Anyway, what about you, Ryan? You have one cool thing for us?

Ryan: Crematoriums, actually. Weirdly.

Craig: No.

Ryan: My one cool thing, I’m going to do two because I’m a selfish prick, but the first one’s super fast, Tony Zhou. I brought him up earlier. Tony Zhao’s interesting. He just sort of isolates one. I think he’s a film editor. Last name Z-H-O-U, I believe is how it’s spelled. I think I’m getting that right. Really smart, insightful, bite-sized peaks into filmmaking. The main thing for me is tangential, but I think appropriate, is TCM, is Turner Classic Movies.

Craig: Oh yes.

Ryan: I recently got to be a guest programmer on it. It meant a lot to me. I’ve watched Turner Classic Movies for nearly two decades. It’s always on when I’m home, sometimes it’s on mute. I like it for so many reasons, but I think it is some, even by osmosis, helped me tell stories. I know that there are probably many people listening to this going like, the dick joke Deadpool guy, and TCM that doesn’t exactly, but TCM has been my happy place forever. I cannot recommend it enough for storytellers, for creatives, for people who just want their nervous system to slow down a little bit.

I adore it as a resource, and I find it to be incredibly restorative, and I can’t say enough good about it. I have absolutely no, I don’t know why I have to say this, but financial connection to it. I have nothing to do with this, except I’m just a huge, huge fan, and I feel like it is a living, breathing museum for this industry. They have so much to tell about how stories are told throughout the last 100 years, and I’m incredibly grateful to Turner Classic Movies.
That’s my thing that I would recommend for young and old alike.

Also, it’s great gossip. Modern gossip, it can be a little toxic, it’s ugh, it feels a little icky. Once you start getting into it, you’ll be sitting there, you’ll start Googling all these stars, and all these heavyweight studio chiefs, and all kinds of– To me, it’s much less corrosive gossip because it’s sometimes 80, 90 years ago, but you go down all these rabbit holes that I think are really fascinating. TCM is my jam.

John: That’s excellent. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Tim Engelhardt. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnautos.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions. You will find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnautos.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts, and sign up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing.

We have t-shirts, hoodies and such. They’re great. You’ll find them at Cotton Bureau. You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments, like the one we’re about to record, and all the non-movie stuff that Ryan does. Ryan Reynolds, an absolute damn delight having you back on the show.

Ryan: Thank you for having me, guys. That was an honor. Thank you for that. Really appreciate it.

[Bonus Segment]

John: Alright Ryan Reynolds, traditionally movie stars, top of the sheet there, they would stump for brands. You’d see Beyonce and Britney Spears for Pepsi. In your career, I’ll see you with a watch ad in a magazine, which is a very classic thing, that a big famous movie star does. You are really known for the stuff that you promote, that you own a piece of it. Brands that are partially under your control, so Aviation Gin, Wrestling Football Club, Mint Mobile. I want to talk to you about why, because–

Craig: Why?

John: My gut is that the instinct is not money. The instinct is you get to make a bunch of stuff whenever you want to for these things, and you get to shoot stuff all the time.

Ryan: Yes, partly. I do love building things. I love, you guys know this, but I think it needs to be said, is that I do not do anything unilaterally. I have a partner, George Dewey. He and I met on Deadpool 1. He was in charge of digital marketing. He and I just hit it off, and that was where we got the most bang for our buck, was George and I just going off, writing, playing, and making stuff. Then, I let it be said that I do not own Aviation Gin anymore. It is sold. I don’t own Mint Mobile. That is also sold. I am the co-chairman and co-owner of Wrexham A.F.C. still, and I hopefully will be that, until I’m very, very old and just sub-Norman Lear age.

I love storytelling. I love bite-sized storytelling. I sometimes call it fast-vertizing, these sorts of ideas that you can move at the speed of culture, and you can’t do that in any other medium, other than advertising and marketing. For me, it’s really fun, and a lot of times we make ads for companies we have nothing to do with at all. We’ll go to them and say, “Hey, there’s this thing we’re thinking of,” and it’s mostly just to get it financed, so we don’t lose money on it. Then we can make something cool and fun, and make an impact in culture.

Craig: Part of this, in listening to you, it seems like part of this is a way for you to exercise the compulsion. I call it the compulsion on my end of like, here’s what I do. I can’t exactly explain why except that I’m compelled to do it. We are, unfortunately, restrained from our compulsions by finance, scheduling, theaters, licensing, all the crap that keeps us from doing what we do. Sounds like you’ve found a way to keep doing what you do quickly. It’s like little meals, small meals instead of the big banquet.

Ryan: Yes. It’s the most fun sandbox you’ll ever get to play in, I think, because it’s also not really precious. I talk to a lot of companies just about marketing in ideas and how to approach these things sometimes. The one thing I find that is the common denominator with massive companies who are like, how do we hit it hard and fast like this? Generally, they make marketing campaigns that are nine months out. It is overthought, there’s an overspend, everybody’s overstimulated halfway through. Nobody can make rhyme or reason out of any of the original objectives. I’m always like, just suck. They’re fucking ads. No one cares. If your ad sucks, it’s not going to go down in history as like the Ishtar of Pepsi. Just have fun, play, don’t worry about it. Go, let it be disposable and let it be temporary. In doing that, you can spark a bit of fun.

I think about it, but I’m compelled to do much less now. People think I do. I did at one point, I was just doing way too much all the time. My kids, my youngest is one and a half and my oldest is nine. I can’t do that kind of stuff the way I used to. Really, I’d rather do two things really, really well, than five things really well, but be a shitty dad. I can do two things really well and still be a comprehensive father and still walk my kids to school each day, and read them a story at night and make sure that they see me so much, they’re horrendously sick of me.

Craig: I’m a big fan of the genre of comedies where it’s a dad and he’s a shitty dad, and he has to learn a lesson to not be a shitty dad. While he’s making that movie, the actor is being a shitty dad.

Ryan: Oh my God. Right. I was recently thinking about this because my kids and I, we have this thing. My nine-year-old loves ‘80s movies. She just adores, she loves watching ’80s movies. We ran through the gamut, we saw them all. Then I said, “Well, let’s watch, what do you want to watch?” We saw Liar Liar up there. That’s a great classic shitty dad. I thought it’s still to this day, just a brilliant concept. Jim Carrey at the height of Jim, who’s just so great.

I think we talked about this earlier in the main podcast, but being camera aware, man, that guy is camera aware. It’s crazy because even when you watch him early, like in the Mask and stuff, this is all 1994, I think he did, Ace Ventura, The Mask, one other huge, Dumb and Dumber, I think. All of those in one year came out. It’s the weirdest thing to think about, but I was always shocked at how camera aware he was. Shitty dad, his son thinks his dad’s job is a liar, he’s a lawyer.

Just such a fun, fun ride. I don’t want to be the shitty dad while playing a shitty dad, and something.

Craig: While playing a shitty dad and then learning the lesson about not being a shitty dad, missing your kids play. You can being a scene about missing your kids.

Ryan: Don’t get me wrong, I’ve plenty of moments where I’m pretty convinced I’m a shitty dad. Don’t worry, but I think it’s the long game. The long game is that I’m trying to always be a better dad, as is my wife.

Craig: I think we’re all dads here. When a dad starts talking about worrying about being a shitty dad, that’s how you know they’re fine. That’s how you know.

Ryan: You’re right, exactly. John, knowing John’s daughter, I don’t know if we’re allowed to talk about it–

John: Oh yeah.

Ryan: But Amy, just being at that age, 18 now?

John: 19.

Ryan: Oh my God. In my head, Amy’s like up to my middle of my leg, and I’m shooting a movie at John’s house called The Nines. In my head, I cannot wrap my head around the fact that this young woman is in college.

John: No, it’s crazy. One thing I want to us to talk about to in terms of the shooting marketing videos and your ability to do that, it’s almost like you’re sorry at live, and you just get to make sketches like all the time. There’s less of an expectation that everything has to be precious. The fact that you’re doing it suddenly and quickly, and you’re not asking permission, just gives you a freedom.

So I looked at all the promotion you were able to do for Deadpool on this movie, you wouldn’t have the facility to do that if you hadn’t been making a zillion videos for the last six years.

Ryan: We have a little SWAT team that’s basically a maximum effort there, you can mobilize them. They’ll be, well, we could be shooting something. We’ve had situations where something will happen in culture and we’re shooting like 10 hours later, and that’s it. I don’t take that for granted. I also don’t think a normal marketing company should expect that of themselves either. That doesn’t happen all the time, but we’ve done that before and it is no different than SNL. There’s no difference. It’s the same thing.

You’re just playing around with something that people are talking about, and you’re taking a brand and allowing, and if you execute it right, now people are talking about the brand as opposed to just the thing. It’s a cheat code, kind of, but it is no different than sketch comedy. It’s exactly what it is.

John: My favorite one of those spots you did was the one where it was a promotion, I think for a flat screen TV, Aviation Gin and Deadpool at the same time. In some way, you were–

Ryan: Oh, it was a Netflix movie. I remember, it was the Turducken ad. It was basically three things in one. Like people sometimes will ask, “How do you guys do all this?” We all conveniently forget the fact that I have a platform. It’s not fair. I can blast it out to a hundred million plus people across these number of different social media platforms, and create an audience right away. When you’re doing an ad that, and yes, great. You did it fast, you do it in 10 hours, and it’s written well, all that stuff, but you’re still kind of born halfway between third base and home.

Craig: Yes, but I will say, there are other people that have that platform and they just put pictures of their food. Do you know what I mean? The bottom line is you can do it, you can do the thing that most people can’t. It is dark room alone stuff, or it’s dark room with another person stuff, but it’s making things. That is a huge separator. There are folks like you who can do that, and then there are a lot of great, great people with a hundred million followers who are waiting for someone to give them something to do. You don’t wait, maximum effort. It’s so impressive.

I’m very close with Rob McElhenney. We talk about you all the time. He’s so seethingly jealous of you.

Ryan: Oh my God.

Craig: But you guys are such a great combo because you both have that same thing. Neither one of you will ever want to wait.

Ryan: No.

Craig: You are driving it forward. Rob is the most.

Ryan: I learned a lot from him, though. That’s where he’s an all-American Philly guy. That sort of aggression that comes from that, I’m not going to hold back, versus my polite, like, okay, let’s just be careful, I’m walking on eggshells. He’s helped me integrate some of that, which is a great asset to have because he’s very forthright.

Rob is one of the smart one, Wrexham AFC, that is Rob’s– that doesn’t happen without Rob. That is not me lying awake at night going, “Here’s a totally outside the box idea.” That is Rob calling me and going, “I’ve got an idea that’s crazy.” Me, really grab it onto his coattails and off we went, and I’m not diminishing my contribution. I love it as a storyteller, it’s been heaven. I’ve had so much fun in that playing with that kind thing, but Rob, the guy’s just a genius. He’s just brilliant.

Craig: Like you, he just made something happen. He made something happen with Sonny, he makes things happen with Wrexham and you. To me, that’s the fun of it. It’s not so much, I don’t drink gin, so it doesn’t matter. I don’t care about the gin. I also, soccer is boring, but to me–

Ryan: Wow, Craig.

Craig: It is, but not the show. The show is great. The show is amazing because narrative.

Ryan: Because Field of Dreams isn’t a movie about fucking baseball.

Craig: Correct, it’s about fathers and sons.

Ryan: It’s always about something else.

Craig: Yes, Wrexham is about the people of Wrexham, renewal, revival, rejuvenation, and redemption. All of that stuff is great, and it happens because you make it. That’s so impressive to me. There are a lot of people who do what you do, who have a hundred million followers, a whole lot of money, great house, and they just wait and you don’t. To me, that’s the most impressive thing.

Ryan: Oh, thank you.

John: Ryan Reynolds. Thank you so much for coming on Scriptnotes again.

Craig: Thank you, Ryan.

John: It’s great to see you.

Ryan: Guys, that time went by way too fast. That’s crazy. It’s like an hour and 45 minutes.

Craig: Holy shit. Jesus.

John: It’s a long one. It’s worth it. Good conversation.

Craig: Impressing stuff.

Links:

• Ryan Reynolds on Instagram, TikTok and X
• Deadpool & Wolverine
• He’s So Annoying by Jesse David Fox for Vulture
• Buster Keaton – The Art of the Gag by Every Frame a Painting
• TCM – Turner Classic Movies
• Ryan Reynolds Guest Programmer | TCM via YouTube
• How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral by Nilay Patel for The Verge
• Vancouver, BC
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
• John August on Threads, Instagram, Twitter and Mastodon
• Outro by Tim Englehard (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: Bloop, bloop. My name is Craig Mazin.

John: And this is Episode 654 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Now, often on this podcast, we talk about what we can learn from great movies. On several occasions, we even do deep dives on specific films to look at what makes them tick. Craig, you and I are trying to schedule one of those right now, in fact.

Craig: Very excited to make that happen. It’s been a long time since we’ve done a deep dive. And I love doing those.

John: We have a special guest who proposed one, and we’re so excited to do it. We’re gonna try to find a time for that.

Craig: It’s gonna be great.

John: It’ll be good. But today on the show, let’s take a look at what we can learn from watching bad movies. Here, we’ll say that I’m talking about selectively bad, like movies that just don’t work for you. Because my thesis is that we can draw a lot of useful lessons from the films you don’t enjoy, that you happen to watch for whatever reason.

We’ll also answer some listener questions. In our Bonus Segment for Premium members, since we’re talking about sticking it out through movies we don’t enjoy, let’s think about when else is it okay to bail on something. Specifically, when can you bail on a book, a play, a friendship, a relationship, a marriage.

Craig: What’s going on here, John? Is this where you explain to me why I’m not on the podcast anymore?

John: Only the folks in the Bonus Segment will know.

Craig: I like that you just couched it inside of a Bonus Segment. It’s a very you thing to do.

John: Absolutely. As the check is coming at the end of the meal, I was like, “Oh, also, I think this is our last meal together.”

Craig: Oh my god.

John: I had friends – well, a friend – I didn’t know the other guy – who went to Paris, and one professed his love to the other one, and it’s like, “Oh, I don’t feel that way at all.” They were gonna be in Paris for like another seven days or something.

Craig: That’s where you just go and do solo tourism. Were they sharing a room?

John: Yes.

Craig: Oh, no. Get a different room. Get a different room. That’s rough.

John: Let’s do some follow-up here. We had several people who wrote in with feedback about something we talked about in Episode 651. We were talking about this writer who had done a Lifetime movie and was wondering what should he be doing next, how to use this as a springboard for next steps. A couple people wrote in with their reactions to our advice.

Drew Marquardt: Tim writes, “There was an assumption that these films are covered by the WGA. That is not the reality for a lot of these cable network movie-of-the-weeks. A majority of these films are made by non-signatory companies and are acquired by Lifetime or Hallmark or what have you after production, with the writer most likely a non-union writer. A lot of these movies are also produced in Canada, by Canadian companies, so again, WGA rules may not apply.

“As for Daniel gaining momentum, I have written four movies for Lifetime, Hallmark, and similar channels, with one of my movies declared one of the 25 Best Hallmark Christmas Movies of All Time by Variety, and yet still I have trouble getting traction, even with the executives or network production companies I wrote the movies for.

“Regarding representation, I have also tried to get an agent manager, but the feedback I’ve received is that they are either not taking on new clients or they don’t really work with movie-of-the-week writers. So while I appreciate your advice for Daniel, it’s not really reflective of the reality of the movie-of-the-week world right now.”

Craig: I am thrilled that Tim wrote in with all this, because this is good education for us. It is a good reminder that these companies can buy things. We imagine typically, oh, it’s a Lifetime movie, Lifetime hires you to write a movie. But other production entities that are non-union – and certainly in Canada that makes it a lot easier or it’s WGC – make these things, and then Lifetime or Hallmark buys them and puts them on the air. That’s a great point, Daniel.

John: Yeah. To the point of like, it’s not just that these are non-signatory companies and that our assumptions about who makes these is wrong, but the idea that, oh, you should have reps and a manager, an agent who’s doing all this stuff for you, I guess that’s, again, our bias towards the kind of industry that we work in, versus the way that these movies are made. We had other people write in saying, “Yeah, I’ve done these movies too, and I’m still having a hard time getting a rep to represent me.” Again, this is a good education for us.

Craig: It is. I said, “Good point, Daniel,” when I meant, “Good point, Tim.” Sorry. Sorry, Tim. I have thanked him now, and I have also apologized to Tim. This is going great for me with Tim.

What I am also sort of delighted by is that Daniel has written four movies for those types of channels, and one of them was declared one of the 25 Best Hallmark Christmas of All Time. What’s awesome about that is that implies that there are a lot more than 25 Hallmark Christmas movies.

John: Oh, there are.

Craig: If it’s one of the 25 best-

John: There’s like 25 per season. There are so many of these.

Craig: How many do we think there have been?

John: Oh my god.

Craig: Is that something Googleable? Is it 100?

John: I think Stephen Follows, who’s the data expert, could probably generate a big database of how many there have been. It’s a huge, huge number.

Craig: Because I’m just thinking about the writing challenge of coming in to do something… Granted they want a certain kind of formula, of course. They’re not gonna want you to be wildly original, but still, you have to do something different. If there’s 100 of them, it’s like the “Simpsons did it” problem. What other angle can you do?

I have a friend who writes Hallmark Christmas movies. It is fascinating having a conversation with him about how he tries really hard, actually, to put a little spin on the ball here or there. Not easy to do. They have definitely gotten better about LGBTQ representation. It used to be, “No.” Then I think he worked them up to, “There are two guys that live next door, but no one talks about what the story is.” Then eventually, yes, now they are featuring people that aren’t in very Hallmarky heterosexual relationships. But it must be very challenging to come up with either new things or things that they allow that are new.

John: For sure. Again, an area we don’t know very much about. We’re sorry that we speculated wildly and used our biases towards the Hollywood stuff that we’re used to in answering the original question from Tim. I’m realizing we keep going back between Tim and Daniel. We’ve merged them into one super entity of person who writes these movies.

Craig: Taniel.

John: Taniel. Taniel, thank you so much for all your feedback, and everyone else who wrote in about this one.

We’ve talked before about colored pages and whether colored revisions are a thing that are still worth keeping. HL wrote in with a thought.

Drew: “Regarding the colored pages in screenplays, can they be used for WGA arbitration, given each writer had their own color?”

Craig: No.

John: Not really. I think it’s a misperception about how arbitrations work. In an arbitrations situation, the different writers will say, “Oh, this is the script that I wrote. This script best reflects the work that I did on the project.” But if they were on the project for two months and did seven different sets of colored revisions, you’re not gonna ask the arbitration panel to read each of the seven sets of revisions, probably. Instead, you’re gonna say this is the sum total of what was in these seven sets of revisions, or this is the state of the script after all these sets of revisions. Colored revisions themselves are not particularly meaningful in terms of which writer did which thing.

Craig: They’re not. The idea being, HL, that if you’ve done five revisions, the point of the fifth revision is that that’s the last one you hand in. That’s the one that’s relevant. We don’t ask arbiters to read prior revisions of stuff that got deleted and not filmed, because credit is for the film as it appears on screen or on your television screen. So that’s not relevant.

The only time that the credits department will say, “Hey, look, here’s this person’s final script they did, but here’s also one prior one,” would be if that writer – let’s call them Writer B – said, “Hey, my last script was on this date, but Writer C came along, went back to one of my earlier drafts and took some stuff and put it into their draft.” At which point it is relevant for the arbiters to see that, because basically, chronology determines primacy for authorship. That’s really the only circumstance.

I did, by the way, have a further discussion about this topic with my script supervisor, about the locked pages thing. Apparently, there’s something called Scriptation. Do you use Scriptation? I don’t use Scriptation.

John: I don’t.

Craig: But apparently, everyone around me is using it. I guess there is a way to use Scriptation to basically – if the pages do get unlocked, it does it for you and moves your notes around and stuff. I don’t understand it. But in any case, he was like, “Honestly, I could deal with the issues of it.” It’s fine. I would just basically have my own locked script that I would just be living with, because I have to generate a Final Draft file for him anyway, because that’s what he imports into his thing. I’d make one locked thing and one unlocked for everybody else. It’s fine.

John: Last little bit on colored revisions here. The only time in arbitration I can think of where I have seen one set of revisions come into the mix was when there were two writers who were working simultaneously on a project. Writer B did this thing, and Writer C did this thing. But Writer B was still employed and did something after that.

Sometimes, as an arbiter, I’ve seen little bits of pages rather than a full draft coming through. That happens too. But that’s more the exception than the rule. Whether it be a colored page or not a colored page, it doesn’t really matter, because every set of revisions has a date on it, and really the date is what matters.

Craig: Correct. A reasonable question, HL, but the answer is, not really, no.

John: Not really. This next one is about AI and screenwriting. This comes from Eileen. There’s screenshots here, so we’ll read what’s actually in the screenshots here if we can, Drew.

Drew: Sure. Should I do my LinkedIn voice?

John: Please. We got an official LinkedIn voice.

Craig: I didn’t even know LinkedIn had a LinkedIn voice.

Drew: “Pareto.AI is a human data collection platform connecting reading AI researchers with trusted industry experts to collaborate on AI alignment, safety, and training projects. By working together, we can better align AI models with human values and develop more helpful, honest, and harmless AI models. We have a globally distributed network of master annotators, evaluators, and prompt engineers, with a proven track record of successfully completing over 3 million tasks.

“We are currently seeking TV movie screenwriters in the Writers Guild of America or equivalent to assist with developing complex prompts to AI models based on difficult questions and tasks encountered in your respective field of expertise. Experience required: TV movie screenwriting with membership in the Writers Guild of America or an equivalent organization, strong background in creating and developing complex narratives and characters, and experience in crafting dialogue and storylines for TV or movie.

“Compensation is 100 US dollars per approved hour of work. Should your application be successful, the next step includes a one-hour paid trial to be completed within two days. What’s approved will progress to a two-hour paid trial. Those who pass both trial phases will join our project team. Work hours are flexible with an expected commitment of 10 hours per week for 4 weeks. If all goes well, the project may be extended. Please note prior AI training experience is not required, as hands-on mentorship from our expert team will be provided. This project is starting ASAP. For immediate consideration, please apply.”

John: A job listing on LinkedIn for folks to help train this AI model for script evaluation, screenwriting. It’s not quite clear what the model’s being used for. Craig, what’s your first instinct here?

Craig: To vomit.

John: Yeah.

Craig: This is a pretty classic, “Hey, come and teach your replacement so that we can replace you. We have this new robot that can spotweld. It’s just not good at spotwelding. We pay you a lot to spotweld, but jobs have been a little dicey, and the economy, blah, blah, blah. Come in, and we’ll give you $2,000 to train this robot, so that you, human spotwelder, will never be able to spotweld again.”

In addition, Pareto.AI is training their AI with writers who apparently need to make $100 an hour training AI. I gotta be honest with you. I’m not sure that’s gonna get you, for instance, the kind of writing that is done by people that don’t need to be paid $100 an hour to train AI for a couple of weeks or a month. I think this is all bad. I understand people need money. There are other ways to make money. I think this is gross and sort of demeaning. I don’t like it at all.

John: I looked through Pareto is actually doing. It looks like they are a subcontractor, basically. Someone has a model, and they go to Pareto to say, “Hey, we need you to recruit people to actually do the reinforcement learning from human feedback,” which is the way you train a model to get better, basically. The model spits something out, and the human needs to say, “No, you did bad here, but this was actually pretty good.” That’s human reinforcement, the human feedback that reinforces the model there.

Listen. These things are going to happen. They’re gonna train these things regardless. I can’t fault a writer who needs the money. There are certainly a lot of writers right now who need the money, for getting 100 bucks an hour to do this thing, as opposed to driving for Uber or working at a coffee shop. One of my first jobs was as a reader at Tristar. It wasn’t data labeling in the same way, but it was kind of the same gig, where I was doing work for people so they wouldn’t actually have to read these scripts. That’s a function that I can understand.

What makes you uncomfortable, I think makes me uncomfortable too, is that you are training your replacement. You’re training a system that is there to replace your whole industry. A thing you set out your life to do is this thing. That is a real, tangible frustration. And yet it’s going to happen inevitably, so getting paid some money in that process, I can understand.

Craig: We all have choices to make. $100 an hour is pretty decent, but it is not a shocking amount of money. More importantly, this is a four-week gig. “If all goes well, the project may be extended.” This isn’t a year of your life. You’re gonna make some sort of short-term cash for these people.

I’m just looking at their deal. It was founded by Phoebe Yao, Thiel Fellow. That’s Peter Thiel’s. I’m out. I see Peter Thiel, I’m running the other direction. Peter Thiel, the guy who said that we don’t need democracy anymore I think was his latest.

John: That’s a good one.

Craig: Way to go, Peter. No. No. I hate this. This one’s easy to me. Sure, it may be inevitable. It may be that they’ll find people. But I guess my biggest pitch to people considering this is, I’m not saying you’re a bad writer. What I’m saying is, if you are contemplating this, you are an underemployed writer. You may be somebody that is specifically going to benefit from getting in a room, being properly trained by humans who are very good writers with a lot of experience, who aren’t at this level, who don’t need $100 an hour for four weeks. Those people will make you better writers. This isn’t gonna make you a better writer.

This is just gonna make an AI make it much, much harder for new writers to break in, because when new writers enter, they probably are functioning around the level of the AI that they just trained. It’s just making it harder for all of us. It’s going to ultimately deplenish the farm system of writers that rise up from the bottom, up through the ranks, as they learn and gain experience. I just hate it. I hate it.

John: Yeah. I agree with most of your points. The start of what you said is that writers who would go for this thing are probably not at the level where they need to be as writers. I would just say that I know so many folks who are actually genuinely terrific writers and fantastic and have done great things and can do great things, who at this moment are not employed. That’s always gonna be these people, but it feels especially now those people are struggling. I can understand why this is attractive for them, and it feels time better spent than doing other non-industry kinds of jobs. But your point about this is training your replacement and the ick of that is real. It’s tangible.

Craig: This isn’t gonna get you health benefits. This isn’t going to fill your year, or even more than a month. I would sooner, personally, apply for a Good and Welfare loan from the Writers Guild, which are available to members, because they’re saying, “We want Writers Guild members.” If you’re a Writers Guild member, you can apply for a loan. The Guild has an enormous amount of financial resource for that.

John: Last week, we talked about that. We had Betsy Thomas on talking through that.

Craig: There you go. To me, that is vastly more honorable than this. This is one of those things where, with empathy, I can still say there are certain jobs… Look. If you’re struggling to find work in your chosen field, and someone says, “Hey, I’ll give you $1,000 to murder to somebody,” the answer, of course, is no. Now, somewhere on there, once we decide, okay, there are certain value judgments that will overrule these things, then the question is where does this exist on that continuum.

I find this to be toxic to the soil that grows us all. I just would urge people to not do it. It doesn’t threaten me. It’s threatening the new people. It’s threatening younger writers, newer writers. It’s just Silicon Valley being shitty again.

I hate the language that they’re using. These weasel words are horrifying to me. “By working together, we can better align AI models with human values.” Whose human values? Which values? “And develop more helpful, honest, and harmless… ” More harmless? Harmless is binary. What does that mean? What they’re really saying is develop less harmful. They’re giving it away. Heed the words. Do not do this.

John: Let’s move on to our marquee topic here. I want to talk about bad movies. What prompted this was, twice in this past month, I found myself in a movie theater watching a movie I did not enjoy.

The first case, it was not a movie that I intentionally set out to see. I went to the theater to see one movie, and they’d cancelled that screening, because they gave the screen to Deadpool and Wolverine. Good job, Deadpool and Wolverine, but I really wanted to see this one movie. I couldn’t see the movie I intended to see, so instead, I saw this other movie that was out in theaters. In the second case, I went with friends to see a movie that is doing great at the box office. Happy for its success. I just did not like it. I just did not care for it at all.

In both cases, I guess I could’ve walked out. When I went to the movie by myself, of course I could’ve left. When I went to the movie with friends, there’s a social pressure to stay. But I wanted to reflect on what I actually learned from watching a bad movie, because it’s two hours of your time that you could be doing other things. But I actually found those two hours useful, because in a weird way, I stopped watching the movie for the story. Because the movie wasn’t working for me, I could actually just notice all the other things that I was seeing on screen and the points that weren’t working. I actually could take some mental notes about like, “Yeah, that never works,” or, “Let me make sure I never do these things.” I want to talk about some bad movies for a bit.

Craig: You said something interesting there, which is, it’s a movie that’s doing well at the box office, that other people like. The question is, as you said – maybe I would rephrase it. Rather than, okay, what do I get out of watching this bad movie that’s bad for me, and rather, why isn’t this working for me? Because what it helps define is your own taste, which sometimes is just as valuable as saying, “Okay, I didn’t like that. I don’t like that. I think that was fake. That doesn’t make sense. Where’s the logic in that?” But really, sometimes you can just say, “What’s different about me from the people that like this?” That helps you write towards something, which is super helpful.

John: It’s a chance to ask the question, why isn’t this working for me? As you hear laughter from people around you, people who are genuinely enjoying the movie, it’s like, okay, what are they seeing that I’m not seeing? What is it about my taste or my reaction to this movie that is just different from everyone else around me? What can I learn from that? What are the specific things? That moment which everyone thought was hilarious, I rolled my eyes at. Is it just the nature of the joke? Is it how the setup is working? Did I just fall off the train of the movie and just start despising everything I saw because something broke for me?

We often talk on the show about how when you first sit down to watch a movie, those first 5, 10 minutes, generally just go with it. Whatever you’re showing me, I take it at face value. I’ve signed a little social contract. I’m gonna give you all of my attention, as long as you don’t waste my attention. I’m here for the ride. Then some movies, you fall off that. You feel like they’ve broken that trust between you, and it’s very hard to get back into the movie. You’re able to watch the movie for like, oh, these things. I’m able to suddenly see cuts. I’m just noticing the filmmaking and not really paying attention to the story at a certain point.

Craig: That right there is a really interesting indicator of taste, because I’ve noticed for myself, as I direct more and as I work with lots of different directors on my show, that one of the things that is true about my taste – doesn’t mean it’s right or wrong, it’s just individual me – is that I tend to not appreciate when I can feel directing happening. Unless it’s the beginning or end of an episode, or the beginning or end of a movie – where you don’t mind a soaring camera or a sneaky move – flashy things or things where it’s evident that a shot is happening, they tend to bother me, because my taste is to want to be completely immersed in the people. One of the things I know about me is that when I watch movies, I am all in on people and relationships.

The first time I saw Goodfellas, for instance, I was just in love. And I still am to this day. I don’t care how many times I see it. But I didn’t even notice that there was this long tracking shot where Ray Liotta is going through the nightclub with Lorraine Bracco, because all I cared about was what he was saying. The voiceover there was so fascinating and so indicative of why he chose the life he chose, that I didn’t even notice the fact that there was this incredibly difficult-to-pull-off tracking shot, especially in the ’90s, back then. It’s a little easier now. So that’s me. That’s an interesting taste thing I’ve noticed about myself.

As I approach writing, I often ask myself, hey, am I writing in some cool shot here to be cool, or is it purposeful? Is there a reason? That’s something that things that I don’t like have taught me. Obviously, I love Goodfellas, but there are times where cameras go whipping around. I’m like, “Oh my goodness, where is this camera? Who is this camera? What’s happening here?”

John: I would say my early reaction to Wes Anderson films, I liked Bottle Rocket, but I didn’t like many of the films after that point, because I feel like every moment was like, “Look at me direct.” It was just so presentational at all times. At a certain point, a little switch clicked, and it was like, oh, I get what he’s doing. I like what he’s doing. I’ve come to accept it.

Some of that is the way we approach genres and filmmakers. We come in with a certain set of expectations. As long as those expectations are met and we know what we’re gonna get, we’re okay.

I think about this with – I was hearing this podcast was talking through Deadpool and Wolverine. One of their viewers said, “This is all prefaced on the fact that I can’t stand Ryan Reynolds.” I think it’s good you said that, but also, it’s really hard to sit down in a movie theater and watch this movie if you don’t like Ryan Reynolds and what he does, because the movie is all Ryan Reynolds.

Craig: That’s so weird. Let me just preface this review of this hamburger shop by saying I hate hamburgers. I don’t care then what you think. The only thing to say after, “Let me preface this by saying I don’t like Ryan Reynolds,” is, “Therefore I didn’t go,” or, “I went, but I’m not gonna write a review. Who cares what I think? I’m not useful to you.” If you don’t like Ryan Reynolds, you weren’t going; and if you do, you probably were.

John: You also hear people like, “I hate horror movies.” When people talk about a genre, I think it’s always worth digging a little bit deeper, because what is it about horror movies that you don’t like? What do you actually define as a horror movie? Does it include any thriller? Is it anything with suspense? Is it gore? What are the specific things you don’t like?

My husband, Mike, he’s very specific. He doesn’t like scary movies that take place in realistic situations. He’s fine watching Aliens, because Aliens is never gonna happen to him, but he doesn’t want to see anything that’s like a home invasion thriller. That’s not a thing he’s gonna watch.

Craig: Because he doesn’t like the feeling of being scared. I don’t like the feeling of falling, so I don’t like roller coasters. I am not a good person to review a roller coaster.

You also said something really smart. So much of this has to do with our either expectations or what I would call familiarity. Wes Anderson is very specific. The way he makes movies is unique to him. Nobody else makes Wes Anderson films, as far as I can tell.

John: I’ll also add, if someone did use some of those same techniques, it’s like, “That’s a Wes Anderson thing.” Anyone who tries to ape his style, we recognize the symmetry, the thing he’s doing. He’s doing a Wes Anderson thing.

Craig: It’s really specific to him. Bottle Rocket was his first film, I believe, and so he’s just beginning to become Wes Anderson. But when he gets into full Wes Anderson mode, finally, the first time you get there, you’re not familiar with it. And I think it’s perfectly appropriate to go, “What the hell is this?” But once you become familiar with it, then it’s just different. Our minds are anchored in a completely different place. We are now receptive, because we know. We’re not walking in going, “What the hell is this?” We’re walking in going, “This is going to be like this. Now, what’s going to happen in it?” I think that’s important.

I remember the first time I saw Fight Club, I struggled with it. The second time I saw Fight Club, I fell in love with it, because I knew what was going on. It was weird. It was almost like the problem with that movie was the twist came too late for me, because everything before it, I was going, “Why? Why?” I spent so much time going, “Huh? Why?” Then the second time I saw it, I could settle in and be like, “I love this.” It was a question of familiarity.

John: Yeah. Let’s say you’re sitting down at a movie and you’re not enjoying it and you’re staring at the screen. Some questions I think that are worth asking, because if you’re not enjoying the movie, you can ask yourself these questions. What is it about the story that’s not clicking for you? Are you clear who the hero is and what they want? We talk about hero motivation so much, but if you don’t know what they’re actually going for, why they’re doing the things they’re doing, you’re gonna fall off the ride.

Do you believe in the setup? Do you believe the world? Do you believe the rules? Do you believe the supporting characters around that hero? Do you buy this as a story concept, as a group of people who are here together in this specific cinematic universe? So often on the podcast, we’ve talked about mystery versus confusion. Are you confused in a bad way? Are you confused in a way that does not spark your curiosity but just becomes annoying?

Do you want to know more about the backstory? Do you want to know more about motivations? Do you care what happens next? If you don’t answer those questions yes, then something didn’t click for you there. It’s worth asking what more could’ve happened that might’ve gotten you on that ride or gotten you to stay on that ride.

Craig: This is why I wish more film and television critics would just disclose their tase. When you go to read their review, there’s just a little profile that says, “Here are the things that I love, and here are the things that are not that important to me.” Some people are logic Nazis. Some people only care about the relationships and the human beings and the truth of the drama. Some people love spectacle. Some people love being cinematically challenged, like Wes Anderson might do to you. Some people love being confused, and some people loathe it. Disclose all of that, because the truth is…

The point of this show, what we do here, is to help people become the best writer they can be. There’s no such thing as be good writer. That’s not a thing. You be the best writer you can be. One of the ways is to find the movies you love, figure out why you love them, and write towards those. But when you do see things you don’t like, figure out why, then stop beating up the movie, and start thinking about how that educates you about your own priorities and taste. And then lean into that.

There are so many people that like slasher films, for instance. They don’t just like them. They love them. They’re passionate about it. There are magazines dedicated to it. The great Fangoria. Movies that involve lots of blood and gore and slicing and crying and sadism and ripping of flesh. I don’t. I don’t.

John: I don’t either. But I would say that’s the same thing as a Wes Anderson. It does not work for me. I don’t have the exposure, the history to it, so I can’t appreciate a good one versus a bad one.

Craig: Right. It’s like drugs. There are some drugs that… You’re not a big drug guy. But if I laid out all of the kinds of drugs there are and we went through a John August month of just each day we hit you with a drug, I guarantee you – everything from alcohol to nicotine to LSD to fentanyl, literally everything – there are gonna be at least one or two drugs that you go, “Oh, I sure did like that.” And there are gonna be a whole bunch of them you’re like, “Nope, don’t want that again.”

John: Never again.

Craig: The “never again” drugs are some people’s lifelong addictions. And the drugs you love and you be like, “Oh, I gotta stay away from that,” are things other people detest. The concept of criticism, I think, would be helped tremendously if critics disclosed the things they just hated and loved before they ever showed up. That would be helpful. If they really do hate what is at the heart of something, maybe don’t write the review of it.

John: I think so. You’re sitting in the theater, and you’ve given up on the film. You’ve given up on trying to like this movie. Some suggestions for what to do next. Be thinking about how much of what is not working could be pinned on the script, in terms of the story. Obviously, you don’t have the script in front of you. But does it feel like these are fundamental story issues that are in the way? Is it the filmmaking? Is it the choices the director’s making? Is it a choice of how the music is working, how the shots are put together? Is it the casting? Is it just the wrong person in that role? Those are all fair questions to ask and investigate along the way.

But while you’re doing that, I would also say keep an eye out for things that actually do work, because even in these two movies I watched, there were things I actually genuinely liked about them, things like the score or the setting.

I recently went back and rewatched Grumpy Old Men, which I didn’t love on the rewatch, but one of the things I really appreciated is it was snowy and it was real snow. It was real snow in a way that I’ve not seen in movies in 30 years. I really felt just dirty, actual snow, which I liked a lot. It felt cold, which was great. I remember watching the Amityville Horror remake. I did not like the movie very much, but I really thought Ryan Reynolds was great in it. That’s why I cast him in my movie.

There can be really good things in movies that don’t otherwise work. That is something to always keep in mind as you’re watching a film that is not clicking for you.

Craig: Yeah, without question. That is helpful. I’ve always made a point of saying hey, let’s just talk about the things you love. On this show and nowhere else online will I ever say I don’t like this or I don’t like that. I just don’t do it, A, because I’m part of a siblinghood of writers who hopefully help each other rather than tear each other down, but also because I’ve always felt intrinsically that talking about the things you love helps make you better.

But I agree with you that there is value here, at least, in figuring out why you didn’t like something. Rather than working it out as, “Hey, everyone, stop liking the thing I don’t like,” which is the worst and stupid and ignorant of the human condition, just allow that you… Look. I don’t like mayonnaise. I hate mayonnaise.

John: Yeah, you really do. This is the true fact.

Craig: There’s a world of cuisine built around mayonnaise. It makes me crazy. But what I don’t do is sit there at a restaurant and say, “No mayo, please. Also, can you just stop making things with mayo, because mayo is bad.” That would be stupid.

John: Yeah. You don’t let people lecture you, say, “No, Craig, if you actually tried mayo, if you tried aioli, you would love it.”

Craig: They do say that.

John: You’ve never had good mayo. That’s the whole reason.

Craig: I’ve heard that too. My favorite is aioli. I’m like, what? If you throw garlic in mayonnaise, it’s not mayonnaise anymore? Beat it.

John: It does actually apply to genres. People say, “Oh, no, you really need to watch this thing and then you’ll love the genre.” It’s like, probably not. Yes, there’s a 1 percent chance that’s gonna tip me over and I will suddenly love that whole way of making movies, but probably not. There’s many other movies and many other foods to enjoy.

Craig: Speaking of foods, Dan Weiss, of Game of Thrones fame, was having a conversation with me. We were talking about sushi. I love sushi. There are a couple things that I don’t love. I’m not a big salmon roe guy. I love masago, the little tiny roe, but I don’t love salmon.

John: I don’t like big roe, no salmon. I think it’s because going fishing, we would use salmon roe for fishing.

Craig: It’s a bit chummy then. I said I had tried uni once, sea urchin, and really, really just struggled to even get it down. Dan said, “Okay.” He did the thing. He goes, “The uni is binary. It’s either gonna be horrible and you’ll want to throw up, or if you have it someplace great, it’s transcendent.” He said, “If you’re at a great restaurant, just give it a try again.” I was at a great restaurant, and I tried it again, and it was horrible. I just don’t like it. But he got me. He got me with the whole, “Oh, if you try a good… ” I texted him, I think right then and there, and said, “You lied. You lied to me.”

John: He lied. He lied. Let’s see if we can answer some listener questions here.

Craig: I bet we can.

John: We’ll start with Stefan in Prague.

Drew: “How do you thread the needle when writing weirdos or characters that feel really off without making them feel artificial? What, if anything, changes when the character is the protagonist or a side character or the antagonist?”

John: I think a question I would start with is, is the character weird in the context of the film, in the context of the story? Would other people around that character say, oh, that’s a weirdo, or is just the world weird and it’s a character who makes sense within this weird world? Those are two different situations. It’s how the people around them are reacting that will cause us to have empathy, sympathy, relatability with that character, based on how everyone else is treating them.

Craig: Yeah. Stefan, the other advice I would give you is to go far more specific. Weirdo or off is such a broad concept. We use it all the time, but we’re not necessarily accountable to an audience when we’re describing somebody. But very typically, if you’re saying to somebody, “Oh my gosh. I went on a date, and I was with this guy. He was so weird,” the very next question the person you’re talking to will ask is, “How?”

John: What did they do specifically? Yes.

Craig: Yes. In what ways were they weird? Did they have verbal tics? Did they move physically stiffly? Did they not have the ability to make reasonable segues in conversation? Were they obsessive about one sort of thing? What was weird about them? Did they not blink? There are so many ways that we can feel offput by somebody.

It’s worth doing your research here and thinking, okay, when I think about weird or off, who am I actually thinking about in my head? Or am I thinking about a couple of different people? What about them? Go really specific. Do some research. Are you talking about neurodiversity? Are you talking about somebody with anger issues? What are you going for? Get really, really deep under the hood. The more you get under the hood, the more interesting and specific it will be, and certainly, the more realistic it will seem.

John: Absolutely. You think about the Pee-wee Herman character or Napoleon Dynamite, they are weirdos, and yet they’re specific to their world. They are the heroes, the centers of the story, because everything’s constructed to let them be the centers of the story. Think of all the characters in Wes Anderson movies. We were talking about Wes Anderson. Most of those are weirdos, and it works within the context of that movie. Again, it’s all about how these characters fit within the world that you created.

Craig: Exactly.

John: Next question comes from a Concerned Dad.

Drew: Concerned Dad writes, “My son is looking to hire a ghostwriter for an idea he has for a full-length movie screenplay. Neither my son nor I have experience in this. He has done some research and found this person, who has a website which he has shared with us. This person is listed on IMDb. He has sent a contract to my son. The price is $7,500 over 4 installments, each with a deliverable for a 100-page script. He also asks for 2 percent if the script is optioned or sold to a third party, as well as a co-writer credit, and that the client owns the rights and copyrights to the script. Do you have any thoughts or advice I could pass on to my son?”

John: I believe the person writing in with this letter, but I also kind of don’t believe it, because I’ve never actually heard of this existing in the real world, where someone commissions a screenplay for $7,500 where their name is taken off it. This is wild and crazy and does not make sense at all. Wait six months, Concerned Dad. You can just hire the Pareto.AI people to generate the screenplay for you and probably be cheaper than this.

This is weird and wrong and bad. There are no movies that are made that are done this way, where a ghostwriter wrote the screenplay and a different person has their name on it. Having an idea for a movie is not a thing. I think that’s part of what we’ve talked about on this podcast for 12 years. None of this feels right. You should not be sending money to these people.

Craig: Yeah. First of all, I just think as a writer, the idea of hiring a ghostwriter, it’s against my values, because writing is about authorship. It’s the purpose of it. I’m looking at the website that Concerned Dad has indicated for this ghostwriter. I don’t like it. I think it’s full of a lot of unverifiable boasting. Furthermore, if somebody is gonna write you an entire screenplay for-

John: $7,500.

Craig: Over four installments. $7,500 for a screenplay. Just to be clear, WGA scale minimum for an original screenplay, I think, is $100,000. You’re gonna get what you pay for. You’re gonna get something that I assume somebody just barfs out, for the cost of $7,500. He’s asking for a co-writer credit. That doesn’t even make sense, because this isn’t a WGA thing. Eventually, it just ends up as source material, and somebody else is gonna get writing credit at the WGA.

I don’t know what to say except this would be a huge waste of money, and you’re not doing your son any favors. If my kid came to me and said, “I have an idea for a movie. I’m looking to hire somebody to do it for me,” I would say, “We need to talk about values.”

John: I think the other thing you could say to your son is, “Congratulations, you’re a producer.” You’re a producer with an idea for a movie. You’re gonna go out and hire a writer. That is an actual, valid thing. Producers have ideas. They read a bunch of scripts. They hire a writer. They pay that writer to write a script for them. That is a thing that happens. But this ghostwriter thing is not a real thing.

Craig: No. “Congratulations, you want to be a producer.” How about go do the work that is required to function in this business. There are 14 billion people who want to be in Hollywood. Your son isn’t any different, except that he thinks that if he pays $7,500, he has this genius way of short-circuiting the whole thing. He does not. It will be bad. It will not work. Never in the history of Hollywood has some ghostwritten script for $7,500 ended up on screen and made somebody’s career. Even if it did, what would anyone need your son for? To hire the publicly advertising ghostwriter again? It just doesn’t make sense. So, no. No. No.

John: No.

Craig: No.

John: That’s Craig’s answer to a lot of the questions today.

Craig: Yes. But Concerned Dad, I will say, as a fellow dad, that concern, the reason you labeled yourself concerned, it means, A, you love your kid, which I love, and B, you have an instinct that should be heeded.

John: For sure.

Craig: Good on you, actually.

John: It is time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing this week is the Pageant of the Masters. Craig, what do you know of the Pageant of the Masters?

Craig: Nothing.

John: Nothing. You watched Arrested Development, I’m sure. This was actually a joke on Arrested Development, where the family, the Bluths, were participating in what they called the Living Classics, which is where they would stage these great works of visual art, and they’d have to dress up like the people and recreate the frames of these master artworks. It’s a real thing.

The Pageant of the Masters happens in Laguna Beach once a year, for six weeks or so. For my birthday, we went down to Laguna Beach and we saw it. And it was actually kind of great. I was expecting it to be cheesy. There was some element of cheese to it, but it was also incredibly impressive.

You’re in the audience. It’s this outdoor amphitheater. There’s narration, which is actually really well written and really well delivered. There’s a full orchestra. But the curtains open, and it is a work of art, a painting. You’re looking at it like, “Oh, wait, those are some real people in there.” There are people who are dressed up in the costumes, with their faces painted to look like the brushstrokes of the people in there. You really have to look carefully to figure out, oh, that actually is a person in there and not something else.

You’re admiring it for, at most, a minute. The curtains close, and then very quickly, the curtains reopen again and it’s a completely different staged artwork. It’s not until maybe five or six of these reveals in does it actually show you – they don’t close the curtain. They actually show what happens behind the scenes.

Anybody who’s interested in stagecraft will be just blown away by how precise everything is. The picture frame has to change. There’s a quick change of the person who was wearing this one thing. Clothes get ripped off and they’re in a different thing. New sets are brought in behind them. It’s all just on rails to get it to happen so quickly. It was incredibly impressive.

The theme this year was the art of fashion, so they went back to Ancient Egypt but up to Alexander McQueen and the work of Edith Head, who developed Hitchcock’s movies. It was just really, really well done. If you happen to be on Laguna Beach and get a chance to see Pageant of the Masters this year or next year, I’d recommend it, because it was actually a much cooler thing than I was expecting.

Craig: That sounds actually pretty awesome. I’m looking at the list of the paintings. I would love to see The Last Supper with people.

John: The Last Supper was the final work of art in this year’s performance.

Craig: That’s what I’m seeing. As opposed to what people thought was The Last Supper in the opening ceremony for the Olympics, when it was not.

John: It was not. In the show notes, I’ll put a link to this Wall Street Journal video that shows how they do some of the work. This is some young children painted up like this work of art. The people you’re seeing on stage are volunteers. Good lord, that’s such a time commitment to do it. But I was really impressed by the professionalism of everything around it was off the charts.

Craig: That’s amazing. Well done, Pageant of the Masters.

John: Craig, do you have a One Cool Thing for us?

Craig: I do. I’m very, very late with this. I apologize to Dan Erickson, the creator, and to Ben Stiller and Aoife McArdle, the two primary directors of this show, or the only two directors of the show, but I finally watched Severance.

John: Holy cow, I loved it. Did you love it?

Craig: Loved it. I mean loved it. I finished it and I texted my agent and I said, “Who represents Dan Erickson? I need his contact. I just need to email him and just tell him how good this was for me, how much I loved it.” It’s one of my favorite things to do is just email someone and go, “I watched your thing. I loved it. Here’s why.”

It was so brilliantly done. The thing I loved about Severance is, the sci-fi high concept of it, which they exposited beautifully, could have led to 400,000 bad shows and maybe 1 good one. They did the good one. What I loved about it is that it ultimately prompted questions that were relevant to me, to all of us, not just about work and life and late-stage capitalism, all the easy stuff, but literally about who we are, what defines us. How important are our memories? How important is experience? If I split, is it still me? What is me? What responsibility do I have toward me? Who would I be if all the circumstances around me changed irrevocably and the other ones were wiped away from my memory? All of that stuff was so brilliantly done. The tone was so cool. I love the look of it.

John: Now, growing up in New Jersey, were you familiar with Holmdel, the exterior there for the big office building? Because that’s where my dad used to work.

Craig: Indeed, I was familiar with Holmdel and the exterior. It was an old AT&T building, I think, right?

John: That’s right. Bell Labs.

Craig: Bell Labs. Lovely brutalist kind of thing sitting there. The casting was brilliant. I loved how spare everything was. When you look, there’s almost nothing in there. I assume that that’s probably a lot of input from Ben Stiller, since he was directing the first few episodes and kind of sets the look, I imagine, along with Dan Erickson, to be so sparse.

I loved how they had a job that made no sense, but they told you it made no sense and explained why the characters were okay with it making no sense and promising that perhaps maybe it does make sense. The confusion versus mystery meter was perfectly pitched.

The most important thing, the thing that made my heart sing, was that in a world where television shows are constantly using the bait of mystery that they cannot actually pay off, this show paid it all off. When I say paid it off, I don’t mean they figured out a way for it to make sense later. It was clear that they knew from the start, everything they wanted to do, who everyone was, why everything was happening, and how it should come out. It was just masterfully done.

I don’t know how many people watch Severance, because it’s on Apple TV, and it’s not like there are ratings or anything, but I would encourage anyone who has not put in the time to put in the time. By the way, it’s not one of those things where it’s like, “You just gotta watch the first five episodes and then it gets good.” It’s good literally in the first second. It’s great.

John: It’s one of the shows you can definitely say watch the first episode. If you don’t like the first episode, you’re not gonna like the series. Then move on. That’s great. Some things will not be for everybody. But definitely, it’s the show it is from the very start, which I love about it.

You and I actually had the same experience, because I watched it while I had COVID, when I was stuck in Boston. You watched it more recently on COVID. We both had COVID brain as we were watching it. I don’t think that’s a prerequisite for loving it, but definitely, it was the same special time.

Craig: It focuses you. It focuses you, and it helps pass the time while you’re sitting there blowing your nose. I would just say again that everything is so beautifully thought through. The level of intelligence that went into the creation of the show, and the seamless direction, also, between Ben Stiller and Aoife McArdle. For me, at least, there was no seams. It was all beautifully done.

Congrats to Dan Erickson. Congrats to any of the writers on the show. I’m looking now to see who else was writing on it. Just so gorgeously done. There was Anna Ouyang Mench and Mohamad El Masri and Wei-Ning Yu and Chris Black and Andrew Colville and Kari Drake and Helen Leigh and Amanda Overton and Erin Wagoner. Congrats to everybody there. Oh, and Samuel Donovan also directed two episodes. Congrats to the crew that put it together. You could just tell it was put together with love. Huge tip of the hat also to Adam Scott, Zach Cherry, Britt Lower, and of course, the great John Turturro, not to mention Christopher Walken, all of whom sort of led things, and then Patricia Arquette, who just was so-

John: Great.

Craig: And Tramell Tillman. Oh my god, was he good.

John: Oh, yeah, he’s a star-maker.

Craig: Honestly, just top to bottom, wow. What else can I say? Couldn’t have loved it more.

John: That’s great. That is our show for this week.

Craig: Yay.

John: Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt.

Craig: What.

John: Edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Craig: Woo.

John: Our outro this week is by Pascui Rivas, and lord, it’s such a good outro. Man, you guys have just been topping yourselves. Thank you to everyone who sends through these outros. If you have one, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. Y

ou will find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts and sign up for our weekly newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts and hoodies and drinkware now and hats. They’re all great. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau.

You can sign up to become a Premium member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back-episodes and Bonus Segments, like the one we’re about to record on when it’s okay to bail on a thing, which is not an excuse to get rid of Craig, I promise. Craig, thanks for being here. Good to have you back.

Craig: Good to be back.

[Bonus Segment]

John: In the main show, we talked about you’re sitting in a movie theater, and you actually have the choice, you could leave the movie theater. Rarely will I do it, but sometimes I’ve done it. But I want to talk about when you can bail on a book or a play, a friendship, a relationship, a marriage.

Let’s start with books. Craig, if you start reading a book, how much of a book do you feel like you need to read before it’s just not for you and you’re setting it down and never picking it up again?

Craig: It’s gotten shorter over time. I think it wasn’t that I was more patient. I just simply had broader taste. It was just more accepting. I have become less accepting. I feel like if I’m gonna read something, I want it to be great. For me, it’s not really a question of pages. It’s just like once I get to a spot where I go, “This is just not enjoyable. I’m not looking forward to turning the page,” it’s over.

John: Yeah. There’s no sense of having to honor that commitment and finish a thing. I’m better about setting down books. Honestly, Mike and I – Mike more so than I am – we’re both a little bit stubborn about continuing to watch a show that we’ve stopped enjoying. Something that we really enjoy the first season, the second season, if we’re in the third season, we’ll probably stick with it, even if we’re not loving it. Some of it’s inertia. Some of it’s hoping it’ll get back to its good form. But we’ve definitely stuck it out through bad final seasons of shows. Craig, do you stick with a show if it’s not working in later seasons?

Craig: No. No, I don’t. Maybe because I make a television show and I’ve made movies, there’s something about movies and television shows where I just… At least with a movie, it’s like, meh. Look. Unless we’re talking about some three-and-a-half-hour behemoth, it’s gonna be a couple hours of my life. It’ll end. I’ve walked out of two movies in my life, because it just feels like, meh, distress tolerance. You’ll make it through. But television shows, now I have to actively go and keep watching.

I won’t say what the series was, but it was a very supergenre, very popcorny, fun television show that I watched the first two seasons of, and then the third season came around and I was like, “I’m done.”

John: We’ve been talking about works of art, but let’s talk about in the real world and relationships. Friendships that you’ve decided to bail on. I can think of a couple. There’s natural stages of your life where you have friends who are specific to that stage of life, and as you move past that stage of life, you have to decide, are they gonna come with me, or are they gonna stay back there? There are friends from high school who I wish them well, but they’re not my friends now; friends from college, the same way.

But there’s also some people who I’ve just had to make deliberate choices, like, “You know what? I think I’m not gonna continue this friendship.” I always feel weird about it. Also, it feels like, do I acknowledge to that person that I’m not continuing the friendship, or do I just let it fade away and let things go longer between the texts?

Craig: As we get older, it seems less and less reasonable to force yourself to spend time with people you don’t enjoy or people who actively are upsetting you, because you’re running out of life. When you’re in your 20s, it’s like, whatever, who cares? We’re entering the “ain’t nobody got time for that” phase of our lives.

I’ve never really said, “Dear so-and-so, it’s over.” You just put a little less effort in. Look. The truth is, I’m not so proud as to imagine the people on the other end are like, “He seems like he’s putting less effort in.” I think they have plenty of other people that they’re… If it’s not working for me, it’s probably not working that much for them either.

But mostly, the friends I have that I really care about, I care about. I’m more of a focus on the people I really like person, as opposed to a, “I go and move with lots of different people every weekend. I go here and there with this group and this group and this group.” I don’t have that kind of social battery anyway.

I don’t really recall having to actually push the eject button specifically on a person. But I would say certainly if you’re not enjoying someone’s company, just remove yourself.

John: It is interesting. There was a person who was a friend for a good number of years and things fell off. Moving to France was actually a pretty clear demarcation of who’d I get back in touch with after I moved back from France and who I did not. But when I saw this person got married this last week – there was a Facebook post that Mike shared, like, “They got married.” I was like, “Oh, wow. That’s so weird.” I was trying to fill in all the details from what must’ve happened between the last time I saw them and now.

It was just a reminder that time marches on for everybody. Just because someone’s not in your sight right now, they’re still off living their own lives. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that I missed.

Craig: Thank God for that. I’m one of those people that, if somebody asked me, “Would you prefer that people be thinking about you or not thinking about you?” I am 100 percent in the I would prefer they are not thinking about me category. Go think about other stuff, and I’ll see you when I see you.

John: It’s a strange thing. There are friends who I think about, and it never really occurs to me they must be thinking about me too. I don’t know. I’m sure they are.

Craig: It’s possible. I like to live in a fantasy that – like babies don’t have object permanence – when I’m with somebody, we’re being friends, and then when we go away, they’re not really there.

John: I would also say with friendship, having regular times when you’re going to meet is so crucial for this. I definitely have friends, who are longtime friends, who I haven’t seen them for a year, you could pick right back up and everything’s fine. But also, the fact that I see you guys every week for D&D, the fact that we’re on a Zoom for this, those regularly scheduled things are important. It reminds me of why bowling leagues and church and other things like that are so crucial for maintaining and strengthening friendships.

Craig: Yeah, especially for men. They’ve done all these studies. As men grow older, they just stop having friends. They just end up being friends with their spouse, and that’s it.

John: A lot of work for them.

Craig: Then their work, quote unquote, friends. But they don’t have their own friends. I saw this happen with my dad. They begin to get isolated and detached from the world around them and stubborn and cranky. Because I don’t go to church, and because, generally speaking, I hate anything organized with people – any time I’m part of anything that even vaguely resembles a mob, I start to get very sweaty. But the fact that we do have this ongoing D&D game, and that I have a couple other groups that I play D&D with here and there, is like that’s my church. That’s where all these friends come from.

Then on top of that, honestly, because of a bunch of online things that have since withered away in importance, I know a lot of writers that do what we do, and I have a lot of friends that do what we do. We meet up and we hang out and we have a drink. We go out to dinner. We know each other’s spouses and things. Those things are wonderful. I’m just very grateful. My wife has 4 million friends.

John: I’ll see them over at your house, and I’m like, “Oh, yeah, another Melissa friend.”

Craig: It’s insane. But I have, I don’t know, like 20. I have a decent amount of friends, and I love seeing them. I’m just very grateful that even though I go and I disappear for a year to go do something, a bunch of them are also disappearing for a year to go do something. We’re all in that world. When we’re back together, we’re back together, and it feels great.

John: Craig, it’s always great to be back together with you.

Craig: Aw. Segue man.

John: Thanks for another fun show.

Craig: Thank you.

Links:

• WGAW Good and Welfare Emergency Assistance Loans
• AI Screenwriter job posting
• Pageant of the Masters
• Pageant of the Masters Brings Art to Life from the Wall Street Journal on YouTube
• Arrested Development – The Living Classics
• Severance on Apple TV+
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
• John August on Threads, Instagram, Twitter and Mastodon
• Outro by Pascui Rivas (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: You’re listening to Episode 652 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, what things are characters doing out of habit or tradition? We’ll look at rituals to see how they can illuminate your hero’s background and provide a jumping-off point for your story. We’ll also answer some listener questions, including how to move from writing plays to writing movies. In our Bonus Segment for Premium Members, since we’re talking about rituals, how about bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs. My guess is, Craig, you had a bar mitzvah.

Craig: I sure did.

John: Let’s look into that, because Megana and I didn’t have a chance to do that. Here’s why I say that. Megana is filling in for Drew, who’s off this week.

Craig: Yay.

John: Megana Rao, welcome back.

Megana Rao: Thank you so much. Here by unpopular demand, I guess.

Craig: I don’t know about that. From what I understand, Megana, you are popular. You’re somewhat of a celebrity amongst the millennials.

John: Even non-millennials. This last week, Megana and I went to see Taffy Brodesser-Akner at a book launch party for her new book, Long Island Compromise, which is fantastic. It was my first time meeting Taffy in person. She’s come on the episode. I guess you weren’t there, Craig, so it was just me and Taffy.

Craig: I wasn’t, yeah.

John: Megana was, of course, producing that. I got to see her in person. We hugged. It was lovely. I said, “Oh, and this is Megana Rao.” You should’ve seen the hug that Taffy gave Megana, because Megana is, of course, the true star of Scriptnotes.

Craig: Unquestionably.

John: No question.

Craig: She’s real quiet because she’s so uncomfortable with it, which I love.

Megana: I’m really glad the video’s not on.

Craig: Just squirming. Just squirming. By the way, I do the same thing. Just, “Don’t look at me.”

John: We’ll let her squirm quietly while we do some follow-up here. Craig, you and I have been talking about locked pages and colored pages and things that we should be moving on past. We asked for ADs and script supervisors and other folks who need to work with locked pages and colored revisions, “Okay, tell us what your objections, your concerns are. Are you for this?” We got a couple people writing back with good feedback. Megana, could you help us out with some of these responses we got?

Megana: Yes. I guess I’ll start with Adam, who’s a first AD.

John: Great.

Megana: Adam writes, “I loathe locked pages. They served a purpose when there were printed pages. Now, however, digital distribution/Scriptation has made them completely moot, so I would happily eliminate them. Colored pages still serve a purpose, as they allow crew to specifically target changes and the new elements they bring. Again though, digital distribution has made this dramatically easier.

“I don’t think shared documents are useful, given the number of department-specific notes that people make in their scripts. For me, keeping the script coordinator position is extremely useful when they’re good, as they track and list changes, on top of releasing the new pages, etc. Keep colored pages, eliminate locked pages, and still have a small number of paper sides available on set for us Luddites.”

Craig: Amen, Adam. By the way, completely agree about the script coordinator position. On The Last of Us: Season 2, the script coordinator position is occupied by Ali Chang, who also works as my assistant, so she does two jobs.

Megana: Oh, wow.

Craig: She’s very, very good at it. I’m pretty good at it too, meaning it’s not like I hand her a mess and then she has to clean it up. But she proofreads and she makes sure there aren’t any errant asterisks, and then she also pipes it through – I guess we use Scenechronize. Scenechronize. That is absolutely essential. I’m curious about colored pages here.

John: I want to talk a little bit more about that, because I think – and we’re gonna see this in other follow-up here – when we’re saying throw out colored pages, we’re not saying get rid of the idea of this is a set of revisions that are complete and intact. I think we’re for numbering them, dating them, making it clear that this is a revision. We just think the concept of color is silly.

Craig: Yes. There are options in all the popular screenwriting software to issue revisions either with text in color and asterisks, or text not in color and asterisks, or both or either of those and then the page itself being a color. I don’t issue pages in colors, and I don’t issue the text in colors either. I simply indicate the asterisks.

When we distribute this, there are two versions that people get. They get the full script, and they also get just the pages that have changed. I don’t think the actual color itself is necessary.

John: I think it was a very useful thing back and the day when everyone had a printed script. They’d say, “Okay, why is the page you’re looking at a different color than mine?” But that’s not the world we’re in right now.

Craig: It sounds like Sam, the first AD, has a different point of view.

John: Megana, can you help us out with Sam’s response.

Megana: Sam reads, “It’s the ADs, script supervisors, and script coordinators who most value the standard, so why are the people who cling to these messy remnants of a bygone era also the people who are in charge of efficiency and accuracy? The answer is efficiency and accuracy.

“Once pre-production begins, the script becomes a technical document, providing the necessary scaffolding on which all plans are made. Strange as it may seem, the physical position of the text on each page is a pretty critical component of that scaffolding. There are several reasons, but the big three I see are: one, page aids; two, line script coverage tracking; and three, preserving annotations.

“With unlocked pages, even small revisions will cause a chaotic cascade throughout the entire document, forcing the AD and continuity departments to re-break down the entire script, update all their documents along the way, and exchange notes with one another, so both departments’ accounting of scenes to be shot are synchronized. Not only is this immensely tedious, but it will inevitably cause discrepancies down the road.

“These discrepancies risk miscommunications, wasted resources, and a lot of personal anxiety, not to mention lost sleep, because when the revisions come in, they generally have to be processed outside of production hours, which are already brutal enough.

“ADs already sacrifice more sleep than you could imagine, to protect the creative vision that the writer dreamed up from shattering against the rocky shoals of reality. The last thing you want is to break down one of the few levies they have to keep the tide out, if the only benefit is doing so is that the pages feel nicer to read.”

Craig: Sam, I have a question. The question is, don’t scene numbers handle all of this?

John: That’s what I was going for also. I worry that there’s a lack of imagination happening here, or just a dismissal of the fact that we do have another system already in place there for keeping track of what is the thing you’re actually shooting, because remember, you’re not shooting a page; you’re shooting a scene. If that scene has changed and if it’s now two-eighths of a page longer, that can be denoted and seen. It’s not just that it’s breaking across four AB pages in different colors in different ways.

Craig: Yeah. It seems to me that it’s easier to track the length of scenes when they are broken up across pages, because ADs do divide pages into eighths, and it is a lot easier to divide a full page into eighths than it is to divide lots of little bitsy bobs into eighths.

Line script coverage tracking. If the documents that people have, if they are taking notes, I can understand that, meaning if the notes are tied to not necessarily physical pages but virtual pages.

John: Yeah, or a pdf with handwritten stuff on it from an iPad or something.

Craig: Right, I can absolutely see that that could be a thing. That’s the one thing that Sam’s mentioning here. I would probably check with my script supervisor, because I believe that he brings everything into his own software. When he’s going through the script – and I watch it on his iPad, because he’s got this fancy script supervisor software on his iPad – there are never broken pages. I think he’s unlocking them himself. Not quite sure if I agree here, but fair to say that unintended consequences must be investigated.

John: So far, we’ve been talking about pre-production and production, but Eric brings up issues with post. Megana?

Megana: “As a post supervisor, it was always helpful to have the locked pages, and then scene changes to the script as a new number, 13-A, for example. Also, most editors I’ve worked with print all the pages with scriptie notes for their binder and have the pages in front of them while they work.

“When considering whether to scrap locked pages for the benefit of production, please also consider the needs of post. There might be a future where editors are solely working from a digital script or digital scriptie notes, but feels like it won’t happen until those habitually using papers are retired.”

Craig: Again, I don’t understand this. I don’t see why, as a post supervisor, it’s helpful to have script changes as a new page number, because sometimes script changes don’t generate a new page number. Also, yes, editors do receive the printed scriptie notes for their binder, but almost every script supervisor right now is using software that then generates all of that. I believe it generates it without the broken pages. They don’t need broken pages. They just need the script supervisor’s notes.

Also, Eric, I will say, if there’s one thing I have complained about to every editor with whom I’ve worked, it’s that they do not look at the script supervisor notes, ever. I’m begging them. I’m like, “You have this huge binder over there. Look at it.” But the binder would be smaller and easier to read if the pages were unlocked. Again, the scene numbers are the key. That’s what editors go by, scene numbers. They do not go by page script numbers at all.

John: Craig, I think one other thing we’ve talked very much about on the show is that there are times when it becomes really a judgment call whether something is a revision to a scene or should just be a brand new scene with a new scene number. Can you think of examples on The Last of Us where in the edits you made to a scene, you realize, “Okay, it’s silly to be calling this the same scene number. We should just make it A-52, rather than Scene 52.”

Craig: In post?

John: In post or in production or heading into production.

Craig: Certainly in production, when we’re making revisions. I may look at something and say, “Look, this person actually is gonna dip outside of the room, look at something, and then head back in.” And when they go out, they see something. Then, yes, I will split it. It’s uncommon, but sure, I generally tie scene numbers to spots.

Our first ADs don’t break up large scenes into lots of scene numbers. I’ve seen other ADs request that. We just do scene part 1, scene part 2, scene part 3, scene part 4. That’s how they organize it. In post, we never mess with scene numbers, because they’re going by slates. Everything in their bin is connected to the scene number on the slate. The one thing that the script supervisor will occasionally do is decide whether or not this should be a different setup or a different take.

John: Of course.

Craig: We’ve done scene 238-A. Then we all decide, you know what, let’s do this next take but just change a lens here on the third camera, on C camera. Then they come, “Are we lettering up, or are we just going take 4 and then the script supervisor will decide?” But yeah, in post, never.

John: Never. A thing that happened in a couple movies I’ve worked on, Charlie’s Angels being most notable, is that a scene, a sequence was given one number, and based on who was in the scene, what the scene was actually doing, what function it served, you could’ve said, “This is the new version of scene 63.” But instead, “Cut scene 63. Here’s a new scene, A-63, that takes its place,” because I think the decision was that it’s better to tell people this is a whole new thing, and so don’t carry your previous considerations of that previous scene into this new thing that we’re doing.

Craig: That probably happens more frequently in movies than it would in television. The weirdest thing is – I think we’ve talked about this before – the crew is really good at learning what scene numbers are, and then sometimes they’ll come to me and say, “Hey, I have a question about 338.” I’m like, “No.”

John: No idea what that is.

Craig: “Please tell me what that is. I just don’t know.” But they all do.

John: Craig, is 338 the scene in that episode, or would that be Episode 3, scene 38?

Craig: That’s Episode 3, scene 38. That’s how we work it. Every episode starts with 300 or 400 or 500 and goes from there.

John: You can’t have more than 99 scenes in an episode?

Craig: We could. We could.

John: It would go 10-100 or something?

Craig: I think we would probably start using letters is my guess.

John: Cool. We have one bit of follow-up on industry software. We’ve talked about our frustrations with the current state of industry software and how difficult it is to make economically viable products here. A point from Pontus in Västerås, Sweden.

Megana: “I work in software, and in software we use version control systems like Git to keep track of changes in the code. This should be very easy to use for scripts. It should be a no-brainer to merge the two. The only thing that is required is that the doctors are in xml, json, or some other text format, and that someone needs to make an interface on top of Git to make it easy to use for a non-programmer.”

John: There, Pontus actually ran into the issue here. The idea of using version control for code for text documents, like scripts or like books and other things like that, is a longstanding idea. There are writers out there who really use version control for their own projects.

The issue is Git is just complicated in its own ways. You check something out, you put it back in. You have to merge branches. I’ve seen some clever ways of simplifying that, some UI things to make it a little bit easier. But keep in mind, screenwriters get fussy over the smallest things. I do wonder, Pontus, if the actual folks who would be using this would be willing to use it is just frankly my concern.

Craig: We won’t. What we do have is version control through the user interface of the various screenwriting softwares that are out there, the commercial software that’s out there. How they keep track of it may be some application of this. Every now and then, I end up in Github for some reason, and I just start running away.

John: I’ll say that under the hood, Highland actually does do some version controlling that would allow you to go back to earlier revisions and can do snapshots and that kind of stuff. The reason we don’t surface it for users is it’s actually just a difficult interface for people to grok. It’s hard to understand exactly what this means.

I think screenwriters have this habit and tradition of, “Okay, I want to save as a new file with a new date on it.” That’s the kind of version control that we’re used to doing. One screenwriter working by yourself, that’s okay. That’s actually very doable. The challenge comes when you have many people working on a document simultaneously, like a Google Doc situation. That’s where the online services, like WriterDuet or Scripto or other things like that, do have an advantage, because there is one central source of truth, and they can do some stuff around that that makes more sense. But it’s a challenging problem.

Craig: We also have a bit of version control through the commonly used backup systems. Dropbox, for instance, will hold 4 billion versions of something, all of which are indicated by date and time. I understand, Pontus, from your point of view, this makes absolute sense, but that is because you work in software. Generally speaking, screenwriters do not. There are screenwriters who barely can handle working with screenwriting software, much less Git.

John: When we had Eric Roth on the show – I just remember this because I saw his chapter in the Scriptnotes book – he was talking about this ancient system he still uses for typing screenplays that can only hold 30 pages at a time. I love it. I love that kind of kooky thing.

Craig: He’s still out there writing Killers of the Flower Moon and all these amazing movies. We don’t need to burden Eric Roth with Git.

John: For this next bit of follow-up, there’s a long email here. I think rather than read the whole thing, I’d rather summarize it, because it’s gonna be more instructive, I think, if we do summarize this. Phillip wrote in because back in Episode 613, you and I, Craig, we talked about the wins for writing teams in this most recent contract. You said, “For as long as I’ve been in this union, for as long as you’ve been in this union, teams have been penalized, essentially. They had a different deal for how much money they could receive healthcare contributions for, and now, finally, at long last, we have won that, which is not only fair, which is that if you write something with somebody else as a team, you are treated individually for the purposes of qualifying for pension and health care.”

Phillip, who’s a member of a writing team, says, “No, guys, you’re wrong. You guys are wrong, and everyone is reporting this wrong. Variety was wrong.” He called the Guild, and this is not what it is at all. He says, “With regards to minimums, nothing has changed. Each writer still needs to earn exactly what they needed before the strike, or to put it more succinctly, we need to make twice what a single writer would in order to qualify for pension and healthcare.”

Basically, he’s angry and upset, because he believes that we have misinformed the listenership of what actually was gained in this. He’s wrong, but I want to provide some context around this, because I think I understand how he got the wrong conclusion.

Craig: I understand. Yes, I do too.

John: I want to be generous here and say, listen, I’m sorry you thought this was a different thing than it was. I’m sorry you didn’t get the answer you wanted out of the Guild. But I also feel like maybe you were specifically asking one question that they answered specifically and didn’t provide a different context around things.

Craig: Phillip is talking about two different things. He’s saying, “Look, you guys got it wrong because of this thing,” but really, we were talking about the other thing. You qualify for pension and healthcare by earning a certain amount of money, but there is a cap on how much of that money the companies will pay fringes on. For every $10 we make, they will add – let’s make it $100 is a better way. For every $100, I believe they add something like $8 for health and $8 for pension, something like that.

John: It’s a contribution based on the earnings.

Craig: It was a contribution. But it stops. At some point, it stops. Pension, it stops at 225. After you hit $225,000 in earnings, they stop paying fringes for pension. After you hit $250,000, they stop paying fringes for your healthcare.

That amount isn’t just something that goes into the general pot for everybody, but also, the amount of covered earnings you have also generates these points that if you were to, say, have a down year, you could draw points to keep your health insurance going.

Now, it used to be that if you were writing as a team, the maximum for the team contributions would be $250,000. That’s it. But you’re only making 125. It’s not fair. You’ve only got contributions up to 125. That’s what changed. They decided incorrectly that if you’re a member of a team, the cap on benefits should not be halved for you simply because you’re making half of the money that the team is making.

What Phillip is saying is that there is an amount of money you need to earn to qualify for healthcare in the first place, and that doesn’t change for a writing team. For a writing team, the qualifying amount for pension and health is currently, as he points out, $45,000. If a writing team earns, collectively, $45,000, then what happens is one person gets paid $22,500, and the other person gets paid $22,500, and neither one of them are qualifying.

It can’t work the way he’s suggesting it should, because a certain amount of money has to be earned for a person to get health insurance. You can’t split health insurance in halves. You can’t give somebody half health insurance. In fact, each person does have to make that amount to get healthcare. That didn’t change. We didn’t think it would change. We didn’t ask for it to change. That’s not a possible thing.

John: I think it’s important for folks to understand where we were at before this contract. There was even a thing called a married writing team exemption or a special case. There were situations where this writing team, they’re married to each other. They know that one of them gets health insurance, they’ll both get health insurance, because your spouse gets health insurance. They would go and say, “Hey, give me an exemption here, so rather than splitting 50/50, we can split the income 80/20 or 90/10, so that at least one of us can earn over that threshold and therefore qualify.” It’s crazy.

What this deal did is that – you’re not getting double the money, but it’s making it possible for writers in that situation to earn enough to get their healthcare covered. It’s an important win, but we didn’t change the minimums for a writing team. It’s still $45,000 per writer, whether you’re part of a team or not part of a team.

Craig: The good news, Phillip, is that if you go past $45,000 – and most writers will – then they keep paying fringes, so your pension grows bigger, all the way to $225,000. It used to go only contributing up to half of that, and similarly for earning points for healthcare. It is now double what it used to be. When Phillip says, “Other than,” in all caps, “VERY successful writers, this isn’t helping teams.” I have to push back there.

John: I do too.

Craig: We’re talking about minimums here. If you’re working on staff as a team, I think you’re gonna hit 90 grand over the course of a season. That does not seem to me like what I would call the threshold of very successful writer. Very successful writers are earning millions of dollars. I don’t know what the average income is for a WGA member. I’m actually looking it up. Average income. Now, average is a weird way to put it.

John: Median probably, yeah.

Craig: Median. They haven’t released median. The last time they released a median figure was 2014. In 2014, in 2021 dollars, so it’d be a little bit more now, the median was $140,000. I don’t agree, Phillip, that only very successful writers in teams are making healthcare minimums for both.

John: The other thing I want to make sure we’re framing this as is, Phillip is right to feel frustrated about how hard it is to get health insurance, about the weird penalties we put on writing teams in the Guild. Structurally, we’re the only guild that has teams where they have to split an income. It’s nuts. All these things are real frustrations.

But in this one case, I think your anger is misdirected, because this is a genuine gain for a lot of writing teams. A lot of writing teams were overjoyed when this happened in the contract this year.

Craig: Yeah, probably most. What I will say is, Phillip is putting his finger on a problem that we have danced around at the Writers Guild, that has never changed. But the Writers Guild approaches healthcare in a different way than the Directors Guild does.

The Directors Guild offers two tiers of healthcare. It is much easier to qualify for the lower tier than it is to qualify for WGA health. The number is just lower. In part, this is because they also have a lot of first and second ADs. That lower tier of healthcare becomes available to you more easily. However, of course, it is not quite the limousine healthcare that the Writers Guild has, for instance. Then the idea would be that the second tier would probably be a higher number to qualify for.

The Writers Guild, as a matter of policy, has resisted doing this, because they don’t like the idea of first and second-class citizens within the Guild. I’ve always felt that that’s fine unless you don’t have health insurance, and then maybe it’s not fine. It’s a philosophical argument. I don’t know if it will ever change. But I guess I would say if I were in a room having a vote on that, I probably would vote for a two-tier system to get more people covered.

John: It’s a real challenge thinking about healthcare in a union environment, because unions overall, I think, want to see all Americans get great healthcare and great coverage, and at the same time, they want to make sure their members are protected to the standards they’ve always been protected. Sometimes those are not compatible goals.

If you really want Medicare For All, for example, that would mean unions having to address the fact that they’re on these plans that are way beyond where Medicare For All would be. It’s a challenging situation. Always has been.

Craig: It always has been. Also, Phillip, one thing to note is that the amount of money that somebody has to earn to actually pay for their own healthcare is not $45,000. It’s quite high. It’s probably more like $80,000 or $90,000.

What happens is, the people who are over-earning, all the way up to the cap of $250,000, they’re paying for themselves and they’re also paying and subsidizing other people who are below the break-even line, which is, again, probably 80 or 90. One other thing that’s great about this is by raising those caps for writing teams, we have the ability to subsidize more people, which may ultimately lower that number. It certainly will help keep the minimum number from ballooning as fast as it has.

But I commiserate here. We would love for every single writer to be covered by health insurance. Part of the problem, I suppose, is that our health insurance at the Writers Guild is so good, and the people who have it are so used to it and would be so upset about it being diminished, that nothing is probably gonna change, unless they did go ahead and adopt a two-tier system, which I suspect they never will.

Megana: I just want to say that $45,000 in the year 2024 is a hard thing to hit, with the climate and the way the jobs are. So I do really feel for Phillip and, I feel like, a lot of people listening. I just want to make sure that I’m saying that.

Craig: I agree with you. Meaning if you’re trying to get work, absolutely. If you have work on a staff, my question for you, Megana, is does $45,000, if you’re working on a staff, still feel out of reach?

Megana: In previous years, with mini rooms, yes. Moving forward, I don’t know what the shakeout’s gonna be with mini rooms. I still think that being on a staff position, $45,000 is still a pretty tough goal to get to.

John: As part of that, if you’re not hitting $45,000 in a year worth of earnings, beyond your health insurance, that’s a hard number to survive at in Los Angeles overall. It’s part of a larger systemic frustration.

Craig: What is the minimum for television work per week?

Megana: It’s $5,300 for staff writers.

Craig: So you need eight weeks, basically.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Got it. If you’re a team, I can see where that becomes an issue. You’re right, mini rooms really did screw that up. I’m hoping that part of the restructuring that we gained in the last strike and negotiation will do what it’s supposed to do with mini rooms. It seems like it should.

John: In terms of longer guaranteed terms of employment, mini rooms have to segue into the real room in most situations. Those are things that could structurally help some of these problems, and at the same time, it doesn’t get a writer hired. If you’re not hired on a job, making the $45,000 or whatever number is going to be really challenging.

Megana: Right. Mini rooms versus no rooms.

Craig: Exactly. I will say as a showrunner, and now I speak to fellow showrunners. Don’t do this to people. Know the number. It’s actually very important to know what the number is and get them to that number. There really isn’t much of an excuse as far as I’m concerned, because I don’t care what the show is. If you’re bringing somebody to $40,000 and then letting them go, you’re a dick. Get them there. It shouldn’t be hard. It is not a large amount of money. It is absorbable. Just to sleep at night.

Listen. Now, I do have a very small room. It will be one person larger. We run it really for about eight weeks, at which point I go and write everything, or Neil and Ali. But I make that over the course of those weeks that our hire qualifies for pension and health. It’s essential. At least for one year. It gets them health for a year.

John: I don’t know if you guys saw that Jimmy Kimmel does this thing where he will go to actors, and basically he’s looking for actors who are $1,000 away from qualifying for health insurance. He’ll bring them on for a line on the show, to pay them, so that they get paid enough to qualify for health insurance. That’s the silly system we’re in right now.

Let’s get to our main topic here. Let’s talk about some rituals. This is also inspired by our visit to Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s book signing event. She was talking about, in her book Long Island Compromise, there are two different bar mitzvahs, which makes sense, because it’s multiple generations of a wealthy Jewish family in Los Angeles and Long Island. It got me thinking about useful rituals are when I’m trying to establish characters and what the normal life is of these characters before the story has started.

I wanted to break rituals into two big buckets. The first is what I’ll call routines, which are the things that characters do every day – we see that this is their normal standard operating procedures – and rites, which I would say are the special ceremonial things that have significance to the characters but only happen occasionally.

I want to differentiate the two of those and really talk through how it can be useful to be thinking about what the rituals, routines, and the rites are of these characters we’re establishing, our heroes and everyone else around them, so we get to understand their world and specifically where they’re coming from.

Craig: Routines are maybe the most important, because we all know from Joseph Campbell and every other writing book and just from watching TV and movies, that when we meet people, we’re trying to meet them in their normal life, because we want their normal life to stand in stark opposition to the insanity that occurs once we throw the proverbial meteor at them.

These routines help ground us and explain who these people are. They are oftentimes routines that the characters detest. There are two kinds of normal lives. The, “Ah, I love this. I hope this doesn’t change.” Then there’s the, “Ugh, I’m going nowhere fast. This is my life day after day after day,” and then something changes.

John: Thinking about what is the checklist that the characters are going through – are they doing this by choice? By force? Just out of habit? Are they stuck in a rut?

We have an expectation of what a parent’s routine is going to be, which is basically, gotta wake those kids up, gotta get them fed, gotta make lunches, get them to school. You have dinner. You have bath time. You had bed time. Those are the rituals, the routines that we’re used to seeing parent characters in our stories do. As an audience, we have an expectation of like, this is probably what it’s like.

If you show us then what specifically it’s like with these characters or the ways that it’s different than usual, we will lean in, because it’s a surprise to us. It gives you a backdrop on which to show what is different about this version of the character than every other version of the character you’ve seen before.

Craig: Sometimes the normal rituals themselves give you tremendous insight into a character. One of my favorite ritualized introductions is Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. Pee-wee wakes up in the morning, and his entire house is rigged as a Rube Goldberg machine to make breakfast for him. Him watching it and his delight interacting with it tells me so much about him, including the fact that even though this is clearly the same thing that happens every day, he’s thrilled as if it’s the first time. You can learn so much from even the way people interact with their own rituals.

John: I’ll put a link in the show notes to this one card from Writer Emergency Pack. We have one called Standard Operating Procedures. I think what’s good about that is also to look at what would be in the guidebook for this character. What do they know how to do? What is the way they would approach the situation based on how they’ve been trained, what they actually do? If you have a paramedic character, they’re going to have a standard operating procedure, a routine they go through, which is how they work.

It’s good for you to know that, for us to be able to understand it as an audience, partly because when something goes wrong, goes awry, which it probably should in your story, we’ll understand what the expectation was going into it – what the character’s expectation was and what the audience’s expectation was.

Craig: For instance, in Crimson Tide, there is a missile drill, where they get a notice to run a missile test as if they were gonna launch their missiles. We watch the routine of getting the things out of the safe, comparing the numbers, communicating to the missile team, the executive officer concurring, which is incredibly important for the story. And then, great, we did it. The context was we didn’t do it fast enough. It had purpose. But then when it happens for real, we know. We’re not distracted by a lot of things.

Same thing in War Games. The opening of War Games was a ritualized launch of missiles that fails. It fails at the last moment. The failure of the ritual is what obsesses people and causes a change in the story.

John: So far, we’ve been talking about routines, really. These are things that would happen on an ordinary day. But I think rites are a special case of things that happen every once in a while. These are ceremonious, so things like weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs, christening, quinceañeras , Lunar New Year celebrations, trick-or-treating, Christmas.

These are things that have special cultural significance to the audience maybe, but to the characters within the story definitely. Do they love these things? Do they hate these things? Is this a tradition? Are they a spectator to it? Is this already part of their culture?

I think some of the success of Midsommar was we have characters who are entering into this strange Swedish midsummer festival, and they don’t know how normal this is. This seems really strange, but maybe it’s just their culture. It’s like, oh, no, you were mistaken. This is deeply dangerous and weird. They don’t know how to react to it.

I think rites are – you think about them as bigger, more mythical things, but really, anything you do seasonally is probably a rite. We all have traditions that we do that we’re not even quite sure why we do them.

Craig: That’s part of the waking up of a character, to suddenly realize, why do I do what I do? The Truman Show is a guy going through an incredibly ritualized life and then suddenly asking the question, “Why? Why does all this happen this way? Why am I living this way?” We’ve all felt this; this sudden awareness of how mechanized we can be.

I noted once when I shower, I do everything in the exact same way. Literally in the exact same way, in the exact same order. Not all of it is perfectly efficient. Some of it’s just oddly – it’s just odd, like, “I gotta wash this part a little bit extra.” Why? The right side of my head? Why? I don’t know. It’s become ritualized.

John: There was an episode of The Office in the first season about Diwali. I think it’s called just Diwali. It was a Mindy Kaling episode where she takes the whole office to a Diwali celebration. What I thought was so smart about it was that it was a chance to see these characters who know their office environment so well reacting to an environment that was new. It was so great to see it. It was such a great reminder of, taking people outside of their normal comfort zone can be a great way to actually show how they work and how they really function outside of normal, everyday things.

Megana, we saw Diwali on that episode. Was it accurate? What was your experience watching that episode? You remember it, right?

Megana: Yeah. It takes place, I think, in a school gym or cafeteria or something, which felt so true to life, growing up in the Pennsylvania, Ohio area. Like Craig pointed out, the characters’ attitude towards rituals is so telling. I think you learn so much about Kelly Kapoor’s character based off of how she describes Diwali to the office. I think she says something like, “You dress up and there’s fireworks, whatever.” But I think it’s such a useful insight into who she is as a character.

John: Think about how different characters would describe Christmas. Christmas comes once a year, but it means a very different thing to different characters in different specific situations. You learn a lot about a character by what they think of Christmas.

Some other common aspects of rituals, be they rites or be they routines, is a lot of times there’s an unclear history or purpose, like, why do we do it this way? Why does Craig wash one side of his hair more than the other? He can’t explain it. But if there was a reason, he’s forgotten what it is right now.

A lot of times, these routines or rituals are a coping behavior. There’s some irritation in the world. There’s something that’s wrong. This is a thing you do to cope with it. If the character’s functioning on autopilot – and generally, in our stories, we’re trying to get characters off of autopilot, but just show what the autopilot was.

I think a lot of times, rites specifically are about attachment to the community – so either a community of choice or the community that you grew up in – or it can also be about escaping that community. Drinking can be a way of bonding with your friends or drinking alone to hide your problems. The same behavior can be a positive routine and ritual or a negative one. It’s your job as a writer to describe what that is.

That’s, again, why specificity is so crucial. If you’re showing a wedding, what is specific about this wedding? What are you showing us that is different than other weddings? Because otherwise, we don’t want to watch it.

Megana: I think even a character’s drink order is such a small aspect of a ritual or routine that I hadn’t thought of before, like the White Russians in The Big Lebowski or something.

Craig: All of these things provide us some sense of safety. That’s why we do them. We want to be fascinating people, but we do have these little Linus blankets that we have to clutch to. Sometimes you can tell an entire story about somebody who is routinized because of fear. The movie that’s coming to mind is The Others, the Nicole Kidman film.

John: Oh my god. She’s locking the doors.

Craig: It’s written by Alejandro Amenábar, also directed by him as well. I think it’s been enough time. It’s been 23 years, so we’ll go ahead and spoil it. It’s a ghost story. Nicole Kidman lives in a house with her children. She believes they are being haunted by people, which they are. But it turns out that in fact they’re the ghosts. She and her kids are the ghosts. Everything that they do is this ritualized existence to serve the denial of how they died and the fact that they’re dead at all.

Same thing with Sixth Sense. Just a guy going through this very ritualized, quote unquote, life, because he can’t accept what he has to accept. When you do, that’s when you let the rituals go.

Megana: There’s this book called Chatter. John, you’ve read it, right? This book called Chatter by Ethan Kross. It’s a pop psychology book.

John: I remember the book. I don’t think I actually read it. But I remember the conversations around it.

Megana: A point that he made in that is that rituals can be really helpful for anxious people, because it helps you assert a sense of control or order over your world. It’s a thing that helps you switch into muscle memory. Craig, as you were talking, I was like, oh, a ritual’s a really helpful thing to establish for characters around things that they’re anxious around. It can be a useful shorthand for that.

John: Absolutely. For people in the real world, we want them to find rituals that are effective for them and constructive. As people who are creating characters in worlds where we need everything to fall apart, we need to find ways for the rituals to fall apart or be destroyed so we can actually tell our stories. Again, as writers, we want bad things for our characters, at least at the start.

Craig: We’re bad.

John: We’re bad.

Craig: We’re bad. John, in order to not be bad, segue boy, why don’t we answer some listener questions?

John: Let’s do that. We actually have an audio question. Let’s listen to a question from Bethany.

Bethany: I’m an actress, and my training is in theater. Most of the work that I’ve done is in theater. I’ve only recently started to get the courage to start writing, which is what I’ve always wanted to do. I was able to stage a few one-acts. They did really well. I had interest from some filmmaking friends in turning one of them into a film. But I feel like I just can’t think like a screenwriter. All my story ideas involve putting everyone into one room and just putting a bomb off and seeing what happens. When I try to spread things out in time and space and try to see them progress that way, it feels like it just gets watered down.

I’m developing one play right now. A friend of mine is looking at it with me. He is in filmmaking. He suggested cutting away and adding some scenes connecting the characters to their history or to other parts of their life, letting us see more of that. I can’t see it. I can’t see that working, because it still just feels very much like a stage play.

So what do I do? Is there a way to start thinking differently? I feel very confident in my ability to write dialogue. I’ve heard you all say that’s one of the most important things, so that’s encouraging. But I just don’t know how to think like a screenwriter. So any advice? Thanks.

Craig: Interesting, Bethany. Here’s a provocative thought. Maybe you’re not a screenwriter. Maybe you’re a playwright. What’s wrong with that? There are some things. I worked with Lisa Kron as she was adapting her book and her lyrics for Fun Home into a screenplay. She was doing all the writing. I was just an advisor, a friend. One of the things I remembered saying to her was, “Plays are inside and movies are outside.”

Even though we shoot interiors all the time, of course, think about going places. Think about all the places you can be and how you can move through space and time, and also, how much closer you can be to somebody. Plays are presentational. Everybody in the audience is the exact same fixed length from everybody on stage, other than the rows of seats. But when you are thinking like a screenwriter, you can get very close, and you can be very alone. You can see tiny things. You can see enormous things. But Bethany, it’s also okay to just be a playwright, especially if you’re a good one. It sounds like you are.

John: I want to underscore what Craig just said. It’s entirely possible that writing plays is where your strength is, and you should completely pursue that if that’s something you enjoy. But it sounds like you’re curious about writing films and writing stories that move from place to place to place.

A couple things that you might want to try doing is just, to get a sense of what this feels like on the page, take your favorite movie or a great episode of a TV show and try transcribing it, which sounds crazy. But you’ll get a sense of what scenes look like when they are moving from this space into that space and how a scene connects to another scene, because when you’re doing a one-act play, it’s just a scene. It’s just one blob of a thing. There’s power in that, but there’s also a lot of power of cutting from one thing to the next thing to the next thing.

Transcribing something might actually be a good place to start to give you a sense of what that feels like. Obviously, read a lot of real scripts and see what that looks like on the page. Just try doing little, short things – try writing a little, short film that doesn’t sit in one place but has a character literally moving through space and time, so you get a sense of what that actually feels like on the page for you.

Megana, any thoughts for Bethany here? In your writers’ group, do you encounter people who come from a playwriting background?

Megana: Yeah, sometimes. I have a friend who has a theater company that does one-act plays every month, called Public Assembly. I think it’s such an interesting question. I like, Craig, what you said about the inside versus outside. But I have a follow-up question, which is – these are two very different things. Why do you think there’s such an impulse from – I don’t know what – it seems like executives, to bring playwrights over to become screenwriters, when they are such different mediums?

Craig: Executives don’t know. They don’t know. They see success and they think some of these will work. Sometimes they do.

John: They really do.

Craig: Sometimes they really do. But a lot of times, they don’t. There are some playwrights who very famously were excellent screenwriters. Tom Stoppard, for instance. They’re out there. Jack Thorne works in both, of course, being the genius that he is.

It is interesting that Bethany feels a kind of pressure. I’ll tell you, I’ve never felt pressure to be a playwright. Probably would be bad. That’s how I feel about everything. Probably would be bad. But I guess I would say to Bethany – sounds like she’s fairly early on in her journey as a writer, because she was an actor first. I would say let’s get plays mastered and then see. If you want to transition, transition.

John: I’ve done, obviously, a ton of movies. I’ve done some TV. I did a play. I did a Broadway show. Learning the differences between how we tell a story on a stage versus screen was a real education. I approached it with curiosity, interest, and a real understanding that I couldn’t do things the same way. I need to look for what is the theatrical solution to an issue that comes up, rather than going to a cinematic solution to those issues.

I’ve done books, of course, and that’s a different kind of storytelling. I’m doing my first graphic novel, which again, is a very different way of moving through a story. You’re always looking for what is it panel to panel and what is that page turn gonna get you.

These are all exciting new things to try, but that doesn’t mean you have to try all of them. If you like writing one-act plays where everyone’s in a space together, and that works for you, there’s no requirement that you do something else.

Guys, I think it’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing – we’ve talked before on the show, I think, about non-alcoholic beers, which used to be just terrible, and in the last few years have gotten much, much better. There’s really compelling non-alcoholic beers, to the point where I basically only drink non-alcoholic beers now. The same could not be said for cocktails in general.

But there’s a brand out that I think is actually really good – at least some of their things are really good – called Free AF. We’ll put a link in the show notes to it. But their cucumber gin and tonic is a canned cucumber gin and tonic with no alcohol, which is surprisingly compelling. They found some way to make the bite of alcohol without the actual alcohol in it. It’s just delightful. I’ve been having quite a few of these and really enjoying them.

If you’re looking for a non-alcoholic alternative, obviously, there’s a gazillion really good fake beers out there, but I would say try these Free AF non-alcoholic cocktails. Megana, you were over, and I think you had a different one. You had a mule, which we didn’t like as much, correct?

Megana: Correct, but just looking at their website, it is pulling me in. I want this beautiful marbleized, minimalist can. I need it.

Craig: Marbleized.

John: Megana and I were talking about the degree to which the fancier a product is, the more plain its iconography is, the plainer its label is. It’s just a psychological thing. The less crud is on a label, the higher quality you assume it is. It’s just this time that we’re in.

Craig: Do you guys remember, many years ago, somebody did a spoof thing where they took the packaging for, I think it was the old iPod, which of course was incredibly minimalist. It was just white and had the Apple logo, and then I think it said iPod. They said, what if Microsoft had put this out? There was this wonderful thing where they just kept adding stuff, badges and versions. There’s people enjoying the product. It’s hysterical. When you see what it ends up as, you’re like, this is ridiculous and also exactly what Microsoft stuff looks like, exactly, with reams of tiny words of explaining and all. Microsoft, never known for their taste.

John: Craig, I will say, as you love an old fashioned-

Craig: I do.

John: I’ll say it appears that brown liquors are just harder to fake. I’ve not seen a compelling version of this yet, but it doesn’t mean that we won’t somehow get there.

Craig: It’s certainly possible. I am not cursed with alcoholism. I don’t have a problem drinking in moderation whatsoever. In fact, I specifically have a problem if I try to not drink in moderation – it’s been a long time – because three drinks and I’m in trouble. I don’t feel good. I don’t drink much, but DnD is an opportunity to have a drink or two, and going out to dinner on a weekend, have a drink or two. It’s not something that I am ready for. But I’ll tell you what. When they come up with a healthy cigarette, oh my god, I’m first in line. Oh my god.

John: It’s going back to the early episodes where you can hear Craig smoking in the background.

Craig: Oh, man, I’m telling you, if they can invent a healthy cigarette – and vaping, I guess, but it’s not a cigarette.

John: Actually not healthy.

Craig: I want them to create a thing where I can light it on fire, inhale it into my lungs, and it’s actually good for me. Now. Now we’re talking. Oh, buddy.

Megana: A ritual.

Craig: That is the ultimate ritual.

John: That’s a ritual.

Craig: It’s the most ritualized ritual.

John: In previous years I’ve done Dry January and stuff, and it kind of sucked. I felt like I was not doing a thing. This more recent not really drinking much has been much easier, I think because there’s less structure and framework around it, but also – and this is, again, maybe just the age that we are now – I just feel the remnant effects of a drink the next day much stronger than I used to. That’s no bueno.

Craig: That’s me all the time. My body does not process alcohol quickly, and so it’s not like I get drunk really fast. But one or two drinks hang around for a really long time in me. The only way I’m ever gonna get past that is if a mistake occurs or if I’m at a dinner with a couple of my Irish friends, who fill your glass when you’re not looking. It’s their thing. It’s just a thing. No one hits the bottom of their glass.

I was at a dinner once and had what I thought was one glass of wine, and I was completely bombed at the end of the dinner. They were like, “Oh, no, we’ve gone through four bottles.” I’m like, “What? No. No!” Of course, they woke up the next morning at 8:00 a.m. I was in bed feeling horrible until about 2:00 p.m. I just can’t do it.

John: The drunkest Craig has ever seen me was at an Austin Film Festival.

Craig: Oh my god, that was the best.

John: I had more than I would usually drink there, and I was fine, but it was more than I feel comfortable being in public around.

Craig: But you were great. Drunk John was amazing.

Megana: Oh my god, I want to see it.

Craig: Megana. They say people sometimes become mean when they’re drunk or they can be sloppy. John was just the most charismatic. Basically, he was great.

John: Wasn’t Birbiglia there that year too?

Craig: I think it might’ve been. Drunk John August was just spectacular, just really fun. Megana, let’s figure out how to get that going again.

Megana: It sounds like we need a party.

Craig: We need a party. You know what? I’m coming back soon. I’m back in a month.

John: We’ll play some games, have a party.

Craig: We’ll have a party. We’ll just keep slyly feeding him drinks.

John: Absolutely. Keep my glass full there. Craig, do you have a One Cool Thing?

Craig: My One Cool Thing is Megana Rao. She’s here, so I’m gonna let her take over and do the One Cool Thing.

John: Megana, do you have a One Cool Thing in Craig’s stead?

Megana: I do have a One Cool Thing. I hope it’s a One Cool Thing that Craig might like. Have either of you watched Julio Torres’s new show, Fantasmas, on HBO?

John: I have not watched it yet. I think he’s great and just so specific and absurd.

Craig: I have not seen it.

Megana: It’s certainly within his world. It’s a sketch comedy show. It’s surreal and brilliant, like everything he does. But he captures what it feels like to just live in a bureaucratic state that makes it funny and fantastical. It’s so absurd it’s hard for me to even describe it. One of the characters is his friend who’s a performance artist, who’s been performing as his agent for so long that it’s unclear whether she’s actually his agent, because she does book him things. Check it out. I feel like it’s not getting as much love as it deserves. It’s on HBO and it’s fantastic.

Craig: Melissa loves, loves Espookys. Obsessed with-

Megana: This is why I love Melissa.

Craig: We all love Melissa.

Megana: We all love Melissa.

John: I will say that Megana Rao was very early on the Julio Torres bandwagon. Years ago, she was singing his praises. Don’t think she’s a latecomer here, because she’s always been into his-

Craig: Megana was into Julio Torres before he was cool.

Megana: I would say that he was always cool, but yes, cool to the wider public. I was showing John random lo-fi videos of him doing stand-up in a dark bar in New York, and being like, “This is incredible,” and John was like, “The audio quality on this is horrible.”

Craig: You’re just cool. Hey, Megana, here’s the deal. Millennials are old now.

Megana: God, I know.

Craig: Gen Z is taking shots at them all day long for being old. Welcome to our world. But you’ve always been cool. I don’t care what generation. There are some millennials who are actually legit cool, and Megana Rao is one of them, for sure.

John: 100 percent. Now she’s blushing again. Craig, you’ve done it.

Craig: Aw.

John: Aw.

Craig: Aw. You know what? Let’s let her off the hook by doing some boilerplate.

John: Here’s the boilerplate.

Craig: It’s a ritual.

John: Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt with special help this week from Megana Rao. It’s 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@johnaugust.com. It’s also a place where you can send questions.

You’ll find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts and sign up for our weekly newsletter called Inneresting. There’s lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts and hoodies and drinkware now for alcoholic or non-alcoholic choices. You’ll find them at Cotton Bureau.

Craig: With that hat. I got that hat, by the way, John.

John: You got the hat. I got the hat too.

Craig: I got the cool S hat.

Megana: I need a hat.

John: You can find our great word game called AlphaBirds at alphabirdsgame.net, also on Amazon now. Thank you to everybody who bought it, but also who left reviews, because, god, reviews really help us a lot, because it makes it feel real out there.

You can sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back-episodes and Bonus Segments, like the one we’re about to record on bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs. Craig and Megana Rao, an absolute pleasure talking to you both.

Craig: Likewise, John.

Megana: Thank you both so much. The coolest guys.

[Bonus Segment]

John: Okay, Craig, so we are gonna time warp back to – let me see if I can get this right – was it 1983 or 1984 when Craig Mazin-

Craig: 1984.

John: Oh my god, what an incredibly iconic year and a year to have a bar mitzvah. Can you talk us through the experience?

Craig: Sure. First of all, it was mandatory. I just want to be clear about that. A bar mitzvah or a bat mitzvah is the coming-of-age ritual in Judaism. When a boy or girl is 13 years old, that’s when they become, quote unquote, an adult. They do that because I guess the Bible says so. That’s so problematic, and no one ever talked about it. Ever. No one ever. They would just make a joke, “Oh, you’re an adult now, LOL.” I’m like, “Yeah, but no, I’m not, and none of us are. What are we talking about exactly?” Nothing changes whatsoever.

But everybody thinks that a bar mitzvah is just a huge party. If you live among rich people, it is a huge party. My family’s not rich. It was just a party, which your parents spend money they don’t have on. It’s kind of tricky.

Then the part that people maybe don’t know about is it’s also a lot of work for the kid. The idea is that, at your bar mitzvah, you get up there, and if you go to a conservative synagogue like I did, in the middle of a three-and-a-half-hour Saturday morning service.

Megana: Wow.

Craig: Endless, most of which is in Hebrew that no one understands. Then at some point you get up there to do a little speech. But the centerpiece of the bar mitzvah is when you, the boy or girl, reads your Haftorah.

What is the Haftorah? Every Saturday, the real Sabbath – because honestly, literally, it says on the seventh day God rested, and then I don’t know what Christians were doing with Sunday. So anyway, on the real Sabbath, Saturday, a portion of the Torah is read. The Torah is the first five books of the Bible. The year covers all of it. There’s a section that’s called the Haftorah. That’s what you’re reading that Saturday.

The bar mitzvah boy or the bat mitzvah girl has to read that section in Hebrew. They also have to sing it, because you don’t just read Hebrew; you sing it. There is a specific cadence and melody to this. You have to learn what amounts to, I don’t know, five minutes of singing in a language you do not understand.

By the way, when I say the first five books, I don’t even think that’s right. I think maybe it’s more books in the Bible than the first five. Honestly, I really don’t know. I don’t know. I gotta be honest. I went to Hebrew school. I was not paying attention. But I had to learn this thing.

John: One thing we should stress though is it’s a specific section of it, and you know going in what section it’s gonna be, because it’s basically what that week’s section would be. You got to prepare for that specific section.

Craig: Yes.

John: What was your section about?

Craig: Can’t remember. I can’t remember. I don’t even remember what it’s from. Maybe it was from Jeremiah. It’s not the first five books. It’s all of them, which is insane, because there are so many of them.

But here’s what was weird. My birthday is in early April. My father’s birthday is in early June. He was bar mitzvahed as well. Because the Jewish year doesn’t line up with the normal year that we use – it’s lunar months, and I don’t know what year it is, 5,000-something – that means that on any given Saturday, it shifts. It’s not like, oh, okay, it’s always gonna be the same thing, because the year is different. My father’s father forced him – a lot of forcing in this – to go to a recording booth in Manhattan in the 1950s and sing his Haftorah, and they made a record. My father had it.

John: Incredible.

Megana: Wow.

Craig: It was the same one that I had.

John: You had the same passage.

Craig: We had the exact same passage. Party has a theme. Do you know what my party’s theme was?

John: Would it have been Star Wars? What would it have been?

Megana: Dungeons and Dragons?

Craig: Computers.

John: Computers.

Craig: Such a nerd. You have to give people a little thing to take with them. I remember our thing, it was a pencil holder with these slidey bits where you can line up units. It was so dumb. Oh my god, I’m such a dork. It was computers. They got a pad that looked like the dot matrix paper, green, white, green, white, green, white. Oh my god.

Megana: This is so cute.

John: It’s adorable.

Craig: It was crazy.

John: Growing up in a non-Jewish household and without any Jewish friends in Colorado, I didn’t go to any bar mitzvahs as a kid. It was only when we got to Los Angeles I had a bunch of Jewish friends that I would go to their kids’ bar mitzvahs. Of course, my daughter, Amy, when she was 13, she was going to all these girls’ bat mitzvahs, and some boys’ bar mitzvahs as well. I got to see what the whole process was like. Aline graciously invited us to one of her son’s bar mitzvahs. Got to hear him give his little Torah reading on menstruation. That was just so ideal.

Craig: “You are unclean. You must go into the bath.”

John: How are we gonna take this Torah passage and make it meaningful for whatever, 2019 or whenever that was. Great. Love it. Love it so much.

What got me thinking about bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs was Taffy at her signing was talking about how she hadn’t really thought about the bar mitzvah until her sons went through it. She realized, “Oh, there’s no other time in my life where we’re gonna get a bunch of people together to say I am so proud of this kid, that I want to celebrate everything this kid has done and his transition from who they were into this thing that they’re becoming, and they’re so excited about their future.”

That got me a little goosebumpy, because I didn’t have any of those moments for me. We had high school graduation, but that felt a little bit late. It was nice to have a moment to celebrate at least the end of childhood, if not into adulthood. That felt kind of cool. I felt like I’d missed that experience growing up.

Megana: I would say that you have your Eagle Scout experience must’ve been similar, right? That’s you graduating into…

John: I got my Eagle when I was 17. But along the way, I guess Boy Scouts did have a lot of rituals and courts of honor, so you got to do things. You were moving up in ranks. Certainly, that was serving some of that same function, for sure. How about you, Megana? Did you have things you went through that were those coming-of-age moments?

Megana: Yeah, I think the closest thing is, in South India they do this thing called the sari ceremony. There’s a more formal Sanskrit name for it. But I was 12 years old and had to wear a sari for the first time. There was this puja and this whole party around it.

John: Did you do that in India or in Ohio?

Megana: We did it in India. There was a lot of family members that I didn’t know. I think that the ritual is that after that point you’re a woman and you start wearing saris. I was like, “I’m absolutely not wearing one of these.”

Craig: I do like a sari, I have to say. As you were talking, I was looking at the Wikipedia page for samskara, which I guess covers various rites. I just love this. They have an image. For Jainism, there’s a specific garment that they wear for one of the passages where they have the hand with the beautiful circle in the middle. And then above it, there’s a swastika. I know it’s not a swastika. But still, that’s awesome. Oh, man, that would be really weird to wear.

John: Yeah. I think you’re making a different choice.

Craig: The Nazis ruined everything.

Megana: I know. They really did.

Craig: They ruined it.

John: Hey, are we gonna come out on the show as being anti-Nazi?

Craig: I think so.

John: That’s a bold stance to take.

Craig: Based on my bar mitzvah, I think I probably should be.

John: You probably should be. For your bar mitzvah, you had the service, and then did you stay in the same venue for your party, or was the party someplace else?

Craig: The party was in our backyard. Everybody is finally released from the prison of the endless service. Then people go to your house and they shove into the backyard. We put tables in the backyard and stuff. It was a lot of people that I knew and a lot of people I did not know.

John: Did you invite your entire class? I guess you were in junior high.

Craig: Oh, god, no.

John: You invited close friends.

Craig: I did. Our backyard was not large. There was a real limit. One of the things you realize very quickly is that even though this is about you becoming an adult, you are not in charge of the bar mitzvah whatsoever, and that in fact, most of the people there will be people that your parents are inviting, because it is for the parents to go, “Look at our kid.” It is a little bit of displaying. It’s a slight zoo aspect to it. I felt the same, honestly, at my wedding. I remember there were just so many relatives that I didn’t know or care about, who were just observing, like, “Look at them. They’re married now.”

Megana: I need to know more about this computer theme though. Was there a computer present? This is 1984.

Craig: Oh, god, no. Are you kidding me? No, we didn’t have money for that. It was really more like, oh, on every table, the paper plates have a robot on them. They didn’t really cohesively present a theme. Themes back then were like baseball, computers. I think I wanted baseball. My parents told me no, because they thought it was stupid, so I had to go with computers. It sounds like the kind of thing my parents would’ve said no to. It was very mild. I’ve actually never been to a rich person LA bar mitzvah.

John: Oh, wow.

Craig: Someone sent me a video of one. I was like, “We shouldn’t be doing this. This is too much.”

John: I went to one at Henson Studios.

Craig: Oh, god.

John: It was bigger than most movie premiers I’ve been to. It was wild.

Craig: I think that’s problematic. I really do. In general, I think giving a kid a party, a rite of passage is great. Every culture has these beautiful rites of passage, especially when they’re around children growing up, because everybody loves embracing the innocence of that and the hopefulness of that. But then, especially in Judaism, where the concept of tzedakah, which is charity, is so high, the notion that you would – it’s too much. What I’ve seen, I’ve just been like, “Oh, or not do that.”

John: We talk about rituals as often having a purpose, that you forget what the original purpose was. I do wonder, with both the sari and the bar mitzvah, at 13, it’s not that you’re necessarily an adult, but you’re probably not gonna die in childhood. Basically, you made it through the period where a lot of little kids are gonna die. This is a real human now. This isn’t some transitional thing that’s gonna maybe die next week. If they made it to 13, they’re gonna stick around.

Craig: Yeah, and I suppose 13 was adulthood way back in the day. There were children having babies at 13. But it doesn’t make much sense now. What it is now is a party. It sometimes strikes me that it can be a competitive party situation, especially when you’re dealing with wealthy people, who are like, “Look at my huge party.” “Look at my huger party.”

John: My Super Sweet 16.

Craig: I don’t like that. I think there should be some modesty with these rituals, myself. But then again, I’m sure people might think, “Oh, you’re just bitter because your parents didn’t have any money and your bar mitzvah sucked.” But I don’t know.

Megana: Also, at 13, still now, but the last thing I wanted was anybody to look at me.

John: I get that.

Craig: You’re so awkward. You’re like, “Oh my god, you’re a man.” Look at me. Do I look like a man? Really? For girls, sometimes even worse. I don’t know. There’s just this awkwardness of everything. All of it is just bizarre to me. Then you throw on a boy reading a passage written, whatever, 5,000 years ago about menstruation. At that point, just throw up your hands and say none of this makes sense.

John: Craig, Megana, always a delight talking to you both.

Craig: Same.

Megana: Thank you.

John: Bye, guys.

Craig: Bye.

Megana: Bye.

Links:

• Standard Operating Procedures from Writer Emergency Pack
• Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
• Free AF non-alcoholic cocktails
• Microsoft Re-Designs the iPod Packaging
• Fantasmas on HBO/Max
• AlphaBirds
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
• John August on Threads, Instagram, X and Mastodon
• Outro by Nick Moore (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt with help this week by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.