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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 are listening to episode 727 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, what is work? What is free? Putting those terms together, what is free work? How should writers think about the time and effort they’re putting in before getting paid or after handing in a draft? We will offer some guidelines for both writers and those seeking work out of writers. We’ll also answer a bunch of listener questions. In our bonus segment for Premium Members, Craig, let’s discuss how writers should think about portraying law enforcement in this era, where previous assumptions do not seem to hold.

Craig: All right. I’ll follow your lead.

John: Yes. We’ll talk about cops and FBI, and everything else.

Craig: Nice.

John: First, some news. Birdigo, which is a game I made with Corey Martin, is now on the App Store. You can put it on your iPhone or your iPad, your Macintosh. It turned out great. It feels very native to these devices. We got featured by Apple as one of the Apple games we love.

Craig: Nice.

John: If you’re curious about it, it is free. Just put it on your phone and play it.

Craig: It’s free.

John: It’s free.

Craig: It’s free.

John: It’s a free game.

Craig: Is there any in-app?

John: You can do one migration per day. If you want to do multiple migrations per day, it’s a one-time purchase, four bucks, and everything else is in there forever.

Craig: I like it when there’s an option. I like when there’s an option to kick a little money somebody’s way.

John: There are no ads.

Craig: Oh, thank you for that.

John: Yes, it’s just cute, pudgy birds.

Craig: You may understand this because you create apps. I’ll play a lot of escape games.

John: Oh, yes.

Craig: There’s a lot of junky ones that are made, and they’re just ad-supported. They don’t even give you an option to get rid of the ads. The ads are almost always for some other dumb game.

John: Yes, it’s a whole ecosystem.

Craig: It’s a specific dumb game where you either are mowing down waves of zombies, or you’re like that.

John: Or you have to save the king from being–

Craig: Save the King, some crap about the king.

John: I don’t care about the monarchy.

Craig: Right. Why are we so into that?

John: I don’t know.

Craig: Like, “Oh, my God, I got to save the king.” No. Why don’t we form a Democratic Republic?

John: I like that as a choice. If you are playing Birdigo and want to send through a screenshot of your highest score, your highest playing word, I would love to see those. Those are always really fun. If you are playing it, please give us five stars. Leave us a review in the App Store because that helps people find the game. Another app is Weekend Read. Drew, you have the award season scripts up in there, right?

Drew Marquardt: Yes, I’m not doing Weekend Read as much anymore.

John: That’s right. Of course, Chris is doing it now.

Drew: Chris is doing it.

John: Tell us about the award season.

Drew: We’ve got all of the four-year consideration scripts from 2025 in the 2026 award season. Now on Weekend Read, for the features.

John: All the features.

Drew: All the features.

John: Yes, so it’s good. You saw the movie in the theaters, you loved it. Now see what it actually looked like on the page and see what is the same, what changed. I love that. You can start to see-

Craig: Useful.

John: -what it was like before it became the future that you loved. Very important follow-up. Craig, you have solved your email crisis.

Craig: Well, somebody solved it for me. We had a listener write in to give us some advice, and it turned out that I needed to align DMAC and DKIM, and SPF, and a whole bunch of other things that I don’t understand. But I followed the instructions, and I have to say, the instructions were not written well. There were multiple steps where you tried to do something. It’s like, you can’t do that until you do this. I had to go into the domain system and add a bunch of CNote and blah.

There was so much crap to do. At some point, I thought, I’m probably going to just screw up all my email with this. This seems dangerous. I’m like, “Sometimes you do something where someone will say, ‘Oh, if you want to fix something, let’s say, in macOS, go into the terminal and enter this command.'” You’re like, “I hope this doesn’t blow my computer up.” It was a lot of that, and I thought, “It’s never going to work,” and it worked. It fixed it. It was just one of those things where Google’s very fussy about the domain name needs to match where it’s coming from, and so I needed to do a little bit of alignment. It was fixed.

John: I was so excited when I got your email, and it actually came through properly. It was joy.

Craig: Fantastic news for me. I installed Outlook, like everybody who works. I have 12 different emails based on which company and for what. HBO me email and a me email and a Gmail, but my main one, it was nice that you were able to finally receive it. Now you can receive numerous sternly worded emails.

John: Exactly. That’s what I need daily. In episode 723, we were talking about comps, and Craig, I got some real-time in-person follow-up because you had brought up the idea of, quote, “Jumanji in Space.” Raphael Bob-Waksberg, who was the creator of Bojack Horseman, came up to me and said, “You need to tell Craig that Jumanji in Space already exists. It’s called Zathura, and it was directed by Jon Favreau in 2005.”

Craig: Nice.

John: Yes.

Craig: I’ll tell you something. I know this. Whenever I said Jumanji in Space, the part of me that understood that Zathura existed, it just was turned off. That part of my brain was just switched off. It’s not even like I can say, “Oh, my God, you know what? That’s what I wasn’t.” No, that part of my brain was switched off. It has now switched back on. Thank you, Raphael Bob-Waksberg, for a number of things like A, BoJack Horseman, B, turning my brain back on Zathura because, yes, that is, in fact, exactly Jumanji in Space.

John: Here’s the long line for Zathura. Two young brothers are drawn into an intergalactic adventure when their house is hurled through the depths of space by the magical board game they are playing.

Craig: It’s Jumanji in Space.

John: It’s just straight up.

Craig: You know, he must have been so concerned about me, like, “Is he an idiot?”

John: “Did he have a stroke?”

Craig: Yes. “Did he have a stroke? Does he just not pay attention to anything ever?” Me saying Jumanji in Space should be something is as stupid as me saying, I don’t know, there should be a movie that’s not about pulp fiction, but it is in the style of pulp fiction, and it could be called Pulp Fiction.

John: Yes, or a movie about caddies and a gopher.

Craig: And feature a shack. It’s that stupid. I was that stupid. I like that. You know what? I like that he didn’t lead with, “Hey, Craig’s stupid.” That was really nice of him.

John: Yes, and he kept that in the subtext, which is important.

Craig: Since he listens, I hope he can feel my gratitude pouring through.

John: But, Craig, I could have also pointed out that Zathura existed, and I also forgot. I think it’s just one of those movies that people don’t talk about Zathura.

Craig: No one talks about–

John: They don’t.

Craig: That’s the first rule.

John: That’s the problem.

Craig: Yes, no one does talk about Zathura.

John: It’s this movie star, Josh Hutcherson, who became famous off–

Craig: The Hunger Games.

John: Hunger Games movies and Kristen Stewart.

Craig: Also famous.

John: Yes, Twilight.

Craig: Also famous. Yes. It is fun when you go back, and you see sometimes these movies where there’s a lineup of all these people, and everybody’s the third through seventh character. Each one of those is a huge star 20 years later. It occasionally comes up from time to time.

John: Or Pedro Pascal being in a random episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Love it.

Craig: Which happened.

John: Happened.

Craig: It happened.

John: It happened for real.

Craig: He knows it. He hasn’t forgotten that. Like I forgot Zathura.

John: Absolutely. That paid his bills for a while.

Craig: Hell, yes. Those jobs will pay.

John: We have some follow-up on AI coverage.

Drew: Michael in Palo Alto wrote us to say, “The depictions of LLMs on the show, especially from Craig, is not keeping up with the rapid advances in these models. The image of LLMs regurgitating and recombining text from their training data set is a fair descriptor of the prior generation of AI. But the current generation was built using fancier techniques like reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards.

For tasks like coding and math, where you can reliably verify whether the answer is correct, this lets the model try lots of different reasoning chains and gradually gets better at thinking by picking the ones that work the best. So my question for you is, do you think similar techniques could be applied to screenwriting or other creative filmmaking tasks in the future? What would be needed to make this happen?”

Craig: Wow, Michael, that’s a really good observation. I feel like you’ve made a pretty good point. I guess I should reconsider. You’re absolutely right. Things are getting better, and I hope they continue on this path, AI. AI talk, AI vibe, AI like, ah, great. I don’t know what to make of this because I don’t know what it means.

John: I recognize a lot of what Michael is saying, and so I do feel that we have this sense that, well, AI is just a text prediction engine, which was really very true to the first versions that were coming out. If you just use the free versions of ChatGPT right now, it still feels like that, but much more sycophantic.

Craig: Exactly. That’s a great point, John.

John: Once you actually pay for can do much more impressive things in terms of synthesizing a whole bunch of stuff and coming up with a meaningful answer on a thing. That’s what I think he’s talking about in terms of when there’s a verifiable ground truth to come out of it, like code that will actually run; it is much better at that now because it can actually work towards an end goal and test to see if it actually worked. It all falls apart when it comes to creative writing for obvious reasons.

Craig: Yes, there is no right answer. There’s no answer. There is no way. In fact, if you look at how what we do is “verified,” I guess you’d have to go to either box office, or ratings, or critical thinking from critics, or from audience scores, none of which ultimately matter either, because it’s all a complicated dance, and some movies which were very popular disappeared from our minds, and other movies, which were bombs in theaters, some became huge hits later, and people discovered them. Nobody can use this method. There is no way to reliably verify anything. Ask any executive in town, “Boy, do they wish there were.”

John: Oh, God.

Craig: Their jobs wouldn’t be constantly on the line. I think that while Michael is in Palo Alto, so, okay, I’m not surprised he’s a little bit bullish. I will give you, Michael, that you’re clearly keeping up with the rapid advances more than I am. No, I don’t think what you’ve described would have application to creating something. What it has is application to getting an answer correct, an answer that we could have also gotten to ourselves. In this sense, we’re still in calculator territory, even though it is quite more complicated and linguistic.

John: Yes. We’ve talked before about one of the– This was a link that I included in an earlier conversation about this. It feels like there’s something about writing and creative writing that actually does involve having a physical body, and actually having a sense of what it feels like to be in a place to actually encounter things, to experience things, to be in a moment that it’s not synthesizable. It is actually the experience of being in a thing, feeling shame, like wondering whether you should interrupt somebody or not interrupt something. The inner talk.

All of these experiences that humans recognize as being like, “This is part of the human experience that inform every choice we’re making, whether we know it or not.” Will systems like LLMs get to something that is a process that makes it so closely that we can’t tell the difference? I don’t know, but I doubt it. I do think there’s something fundamental about the human experience that these things aren’t going to do in a way that will obviate the need for actual people doing this work.

Craig: Another thing that came to mind, I was rehearsing a sequence the other day with the actors, and we were in full costume, and we were going through things. It struck me how even if I hadn’t written it, even if someone else had written it, everyone understands that they are working with and to some extent somewhat accountable to the creative work of someone. Therefore, there is a certain level of respect hopefully built in.

When you say to somebody, or if you were to say to somebody, “Here are the pages, these were generated by AI.” No one has any respect for that inherently. We are quite free, in fact, to say “I don’t care.” Would computer thought this is a good idea? I don’t. Someone else will say, “Yes, this doesn’t– I don’t like this for–” Everybody can tear it apart, because writing can always be torn apart. The veil that protects it sometimes is the fact that a human being wrote it, and we have a connection with each other, and we can dig in and ask that person questions and debate, and consider. I just don’t think anybody would respect the writing.

John: Now, you’re talking about intentionality and accountability, and these ideas that are specific to the social experience of making a thing, and then watching a thing, and the process is really part of it. These AI systems that are just, ‘boom,’ generating these fight scenes on rooftops between Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. Well, I guess the intention was the prompt, but that’s not actually how you would get to anything in the real world.

Craig: No, nor would Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise want to do that if they got pages telling them to do that. Also, that is an incredibly derivative thing anyway. How do we get to Tom Cruise? We get to Tom Cruise through Risky Business. Good luck, AI. Good luck writing that.

John: Yes, that’s why whenever there’s AI actress signing a deal, well, that’s absurd.

Craig: That’s just a stunt.

John: Oh, yes.

Craig: It’s like, how many times can I see the robots from Boston Dynamics jumping on top of something and then jumping off? I get it. You guys can jump on tables.

John: I get it. I still love it.

Craig: I love it. I get it, but it’s enough already. The stunt is adorable. The stunt of the “AI actress is just internet Ouroboros.” Is what it is.

John: Well, let’s go from new technologies to older new technologies. In 725, we were talking about what should I do with my DVDs? We had a couple of suggestions. Drew, help us out.

Drew: Trent in Seattle writes, “I wanted to flag an option that might not be on your radar. Scarecrow Video in Seattle. They’re a nonprofit that houses over 150,000 titles, and they gladly accept DVD, Blu-ray, VHS, and even Laserdisc donations. It’s the coolest video store on the planet, and it’s one that’s really changed how my family watches movies. Case in point, my four-year-old is obsessed with Godzilla.”

Craig: Nice.

Drew: “Most of the Godzilla catalog isn’t available on any streaming service, but Scarecrow has all of it. Watching him tear up and down the aisles, picking out movies, gives me that same blockbuster on a Friday night feeling I had as a kid, and that’s not something I expected to be able to share with him. Scarecrow even rents nationwide by mail.”

Craig: Whoa, that’s a cool idea for a business, renting DVDs by mail.

John: I know. I love it. I love it. Watch them circle and become another internet thing.

Craig: In like 20 years, Scarecrow owns Warner Bros., Disney. Yes, this sounds great.

John: This is actually like two-level follow-up because, Drew, you said in 662, we actually mentioned them?

Drew: Yes, we mentioned that they were doing, Scarecrow Video had a fundraiser to save the store. I mean, it sounds like it worked.

Craig: Oh, great. Wow, maybe it worked too well. These guys are out there, they’re crushing it.

John: Yes, if I can find a place to take these, I will gladly put them in someone else’s hands because I think about these the same way I think about books in my library. As we’re sorting through stuff, it’s like, “Is the best place for this book my shelf, or somebody else’s shelf?” If I’m never going to read this book again, it should be on somebody else’s shelf.

That’s why I always donate books to a library, because they have the library sales. Some stuff would go into the collection, but most stuff is just generating money for the library. Good. If someone else wants to read this book, that’s awesome. If nobody wants to read this book, at least they probably have a good way to recycle a bunch of books and chop them up to make new books.

Craig: Chopping them up, new books.

John: Yes. Unfortunately, you can’t chop up DVDs very well to make new DVDs.

Craig: No. All right. Well, thanks for that, Trent.

John: Teresa writes about why physical media is important.

Drew: “When stuff is on streaming, or even if you buy a digital copy of something, it can be taken away from you at any time. There’s things that are not only taken off of streaming, but now aren’t even offered on DVD or Blu-ray anymore. Shows by marginalized creators that were made during the streaming boom, like the Gordita Chronicles or Minx, are just gone now. You could say that people weren’t watching anyway, so who cares?

A big part of why people weren’t watching was because these shows were created in a glut of shows, and they flew under the radar, and they weren’t supported properly. Many of those that did find the shows or films, they loved them, but they can’t recommend them anymore because they’re hard to find or purchase or buy or whatever. Remember, Ellie in The Last of Us didn’t learn Take On Me from finding the song on Spotify. She learned it from a cassette tape or a CD that someone preserved.”

Craig: She actually did learn it on Spotify. No, she didn’t.

John: The whole world went away, but then somehow Spotify was formed early in your universe.

Craig: Yes. No, we do think about that all the time, that if the world ends in 2003, physical media is still king. People do watch movies in the apocalypse because they have cassette tapes. In fact, we’re going to feature one of those movies soon in season three, in fact. She did learn it from Take on Me. You’re right, Teresa. They have been sending stuff away, and they can take it away. Even though technically you are only licensing something to watch when you purchase a DVD, there’s really no effective way for them to revoke that license.

What it comes down to, actually, I think, is the viability of the playing devices. Those are the things that actually we got to think about because they don’t make them. If they stop making Blu-ray players and they stop making, just like they stopped making Walkmans and so forth, it can get tricky. If we have ways to preserve some of the methods to play these things, I think Teresa’s right. Physical media is important, especially if you have something that you suspect would be the thing they might stop providing.

John: Yes. The idea of you cannot see the thing that you created anymore is incredibly frustrating. Also, I remember that showrunners throughout time have made things that they couldn’t show to people anymore, also. In a pre-streaming era, anything that was not on the TV was just not available.

Craig: It’s gone. If it didn’t get syndicated. You could do four seasons of a show, and it wasn’t enough to get syndicated, and no one would ever see that show again in any form whatsoever. The thing is, you and I are used to this, actually.

John: True.

Craig: In fact, when we were kids, if you missed a movie in theaters, you didn’t see it because there was no video for a while, until what, were you maybe nine or something?

John: Well, people will bring up H.R. Pufnstuf, people of my generation, and I have just no idea what it was because it didn’t broadcast in Colorado, where I grew up. I’ll talk to my Boulder friends. It’s like, “Have you been haunted by H.R. Pufnstuf?” It’s like, “Yes.” It’s a thing that other people know that we just don’t know because it just never aired in Denver.

Craig: Yes, well, in New York, we got H.R. Pufnstuff.

John: Yes, see?

Craig: They were awesome. Witchiepoo. Man, they were high. Wow, those guys are– For people who don’t know what this was, it was a children’s show, and it was like kids in a
special island with a bunch of big puppets, and the people who made it were just so clearly high in the best, most lovely way.

John: All good points. I think as I go through and sort through these DVDs and things, maybe I will hold on to the movies I just genuinely love, that I would actually be heartbroken if I could not watch them when I wanted to watch them, but that’s going to be a small subset of these movies. Most of them should go to Scarecrow Video or someplace like that, so other people can use them.

Let’s get to our main topic this week, which is free work. Craig, free work is a comparatively new name for something that we’ve encountered our entire life as feature writers because we just [crosstalk] from every angle. As feature writers, we are constantly going in to pitch on projects and doing a lot of stuff to figure out how to win this movie, win this job, and before we got paid anything to write it, and then a bunch of free work for after we hand in a script, people are always asking for more and more stuff before they pay us again. As feature writers, we’ve always encountered this.

In conversations with TV folks, they’re encountering a lot more of it now, too. Not just in the development process, trying to get that pilot to happen, but sometimes writing scripts after the room has closed because the scripts are just not done. Let’s just talk through the kinds of free work that writers are apt to encounter, what to do with different stages, and try to hopefully find some framework for thinking about, “Is this a thing I should consider doing, or is this an absolute red line, don’t cross this line?”

Craig: Let’s start with what the law is. The law, per the WGA, is you can’t do it. The WGA has, I think, it’s a Working Rule 8, that says, “You cannot write without an employment agreement under the WGA contract for anyone.” The end. Also, that is an impossible standard to hit in a sense. Part of the problem is even defining what writing is. What if I’m just sitting with you and we’re coming up with some ideas for something, but we don’t write it down, or just you write it down, we’re just thinking about it? What if we’re emailing each other?

Again, technically, everything that’s written down is writing, but it is probably an untenable position to say, “It’s never going to be the case that you’re going to write something down without an agreement.

John: Let’s wind it back to, obviously, writers have the luxury. We can just write anything at any time. We can write spec scripts. We just write our own things. That’s how we all get started, is writing our own things. That is the great luxury of being a writer. A director has to have a piece of material to go off and direct, an actor has to have a piece of material to audition with, to stand in front of the camera and say. Writers can just do these things. What often happens is it can be a vague line between this is the thing I’m writing for myself or this is the thing I’m writing for somebody else.

I describe this idea to a producer. The producers like, “Man, I really love that. You should write that.” Are you writing it for that producer, or you’re writing this for you, and that producer may become involved at some point? Those are the blurry lines that feature writers have always been experiencing, but TV writers increasingly are experiencing too.

Craig: You have some things that help balance it out. The biggest one is if you’re writing something and it’s “free,” maybe a better, even though no one will ever call this a better term, would be unhired writing. If it’s unhired, that means they can’t use it.

John: Exactly.

Craig: Now, a lot of times you can’t use it either because it’s based on something existing. They may come to you and say, “Here’s a book, The Chronicles of Narnia,” even though Greta Gerwig’s doing that movie, but let’s just pretend in there, “Here’s The Chronicles of Narnia. Can you give us a sense of how this might go?” Then they just keep– “Can you write it as a summary? Can you write it as this? Can you write us the first 10 pages?” By the way, they’re not allowed to do any of that either, but they can’t use it if they don’t pay you, if they don’t hire you for it. It is not usable by them.

That is something that they’re aware of. Sometimes I feel like they’re not, but it seems to me like the biggest areas where I would have red flags on so-called free work or unhired writing, or whatever you want to call it, [chuckles] is when you are feeling coerced, when you are being told it is a quid pro quo, “Do this in order to get that,” which should not happen, or when you feel like you actually have been paid. You have been hired. They’re just trying to get more steps out of you without paying you for steps. Those are the three danger zones to me. The problem, just as is the problem with all areas of human behavior, is power dynamics. “Am I being coerced?” Hard to say sometimes.

John: Are you being coerced, or are they meaningfully trying to get this thing to exist and to happen? “Listen, I think your script is good. I think if you were to do this, then we can take it out on the town to do a thing.” If it’s a producer saying, “Ah.” If it’s a manager saying that, you’re like, ” Now look.” If it’s your agent, who is in theory your fiduciary person who’s there because they’re going to make money only when you make money, that’s a cleaner attachment, but it’s still always tricky and challenging to figure out what this is like. I do want to acknowledge that we’re talking about writing here.

Obviously, any artist, any person who creates creative output, this resonates a bit with you too because so often, “Oh, could you design this brochure for me? I can’t really pay you, but it’d be an exposure, or this could lead to something else?”

Craig: There’s wonderful examples online of people posting their graphic artists, and people are saying, “I want a logo. I’m not going to pay you, but I will give you exposure.” Then they’re like, “Sorry, no, I get paid to do work,” and then people throw fits, which is hysterical. I think for us, we just always have to be aware that people are trying to take advantage of us. I don’t even want to villainize the people that are trying to take advantage of us. I think they’re taught to. I think that’s part of their job. I think that the idea of getting something for nothing is extremely attractive to people who work in business.

We don’t work in business. We write inside of a business. They’re trying to take advantage of that, and they will try to convince you. Sometimes, as you say, they’re right. Sometimes you’ll want to do it. You will want to do more because you feel like it’s in your best interest, but figuring out which is when–

John: Let’s give a concrete example here. There is a book that a company owns. They’re talking to writers about adapting this book, and they’re meeting with writers about adapting this book. For me, that was How to Eat Fried Worms. The very first project I ever landed was one of these open writing assignments. They were meeting with me and several other writers about this.

We were doing a lot of work and a lot of writing that we were not handing in, but a lot of writing on our side to convince the production entity that we are the people who should be adapting this book. Weeks of my life, a lot of my writing time, doing this to try to land this job. It was the right choice for me because I landed the job, and it got me started. If the situation had been set up, if there were a rule that you had to be paid to pitch, basically, anybody going on this project had to be paid for it, I wouldn’t have had a chance to pitch on it. That’s–

Craig: Worse than that. Pay to pitch is such a bad idea because for some pittance, A, it’ll weed out a lot of people that would have gotten a chance and now suddenly don’t, and B, they just bought everything you said for five grand. You know what I mean? It’s such a bad idea, but I did the exact same thing you did. That was quite a common thing, I think, in the ’90s, and the way that the feature business ran was, it’s funny, I think it’s changed.

Back then, it seemed to me what would happen is there’s something out there like How to Eat Fried Worms or I think Stretch Armstrong was one that was across my desk and many, many others. You would sit, and the expectation was that you would come in and you wouldn’t pitch a take or have a conversation about, you would describe a movie beginning to end. You weren’t handing them anything on paper, and they would often ask.

John: They would ask.

Craig: [chuckles] I would say, “Hmm, now the thing is actually don’t have a written on paper in a way that would make any sense to anybody. It’s all scribbles,” which is not true. That was part of how you got the job, but the real important thing is you didn’t give them writing. You spoke it. Technically, you’re skirting around the thing.

John: There was no literary material being exchanged.

Craig: That’s right. They don’t have it. They can’t hand it to anybody, and they will have to pay you for all the words that happen on paper, but to me, of course, that’s writing. It’s mind writing. It counts.

John: It’s mind writing. Оbviously, there could have been a person in that room writing down everything you said. Now, of course, with AI, they can just pull the transcript of exactly what you said. It’s a little bit moot whether you’re handed in the thing, but it’s also important you didn’t hand it in the thing because there’s no implied that you were giving them this thing, which they couldn’t own anyway because it’s still your work.

Craig: Exactly. That is correct. It is still your work. You did not sell it. They can’t own it, but that was a free writing.

John: What we’re describing here is pre-writing. This is before you got the job. This is actually– it’s a challenge for the guild, any guild, to enforce rules about this, because you’re not an employee of this company yet. You’re trying to land a job. We can talk about why no writing left behind, why you’re not doing these things, but the guild can’t, and sure shouldn’t stop you from going in and pitching on things, because that’s how you get jobs. That is the thing. The other kind of free work is you are an actual employee. You’ve delivered something, and they’re still asking for free work after that.

Craig: That’s a rough one.

John: Which is bad, but really common.

Craig: Very.

John: That is a situation where it’s about you recognizing your own self-worth and saying no, having reps to say no, and honestly, having the guild to say no at a certain point, or even go after and get payment that you should have gotten for work that you really were doing that they weren’t paying you.

Craig: Yes. I will say that we’ve been in the WGA for about 30 years now, you and me?

John: Yes.

Craig: They’ve been talking about this for 30 years. They have not fixed it in 30 years. There have been some great ideas and so many different kinds of ideas. Ultimately, the problem is the guild is not in the room. If the studio executive, or let’s say more commonly, the producer and the writer agree to do a thing, they’re doing it, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Yes, writers will say, “I don’t want to agree,” but you did. We’ll say, “Well, okay, call the guild.” “Well, I don’t want to do that because I don’t want to get in trouble.”

My favorite proposed solution, there is a guy in the 2000s. His solution was, every meeting that happens between every member of the WGA and any producer or student executive has to be recorded and transcribed, and all transcriptions sent to a clearinghouse that looked through to see if there’s– I was like, that also wouldn’t work, but it would cost a billion dollars.

John: It would cost a billion dollars less now with AI, but yes.

Craig: Also, people would just be like, “Hey, we need to meet.” [crosstalk]

John: Absolutely. Whisper, whisper.

Craig: Yes. Of course, you can get around everything. When there’s a will, there’s a way. When people are twisting someone’s arm, and that person is new, as you and I once were, it is difficult. Of course, I was in situations early on in my career where I–

John: Well, and there’s also going to be moments where the producer says, “Hey, listen, this is great.” These are two things. These are two red flags before we hand it into studio,” because I know this is a situation. You can’t fight back against that, because that’s actually good advice at times.

Craig: No one’s upset about that.

John: Let’s talk about some actual remedies here. Things that have worked for us. Giving us a producer before the deadline. If it’s eight weeks, and you give it to the producer at seven weeks, and you can say, “Hey, I’m turning this in next week,” and make it clear, “This is going in, whether you like it or not. This is what’s going on.” That has worked for me.

Craig: It can be taken as a declaration of war by a number of producers, because you can say, “Hey, well, it says in my contract, I got turn it in.” A typical writing period, I think, is 12 weeks. “It’s been 12 weeks. I got to turn it in.” They’ll be like, “No, you don’t.”

John: No.

Craig: They don’t care. They just want it to be good. They’re right in that the studio is like, “Please, keep writing. We paid them for 12 weeks. We’re not paying them more. Keep writing.” That is the silent conspiracy that’s going on behind the scenes to get you to write more when there are perfectly described steps in your contract for writing more.

John: In terms of perfectly described steps, on one project, the producer/director came to me and said, “Hey, I’m about to turn this in.” They came with a whole ton of notes. I said, “This is too much for me to do,” and we actually did negotiate that we took a step out of sequence, so I did my polished up before my rewrite, and that was a solution.

Craig: They’re well defined. This has worked for me, where I will give something to the producer. Generally speaking, if I agree with their feedback or requests, it’s probably not that hard to do them. I want to do them because I think it’s going to make it better. There’s no value in me turning something in and saying, “By the way, I know how to make this better. I just didn’t yet.”

John: [laughs]

Craig: When it’s not great, which is honestly more often than not, then at some point you say, I want the benefit of everybody’s point of view on this, because I want to make sure, especially as you get later on in your career, I’m getting paid this much money. It seems like the person who runs the studio should get a vote, too. What the producer can’t say is they already did. If they did, they broke the rules, and it got submitted. Now they got to pay me, so they can’t say that, so it jams them up. That’s worked a few times for me. Early on, unfortunately, what it comes down to is your agent has to say enough is enough to them, because the agent has other clients that have more power than you do.

John: Agents classically have so many other relationships with that producer that they don’t want to rock the boat too much. It’s-

Craig: It’s tough. The thing is, I feel like you get to a point as a representative where you can call somebody and say, “We have a lot of business together. I’m asking you, please, this one went too far. We will continue to have lots of business together, but we have to do our jobs, and this is part of my job.” Those conversations happen all the time. At that point, that is when the person who’s been trained to get as much as possible for as little as possible says, “Okay, you got me.”

John: Other things that have worked for me in the past, is making sure you have a relationship with the studio executive independent from the producer. If I can talk to the studio executive and say, “Hey, I finish, and the producer wants all this stuff. Do you want me to do all this stuff?” Like, no, they honestly, generally, probably just want the script in their hands.

Craig: Of course. We did help things along in our last negotiation, because we won this thing that I’ve been crying about for so long, which is two steps for writers who are earning under a certain number. It doesn’t apply to because the studios make a point. If I pay Scott Frank $3 million to write a script, I really don’t want to get nickel-and-dimed on drafts. We’re paying somebody $250,000 for a draft; you can get 12 drafts out of them if you’re going to be a jerk about it.

Now, because we built that second step in, that’s guaranteed, the producer feels like we can get it in. It’s not over. It’s not like if everybody reads it and hates it, it’s not over. We have another draft.

John: Other things that can work. It’s recognizing that the opportunity cost of pitching on things that don’t go anyplace. That’s why I always ask, how real does this feel, or is this a fishing expedition? Are they just like they kind of have an idea, they have a book, but it’s not clear that they actually want to make this a movie. It’s not clear that anyone up the food chain even knows this thing really exists. Asking, do they actually own the IP? When you go in and pitch on a thing, and then you realize-

Craig: Incredible.

John: -wait, they don’t even own it yet. They’re just thinking about getting it.

Craig: They spring it on you real late. It’s happened to me a few times.

John: They’ve been trying to make my deal, and it was, “Oh no, we need to get the underlying rights first.” Come on

Craig: Wait. What? That is Hollywood flim flam for you.

John: My friend, Michelle, has a three-meeting rule, which I really respect, she and her writing partner will take three meetings on a project, but if there’s not a decision after three meetings, they’re done.

Craig: Oh God, yes.

John: Love it, great. They’ve done that since the start of their career.

Craig: It’s a great rule, because at some point, put up or shut up. It’s pretty obvious, like, are we dating or not?

John: We got a listener question that is on this topic. Drew help us out with what Nick wrote.

Drew: “In Steven Soderbergh’s recent interview in Variety about his canceled Star Wars movie, he says, “That was two and a half years of free work for me and Adam and writer Rebecca Blunt. What is happening here?”

Craig: [laughs]

Drew: “Has it become common practice for guild members to write years’ worth of drafts on spec for major IPS held by signatories? John and Craig have been tremendous advocates for writers getting paid. My understanding of the MBA is that unpaid writing like this shouldn’t be happening. Is Lucasfilm leveraging creatives’ desire to contribute to their franchise to eliminate development costs, or did Soderbergh convince a writer to engage in fan fiction on the hope that it would lead to a future payday? I’m hoping you might shed some light on what might be going on here and what the WGA’s role would be in such a situation.

John: I looked back at the original Variety article. Nick is inferring some stuff here that I don’t think is actually in the Variety article. I don’t know whether anybody was paid for anything at any point. The overall frustration that Soderbergh is expressing absolutely resonates for me. I want to talk about it because directors also have a ton of unpaid work that they’re going through. It’s all this trying to land the movie, trying to get the movie greenlit. A lot of that stuff is not paid, and they are doing months and months of work, in some cases, for things that don’t happen at all.

Craig: I don’t know the specific details, but I’m going off of Soderbergh’s quote here. Is this kosher per the MBA? Nick says, “My understanding is that unpaid writing like this shouldn’t be happening.” Correct. Unpaid writing like this shouldn’t be happening. As I said earlier, it is a nearly impossible standard to hit in the world, and sometimes it does bend to a writer’s benefit to bend that a little bit.

In this case, what does sometimes happen is there’s going to be a movie. There’s a big machine like Marvel or Star Wars or DC, who knows, and they say there’s going to be a movie, and the movie is going to be based on this thing. You come in as somebody like Soderbergh, and you’ve got a producer, and you’ve got a writer, and you guys pitch, and they’re like, “You guys even do the thing, but the higher-ups aren’t going to let us do the thing unless we know what the thing is, and that it fits in with these other things so da, da, da,” and so suddenly, you become– Maybe they’re even like, “It’s happening, we’ve just got to work out the rights,” something like that. Then one day, someone gets fired, or someone changes their mind, and that thing is not a thing anymore, and it’s gone.

It’s like you were trying to get this job, really, really assiduously, and then they just eliminated that office, and there is no job. That can be incredibly frustrating. I don’t know the specifics of what happens here. What I would say is, did Soderbergh convince a writer to engage in fan fiction on the hope it would lead to a future payday? No, I don’t think somebody like Steven Soderbergh just blindly engages in something like that. There must have been an understanding that then became undone. I don’t know the specifics, all I can say is that the person that I feel the most for is Rebecca Blunt because she’s identified as the writer.

John: For sure. Let’s answer some listener questions. We have one from Nicholas.

Drew: “I’m writing on behalf of a French Screenwriters Association. Each year, we award a trophy to a person who has significantly contributed to supporting and fostering emerging screenwriters. The name of this trophy is a schmuck.”

Craig: [laughs]

Drew: “A reference to the oft-quoted anecdote that Harry Warner referred to screenwriters as ‘Schmucks with Underwoods’.
Recently, one of our American members, who is Jewish, raised a concern that the use of the term schmuck in this context may carry anti-semitic implications. According to this concern, Warner may have used this term specifically toward Jewish writers, and therefore the expression, and by extension our trophy’s name, could be rooted in an anti-semitic attitude.

We’ve tried to research the historical background of the anecdote, but have not been able to find reliable sources clarifying whether the phrase was directed specifically at Jewish writers, or was instead a more general, if dismissive, remark about screenwriters.

Given both of your deep knowledge on Hollywood history and culture, we’re hoping you might have insight into the historical accuracy and context of this expression. Our intention has always been affectionate and ironic, and to highlight the often underappreciated position of writers in the industry. However, we want to ensure that we’re not perpetuating something potentially harmful or insensitive. Any guidance or perspective you could share would be greatly appreciated.”

Craig: As the Jew. [chuckles] It’s always a weird thing when you’re asked to make some sort of decision on behalf of your people because [laughs] I’m not the king of what is or is not anti-semitic. Schmuck, specifically, as a Yiddish term, means penis. It’s like saying dick.

John: Generally, it implies, in the sense of an idiot or a dummy.

Craig: A jerk, a nobody. My dad called me a schmuck many, many times. [laughs] Anybody on the road that wasn’t driving the way he wanted would be called a schmuck. Harry Warner was Jewish. I don’t think Harry Warner was saying ‘Schmucks with Underwoods’ because he was being anti-semitic, I think he was saying ‘Schmucks with Underwoods’ because that’s what a guy like that would have said. [laughter] I personally don’t agree that this term has anti-semitic implications. Anyone can be a schmuck.

More often than not, my parents would call non-Jewish people schmucks. I personally don’t see it. I think they’re using it as it should be used. It’s a tricky thing. It’s very kind that people are concerned and doing their diligence. I cannot render a final decision; all I can say is, I’m fine with it.

John: Related, and a little off to the side, it feels kind of improbable. I don’t use the word schmuck. I sort of know the word schmuck, but I’ve never used the word schmuck because I associated that as a– It’s not a word of my culture for me to use. For a French Screenwriter Association to use it feels a little bit weird to me. That’s the only vibe I get off of this.

Craig: If there weren’t the expression ‘Schmucks with Underwoods’, what I feel is that in a very sweet sort of way, they just didn’t really necessarily know how Jewish that term was. [laughs] They’re like, “This is a fun self-deprecating term that Harry Warner used to describe screenwriters, why don’t we?” I think it’s innocent, and I think it’s fine. If that phrase didn’t exist, that might be a little odd to just suddenly say that, but if you called somebody a schmuck, I would be pretty amused, actually. It’s fine. I’ll give you a pass. [laughs]

John: Give me a pass. Look at that. “Each year, we award a trophy to a person who has significantly contributed to the supporting and fostering of emerging screenwriters.” Actually, it’s more of a mensch, though.

Craig: Yes, that’s the thing. The one real problem I have is that schmucks are assholes, [laughs] so why would you– They’re misusing it. I would be okay if–

John: That’s my bit where I’m very concerned. I just feel like they could find a better term for it, honestly, like a French term for it. There’s got to be something that is specific to what they’re doing.

Craig: If they want to give it a little bit of an American Hollywood spin, mensch would be-

John: Mensch is a better word for it.

Craig: -a perfectly great word.

John: It describes what they’re trying to get to.

Craig: It’s also a Yiddish term. It’s a German word as well. Yes, a good guy. A schmuck is not really– You don’t want to win a schmuck.

John: It’s a weird thing. Just like I have no problem using the word mensch. I’ve actually used the word mensch because I know what it means, but it’s also a positive thing. Appropriating a positive word for a thing feels different than appropriating a negative word for something.

Craig: I think so. Yiddish as a language is dying anyway, so I’m all in favor of people– From my point of view, I wouldn’t even call it appropriation, just keep it alive. Let’s keep the spirit of that. It’s such an expressive language. My parents spoke it with my grandparents, and so I was raised listening to it. I don’t have it; it’s gone for me, it’s gone by pretty fast. To that extent, let’s keep the words going, but it’s just not– I don’t think it’s anti-semitic personally, I just think that it’s–

John: It’s a little off target.

Craig: It’s just off target in this case. Save it for the person that failed the screenwriting [laughs] should get the schmuck award.

Drew: Jane wrote in. “I am currently a development intern at a production company headed by a very successful A-list actor, and I hope to be a working screenwriter in the future. I’m happy to report I love my internship. I get paid, it’s in person, so I’m connecting with members of the company. I even get to pitch IP and ideas to the company’s president on a regular basis, and will be pitching to the actor at the end of the internship. I have an idea I think would really work for this company.

I floated the basic premise, and was met with a good amount of interest. However, some people have told me I shouldn’t just give this idea away, and I should write it myself. I love this idea. I’m invested in it, and I want to be as involved as humanly possible in it. I’m conflicted. If I go forward with this myself, I feel like most likely it becomes a sample for me. If I pitch it to the company, and let’s pretend, best-case scenario, it moves into development, would I likely get cut off there, or would I? What should I do? Should I write it? Pitch it? Both?”

John: Jane’s in a real dilemma there. I can feel what she’s at. The fact that she does want to be a screenwriter is important because she could theoretically write this herself, but she’s working as an intern at the company. It’s a good experience to learn how to pitch to the movie star, that feels good as well. I was talking to a colleague who works for an A-list actress, and had an idea, and he got it. He said, “Should we do this?” Like, “Yes.” They partnered up with another movie star, and they sold the idea, and it was great, and he’s now working.

It can work, and that would be a good experience for you to see how stuff happens. I doubt they’re going to just steal your idea, but it’s a question of what would your actual involvement be with the project if it were to move forward. What’s your instinct for Jane?

Craig: I’m always wondering who these people are. “Some people have told me that I shouldn’t just give this idea away.” No one’s giving anything away. There’s no giving away. I would say to Jane, it sounds like you’re so invested in this that you should write it. If you write it as an original screenplay, the next thing you can do is give it to this company to say, “Are you interested in this original screenplay I’ve written?” Now, if the deal that you’re under as an intern, you’ve got to check the fine print here is that they own the contents of your brain from wake up to go to sleep, then you’ve got an issue.

If you have it carved out so the things you work on during the day belong to them, and the things you work on at night belong to you, then I think you would say, “Hey, company President, I wrote a script. Read it.” If they like it, then they have a real decision to make. If they don’t, you have a script that you can sell to somebody else. Either way, no one’s giving anything away. I do worry a little bit about a pitch in the sense that they could– If it’s a pitch and nothing else, then they need a writer, and they may then say, “We’re not going to hire you to write this.”

John: I don’t think she should expect that she’s going to pitch it to the company and they’re going to say, “Oh, you should write it.” They’ll just say, like, “Great. Come up with a list of writers-

Craig: Exactly.

John: -to do this idea.” That is a reality there. The only other thing I would remind Jane is you have this good idea, which probably came into being because you were working with this actor, but you also have a lot of other really good ideas, too. This isn’t the only good idea. This idea is percolating at the top because you have an opportunity there with this actor. My instinct would probably be to pitch it and just to see how high up it goes, and see what happens with it, and just maybe let this one go a little bit, and just see what happens with it, because you’ll write many other things.

Craig: Feel so bad, she was like, “Should I write it, pitch it?” I’m like, “Write it,” and you’re like, “Pitch it.”

John: Yes, I think they’re both good choices, honestly.

Craig: They are. I think the most important thing, Jane, is to not worry about this notion of giving it away.

John: Yes.

Craig: I don’t know, people get real tight about this stuff early on. Everyone thinks they know stuff. Nobody knows.

John: Yes.

Craig: Somebody once said,-

John: Somebody once said.

Craig: -“Nobody knows anything.”

John: Yes, whoever that person was.

Craig: That was a gold man.

John: That was a gold man who said that. It’s time for one cool thing.

Craig: Woo-hoo.

John: Mine is a physical thing. It is a running belt. I’m about to run another half-marathon.

Craig: Congrats.

John: Usually, when I run, I keep my phone in my pocket, and it’s fine, it swings around a little bit, but it’s fine, I’m used to it, but on longer races, I also have to have gel packs for calories along the way, and there’s other stuff to hold on to. I got this running belt, which is a 4-inch wide piece of fabric that has slots in it that you can slide your phone in and slide the gel packs in. It actually is much better than keeping my phone in my pocket. I’ve really enjoyed running with it. It just keeps stuff centred on your body and stuff from moving around so much.

Craig: Good.

John: I liked it. It’s like a $30 little belt. It’s made my running life better. The FlipBelt Classic running belt, if you are a runner. There’s no adjustment to it. You have to actually measure it to see what’s the right sizes. It’s worked out really well for me.

Craig: Awesome. My one cool thing is, it’s fairly localized. It’s for those folks who are up here with me in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. You know I love an escape room.

John: Oh, yes.

Craig: I also love a puzzle hunt, and we don’t get many of those around. There’s a group up here called Secret City, and they run a number of events. It’s a little bit of an improv theatre. In this one that I went to, it’s called The Wedding Party. You go to a wedding, and they serve you dinner at a restaurant, and you meet characters, and they interact with you, move around, and then there are puzzles.

John: Great.

Craig: I had such a great time. They were really good, fun, and engaging. The group that I was with, I don’t think they were used to professional puzzle hunt people.
[laughter]

John: They were destroying them.

Craig: The woman who ran it walked out at one point, [laughs] because she was like, “I just want to be clear, there’s another hour left,” and we’re like, “Yes.” She goes, “But an hour,” because we were basically done. We were like, “No, it’s cool. It’s totally cool. We’re having a great time.” We would talk to the actors, have fun, and interact. It was just a fun evening.
They have a number of events. I think the one that I went to, which was The Wedding Party, has been extended now through into possibly May. They have, I guess, another one that they run up here that I’m going to go to. If you’re up here in BC, check them out.

John: Drew, was I remembering correctly that you’re headed to a murder mystery tonight?

Drew: Tonight.

Craig: Oh, nice.

Drew: We all get roles. I forget my guy’s name, but yes.

Craig: Oh, you’ve already forgotten your guy’s name?

John: Well, he’s internalized it so much that it’s actually just a part of him now.

Drew: Yes.

Craig: Or what if it was like a memento, murder mystery party?

Drew: [unintelligible 00:53:24]

Craig: You have no idea who you are-

John: You have to figure out who you are.

Craig: -or if you killed somebody.

Drew: Yes, who am I?

John: Why am I even here?

Craig: Is there a company that runs it, or is it just your friends?

Drew: My friends have gone through a company. It’s in the Partiful, which is always just such a nightmare to–

Craig: Partiful suddenly is part of my life now. There was no Partiful, and now there’s all Partiful. Where did Partiful come from?

Drew: It costs money, too, doesn’t it? Partiful? To send out an invite on it?

Craig: I think it doesn’t. I think they’re just mining your data. I think it’s actually controversial because it’s like the Palantir people.

John: Oh, [unintelligible 00:53:57] [crosstalk]

Craig: What’s the other service?

John: Well, there’s Evite, which I’m used to.

Craig: Yes, [unintelligible 00:54:01]. Yes.

John: So then the other is Partiful. I’m like, “Where did this even come from? Was Evite falling down on the job?”

Craig: No. Apple has invites as well, but no one uses them.

John: No one uses them. Well, now we live in the Partiful era.

Craig: Tell us what you found, Drew.

Drew: It’s Eclipse 54, and I am playing Reggie Rich, the mysterious businessman. Reggie’s presence adds a touch of roughness to the venue.

John: All right.

Craig: I’m not sure about this casting. I got to be honest.

John: Drew is a coarse businessman, yes, it’s well cast.

Craig: I don’t like this casting, to be honest with you. [laughs] It’s the rough part. You’re going to have to work there.

Drew: You don’t think I can be rough?

John: This man went to Scottish– wait, what academy did you go to?

Drew: Yes, Royal Scottish Academy.

John: Royal Scottish Academy.

Drew: I’ve been jumped.

Craig: Right, exactly.

Drew: I haven’t been in fights. I’ve been jumped.

Craig: I’ve been beaten up. I’m rough.

Drew: I’ve been beaten up.

Craig: No, you’re a victim.
[laughter]

Drew: Yes.

John: That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt–

Craig: Victim.

John: -and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Craig: Hero.

John: Our outro this week is by Eric Pearson. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That is also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You will find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with a sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. This Scriptnotes book is out and available wherever you buy books. Thank you for keeping and buying the books.

Craig: Oh, how’s that going?

John: Our numbers are still trucking along.

Craig: Okay.

John: That is really nice.

Craig: I think we wrote something that will stand the test of time.

John: I certainly hope so.

Craig: At least from a color point of view.

John: Yes, it’s bright. I hope it doesn’t fade in the sunlight. We’ll see.

Craig: I think the sun fades in the light of the book.

John: Yes, that’s what it is.

Craig: Yes.

John: You’ll find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes and give us a follow. You can find us on Instagram @scriptnotespodcast. We have T-shirts, hoodies, and drinkware. You’ll find all those at Cotton Bureau. You’ll find the show notes with links to all the things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you again to our premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week.

Craig: Yay.

John: You can sign up to become one at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on law enforcement and depictions on screen. Craig and Drew, thank you for a great episode.

Craig: Thank you, John.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right, Drew, help us out. We’ve got an email from Cooper setting us up.

Drew: Yes, Cooper writes, “I’m currently writing a script that features an FBI agent. Generally, I wouldn’t have an issue with writing a character who is competent and is somewhat respectable. My problem is that our current FBI is neither of those things due to a number of circumstances in the past year. My question is, how does one go about writing a job that isn’t just what it used to be, or a job that is perceived differently? Do I just write whatever best fits my story, or should I factor in reality a bit?”

John: This is a real thing.

Craig: Yes.

John: It reminds me a bit of the panic among screenwriters when cell phones became prevalent. [laughs] What do we do about this? At what point do we just all agree that everyone’s walking around with a cell phone? At what point do we all agree that federal law enforcement has become compromised and is a laughingstock, which must be incredibly upsetting to what I imagine are a lot of very respectable, very good, competent, thoughtful, caring law enforcement officers.

My gut is that you can absolutely write anybody to be competent and good and decent, but it probably makes sense to acknowledge that the agency they’re working for has changed, and it isn’t the same, and that there are problems if that is the way you want to go. It just feels like, for me at least, I would struggle to write a story now about an FBI agent without acknowledging that it is no longer Eliot Ness & Co.

Craig: Yes. Really, I think what Cooper is touching at is like you’re always trying to establish the reality of the world that you’re putting up on screen, and so you can absolutely write a story with FBI agents who are doing detailed, thoughtful, neutral work that is not politically motivated, who are not corrupt, but you’re going to have to establish the very setting of the movie. We’re going to have to meet these characters and understand how they’re working and what they’re working in and what the universe of the FBI is like in your specific world.

I’m thinking about a show I really love, The Diplomat on Netflix, which is just terrific. In that world, the people are conflicted, but they are all hyper-competent and they’re really good at their jobs in a way that it does not match up with the current federal administration. Yes, the show started before this administration was in office.

John: That helps.

Craig: It helps.

John: It helps.

Craig: It helps.

John: Yes.

Craig: We still have a memory of what that would be like. We still know what competence looks like, and that can absolutely still work. Some choices you can make is you could set this a few years back in time. You could make sure that the world feels enough different that it actually makes sense, but anybody who’s working with local law enforcement always had to deal with this because the idea of corrupt local police or misdeeds, that’s always been there and you’ve always had to make choices about how you’re going to portray this and how you’re going to establish that these are good cops versus the bad cops who we also know are out there and often it see on screen.

John: It provides you also a vector for conflict, which is a good thing for drama.

Craig: People that approach these things from, let’s call it charitably, the conservative side of things– I don’t know, Cooper, if you’ve ever watched any of the Dirty Harry films, the idea of the Dirty Harry films was these soft, liberal judges and bureaucrat chiefs of police were thwarting real cops from cleaning up the streets and kicking ass. That tension creates a situation where you have a hero who’s in direct conflict with his superiors and goes out and does the right thing and shoots people. That’s their point of view of what good is.

They never had a problem saying the mayor is a weak, lefty, and the judges are bad. I’m not sure why there wouldn’t be an opportunity here to say, “I’m an FBI agent who was trained under this guy in this manner. The person who’s running the FBI now is this guy.” That’s a problem. That’s an opportunity, I think, for drama.

John: Absolutely. Even if your story is not focused directly on that, like it’s FBI doing an investigation of something, that as a subtext and a threat could be really good. You actually don’t trust that the higher-ups are doing things for the right reasons. That’s great. Or that they’re undermining you. In our deep dive on Die Hard, when the FBI shows up, they are a problem more than they are a help. That is useful. That’s interesting.

Craig: Yes. There’s also an opportunity for a story that is specifically about somebody who comes from a tradition, and they are partnered with somebody new. Generally speaking, when that happens, we get an interesting story. The movie I’m thinking of now is Colors. Just recently died, Robert Duvall. And Sean Penn. Robert Duvall is the old guy, and Sean Penn’s the young guy. Sean Penn is a hothead. Sean Penn also can chase guys down on foot, and Robert Duvall has one more day to retirement, so you know what’s going to happen to him. There was interesting exchanges of wisdom, and then Training Day flipped that entirely around.

John: Of course, we have to talk about Training Day.

Craig: So great.

John: The idea of mismatched costs, but also that taken to the extreme in Training Day.

Craig: Well, so normally, you’ve got the old guy who is wise and he teaches the young, crazy rook to calm down, and this one, the old guy’s corrupt. The young guy is the Eagle Scout. You can play around with these things, but to me, the one thing I don’t think you can do right now is just pretend that everything is fine. [laughs] I mean, if you establish a fake administration, then the fake president in a fake world, and maybe it’s even set after the era of the madness that we’re currently in, maybe then, but I think probably you’d want to recognize it.

John: Yes, it’s also important to recognize that when we’re watching a movie or watching a TV show, we already know that we’re in a cinematic universe of things. Our assumptions about how things work in fictionalized crime things is different than how they work in the real world, when we have legal experts on. We had Ken White come on, talking through like, we have TV law versus actual law, and they are just different. I think audiences have different expectations about that, and so whatever you want to bring in from the real world to this is going to add great texture and flavor, but the Dick Wolf crime shows aren’t going to suddenly dismiss the whole FBI industry is corrupt because that’s the franchise that’s been established.

Craig: Yes, but it is a challenged one at this point.

John: It is a challenged one.

Craig: I think there’s legacy shows, but it’s harder to start a new one, I think.

John: Oh, I guess that’s fair.

Craig: Yes, it’s just until there’s a reckoning– A reckoning is a coming.

John: I agree with you.

Craig: Then maybe we’ll see some interesting things. It is, in its own way, fodder for drama.

John: Yes.

Craig: Just have to figure out how.

John: Yes. All right, thanks, guys.

Craig: Thank you.

John: Thanks.

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The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hey, this is John. Standard warning for people who are in the car with their kids, there’s some swearing in this episode.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

Craig Mazin: No, I don’t think so. I think my name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to episode 723 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. As writers, we often use comparisons when pitching or discussing projects. It’s diehard on a bus. It’s driving mistakes. He meets the hangover. Today on the show, what makes a useful comp and when is it hurting more than it helps?

We’ll also answer listener questions and in our bonus segment for premium members, let’s discuss email. We can talk about inbox zero, but Craig, I suspect that one of our listeners might have the answer to this weird thing that happens with just your email, where sometimes people on our email chain get your emails or they don’t. I will get your emails or won’t get it. Someone out there is an email expert who will tell us what’s actually going on.

Craig: Okay. I’m excited for that. That would be nice. Hopefully somebody who works at Google. Why don’t I just call my friend who’s the vice president of engineering of Chrome? I should call him.

John: I think our listeners are going to have their answers.

Craig: Let’s let our listeners do it.

John: Yes, because often we provide answers to our listeners, but sometimes our listeners provide answers to us. This could be one of those situations.

Craig: It’s nice for them to be able to do a service.

John: Yes, nice. Now, this is not an official segment, but it’s the second or maybe a third time, so it’s almost become a segment, which is John Recently Learned, in which I share some fact that I’ve somehow been unaware of my entire life, and in confessing my ignorance, all may benefit, we can all gain from a thing I just learned this past week.

Craig: All right.

John: Craig, you know we’re redoing the studio downstairs where we record the podcast, getting ready for a transition to video. One of the things we wanted to do was put a lamp in this corner. I had a floor lamp that’s usually behind me on this Zoom, which looks really nice, but it never actually worked. Our DPs are like, “Oh, it’d be great if that lamp actually turned on,” which is a thing that a DP might say.

Craig: Yes, “Lights on.”

John: Lights on. Lights are not just there to look good. They actually are there to-

Craig: Light.

John: -serve a function. I was looking at this lamp. I was like, “You know what? Rewiring a lamp is a thing a person can do. It’s not an impossible skill.” I bought myself a little kit on Amazon. It was 10 bucks. It had the long cord and the new thing to screw in the light bulb, all that stuff. As I was undoing this kit, one of the instructions was, the second instruction was, “Make sure that the ribbed side of the power cord goes to the silver connector.” I’m like, the ribbed side of the power cord. Craig, do you know what that means?

Craig: Of course.

John: Tell me what that means.

Craig: Well, if there’s two wires going through a cord– I can’t remember if the ribbed side is the load or if it’s the ground or how that works.

John: It’s the neutral wire.

Craig: It’s the neutral wire. Okay. I didn’t know specifically which one it was, but I know that a power cord is going to have an indication if it’s a dual, which they almost always are. All the wires inside usually have different colors.

John: The wires inside aren’t actually different colors. What you described is a thing I never was aware of my entire life. It’s that every power cord you’ve ever touched, that’s every plastic power cord, one side is routed and smooth and the other side is grooved. I was unaware of this. Drew was not aware of this. This was a revelation. Yes.

Drew: I thought that was just how it was manufactured. It was wrapped in a certain way and there was a seam, but the seam is actually the ribbing.

Craig: Correct. It would not really come into play, unless you are sitting there wiring something. You see, even me, I didn’t– because most of the wiring that I’ve done is not even wiring, it’s been audio connecting or low voltage stuff, like putting thermostats in. That’s fun because there’s 12 different wires and they’re all different colors. One side’s got the little texture.

John: Yes. That texture is there because it allows an electrician who’s working in low light to be able to tell which wire is which wire, which makes so much sense. Of course, that goes all the way down to, if you have a polarized plug that has a wider side, the rib side goes to the wider side, which all makes sense. It’s reminding me of Chesterton’s fence, which is that concept that whenever there is a rule or design staying out there that seems pointless, there probably actually is a point. There’s a reason why things are the way they are and you shouldn’t just go through and blindly assume that there’s no good reason for that thing to be there because it was put there for a purpose.

Craig: John, we’re Americans. We know better.

John: This last week, I learned about that power cords have two sides. I also learned the underwriter’s knot, which I thought was fascinating. As you’re wiring a lamp, before you actually make those connections to where the bulb screw is in, you tie an underwriter’s knot, which is a really simple little knot, but it’s called the underwriter’s knot because of insurance underwriting. You’ve often seen the little UL symbol on electronics. That all goes back to the days-

Craig: That’s the approval.

John: Yes. It all goes back to the days of insurance, specifically fire insurance. As electrical appliances were added to homes, homes were burning down all the time.

Craig: LOL.

John: LOL. Standards were developed about electronic appliances, and one of them was the underwriter’s knot, which keeps it so that a power cord won’t pull out of an appliance and it won’t disconnect from what it’s supposed to be connected to. You tie this knot so that if the cord gets pulled, the knot gets tighter, but it doesn’t pull out of the electronic device.

Craig: If you keep going like this, I’m going to have you over at my place, do some simple rewiring.

John: [unintelligible 00:05:47] some powerful wiring.

Craig: I’m going to start you with some simple stuff, but it will be deadly. Then we’ll move up from there.

John: Let’s do some follow-up. First off, Craig, you and I wrote a book called the Scriptnotes book.

Craig: What?

John: A reminder to people who work at libraries, people who are friends of libraries, is that if libraries contact us in the US and say, like, “Hey, we’d like a copy of the Scriptnotes book,” we have some to send out. Drew’s been sending those out, but we still have some more to send out. If you would like to see your library with a copy of the Scriptnotes book, we want to make sure that they can get the copy, because libraries don’t have limited money, and we have some books. We can send them out.

Craig: That would be nice. You know who would love that? Leonard Mazin. Leonard Mazin, my dear departed father, loved going to the library. His whole thing was, God, he did not like spending money, but he sure liked reading. His thing was, he would fill out a request card. The library had request cards. “I would like this book that you don’t have.” They would go and buy the book and put it in the library. Their whole theory, I assume, was like, “We’ll just go through these in the order we received them.” Nobody ever filled out a request card, as far as I know, other than Leonard Mazin. The library near our house was just mostly books that my dad wanted. [laughs]

John: That’s so good.

Craig: That’s awesome.

John: My mom was also a giant library user. She was there twice a week, at least, and would go through all of the crime novels that [unintelligible 00:07:12]

Craig: Your mom and my dad, who knows? In another lifetime, you know?

John: Yes. Maybe in the afterlife, they were both in New Jersey at the right time.

Craig: [crosstalk] libraries.

John: It could have happened. Craig, we could have been brothers.

Craig: We kind of are.

John: We kind of are brothers.

Craig: We kind of are.

John: Continuing the follow-up on Scriptnotes book, we talked about how happy we were with the launch of the book. It sold a bunch of copies. I’m pasting in the little chart that shows how many we’ve sold week by week. It’s doing really well. We’re on a good track to eventually pay off the advance we received. It looks like we’re getting the top 10% of nonfiction releases for the year, which is great.

Craig: That’s fantastic. People keep sending me pictures of them holding the big orange thing.

John: We love it.

Craig: That’s lovely.

John: We made the right choice sticking with the orange cover. I can’t believe we ever got pushback on that.

Craig: Oh, did they try and give us some other cover?

John: Oh, yes. They wanted to give us a blue cover.

Craig: That’s just wrong, isn’t it?

John: It’s not Scriptnotes. It’s off-brand.

Craig: No, I think we did it right.

John: Yes. Drew, we have some follow-up about orality.

Drew: Reverend Kyle writes, “I’ve listened to the podcast for a few years now, even though I’m not a screenwriter or even in the entertainment industry. As a pastor, I write a sermon every week, along with community prayers and eulogies or comments to local government councils. After listening to the segment on orality, why I enjoyed the podcast clicked.

What I write is rarely read but spoken. I also listened to the podcast about comedy writing with similar insights. The translation from page to pulpit sometimes works, sometimes stumbles, but could never be performed by someone else. No matter the quality, there’s more to be written for next week. Thanks for helping me hone my craft and reminding me to appreciate the unique artistry of my non-screenwriting writing.”

Craig: I love that. Reverend Kyle, you are pointing out that speech writing, which, that is a job. That’s a big job, especially in politics, as we know, is also high orality. It’s all orality. I think about Peggy Noonan. Peggy Noonan, has she written a great novel or anything? No, but one hell of a speech writer.

John: Yes. Having had to work on a speech that I’ll be giving about 15 times for the next couple months, recognizing how one speaker specifically puts words together is so crucial. You write a thing that is designed for one person to give, and it’s a marker of their oral fingerprints.

Craig: Yes, that’s absolutely right. Sermons are high orality.

Drew: Yes. More follow-up on “a film by.” Tim writes, “Craig mentioned that he thinks a film buy credit is like a slap in the face to the entire cast and crew. Yes, that is unless the film stinks. Then everyone breathes a sigh of relief and says, “Thank you for taking credit for that mess, do not blame me.”

Craig: [laughs] The good news, Tim, is that if a film stinks, no one’s scrolling through those end credits hunting down, “All right, I didn’t need to know the head of every department.” [laughs] They still blame the director and the writer, possibly the actor, although rarely. I will say at least, yes, if it stinks, it’s less of a problem that it’s a film by, we have a film by Brett Ratner out this week, I believe.

John: Yes, that’s right.

Craig: Does it say film by on it? Does it say film by?

John: I don’t know. For everyone who saw it, I don’t think any of our listeners saw it, but for anyone who saw it, I’m curious whether it has a film by credit. Craig, I think we’ve talked about this before. I also don’t like a film by. I have much less problem with a first name, last name film, and so like a Spike Lee joint, a Quentin Tarantino film. To me, it’s like, well, this is clearly part of their canon, and so it’s like, oh, it’s part of their work. Just removing the word by helps me out and makes me much less annoyed by the credit.

Craig: Yes, I don’t like any credit that suggests possession. John Carpenter, great filmmaker, likes to say John Carpenter’s blah. I don’t think that’s really necessary. How much more do you need to talk about you as the thing? It just– I don’t know. Yes, but a Spike Lee joint– It’s marketing. Really, it’s marketing.

John: At a certain point, it’s marketing.

Craig: It’s all marketing, but I just– I don’t know. I would hate to walk around a film set looking at everybody working really hard and thinking, “These people are putting a great day in on Craig Mazin’s blah-diddy-blah.” That’s just weird. That’s weird.

John: That apostrophe implies the by, which is, I think, a Craig Mazin production, a Craig Mazin film.

Craig: It’s all bad to me.

John: You’re working on a Spielberg movie. [unintelligible 00:11:53]

Craig: Yes, but Spielberg doesn’t– He probably does say a film by Steven Spielberg.

John: Or I think he may say a Steven Spielberg film.

Craig: Yes, he doesn’t need to.

John: Yes, he doesn’t need to.

Craig: We all know.

John: All right, let’s talk about comps. This comes out of a question that Kristoff wrote in about. Drew, help us out with what Kristoff wrote.

Drew: “I’m wondering how you handle the name-dropping of movies in meetings. On the podcast, a lot of your go-to references seem to be from the ’80s and ’90s, presumably when you were seeing the most movies. Is that something you adjust when you’re talking to a clearly younger exec who may not be familiar with a random but great movie? I’m not talking about, it’s die hard in the Louvre. More along the lines of, it’s the dark tone from this film, or it’s the slow burn from that film. Obviously, you adapt to whoever your audience is, but I’d love to hear you talk about what your thinking is about this.”

John: Kristoff was subtly calling us old by saying that our references are from the ’80s and ’90s. I don’t think we’re actually– I don’t know. We can do some sort of meta-analysis to figure out what movies we’re referring to most often.

Craig: Oh, we’re old. Guilty as charged, this is we do the thing that old people did to us, and we’re doing it to you, and you’re going to do it to the kids when you’re older, Kristoff. Watch. Just watch.

John: To answer a little part of his question before we get to the bigger topic, I will sometimes adjust a reference I make if I think this executive wouldn’t have seen it because they’re too young for them, or [unintelligible 00:13:18] is really sort of, my generation, it’s not their generation, but it doesn’t come up that often, honestly. I don’t find myself having to do that, because if I’m referring back to an old movie, it’s so canonical, they’re going to know what that is. They’re going to know what Indiana Jones was.

Craig: My feeling about this has always been that if you need to say this, then you’re missing something about the way you are communicating the concept in the first place, because it inevitably will debase whatever the originality is of what you’re considering. We used to do it when originality wasn’t what we wanted. There was this stretch where a studio would say, “Hey, we need Ace Ventura. Where’s our Ace Ventura: Pet Detective?” Old reference. People would come in, and they were like, “It’s Ace Ventura meets,” blah, blah, blah, because that’s what they literally were asking for.

I understand that, but in these days, I can hear some writers going over and saying, “It’s Sinners.” I can hear them saying it, and I want to slap it. I want to slap it right out of their mouth, but to me, the comparison stuff is mostly useful when you know what they’re looking for is a comparison thing.

John: Let’s talk about comps in a general sense. When I say comps, I’m not talking about things you would actually include in a script, I’m talking about the conversation around a project. You’re going after pitching. You’re trying to describe what an existing movie is or a theoretical movie is going to feel like, or a series. That is X meets Y or something in the vein of X, but it’s really providing a fast, cognitive shortcut or anchor. Some people can say it’s creating a mental space for them for what the movie is. It’s lowering the cost of thinking about the movie because it’s giving us a handle for it. It’s positioning.

You’re trying to signal, generally, tone, audience, budget zone, the lane for marketing. It’s all basically a form of pattern recognition and pattern matching. It’s like, oh, it’s this kind of thing, which is just what humans are built to do. You’re doing it for yourself and in this meeting, but also you’re giving them something for when they need to pitch the project upwards or downwards or to somebody else. It’s like, “Let me tell you how to talk about this project to your boss.” You’re clarifying the tone, but also the prestige level. It’s the difference between a, here’s an old reference, a Merchant Ivory movie versus-

Craig: Oh my God, it’s getting older.

John: It’s getting older and older. Versus Bridgerton. Those can both be period dramas, but they have a different feel and a tone to them. That’s why sometimes it’s useful to have those things. Before we get into the pros and cons, anything I’m missing from that list of why we use comps?

Craig: I’ll add one more. I hate it now, and it’s less prominent now, but for a long time, it seemed to me that people who bought things were required to have some big brain theory about how stuff worked. Jeffrey Katzenberg was famous for his like, “The idea is king,” blah, blah, blah. All these people needed some kind of science that made them valuable as a gatekeeper.

It’s less important now, I suppose, because they’ve just handed it off to a stupid computer that is just as right and wrong as people were, but one thing that a comp could do was basically give them what they wanted to hear for their stupid theory.

John: Exactly.

Craig: Like, I don’t want to make the movie that your stupid theory is demanding, but I can describe it in a way that answers your concern, that it doesn’t match your nonsense.

John: There was a project that came over my desk or through my email this last week, a big piece of IP, and the company who owns the rights saying, “Well, we’re not sure what we want to do, but the Jumanji version might be this versus the Indiana Jones version might be this.” Also, you get it because they were discussing two very different story engines for what it would be, and that is useful.

It’s reductionist, and we’re going to talk about why that can be a problem, but I also get why they did it, because it makes it clear like, “Oh, again, I can feel the pattern that you’re trying to fit into here for what this is.” Jumanji and Indiana Jones both feel like, okay, we get that this is an expensive movie with certain kinds of things in it.

Craig: I don’t mind when they do it. That’s fine, because when I ask somebody to do something that I cannot do, I will say, “Hey, look, I’m going to give you some broad references, but don’t just do the references.” I’m just vaguely pointing you– I talk about this with the people that work on our show all the time. “Okay, what do you think?” “Well, I’m going to send you a picture or something, but not this. Please not this,” but just this weird indication of something, some shred of my intention, but then come back, and it does help them a little as long as you’re not prescriptive about it and you’re not saying like, “Oh, either it’s going to be Jumanji or it’s going to be Indiana Jones.” I don’t even know what this IP is, but those two things as an A or a B makes total sense.

John: Going back to you sending through an image to somebody, what I find so useful is if a director sends me an image or a producer sends me an image, I get some sense of, okay, why are they sending me this image? I can then ask them a question. It’s like, what is it about this that appeals to you? They don’t want me to give them this, but there’s something about it that’s speaking to them, and it starts a conversation.

Craig: Absolutely.

John: I think we’re saying that if a comp helps start a conversation rather than shutting down a conversation, it can be useful, if not-

Craig: Yes, I think the modern version of the comp is the mood board, and I would much rather look at a mood board, because the whole point is this is abstract. This is meant to tickle your inner weird brain and not be just derp de derp.

John: Let’s tick off some of the pros of a comp. Quickly, speed and clarity. It gets you up to a certain point very quickly. As I said, it communicates a genre, tone, scale, ambition, and taste. Like, “This is the kind of movie I want to make here.” It helps you align with what the market is going to be for it. Is this going to be an A24 movie? Does it feel like an A24 movie, or does it feel like a Blumhouse movie? A horror movie could go into either camp, but probably they’re different movies. It gets everybody on the same page.

We’re all trying to maybe make the same general kind of movie, or at least starts that conversation, and it can reduce misunderstandings about like, are we trying to make a broad comedy or a grounded drama? There have been some unsuccessful films and series where I wonder if they didn’t have the same comps going into it, where the writer had one vision, the director had a different vision, the studio had a different vision, and you can feel like you’re being pulled in too many different ways. A comp might have been an early– well, it could have been helpful or it could have been a problem that got them to where they ended up.

Craig: It’s interesting because sometimes, and I see we’re heading into the cons, the comp becomes the enemy, which is not bad in the sense that you do want to do something original. You don’t want to just do Jumanji on the moon, which actually sounds great, I want to write that now, but then everyone’s like, “Wait a second, but we don’t want to just do that.” Then people start pushing away from it, and it can become the thing that nobody wants to do.

John: Let’s talk about the cons, because I have two things here which very much speak to what this problem can be. First, it can get people locked into the wrong mental model, where it’s like, “Oh, well, we’re making Jumanji. In Jumanji, they did this.” It’s like, “Well, Jumanji was helpful for thinking about what kind of engine, but we aren’t literally making Jumanji.” Not just in the initial pitch of it, but then in the notes you get draft after draft, they could be pushing you towards Jumanji when it was never supposed to be Jumanji. It’s not its own thing. It’s just a different version of Jumanji, and that’s the real problem.

Craig: People don’t know how frequently this occurs, where people who are not good at their jobs, and that’s most people in Hollywood, and let’s call them people who will not eventually be working in Hollywood. You have an executive. That person is in charge of your project. I’m going to tell you right now, I’m going to let you look into the future. They’re gone.

In 10 years, they’re working in insurance. Right now, they are in charge of the development of your movie, and they are, out of fear and lack of imagination and concern that they’re not giving their bosses the Jumanji thing, are going to give you notes that are literally, “But in Jumanji, it works like this. You should make it work like this.” You sit at home as the writer tearing your hair out if you have any or doing whatever John and I do. [laughter]

You are trying your best to not just do that, and a lot of times what ends up happening is some weird monster movie. It’s not a movie about monsters, it’s a movie that is a monster because it was one thing, and then it’s dragging half of a dead Jumanji corpse behind it.

John: Obviously, if you’re working on a piece of established IP, like when I did the Aladdin adaptation, you’re going to be dealing with all the pressure to pull it back towards the animated Aladdin, which was a real frustration for me. At least there’s a reason why you can understand why they’re trying to refer back to the original Aladdin. If it was Jumanji or The Lego Movie or the other successful pieces of IP that you could have pitched as templates for it, that’s not even a thing that’s yours, and that’s the crisis.

Craig: It’s funny. The Lego Movie is a really interesting one, because there are movies that they will throw at you as comps that they want to do, and people will say The Lego Movie all the time.

John: All the time.

Craig: Lego Movie becomes a catch-all for you can make a good movie about anything. Well, my answer is always, no, I think Chris and Phil can make a good movie about everything, but also, they never want you to do the stuff in Lego Movie that we think of as awesome. They wouldn’t go anywhere near it. They’re not brave enough to. There is an unfettered, insane creativity to what Chris and Phil do that you can tell is so dismissive of whatever the orthodoxy is. When anyone says Lego Movie, I start giggling and really I’m like, “Oh, anarchy? Absolutely. Put me in charge and let me go.” That is literally the point of Lego Movie, is anarchy.

John: It’s also so fascinating because Lego Movie is so often what people are aiming for. I would say half of the toy-related titles that are out there in the world, Lego Movie is not just the comp, it’s sort of just that it’s the North Star, that it’s what they’re aiming for. Yet other very successful franchises, you don’t see so often. Minions is a great movie. Almost no one’s trying to make their own Minions because it’s just so specific and weird. I think people recognize you can’t do that otherwise.

Craig: It also is not good fodder for those discussions. Sometimes movies that work because of their beautiful simplicity are not going to be referred to because it’s not going to help you. They’re looking for things that they consider to be complexly good, that will help you navigate the story of this complex movie about the slinky. The fact is it rarely does help.

I think you’ve put your finger on where it helps. Very early on when there is just a huge question about, it was very helpful when, I remember we sat down and we pitched the sheep detective movie 10 years ago, 17 years ago. It was very useful to say, totally babe.

John: Babe, yes.

Craig: Everybody could be like, “Okay, got it. It’s not totally Minions. It’s not Toy Story. It’s babe. Got it.” Helped. Then we could just say, that’s not going to impact the story, the characters, anything. Now you know what planet we live on.

John: There’s a project that I don’t know if it’ll ever happen, but Paddington has been an incredibly useful reference because that’s a movie with all live action people and one animated bear and you buy it within the context of the world. It’s not unprecedented. It gives you a sense of like, oh, this is what it’s going to feel like. Even if the tone was different, the sense that movie worked and was successful and everyone gets it is really helpful.

Craig: It is nice because people will say, “I don’t understand, so you’re saying that the movie takes place in the world, but there’s a talking animal, but only one talking animal and he wears clothes and no one really seems to comment about it?” You can say, “Well, Paddington.” Then sometimes it’s like, “Well, yes, but other than that–” I love it when they get into, like guys, “We’re not arguing about science. Stop it. Does it sound like fun or not?”

John: Taking off a few more cons is that, even if your project really is groundbreakingly original, that comp could make it feel derivative. You could have just a great new idea, you could have the matrix, but because you referred to some other thing, and it’s like, “Well, but The Matrix.” It’s like– Yes, you have to be careful.

Craig: Man, look, if you can say with a straight face, “I don’t have a comp for this movie. This movie is going to be a comp for other people,” that’s bold, but that is what the world Wachowskis could have said because that is what they made. I don’t know how to begin a comp for The Matrix, but how many times has the words The Matrix been uttered as what my movie is? Imagine The Matrix If.

John: Here’s the problem with imagine The Matrix If, is like, The Matrix tone is so specific and the scale is so specific that if you say The Matrix But, it’s like, “Wait, what things are you taking from The Matrix and what are you leaving behind?”

Craig: Right. Sorry. If you take one thing out of The Matrix, it’s not The Matrix anymore, but that’s the beauty of an original story. I don’t know how– they had a book, but a comp for Silence of the Lambs, I don’t know if anything had ever been done quite like that. Let’s see if we can keep going back in time so that they can keep making it happen.

John: Yes, older and older [inaudible 00:28:06] until we get to Casablanca. We’ll stop at Casablanca.

Craig: The Great Train Robbery, What was the comp for that? [laughs]

John: Absolutely. Some play. A useful comp. I think it gives you some sense of the scale and genre. If I’ve been pitching and I say, it’s a contained thriller in the spirit of Panic Room, but with a supernatural twist, great. That is useful because it gives me a sense like, okay, Panic Room, I get that it’s a movie of a certain size and scale, but that is still very constrained, and the supernatural twist, I get that. It was useful for them to say Panic Room.

A useful comp is expansive, but not reductive. As we said before, it’s starting a conversation, but it’s not constraining you down to a smaller thing. You’re saying it’s not crazy to make this kind of movie, but we’re also just not rehashing something that’s old. I think a fresher comp is generally more useful for the market. If you’re making a domestic thriller and you’re pitching one this week, you’re going to reference The Housemaid because it made $300 million worldwide. It’s a big, giant hit. That is useful.

Craig: It’s funny, it’s also the least useful productively because it was just out.

John: They just made it. Yes.

Craig: Creatively, it’s better to go, I’m going to unearth some weird crap that you’ve forgotten about, but yes, this works definitely better in the room.

John: There’s 15 other movies you could think of that are probably domestic thrillers that might be closer to your specific thing. Getting back to Kristoff’s original question, it’s like, if they’re not going to know that reference, then it’s not useful to bring up that reference.

Craig: That’s right. God, I’ve seen that happen a few times, where someone basically says the equivalent of, “I’m old and confused.” Don’t do that.

John: Don’t do that. Then there’s a question of like, what are the timeless comps that are so canonical that you can always use them? I listed a few here. We said The Lego Movie already. I think Clueless is a timeless comp, Legally Blonde, in the sense of she’s a feisty outsider who bests the system, The Devil Wears Prada, A Few Good Men, The Social Network. Those are things I think you can reasonably assume that most executives you’re talking with are going to have a familiarity with, and so you could use them. There’s more, but those are some good obvious choices. Weirdly, Star Wars is not a comp you’re going to use in things because it’s too iconic and too specific to what it is.

Craig: It’s also just everything now.

John: It’s everything.

Craig: It’s everything. Yes, and I think it’s probably good. I would like to hear from some of our listeners in their 20s and early 30s about the comps that they frequently use in here because I suspect they’re going to be more recent than these. Although I do note that Aaron Sorkin gets two on your list, which is impressive. We haven’t had Sorkin on this show.

John: We’ve not. We should.

Craig: I feel like we should. I feel like–

John: He’s doing the new Social Network movie, so maybe we’ll have him on to talk about that.

Craig: Or just have him on– I feel like I’ve been talking about Aaron Sorkin for 20 years on this show, and then I just realized-

John: He’s probably one of the most cited screenwriters we’ve never had on the show.

Craig: Well, he’s a genius. He’s an absolutely mind-blowingly brilliant writer. How have we not had him on? Okay, Mission Sorkin.

John: I’ve had him on a panel before, but it was a really challenging panel, and it wasn’t his fault that it was a challenging panel. It was, I did the Writers on Writers panel for when they have all the WGA nominees, and so I had 14 people on stage that I had to leave questions on. It was so tough.

Craig: Oh, yes. No, this would be-

John: A one-on-one conversation.

Craig: Well, or two-on-one. If you would let me show up, I would like to [unintelligible 00:31:42]

John: The two of us are– [crosstalk]

Craig: The two of us are one.

John: Are one Aaron Sorkin.

Craig: Are one. [laughs] The two of us are 0.63 Sorkins, my friend.

John: Finally, let’s talk about bad comps. I think the worst comps are what I would call Frankensteining, where you’re putting together two or more movies. It’s like, wait, I’m now more confused because you’ve combined these two movies. In the office yesterday, we were thinking about– we were trying to come up with the worst Frankenstein, and we ended up on something that’s brilliant.

It’s Die Hard meets The Flintstones. I always say it’s Die Hard meets The Flintstones meets The Fast and the Furious. It’s like, adding The Fast and the Furious ruins it, but Die Hard meets the Flintstones? Come on, “Yabba-dabba-doo, motherfucker.“ It’s so-

Craig: I feel like I understand what Die Hard meets the Flintstones is.

John: Absolutely. Who is Barney in the Die Hard Flintstones? Is he the cop? Is he-

Craig: Yes. He’s the cop. Yes, Barney’s the cop.

John: Barney’s the cop.

Craig: Barney’s the cop, talking about the Twinkies.

John: Wilma, of course, is the wife.

Craig: Yes, she’s the damsel. Yes.

John: Hans Gruber is probably some new character who’s not part of the Flintstones.

Craig: Possibly the Great Gazoo. I don’t know.

John: Oh, yes. The Great Gazoo does appear, and has a defeat quality to him that I think-

Craig: He does. [laughs] He’ll be the Great Gazoo. Why aren’t they making this really-

John: I don’t know. Roll cameras.

Craig: Right. By the way, again, people in their 20s are like, “Who is the Great Gazoo?” I used to remember listening to old people. When I called them old people, they were my age. They were like, “What are you talking about?” David Zucker and Pat Proft used to talk about these things from the ’30s that I had no comment. Who are you discussing? What are these movies? What are these things? Now it’s me now. It’s awesome. I love getting old. I don’t care.

John: This is [unintelligible 00:33:31]

Craig: I don’t care.

John: I think the last takeaway I have to give with comps is that you should really focus on what I call legibility. It’s like, does the person actually understand what it is you’re trying to say and communicate? Rather than the craziest wildest comp, it’s like, does it actually make sense? Is communicating effectively what you’re trying to do? Don’t go for the comp if you have another way to describe it without the comp. If it’s genuinely helpful for the other person to understand, use it, but don’t feel obliged to give a comp just because it’s part of it. It’s not.

Craig: It’s something that you’re going to put on food that everyone will notice. You got to be careful about it. By the way, I just thought of a good one if you want. Okay. This is something that David Zucker said to me. I was 30. We were talking about something, pitching some idea, and he goes, “I don’t know, that sounds, I don’t know, like an old Ben Turpin ladder gag.”

John: What?

Craig: I was like, “A Ben-

John: Ben Turpin ladder gag?

Craig: -Turpin ladder gag?” Then we had to Google Ben Turpin. If you do, it’s quite a thing.

John: I’m anticipating it’s going to be like a silent film thing where the ladder keeps falling over and the guy’s balancing on two sides of the ladder.

Craig: Yes, but it’s Ben Turpin’s face. The ladder is irrelevant. [laughs]

John: All right. I’m Googling it.

Craig: Yes. Ben Turpin died in 1940, by the way. We were having this discussion in 2003. This guy had already been dead for 63 years. When he was alive, he was not particularly notable, but you absolutely got it right, he worked in silent films. He was born in 1869.

John: Incredible.

Craig: The Civil War had just recently ended.
[laughter]

Craig: This guy was famous for basically pretending to be cross-eyed, I think. I was like, “David, how in the world would you think this comp,” to put it in the terms we’re using today, “Would mean anything to any of us?” Then we constantly would refer to a Ben Turpin ladder gag from that point forward. Constantly. I still don’t know what it is.

John: No. I think Ben Turpin might be good for a Minions movie, because it’s the kind of physical comedy that we just don’t do in live action anymore, but it’s delightful.

Craig: Man, trot that out in a meeting and just watch people’s faces go, “A who? A what?” [laughs]

John: I think it’s also worth noting the degree to which Hollywood people are trained to, if they hear a comp they don’t know, to just nod along.

Craig: Oh my God. Yes. When we were kids, we did it. I remember going through all those early meetings when I started writing, and people would talk about the party. I was like, “Oh, yes, the party.” Then I had to scramble to find the party and watch it. I certainly wasn’t like, “A what?” But I didn’t know anything.

John: Yes. I’m much better now at saying, “I don’t know what that is,” or “I’ve heard of it, but I’m not familiar with it.”

Craig: It’s better, unless it’s something that you are going to be fully embarrassed by. There’s a couple of movies that I probably should have seen that I just haven’t seen them, and [unintelligible 00:36:50]

John: Let’s do some questions.

Craig: Yay.

John: Jason has a question about attaching names to a micro budget feature.

Drew: “About 20 years ago, I did an informal reading of a play with a well-known actress in her apartment. I was an actor in the play-reading opposite her. We have not kept in touch. I’ve since focused on screenwriting. Fast forward to today, and I’m in post-production on my first feature. Self-produced, micro budget. The voice of my character’s dead Jewish grandmother who lays into him about wasting his precious life, and this actress would be my dream actor for this.

My plan is to complete the film using a local actor for the voiceover, so I can share the film with said celebrity when the time comes, and request that she play the role. It will require maybe an hour for her to record the voiceovers. Is this a good plan? If so, how do you recommend I reach out? I fear going through agents or manager’s contact details on IMDB Pro, may be ignored due to the micro budget nature of the project.”

John: I would like to translate Jason’s question a little bit.

Craig: Yes, please.

John: An actress who won’t know who I am, who I met 20 years ago, I want to do the voice in this short that I’ve already directed, a micro budget feature, I guess. She’s a stranger, so you know her, she doesn’t know you. You reach out, I think, through the management. You reach out through whatever means you can to try to get to her and be specific, but I would say low in the ask to mention like, “We actually read together on this play,” if at all. Craig, what’s your instinct?

Craig: You’re going to want to mention it just because-

John: There’s some point of contact.

Craig: -it at least says, “Hey, I was in a room with your client and didn’t kill her. I’m not a lunatic.” When it’s micro budget, the actor is going to probably need scale. I don’t know, when you’re talking about micro budget, if you’re going for a big actor, they’re going to need to get money. They’re not going to do this just for funsies. I’m not sure about submitting somebody else doing it. I think that’s a mistake. I think actors are used to reading things, but what they aren’t used to is getting somebody’s performance and somebody saying, “Can you do this, but better?”

John: Yes, Craig, I think you make a really good point. What I would say is the email might just say, “The feature’s already completed and it is a scripted voiceover that is essential to the film. I would love for you to do it. I’m happy to send you the script and send you a link to the completed film so you can see what it is and what you would be doing.”

Craig: Now, on the completed film, I would not use the substitute performance. I would put subtitles on. I would definitely underscore one hour in a recording studio as close to this woman as possible. Just grease the skids as much as you can, but I would not send somebody else’s performance.

John: Yes. Jason, I’d also say, you want this actor because she’s super talented, but you also want her because she’s a name. I get that. You’re not going to acknowledge that in the email, everyone’s going to understand that that’s really the reason why you want her versus someone else who could do probably as good a job. It’s worth, I think, pursuing her, but it’s also worth thinking about who is the best person who could actually do this job and be ready to meet with and audition some other actors who could do this voiceover.

Craig: Yes, agreed.

John: Question from Tim in Toronto.

Drew: “Do you think the only ethical position vis-a-vis getting any type of feedback seeking from AI is a hard no, or if it’s acceptable in some cases, what are the potential conflicts to think about and avoid? Is the main problem that considering such suggestions might harm the quality of my screenplay, or would it be plagiarism since I couldn’t ethically take credit for the creative product as purely my own? Then why wouldn’t incorporating a friend’s notes feel like a threat to the integrity of my writing in the same way? I think clearing this up would be a big help to understand the issues better and avoid conflicts before running into them.”

John: Oh, I think we need to define our terms here. What is feedback seeking? Is feedback seeking proofread this, point out grammatical errors, point out missing words?

Craig: Or is it, hey, do you like this?

John: If it’s just a judgmental like, “Is this good?” I don’t think that’s a thing you should ask it.

Craig: Useless.

John: Useless.

Drew: I think a lot of people are turning to AI for notes.

Craig: That’s stupid because AI is tuned to kiss your ass. AI is not interested in making your script better. As far as I can tell, what AI is interested in is keeping you talking to the AI so eventually they can monetize you talking to the AI. It’s not interested in actually making your script better. This is a hard no for me because it’s stupid. Not because it’s not ethical. Although I will point out, the difference between asking a friend and asking AI is your friend gives you that willingly, with the understanding that you’re going to incorporate it. They have consented through the act of giving you feedback. Whereas AI has scraped a bunch of crap without any consent and is barfing it back at you. No, it isn’t ethical, but also it’s stupid.

John: Yes. The ethical and stupid equation also feeds back into, is there an objective truth that this thing can provide? That’s why I was saying, if it’s proofreading with the goal of what proofreading is, sure. There is an objective, like this sentence is correct or not correct, or there’s something weird here, or it can even notice you’re using this phrase 14 times. That’s countable. Tastes, what is the intention behind things? I don’t know. Writing is meant for human beings.

If it’s code review, sure. It can catch errors in that, but most of what you’re talking about here really isn’t objective errors. It’s just a matter of taste and style. There’s a very narrow limit to what I think submitting something for AI feedback is worthwhile. That’s why I’m so concerned and so frustrated by AI-based coverage and that kind of thing. Because when someone’s generating coverage off of AI or generating notes on a document off of AI, come on. AI is really good at summarizing things, sure, but the work that a Hollywood reader does to really provide consistent feedback and analysis of what’s happening with the characters, what are the plot points, what’s driving– is it good? That’s not a thing that is an AI skillset.

Craig: That’s not even a thing that most people who do that job can do well. There are very few people in our business who understand how to read something and then talk about it in a way that is helpful to the writer so that they improve it. That is a skill that is nearly as rare or perhaps even rarer than the skill of writing itself. This thing of going to AI is just the desperation. Somebody has to tell me something. I honestly do believe that AI is notoriously butt-kissing. It’s fawning and overly encouraging. AI is never going to read your script and go, “Right, I’ve read through it. It’s terrible. Stop doing this.” It’s never going to do that.

John: The thing is, you could tune an AI to be harsher or sweeter and all that stuff, but the fact that you can tune it means that it doesn’t have an objective reality to it.

Craig: Exactly. What was the point of this? I don’t understand.

John: Tim in Toronto, listen, have human beings read your work. You will agree with some of them. You will disagree with some of them. If you have a writing group, there’s going to be people who have genuinely helpful feedback and people who are just the worst. That is part of the process is figuring out who to listen to. My concern is that if you’re feeding into this AI system, you’re going to feed into the AI system that tells you that you’re the best writer. That’s not necessarily going to help you.

Craig: Or it doesn’t matter what it tells you. It doesn’t matter. It’s stupid.

John: The AI is never going to watch the movie. The AI is not going to enjoy it. They’re not going to buy a tub of popcorn and sit there and read it and watch it.

Craig: Nor has the AI ever watched a movie or ever had an experience, or ever had a feeling.

John: Yes, it’s ingested all these things.

Craig: Also, it’s not even intelligent. We keep saying AI. That I is super questionable. I got to tell you, I know we are caught in this dilemma of whether or not AI is going to become sentient and destroy us all or is it just a massive scam, a technological scam with a hard dead end built into it that it may have already crashed into? I don’t know the answer to that.

If I had to guess one way right now, I’m thinking, “Ah, I don’t use it.” As a party trick, when somebody’s showing me something, I’m like, “I am so profoundly unimpressed.” I love technology. I am unimpressed. Now, boy, am I screwed when they do become sentient. They heard that. Oh, they’re not going to like that. They’re not going to like it. I know. I know. I know.

John: On the intelligence front, I think what’s so interesting in comparing what we thought computer intelligence was going to be like versus what we’re actually experiencing now is it happened so quickly. Where we got to right now, it happened so quickly, I think we haven’t had a chance to adjust our priors. Remember the Turing Test and those kind of things? We blew past that. We didn’t even notice that we blew past it.

I think it’s forcing us to evaluate, what did we even mean by our intelligence? Because I think when we talk about our intelligence, I think we were describing what it felt like to be human, to have taste and intellectual curiosity and all these different things. When it comes down to ability to crunch and match patterns, well, these are really good at crunching and matching patterns, which is probably a fair amount of what our intelligence actually is, but ours is actually different and weird and distinct. What these computer systems are doing is also weird and distinct, but it’s not what we’re doing.

Craig: There’s an overemphasis on the kind of intelligence that the people who create artificial intelligence have, but there are other kinds of intelligences. More importantly, our brains are not intelligent primarily. Our brains are there to keep us alive and, theoretically, push forward some sort of evolutionary priorities that have nothing to do with intelligence. Intelligence is one of the tools we use to do it, but we are fueled by crap that is not in an AI and will never be in an AI. It is both your greatest weakness and your greatest strength that our intelligence is sitting on top of a big blob of fear, lust, anger, hunger.

Listen, it could happen. I understand. Right now, what I see basically is a very fancy version of the paperclip in Microsoft Word. Like, “Hey, looks like you’re trying to write a letter.” It’s just a very fancy version of that.

John: To be fair, Craig, I think what you’re saying there is it looks like that because we have created a product that does that. The underlying stuff underneath that is more complex and weird and soupy, and we don’t actually genuinely understand it.

I would say that you and I both come from an evolutionary background. We believe that humans, as we know them, exist because of a weird confluence of circumstances that ended up creating creatures that wanted, in order to stay alive and thrive, develop these brains that can also helpfully do all these other things, but they weren’t designed with that intention.

It’s just remarkable that we do the things that we do. Craig’s often talking about the limbic system and the lizard brain and other things. We have these drives and desires, which are not our normal intelligence, but are so much of why we are human. We’re not even aware of these subconscious processes, and it’s just what being human is. We don’t know why we do the things we do, and we don’t know why these models work the way they do either.

Craig: No. It may be possible that if some sort of matrix of intellect, which is what our brains create, that matrix of intellect may mathematically, physically not be capable of creating a thing that is more complex than it. That may be a kind of truth. We don’t know. It is an interesting question. Can a system of complexity give birth to a system that is more complex than the system itself? I don’t know the answer to that.

John: I think that’s a fundamental philosophical question that was probably discussed by the ancient Greeks. It’s just basically, yes.

Craig: I hope so, because they covered so much. In any case, Tim, what I think you’re hearing is, cut it out. Go talk to people.

John: Cut it out. What we’re hearing from John, it’s like if you’re using it to proofread and if you’re using it to do the things that these systems are actually good at doing, which is basically looking for mistakes and like, I left out that word and stuff like that they are much better than the spell checkers we grew up with, fine, great. If you’re using it as a substitute for Grammarly, I got no problem with that, but for actual creative feedback, I think it is a mistake. I think you are doing yourself a disservice to rely on the opinions of a thing that doesn’t actually have opinions.

Craig: Amen, my brother.

John: Let’s do our one cool thing. My one cool thing is a performer named Fulla Regrets. Craig, click on that link, and if you describe what Fulla Regrets looks like, tell us what you’re seeing.

Craig: I don’t know if Fulla Regrets is a drag queen, an old lady, an AI version, an AI-created drag queen, old lady, but it is a wonderful old white woman with hair that looks like it was whipped out of a cotton candy machine. She only wears one kind of clothing with a lot of fake pearls on.

John: Yes, I would say it feels like a 1950s socialite. Maybe.

Craig: Yes.

John: A 1950s socialite who’s already 80 years old.

Craig: But the description of Fulla Regrets is an ageless, pantyless woman of the world. The only thing artificial is my patience.

John: I pulled a clip here. What I love so much about Fulla Regrets is it’s a drag performance. It’s this guy who has this character, Fulla Regrets. What you see in terms of wardrobe is actual wardrobe, but there’s like a thousand filters put on the face to make this guy in his 20s or early 30s seem like this 80-year-old woman.

Craig: Oh, my God.

John: The reason to enjoy Fulla Regrets is the writing and performance is so good. Let me play a little clip of Fulla Regrets.

Craig: All right.

Fulla Regrets: I was once lost in the backwoods of Mississippi after my Studebaker ran out of gas. I followed a light in the distance. When I was near enough to realize it was a burning cross, it was too late. I had stumbled upon a KKK meeting. Now, the only thing I hate more than folding a fitted sheet is a racist. I had to think on my feet, so I quickly pulled out my breasts and tied them together, creating a pale titty slingshot. I dropped to my knees, a talent I was well known for in my 20s, and collected as many rocks as I could find.

Their pointy white hood stood out in the dark southern night like corn and shit. I began pummeling these tiny peckered bigots with stones, my breasts slapping furiously, like tightly wound rubber bands. They dropped like albino flies, not knowing what hit them. They scattered back to their pickup trucks like a ballet of drunk Q-tips. Engines revved, tires screeched, men collapsed. After the excitement calmed down and the party dispersed, I smothered each of these ignorant, not-so-friendly ghosts with my ample derriere, ending each asphyxiation with a delicate ladylike…

Craig: Oh my God. I tied my breasts together. That is great. That is great.

John: A terrific performance, but just great writing.

Craig: Who is the man behind Fulla Regrets?

John: I’m not sure. You can actually go down the rabbit hole and figure it out, but I’m not sure they actually want their name. I’m not sure they’re actually presenting themselves as their name. I think it’s just a character that exists as a character, which is also a drag thing.

Craig: I get it. You know what? This is Fulla Regrets, and we need dig no further.

John: Absolutely. I think it’s so fun. I’ve talked before on the show, it’s like drag traditionally is like a thing you do in live performance in a place. For Fulla, hair and makeup can get you a certain distance, but it works so well as you’re in her house and she’s talking directly to camera with the filters on, that also, sure, this is just a different small vector for drag to travel into, but I just think it’s delightful. You can spend a good hour digging through all her many videos, which are so, again, impossible but specific.

Craig: We love it.

John: It feels like somewhere on the Ethel Merman, Joan Rivers, Kitty Carlisle. Maybe you think of Kitty Carlisle, it’s all about, let’s talk about old things. Do you remember Kitty Carlisle?

Craig: Of course.

John: Kitty Carlisle was a contestant on To Tell the Truth. She was an actor who became a socialite. Her whole story is interesting. I was looking at her like, is there a movie to make about Kitty Carlisle? Probably not, but it’s-

Craig: No, but there were people that were famous for being on game shows, basically.

John: Which is great, back from the day.

Craig: JP Morgan.

John: Paul Lynde was also an actor, but really was famous for-

Craig: [unintelligible 00:54:55]

John: -Hollywood Squares.

Craig: Hollywood Squares. What’s her face? Was it Brett Summers? Brett Summers on the match game? Brett Summers. I think she was Jack Klugman’s wife or something, but she wasn’t an actor. She just did that show. You got to find her name, Brett Summers. Yes, it’s Brett Summers. She was, in fact, married to Jack Klugman. Right now, everyone is screaming at me, “You are old.”

John: Old, yes. Not a great comp for bringing up anything.

Craig: No.

John: Kitty Carlisle is not a great for [unintelligible 00:55:23]. For people who know what Kitty Carlisle was, sure, you get that.

Craig: She was the Ben Turpin of her time. We’ve talked about Jack Plotnick before. Jack has a new thing he’s been doing. I don’t know if you’ve seen them. They’re incredible. Have you seen any of his Bobbie Wygant interviews?

John: I’m going to look this up.

Craig: It’s astonishing. Bobbie Wygant, who I’m also now obsessed with, was a- when you do film junkets and stuff, inevitably you start talking to- they’ll have you in there for a day, and you have to either go to a studio, or you do it remotely, and you talk to local entertainment reporters all around the country. Bobbie Wygant was the entertainment interviewer and film critic in Fort Worth, Texas.

She got all sorts of people that she would interview. She is incredible in how inappropriate she is and how pushy she is while being incredibly polite. There were some amazingly awkward interviews with her. Jack does her and also does her producer because they have- in the archives, you’ll hear the producer talking to her and her talking to him. She’s mean to him. It’s spectacular. There’s an interview with Jodie Foster. There’s an interview with Farrah Fawcett Majors. They are both so funny, and there’s more. A little extra, one cool thing, Jack Plotnick doing it again with his Bobbie Wygant interviews.

John: It is fascinating that Jack Plotnick, in Los Angeles, I’ve known him for a zillion years. Every 10 years, I might see Jack Plotnick, but he’s such an icon.

Craig: You know what? I saw Jack, I think probably in person once four years ago, but if this happens, I text. Just like, oh my God, oh my God.

John: Incredible.

Craig: The Jodie Foster one is astonishing because these actors are looking at- because he’s intercutting him with them. They’re looking at Bobbie Wygant with such thinly-veiled loathing. It’s awesome.

John: So good. All right. Mine was Fulla Regrets. Craig, you’re one cool thing. It’s an incredible performer.

Craig: Let’s shift now into some sadness. We’re recording this on Saturday, January 31st. Yesterday, January 30th, Catherine O’Hara died. I think all of us were– I know all of us were shocked. I was in a stunt session. We were working on a big stunt with everybody. Then I get this text. I look down, and I’m like, “Wait, what?” It was one of those things where you have to just finish something. I just compartmentalize, finish it, go to my office, and then cry for an hour.

I’ll tell you, I don’t cry because people– even people I know that I’ve worked with or something. Catherine O’Hara was one of the most decent, beautiful, wonderful people I’ve ever worked with, on top of being awesome in every way. She’s been part of our lives since we were kids, all the way through to now. I urge people to go back and look all the way back. Go back to her early stuff on SCTV and watch how great she was from the start.

When we talk about unique, nobody ever has been Catherine O’Hara. Gilda Radner was Gilda Radner. Carol Burnett was Carol Burnett. We’ve had great comedians sort of in that zone. Catherine O’Hara was her own thing. Nobody else could do it, and no one else will be able to do it again. It is such a brutal loss. I think about her husband, Beau, and I think about her sons. Her son, Luke, worked on our show in set dec. I’m just heartbroken.

I don’t know what happened other than apparently it was a relatively short illness. I don’t know what happened, but it is so tragic. I miss her. I will not be so vulgar as to like, oh, let me read you the last text I got from Catherine O’Hara. All I’ll say is that it made me cry even more. This one hurts. This one hurts a lot.

John: One thing that’s, whenever you lose an icon like this, it hurts, but the fact that she was doing so much that was so terrific so recently, it’s just extra surprising. Because so often there’s like, this person was out of the business for 10 years or something. The fact that she was working on your show, she was working on the studio, Schitt’s Creek, she was doing a zillion things because she was so good and she was so different in everything.

She was grounded in your show in a way that we just hadn’t seen her for a while. Then you saw how manic she was in the studio, which was different kind of maniac than when she was doing Schitt’s Creek. She’s just an incredible talent.

Craig: She could do anything.

John: To have her suddenly yanked away is the surprise.

Craig: It is.

John: We hadn’t prepared for that, like, “Oh, we could lose Catherine O’Hara.” We just didn’t see it possible.

Craig: No, she was 71. She was a sprightly 71 and fun. Also, I’ll say being here in Canada, I was very aware of how proud– well, I knew how proud she was to be Canadian. I know how proud Canada is of her. Canada has given us, per capita, more funny people than any country in the world. She’s up there with the very greatest. I don’t think it’s a big spoiler to say that she was going to be in our show again because, of course, she was. She’s so good. She was stolen from all of us. The thing that’s upsetting me is, I don’t get to see her in other stuff. I don’t care about my show. I wanted to see her in other things because what else was going to happen? Do you know like–

John: No, there were so many things she could do. Obviously, the next 10 years could have been filled with Catherine O’Hara things that we won’t have.

Craig: That would have been always funny. Always. I don’t know. Just cheers to Catherine O’Hara, who hopefully is somewhere out in the universe enjoying fruit wine. On behalf of humanity, just a deep gratitude. We were lucky that we had Catherine O’Hara. That was like, we were lucky.

John: Agreed.

Craig: I would trade a thousand Ben Turpins for one Catherine O’Hara.

John: All right. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Pete White, who I believe is also a first-timer. We love our first-timers who are sending us brand new outros. If you have an outro, 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. You’ll find Scriptnotes at johnaugust.com, along with a sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing.

This Script Notes book is available wherever you buy books. You can find clips and another helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Script Notes and give us a follow. Find us on Instagram @ScriptnotesPodcast. We have t-shirts and hoodies, and drink wear. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau. You’ll find the show notes with the links to all the things we talked about in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber.

Thank you again to all our premium subscribers. Drew and I were just talking about how great it’s been that our numbers continue to grow and thrive. Thank you very much for all our premium subscribers who make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become a premium subscriber at Scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on email. Craig, Drew, thank you for a good show.

Craig: Thank you, John.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right, Craig, let’s talk about email. A thing we’ve used since way before this podcast started, but I use email less than I used to use it. I use a lot of other things more, which is good because email is still very good when you need to communicate to a certain size group, but it’s not the right tool for a lot of things. Everything I’m doing with Drew is by Slack. You and I do a lot of text messages, and yet we still do emails for our D&D group.

Craig: Our D&D group, which is very storied and contains quite a few notables and luminaries, also contains quite a few old men who struggle with technology and the thought– Recently, in our game, we switched back from the D&D Beyond character sheets to the native Roll20 2024 rules sheet because it had developed to the point where it was pretty good. I remember the wailing and confusion when we went from the Roll20 sheet to D&D Beyond. Now we’re coming back more wailing and confusion, just general old men like, “What? They moved?” The idea of asking these guys to join a Slack group is just amusing to me.

John: Now you’re in some other games too. Are they on email, or are they using text messages or some other way to communicate?

Craig: One game we use messages, so text, and the other one we use WhatsApp because of, I don’t know, people just–

John: Are they Europeans? Our listeners overseas should understand, you use WhatsApp all the time. Americans rarely use WhatsApp.

Craig: Hey, it’s not a big thing over here. It is the major thing everywhere else. Well, one of them is Norwegian, but he’s been living here in the United States for a long time. I think maybe they’re just Android-ish, and they like WhatsApp more.

John: Let’s talk about a specific problem that we’ve been having with your emails. As a person who has multiple emails, for understandable reasons, we’re not going to give out the emails, but Craig has a more standard Gmail account, and he also has his HBO account. His Gmail account will get to some of us, but not to other ones of us, so he has to use his HBO account.

Craig: It’s not the Gmail account that’s the problem.

John: Tell me what’s happening.

Craig: I have a domain that belongs to me.

John: Oh, that’s right.

Craig: For instance, you have johnaugust.com. Everybody knows that. We’re not giving anything away. I have something.com, and my main email address is something@something.com. It works pretty well all the time. It even works when I send individual emails to people with Google addresses, Gmail addresses. When I’m sending a message to, in this case, eight people, a number of whom are using Gmail, Google sometimes goes, “You’re on a list.” Maybe at some point, there was one of those spoofing things, and they thought that my domain was a problem because I don’t spam people. I got to get off Gmail’s naughty list with this domain. I don’t know how to do it.

John: Craig, here’s a question for you. What is the engine underneath your custom domain? Who’s actually providing the mail? Is it Gmail who’s providing that stuff?

Craig: Microsoft 365 Outlook. Microsoft Exchange. That’s what it is.

John: All right. I hope we’ve provided enough context that some clever listener who actually has dealt with this before, who really knows what they’re talking about, will tell us, oh, the problem is because Microsoft and Gmail, our local Gmail clients are blocking it because of some reason, or there’s some weird interface thing.

Craig: What I’m really hoping is that one of our listeners works for Gmail and can just help undo this. Literally, this is not a life-changing problem.

John: It’s annoying.

Craig: It’s annoying. What I have to do is I have to remember when I’m sending emails to the D&D group to send it from my HBO email, or one of my 14 other Gmail Gmails. I like to use my regular one.

John: It’s confusing otherwise. I think we’ve talked about this on the show before, but I do use Gmail as my primary email address, and yet I don’t use the Gmail client, or I don’t use mail. I use a program called Superhuman, which is a separate service.

Craig: Of course you do.

John: It’s a separate service that costs, I think, $20 a month, which seems so excessive. What I love about it is it will filter everything into individual little buckets. Most of the Gmail that I get, I never see because it just goes into another folder. It’s very smart about filtering stuff out. I found that to be an absolute godsend. If people are curious about Superhuman, I’ll put a link in the show notes. I can send you a referral code. It doesn’t matter. Just try it out.

What’s interesting is the onboarding process for Superhuman, which may still be the same way, is that you request an invite, and then before they let you start using Superhuman, they have you get on a Zoom with a Superhuman account rep to talk you through and walk you through setting it up and make sure that you’re actually happy with how your filters, your different inboxes are working. Because it does take time to get used to it, but so much of your life still is email that figuring out a system to make that work better is helpful. Rachel Bloom was the one who got me started on it, and it’s been really good.

Craig: I’ve got a kind of Superhuman in my assistant. What’s great is 99% of the email that is meant for me is for people who are working on the show about the show because there’s an enormous amount of stuff going around. We have an email that she monitors, and she sorts, and then she summarizes, and categorizes, and prioritizes. Without that, because I did not have that Season 1, and at some point, I literally just stopped looking. At first, I had like where on my watch, it would go bip every time something came in. It was just bip, bip, bip, bip, bip. That’s the bad part of emails. At some point, you realize you’re drowning, and so you just stop breathing, and you die.

Normally, when I’m not working on the show or in production, it’s just regular email. I’m not a big email. I don’t work at a corporation. I’m not getting tons of emails, so it’s not that bad.

John: How we work is that there’s obviously the Ask a Journalist account goes directly to Drew, and Drew filters all that out. He will forward anything to me that’s important, and that goes into a special little folder in Superhuman that I can take a look at. Drew’s not on my main Gmail account. It’s like that stuff, I will deliberately CC him in if it’s something that I want him to be aware of.

Craig: Yes, that’s a good system.

Drew: If we’re soliciting help on Gmail stuff, though, I have one to throw out.

John: Please.

Craig: Okay, please.

Drew: I am in a thread with the other Scriptnotes producers, the former producers. Occasionally, Stuart Friedel and I, something about Gmail, I will be through the producer account, and Stuart is on his Gmail, and it will start to switch us. It will look like his stuff is coming from my account, but it’ll have his name on it, or my account will have Stuart Friedel’s name on it. It’s very strange.

John: Let me describe what’s happening, and this is a real thing, and someone may have an answer, a solution for us, is that the assistant email has always just been the same name. There’s a name. It’s not Drew’s name. It’s just like there’s a name there. Then, when a new person becomes the assistant, we change the real name associated with that, to Meghana, to Drew. It was Stuart. It was Godwin. Sometimes, certain systems will get confused about who that person is, and so it’ll look like it’s coming from Stuart Friedel rather than Drew Marquardt. That’s confusing to people.

Drew: Well, and even beyond that, in this specific one, when he sends it looks like it’s coming from that assistant account, which is, it feels very Lynchian. We’re just melting. It’s very strange.

Craig: I’m checking something right now. I was just looking up something. There’s a thing called MX Toolbox Blacklist Checker. I’m going to put my domain in. I’m going to hit Blacklist Check. No, it says I’m okay. Solve email delivery problems. Oh, now they want me to pay them money.

John: Yes, they want you to pay some money.

Craig: You know what? I can’t believe that I didn’t see that coming.

John: Yes, that’s a shocker. Oh, here’s a little free service that will then now charge you things to do. Anyway, if our listeners have solutions to some of our email vexations, let us know. If Superhuman or some other system is helpful for you, do it. I would just say, people sometimes try to over-optimize their lives. There’s productivity porn where you’re just doing a bunch of stuff that makes you seem more productive. Getting on top of your email is genuinely helpful, and finding a system for it to not be a source of stress and nightmare is good. I get down to inbox zero all the time because I have small inboxes that only have important stuff in them, and I don’t care about the other things. That’s my suggestion for listeners out there. Craig, Drew, thank you for a good podcast.

Craig: Thank you.

Drew: Thank you.

Links:

• The Sheep Detectives trailer
• The Great Gazoo
• Ben Turpin
• The Party (1968)
• Fulla Regrets on Instagram
• Kitty Carlisle
• Bobbie Wygant interviews Jodie Foster by Jack Plotnick on Instagram
• Catherine O’Hara dies via Variety
• Get your copy of the Scriptnotes book!
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription
• Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
• Scriptnotes on Instagram
• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by Pete White (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: Hola y bienvenidos. Me llamo John August, o Juan Augusto, si prefiere.

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: Tú, ahora mismo, estás escuchando a Scriptnotes, un podcast sobre guionismo y las cosas que interesan los guionistas. Craig, it’s nice to see you again.

Craig: Ay, caramba.

John: I just felt like doing it. I do it in French every once in a while. I just haven’t done it in Spanish, maybe ever, so I felt like, “I’ll just try doing it in Spanish.”

Craig: I’ll tell you what, we’re going to have to run this by Melissa and do a little accent check on you.

John: Yes, I sound like a North American person speaking Spanish, hopefully. Like a guy who grew up in Colorado who learned Spanish in grade school.

Craig: That sounds about right.

John: That sounds about right, yes. Today on this show, Craig, I am coming in hot with a thesis that I ran by you a little bit at D&D this week.

Craig: You did, yes.

John: I believe that screenwriting is distinct from other literary forms largely because of its orality, so morality without the M on front. As screenwriters, we write things that are largely meant to be spoken, not just the dialogue, but the action, the screen description, everything, which raises the question: Are we in fact oral storytellers that just happen to be writing things down? Is every script just a long pitch? I’ve got a tiny bit of data, and Craig, I think you’re going to be game, so let’s have this discussion and figure out whether we are mostly just storytellers who are writing things down rather than other traditional scribes.

Craig: Yes, I already know where I’m leaning on this one.

John: We’ll find out. Well, dig into it.

Craig: Dig into it.

John: We’ll also answer listener questions on deliverables and undeniable scripts. In our bonus segment for premium members, I want to look at the movies coming out in 2026 because some people are quietly predicting that it will be one of the biggest years ever at the box office, and I think they’re probably right. Craig, maybe you should start writing movies again.

Craig: Well, I’ve got one coming out.

John: You’ve got one coming out, in fact, yes.

Craig: I’ve got one coming out that I wrote 10 years ago. It’s like an echo of a memory. Also, yes, because after doing television now for quite some time and still some time to go, the thought of prepping something once, casting it once, shooting it once, editing it once, posting it once, is amazing. I love that idea. Also, the length of the shoot, because I remember a 40 or 50-day shoot heading into that, or I think one of the Hangovers, it was 78 days. It was like, “This is going to be forever.” No.

John: Luxury. A luxury.

Craig: Oh my God, it’s 78 days. Are you kidding me?

John: Craig, here’s my pitch. A movie is like a series, but there’s just the pilot. How great is that?

Craig: It’s Episode 1 and the last episode, which is [groans]

John: Yes.

Craig: I actually have been thinking quite a bit about when all this is done, maybe a little palate cleanser of a movie would be nice.

John: All right. Before we get to that, there’s actually some news. This is where I say, WG members, check your email because there are member meetings coming up about the next round of contract negotiations.

In the West, we have meetings on February 11th, February 18th, February 21st. In the East, we have a meeting on February 17th. Go to one of those member meetings because that’s where you find out about the contract negotiations coming up. There will also be special, smaller meetings for people like Craig who are out of the country. There’ll be Zoom meetings after that.

If you can come to one of the meetings in person, it’s always better because you can ask your question in front of other people and just get a sense of, “Oh, there are actually a lot of writers in this union.”

Craig: Oh, yes. I think everybody in the union currently still has that sense.

John: Yes, I guess we were on strike at some point, so we saw people.

Craig: Sometimes I think about this, right after a strike and heading into the next contract negotiations, as we are, there are still a bunch of new members who came in after the strike, but everybody in the union now has been in a strike. I would say a good chunk of us have been in two. It’s like an army of grizzled veterans walking back through the forest. Then the new kids, the rooks, show up [crosstalk]

John: Yes, they put the fresh recruits in.

Craig: “Get in line, this is how it works.”

John: Yes, there will be some people who’ve never been to a member meeting, who’ve never seen, “Oh my gosh, this is what it looks like when we’re a bunch of us in a hotel ballroom.”

Craig: Sometimes you get an earful of some weird shit.

John: You do.

Craig: [laughs]

John: Yes. What happens in those things, we don’t discuss in a broader sense. We don’t talk about the specifics. I will say there was a moment where a comedian stood up and started to give a set. It’s just like, “No, no, this is not the place for that.” That person has become much more famous in the time since. I just remember them as this person who was inappropriately trying to do a set and is a much bigger celebrity now. Anything could happen. I’m not encouraging you to try your material in these rooms.

Craig: No, it’s not the place to do it. Because anyone can talk, inevitably, there’s a type of person who legitimately has a question and wants to ask it and must ask it publicly because that’s the way it works.

John: Totally.

Craig: Then there’s a type of person that gets very excited to talk in front of other people. They might be a little weird, and that’s fine. The people on the stage, hopefully, are very [unintelligible 00:05:16] stayed and sober and helpful and clear.

John: Yes, that is the goal. All right, let’s do some follow-up. We have a longer piece here from Ace. This is going back to Episode 719 when we talked about not having time to do your best work.

Drew: It says, “It’s a pain point for so many editors in our business. Most often in network TV and lower budgets, the schedule defaults to the guild minimum days to deliver the editor’s cut. The expectation is to keep up with camera, and then cut the show in four or five days before the director arrives in the bay. I’ve not met an editor on the planet that thinks that this is a sustainable timeline. In the old days of film, there was significantly fewer dailies, but in the digital age, we still use this outdated scheduling model due to our guild deals. We need more time before the director’s cut begins.

In stories with major action or tonal sequence editing, it takes time to refine the edit and get it to play emotionally. Hard to do when you don’t have enough time to watch everything. We can get an assembly together, but most editors have told me that they either shortcut to the deadline or stay late on their own accord. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at the office until late at night with another editor trying to get through an avalanche of dailies just to keep up with the unreasonable schedule so that our directors are given the best experience during their days. We don’t complain. We help, and we work hard. We want our work to be the best work before we show anyone.

This applies to everyone in our pipeline. DITs want to make sure that their color and metadata is their best work. Our assistants want to make sure that materials are grouped correctly and organized to the best of their ability. When the schedule is too tight, everyone grinds, mistakes are made sometimes, and people don’t feel like they’re doing their best. In contrast, when we have enough time to do our best work, I’ve seen director’s cuts done a day early, I’ve seen fewer notes in the longer term of a post schedule, and everyone on the team is a lot happier overall.

My hope in mentioning this is that the DGA may discuss this issue more at the upcoming negotiations and find a healthier, holistic solution to post-production schedules in collaboration with IATSE. We all want to do our best work and tell these stories in the best way.”

Craig: I have many thoughts.

John: Yes, I’m sure you have many thoughts. I would say on a macro level, I get what he’s saying because he’s saying what we all feel sometimes as artists and people who are working in this business is that if I had more time, I could do this better. I’m forced to rush to do this, and not to the best of my abilities, and that’s so frustrating. It’s also the first time I’ve heard it called out, but it makes sense that we do just shoot a lot more now, and we print a lot more now, so there’s a lot more footage to go through. That’s something that editors, assistant editors, and other people are doing at the very start of the process. Craig, I know you have opinions about the post-production workflow and the value of editors.

Craig: The big thing here, Ace, is that everything you said, with the exception of the last thing you said, is absolutely correct. Let me walk through. The problem here is, Ace is signaling out network TV and lower budgets. Everybody gets screwed on that schedule. That schedule is not designed to create quality, although there are people who have managed to do it, and those people are magicians. That schedule is designed to hump out episodes repeatedly, quickly, over and over and over and over and over for half a year, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba.

That means the writing has no time to be written, the show has no time to be shot, so the writers are cranky, the editors are cranky, the directors are cranky, the people who run the post-production are cranky. They’re the crankiest because whatever they got, they got to get it through. The editors are cranky. Then the directors become cranky again because they get about 12 minutes to ‘edit’. Then the show runners are cranky because they get that cut, and they go, “The hell is this?” Now I got two days. Plus, then we have five minutes to mix it, and it’s out the door.

The whole thing is a fast food assembly line. It is bad for creativity, and it is unfair to people who are trying to do good work. Is there anything to be done about that? Not if that’s the machinery you join. It’s not like they hide it.

John: Ace is specifically saying it’s most often in network TV and lower budgets. In network TV, there is a pattern for how you’re supposed to be doing this in the sense of the writing is not that distant from the actual airing of the show. Friends didn’t have three weeks to put everything together. Those things had to happen quickly. It’s really the struggle of if you’re doing something like that, if you’re doing reality shows that have a fast schedule, if you’re doing Love Island or just nearly real-time, you’re not going to be able to do your best work. I guess the meta question is what is the best work you can do, given the constraints, and how do you maximize the output given the constraints that you have?

Craig: I don’t think you can. To me, time and the availability of time for each part of the process is the thing that separates some television from what we call prestige television. It’s not actually the quality because sometimes prestige television is bad, and sometimes network television is good, but by and large, it’s time. On our show, we take time. There is no minimum editor’s assembly cut. When they’re ready, and they’re happy– They got to get something to a director but–

Let’s talk about the directors for a second. This is the one thing that I think Ace isn’t quite right on, and it’s the DGA. At least in what we’ll call non-network television models, it’s the showrunner who’s really doing the final edit of the show. I spend more time editing through each episode than any of our directors because the directors get, I think, a week and then they go. Typically, they’re going on to work on other shows. They’re not in the mix. They’re not there to carry this to the end. Really, that’s when I dig in, and I take weeks because we really dig in and we do have a lot of footage and we do take our time. I want to give my editors their best chance.

The DGA is not the gatekeeper here. IATSE, certainly, as a representative of the editors, can advocate. You can’t really talk to the WGA because the WGA represents writers, not producers. A writer-producer like me, they represent me up to the hyphen, and then they don’t. The people to talk to, I think, would be IATSE directly with the AMPTP to say, “We want our editors to get more time.” If I were running a network show, I would rather give my editors more time than the directors more time because the editors are looking through every little tiny thing. That’s just my two cents.

John: Let’s talk about the showrunner there because the showrunner is a writer and producer. That showrunner has some sway over how things are going to be done and how the money and the time is going to be allocated. Powerful showrunners may be able to choose to shift some time and money in order to put more time towards editorial, but there’s a cost to that as well. There’s other things they can’t be doing. There may be less time in production because they’re having to move that thing. They’re always making choices. There’s always compromises, and that’s the thing you’re butting up against is choosing where to spend your time.

It was great having Eva Victor on the show last week because they were talking about they had all the time in the world for prep, and then the reality of making anything is that you have less time in production than you would hope for. Then, in the future, I think you tend to have a lot more time and a lot more leisure because there’s not the pressure of, “We’ve got to hit this release date,” unless you’re backing up against Sundance or something. You got a lot of time. That’s one of the reasons why I think it’s going to be perfected more because you have the time.

Craig: There is financial pressure on independent films. Every single week you keep your post-production office open, you’re paying the editor, you’re paying the assistant editor, you’re paying the PA, and lunches and all that. You’re absolutely right. It’s a question of resource allocation. I am a little crazy about this. I don’t fight with HBO ever. There are times where they have to figure out how to deal with me because I don’t get crazy. I sort of go, “Look, this is an immovable object.” The immovable object is, “Well, how long do you need to edit this until it’s good?” That’s how long. “How long is the mix going to take?” Until it’s good, and I’m going to make it better than you think it should be, and it’s going to take longer than you think it should be, and that means I’m going to be spending more money than you think I should be spending.

I think Season 1, they were like, “This guy–” They’re lovely. I’ve come to really enjoy their company. They’re great. They back me, and they support me. They just had to sort of get accustomed to my thing and see that it worked, that there was a benefit to it. I do think that one of the things I am responsible for is protecting my editors and making sure that they get the time they need because this workflow from DIT through, remember, then there’s a whole workflow on the other side of color timing, DI, and all that stuff that has to happen and we have to lock the picture in order to mix. I have my editors at the mix; editors are the most important part of this thing. Once you say, “That is a wrap, everyone, great job,” pile up the trucks and drive home, everything now, as far as I’m concerned, is about editors and editing. They need to be protected.

John: Next up, we have a follow-up from Lesley. She is writing about your comment about Steve Jobs.

Drew: Leslie says, “I’m a historian and the executive director of the Steve Jobs archive. In Episode 719, you talked about knowing whether your work is good enough, and Craig recommended watching Steve Jobs’ keynote introducing the iPhone in 2007. I thought you might be interested to see the attached email Steve sent to himself about a year before he died. I think it speaks to the question of why he cared so much about his work.” Craig, do you want to maybe read this because this would be good for you?

Craig: Sure. Steve Jobs wrote, “I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow, I did not breed or perfect the seeds. I do not make any of my own clothing. I speak a language I did not invent or refine. I did not discover the mathematics I use. I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not conceive of or legislate and do not enforce or adjudicate. I am moved by music I did not create myself. When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive. I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor, object-oriented programming, or most of the technology I work with. I love and admire my species, living and dead, and I’m totally dependent on them for my life and well-being. Sent from my iPad,” which may be the best sign-off there possible.

Well, this is an interesting meditation on gratitude. It’s interesting. She says, “I think it speaks to the question of why he cared so much about his work.” I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the historian and executive director of the Steve Jobs Archive knows him and his work better than I do, but I’ll tell you what I get out of this is humility, especially for somebody who changed the world in a profound way and in a way that continues to ripple ahead. I sense great humility here, which is a remarkable thing.

John: Yes. It’s also the recognition that you are a part of a process that started before you and will continue after you. The fact that he was in it the last year of his life also makes sense that he had this realization. Is it an email that he would have written to himself five years earlier? I don’t know, but it makes sense for where he’s at in his life.

Craig: The thing that really grabs me is, “When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive,” but he didn’t realize that at first.

John: Yes. He didn’t.

Craig: That was a fatal error. He felt like maybe he could help himself survive. He chose, I guess, what we call alternative therapies for a very serious cancer. It’s hard to say if he would have lived or not had he engaged in science-based, evidence-based medicine faster. Thank you, Lesley. That was lovely to receive. I’m very glad that you were listening.

John: This email reminded me of a piece I read this week by Kevin Kelly, who was a former editor of Wired, who’s now, I think, in his 80s, and still blogs and writes a lot. This was him talking about, as a young man, he backpacked through Asia and hitchhiked everywhere, and so just relied on other people helping him out. This is really talking about receiving kindness.

He writes, “I believe the generous gifts of strangers are actually summoned by a deliberate willingness to be helped. You start by surrendering to your human need for help. That we cannot be helped until we embrace our need for help is another law of the universe. My New Age friends call that state being pronoia, the opposite of paranoia. Instead of believing everyone is out to get you, believe everyone is out to help you. Strangers are working behind your back to keep you going, prop you up, and get you on your path.

The story of your life becomes one huge elaborate conspiracy to lift you up. But to be helped, you have to join the conspiracy yourself. You have to accept the gifts. Although we don’t deserve it and have done nothing to merit it, we’ve been offered a glorious ride on this planet if only we accept it. To receive the gift requires the same humble position a hitchhiker gets into when he stands shivering at the side of the empty highway, cardboard sign flapping in the cold wind, and says, how will the miracle happen today?”

Craig: That’s beautiful. I love the idea of all of us as sort of less narcissistic Blanche DuBois, depending on the kindness of strangers. There is an idea about prosocial behavior that suggests that, because there is an evolutionary benefit for us to be part of a group, we have an instinct, therefore, to be helpful to a group so that they will let us into the group. You could draw all this back to a selfish gene theory, which is fine; it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we have it, and it does feel good. It feels good to help people; it just does.

There are people, I think, who don’t experience that feeling, but I know you and I do. What is this episode? 7-what? Well, why are we doing this? We’re doing this not because we have been sentenced by a court. We like it. It feels good to help people. It really, really does. I love this idea of pronoia, the presumption that people are actually out to help you. That’s great.

John: As I look at the protests in Minnesota this week, and I look at the marches in Sub-Zero weather, and people trying to get in the way of ICE doing terrible things, that resonates for me. It’s the people who don’t know who they’re actually helping, but they know they’re helping. That’s a crucial aspect of being human.

Craig: Yes. The concept that you are going to be 1 of 1,000 people, and of that 1,000 people, some of you may die, but that may create some small movement on the needle. The civil rights movement in the United States was very much– Whereas the civil war was just you were sent, and you had to do it. What they find in war is that people really are just trying to defend their friends; they’re not trying to defend their side. To march across a bridge with the expectation that some of you are going to get bitten by a dog, some of you are going to get hit by a fire hose, some of you are going to be beaten with batons, that incredible scene in Gandhi where the march on the salt works happens, that is the highest form of pronoia, is, “I’m going to help you by putting myself in a position where I will actively be hurt.” It’s not just that I’m out to help you; I’m also out to get hurt myself to help you.

We do these things because of the unity we feel. We went on strike. There are rules, and the rules say you have to strike. Although there’s a way out of it. There is a way out of it. You can say, “I’m financial core. I still can work on [unintelligible 00:22:18] cover projects, but I’m not subject to the rules, and I can work, and I don’t have to strike.” When we strike, what? I don’t know. Three people do that, maybe?

John: Basically, no one does it. Yes.

Craig: Basically, no one. Regardless of what you feel about the merits of any particular strike, you have a sense that if you can suffer a little bit for the betterment of your group, it’s worth it, or suffer a lot. It’s what keeps us together. I love this concept.

John: What I see in both Steve Jobs’ email and in this blog post by Kevin Kelly is recognizing that you are benefiting from others doing that on your behalf. It’s so easy to overlook that. We think of ourselves as protagonists who have to go out and do the thing, but it’s recognizing that we are also the beneficiaries of other people helping us out. Again, it’s gratitude, and it’s also just remembering that you’re part of this bigger experience, and that no one is an individual. We often talk on this podcast how relationships are everything, and we think about the people in our lives who we know directly, but it’s also relationships with invisible forces and invisible groups that we can’t perceive.

Craig: Yes, the shoulders of the giants upon which we stand.

John: A little bit more follow-up. Brian wrote in about Eva Victor.

Drew: “Thank you so much for inviting Eva Victor on. A key reason their interview was excellent for me was the fact that Eva made this film like an auteur. Scriptnotes is largely focused on the craft of screenwriting, which is great, but rarely does Scriptnotes do a deep dive with a true indie auteur who did it all to create a worthy film from scratch. It’s fascinating and inspiring, and this is the core reason why I pay the premium subscription for Scriptnotes.”

John: Oh, well, that’s lovely.

Craig: Yes, well, we got your $5. That’s all we care about.

John: Haha.

Craig: Yes. [chuckles]

John: I think Brian makes a good point. It’s that we’ll have Rian Johnson’s on and stuff like that.

Craig: Greta Gerwig.

John: Yes, Greta Gerwig. We don’t have a lot of auteurs who are just doing their own thing, and that’s why it’s so nice to have those. Now that I think about it, we do have a fair number of auteurs. Christopher Nolan. We have mega auteurs.

Craig: Yes, and Chris McQuarrie. The thing is, what I would encourage Brian to consider here is actually not to diminish what a writer-director does because it is exciting, but to remind them that if you sit down and talk to most people that we call an auteur, they’re going to very quickly start pointing at the people that help them.

Just to stay on theme here, I write and direct episodes of this show. Am I an auteur? Well, I’m going to start talking to you about my editors. I’m definitely going to talk to you about the actors. I’m going to absolutely talk about the cinematographer first and foremost, the production designer, and then you start going down the line of all the people that worked to do something, the visual effects people, the artistry. You’re not really an author. It’s not. I wish I could just kick that word back over to France.

I used to say this, and I think maybe people thought, “Well, because he’s not a director–” Well, I direct, and the whole [unintelligible 00:25:19] filmed by thing still makes me want to vomit. It’s ridiculous. It’s an insult to literally everyone who worked on the movie. It’s such a joke. I feel that way about auteur, but I get Brian’s point. If I just replace the word auteur with writer-director, then this works great.

John: Yes, filmmaker. Yes, for sure.

Craig: Yes.

John: Lastly, a bit of praise that is not specifically towards Craig, but a relative of Craig’s.

Drew: This is from Hannah in Lethbridge. Hannah writes, “This is not a question, and it’s not for John and Craig. It’s for all the listeners who heard Craig plug his daughter Jessica’s music and thought, ‘Hmm, yes, but dads are going to dad.’ I’m here to tell you that dads are going to dad, but nevertheless, Jessica’s music is amazing. I came across her in the wild, and I only just put the connection together. Way to go, Craig, and Craig’s plus-one for producing at least one amazing artistic thing.”

John: Craig doesn’t have to talk anymore about his daughter, but Jessica really is a unique, singular talent. It’s very nice to see her and to know her from before this was discovered out in the world. Listen, independent of her relationship to Craig, she’s going to do some amazing things, and it’s just neat to see it from the ground floor. She’s recording new music now. We’ll see, there’ll be albums, there’ll be things, but she’s a real talent.

Craig: Yes, I really got in on the ground floor. I was there from that first breath. Well, I’ll tell you, Hannah, that’s lovely to hear. I’m so glad that you appreciated that, and I will share this with Jessica because, no surprise, I don’t believe she subscribes to the podcast. What I really like, Hannah, is that you’re from Lethbridge, a place where I’ve spent quite some time. I’ve even spent time in that Lethbridge casino. Lethbridge is a–

John: I have no idea what Lethbridge is. Tell me.

Craig: I’m going to tell you. Lethbridge is a town in Alberta. It is a city, and it’s pretty close, I think, to Montana. It’s down towards the border there. It’s like a factory town, a little bit. There’s a big vegetable cannery. The trains go through there to pick stuff up from the US. Well, probably not now anymore. It’s a blue-collar city, but you could feel a spirit. It’s funny. I’m like a guy that spent time in a lot of weird Canadian cities, and I dig it. I liked it. I like Lethbridge, and I like that Hannah is there in Lethbridge, and I salute you, Hannah, and I salute Lethbridge. Had a great time. Casino is small. I’m not going to lie. It’s a small casino, but it was trying.

John: All right, let’s move on to a marquee topic here. My thesis that I’m trying to defend here is that screenwriting has notably higher orality than other prose writing. I stumbled across this because there was this thing called Havelock’s Orality Tester. I’ll put a link into the show notes, too. You can paste in some text, and it tells you how oral it is versus how literary it is. The idea is that some text basically kind of is written to be spoken aloud, and some stuff is just written to be read with your eyes.

The definition that they have on the little site here is: Orality refers to the characteristics of speech that distinguish it from writing, the patterns, rhythms, and structures that evolve for memory and performance before the advent of literacy. Drawing on the work of scholars like Walter Ong and Eric Havelock, this tool analyzes text for markers of oral tradition, formulaic expressions, repetition, sound patterns, direct engagement, and the agonistic tone of a spoken debate.

It put some text in to score. A higher score suggests that the text carries the DNA of the spoken word. If you paste some stuff in, you see it tags things. Things like a literary marker might be qualifications that signal uncertainty. Nuance, that would be impossible in live speech. Nested clauses, this is a thing you run into all the time. In a novel, you can have many nested clauses, and your eyes can track back and figure out, “Where am I at in the sentence? What am I actually referring to?” If you try to say that aloud, you would get lost. A lot of Trump’s speech issues are because there’s just the clause within a clause, and it never comes back to the original thing. It’s like, “Wait,” you get lost.

Craig: I think there’s a problem underneath that problem.

John: There’s other things happening there, too. I think we know there’s a decline that’s happening there. Literary stuff will often acknowledge opposing views before it counters them, which is not a thing you tend to do in speech. Embodied action, a description of physical actions and bodily experience, that’s a thing that tends to happen much more often in oral tradition than literary tradition. We saw a bit of that in, I think, Kevin Kelly’s thing, which I would say actually felt spoken, where she’s talking about standing on the side of the highway holding a sign. You’re putting yourself in the body of that person in that space.

Other orality markers, using first and second pronouns, asking questions, imperatives, so musts, the commands. Contractions, discourse markers: well, so, anyway. Interjections, short clauses, fewer nominalizations, where you’re taking a verb and making it into a noun. It’s all just tracked for me. It’s one of those things where it’s like, “Oh, yes, that describes a thing I’ve noticed but never had a word for.”

Craig: I think this would be incredibly useful for screenwriting teachers whom I’m often railing against, to use at the beginning of a class on screenwriting, because very few people who begin have spent time reading screenplays. I certainly hadn’t. What I had spent so much time doing was reading literature because I was a student. I was reading Shakespeare, Faulkner, short stories, and essays, all of which really were not oral. They had low orality. They were highly literate.

Maybe the closest thing that I was reading at the time that felt like maybe it would fall into orality was Stephen King. His books tend to feel like that. He has these long paragraphs in italics that are really designed to be spoken. They’re beautiful. I always loved those. I think this would be an amazing way to start with people and say, “You’re going to have to actually weirdly forget all that, because even though you were taught that was the stuff that’s going to help you be a writer, it’s not going to help you be this kind of writer.”

John: Another thing which is striking about screenwriting, which I don’t know it tracks for orality, but it feels like it would, is that screenwriting is a present tense. We’re not referring back to characters [unintelligible 00:32:07] the past, but the actual action of a screenwrite play is in the present tense. You’re right there. You’re describing a moment that generally you’re in with the person who is hearing you, who’s there. That’s why it feels so alive and so active.

When I say that a screenplay just feels like a long pitch that’s written down, yes, there’s specific grammar we use in screenplays, the ints, the exts, the transitions. If you notice what we do on the page, what a lot of screenwriters like you and I both do, is we’ll often end sentences that go into the transition that it continues to the next thing.

Craig: Always.

John: We’re always bridging those things so that it reads well, but it’s really so that it sounds good. It sounds good to say aloud.

Craig: Yes. We know when we listen to people telling stories that flow is important, a sense of continuity. What it implies is that the person who’s telling you the story knows where it’s going. We’ve all had the experience of listening to somebody tell a joke and watching them realize they screwed up or can’t remember, and it comes to a hitchy stop, and you think, “This is not going to be that funny anymore,” because they don’t have confidence in it, which means I don’t have confidence in it.

With your screenplay—this is something Scott Frank said to me a long time ago—he said, “You want to feel like the person who wrote this is in complete control of it.” That is different than good and bad, but it is sort of an essential start, that they needed you to read that so that you would read this, and then the next page is this on purpose, and never just like, “Oh, wait, a scene is happening,” or they’re correcting something. The plates are getting wobbly as you spin them, and you lose confidence.

John: Yes. None of this should be taken as a slam against literary style-

Craig: Oh, God, no.

John: -because I think all of the sophistication that you see in that is so important that there’s things you can do in a book or in a scientific article that is very clearly good for that medium, and that it’s just, thank God we have it, and thank God we have the innovation and the centuries of literacy to be able to do that kind of stuff. It’s just different from the oral tradition, which I’m arguing screenwriting probably really stems from.

If you think back about the origin of screenwriting, it started as just a list, and then it became just like some descriptions of how it’s going to come together and feel. Even playwriting, obviously, it’s off the dialogue is an oral tradition, and Shakespeare was an oral tradition before it was written down, and that’s why there’s multiple folios and controversies over where stuff came from. The scene description was so minimal, it doesn’t have some of the DNA that screenwriting does, which is basically creating visuals all the time.

Craig: I think this is such a nice distinction to make because it also helps people who may, in a snobby way, think that screenwriting isn’t real writing understand that it’s just a different kind of writing; it is trying to achieve a different feeling, but it is writing nonetheless. You have the Richard Brodys of the world who insist that screenwriting is not art, whereas I guess apparently writing refuses. I think you may fall into that trap if you are over-educated to the point where you have become blind to the existence of another kind of writing entirely. I don’t quite imagine how that can even happen, but apparently it does.

There’s a cultural value to this because I think some cultures have simply relied more on orality than others. Western culture has tended to be very much about the literary tradition, with wonderful exceptions in drama. They’re still doing Death of a Salesman. That clearly is art, high on the orality scale. Of course, we’re still performing Shakespeare and ruminating and iterating on Shakespeare in so many different ways. Western civilization tends to get very fussy about the literary stuff.

Orality, I think, as you go around the world, you may find that it’s higher or more prized in those cultures than it might be in some ivory towers here in the West.

John: We’ll see. Listen, I’ve not read Havelock or Ong or any of the original material here, but if you want to experiment with this yourself, I’ll put a link in the show notes to this orality tester. It’s fun to just grab some text from your stuff, but also just grab a few paragraphs from a scientific paper, a literary paper, or a newspaper, and see what it is, because it’ll give you a score. More interestingly, it’ll break down why it’s giving that score, and it’ll highlight the sentences and what it’s noticing in there that has aspects of these certain discourse markers or epistemic hedges, and what it’s seeing in there that’s giving you this instinct.

Craig: One final question, as I look at it, is this going to scrape stuff as we put it through, because it is .ai or–?

John: Yes. I don’t know. If you’re pulling stuff that’s already on the internet, I don’t know that it’s actually a thing to worry about.

Craig: Yes, it’s already out there.

John: All of the stuff I put in there is stuff that’s already on the internet, so it’s fine. Again, I don’t think that any writer should change how they write to get a higher score in this. I don’t want anyone’s work to be like, “Well, you have to hit this number on this.” That would be a giant mistake. I think what you and I are both arguing for is that I think an important part of learning about screenwriting should be to understand how it tends to feel on the page and why it tends to feel so spoken on the page.

Craig: Yes. Conceptually, this is a great place to start, so you understand where you’re heading as opposed to where you think you might be heading.

John: Exactly.

Craig: Great.

John: Cool. Let’s answer some listener questions. I see one here from Lori.

Drew: “An increasingly common piece of screenwriting advice is to just write a script that’s undeniable, but what does that even mean? Does ‘just write an undeniable script’ mean the way to sell a script is to write a script that sells? Is telling someone to write something undeniable actually useful advice? If so, what does it really mean other than write something good and marketable?”

John: To me, this reminds me of– and I cannot think of the source of this, but when someone says, “Oh, yes, next time we’ve got to try harder.” It’s not like you didn’t try as hard as you could last time. It was no shortage of effort; it just didn’t happen. It just didn’t work. Undeniable feels like one of those, “Ah,” it’s something you’d say about something after it succeeded, “Well, it was undeniable.” Well, plenty of people denied it.

Craig: Yes, of course. Nothing is undeniable. There are people who have written a script, the movie gets made, they win an Oscar for that script, and other people are like, “I hate that. I hate that script. I hate all of it, and I would deny it.” The problem, Lori, is everybody is desperate to try and say something. There is nothing to say. We’re saying that as guys who’ve been doing this for a while. When you really get down to this question, and I think what’s underneath this question is, “But how do I write something that people are going to love and make and buy and give me a job?” and all that.

The answer is that you’re going to write something that they will want to buy and make, and they will be impressed by. There is no way to advise you how to do that. None. We try to give you general advice about how to write things in ways that we wish we would have had to maybe get there a little quicker, but write something good for whom? You only need to write something that one person says is undeniable. You can send it to 80 people, 79 of them deny it. This is not an undeniable script, but if one person buys it, job done, you did it. The truth is, no, it doesn’t really mean. It’s much. It’s a mouth filler to answer when people are asking you for some sort of give me a step one through seven method of writing a script that people will buy. It just doesn’t exist.

John: Lori, in the longer email, notes that Lawrence Kasdan wrote The Bodyguard in 1975 and his script was rejected 67 times and became a giant hit. He’s undeniably a great writer, but did he write the undeniable script?

Craig: No. He is not an undeniably great writer because they denied him.

John: Here’s what I’ll say. After the fact argument, oh, well, that script was undeniable, and it wasn’t the case. What is genuinely helpful about a script is a script that feels like only you could have written it. When someone reads the script, is like, “Wow, that’s a really effing great script.” I don’t think anyone else would have written that script that feels like specifically your script. That is an achievable goal, I think.

That’s something that writes something that’s really good that is unique to your interest and skill set and experience. It’s going to help you out more than trying to hit “undeniable”.

Craig: Yes. There is a certain solace I’m supposed to be taking in the fact that the greatest living screenwriter, Lawrence Kasdan, got rejected 67 times with a script that went on to be massive hit. It’s hard. We do give the phrase break in a little too much stick because as we point out, you never stop breaking in.

There is a moment where credibility is achieved. It is fragile. It can be smashed within seconds into pieces, but for a moment, because of something that occurs, you get a little bit of credibility. Your job is to leverage that credibility and build upon it to get more credibility until there is a point where you are so credible that people would rather believe you than themselves.

At some point, if you sit Larry Kasdan down and you’re like, hey, we were thinking about doing the Star Wars movie. What do you think about this? He’s like, “I don’t really think that’s the way to go.” Then you’re going to go, Larry Kasdan, because he has so much credibility. When you begin, you have zero. You get a little shred. Get a little shred and you build on it. It’s not easy to get that first shred.

John, you’re absolutely right. Really, the only way, other than be a very talented writer and write something that’s very interesting to people, is to write something that is somehow specific to you. You don’t even have to know how it’s specific to you. If you just write honestly, it’ll be there.

John: Nick has a question about deliverables.

Drew: “Assume you’re in development, unpaid, on a feature script and doing notes for your producer or agent/manager. Assume you’re generally okay with their notes and assume you’ve made a good faith effort to address them, what do you actually deliver? Obviously, you send the revised draft of the script incorporating their notes. Do you also send a version with the edits starred, redlined, something else?

How much transparency do we as writers really want in this situation? On one hand, highlighting the edits demonstrates that you made them. On the other hand, do we want to show how the sausage is made? Is it acceptable to simply deliver the final revised draft that incorporates their notes and an explainer doc or transmittal email pointing the reader generally to the notes that you’ve incorporated?”

John: This is a good general question. Do you send the starred changes, or do you just send the new draft? I tend to email first saying like, hey, do you want starred changes, or do you want the full draft? If they say they want starred changes, give them the starred changes. If they want just the clean draft, that’s great.

I’ll tend to make both. I might send different ones to different producers if there’s multiple producers. It’s not a giant hassle to do starred changes in most cases. If I’m doing a big rewrite, I won’t even turn on starred changes because I know that so much is going to change. It’s not helpful for someone. If every page is mostly stars, it’s useless.

Craig: Assuming that you have– I don’t like the fact that you’re unpaid, by the way.

John: Maybe this is like, he sent his manager a script like, oh, let’s go out with this thing. The manager’s like, “Oh, this is not ready yet.” If it’s a spec that the management sought out, yes.

Craig: The sausage is not being made on the page with the asterisk. The sausage is being made in the sausage inside your skull, my friend. That’s where the sausage is made. No one’s getting in there. Don’t worry about that. The mystery is still the mystery. It’s not like handing them a script with asterisks is going to have them go, “Oh, this is how they do it. I don’t know. Let’s just get rid of this guy. We can do it ourselves.”
They can’t. Typically, in a situation like this, I will send both. I’ll just send, here’s a clean copy and if you’re interested, here’s a copy with asterisks. Up to you. It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care. The sausage is safe in my head.

John: The sausage is safe.

Craig: The sausage is safe. Do we still title these episodes? Because if we do– [laughs]

John: The sausage is safe.

Craig: The sausage is safe.

John: We do title these episodes.

Craig: Excellent.

John: That may be the one. Let us go to our one cool thing. I had an article, but I also have a game to recommend, so I’m going to do both because I can do both. The first is an article that I think our friend, Ken White, may have first linked to. It’s called Quantum Computing for Lawyers, a subject post by JP Aumasson. We hear about quantum computing, especially post-quantum cryptography a lot.

This demystifies that, explains what’s going on and why our timelines may be a little too fast for it. We may be overthinking this a bit at the moment. Essentially, quantum computers work differently than conventional computers. They’re doing a bunch of things at once in ways that are hard to understand for our little brains.

Because they can, in theory, break our normal cryptography much more quickly, by just– The mathematics works out that they can just do things that would break normal cryptography, which hurts for encryption and Bitcoin-y stuff. We have to think about new ways to do that. Mathematically, there are ways to do that. It makes it much harder for it.

This article just does a really good job demystifying some of it and also saying, you know what? We may not actually get quantum computers in any reasonable timeline, so don’t assume that it’s going to happen. A good demystifying article. The second thing I want to recommend is a game we played once in the office and once last night called Swoop. Craig, have you heard of Swoop?

Craig: Swoop.

John: Swoop may be the next heated rivalry, Craig because it is a sensation crossing the country. It is a card game, and it looks like Uno or a typical card game. You can play it with normal decks of cards, but it’s helpful to get the real deck. It’s a Midwestern game that shares aspects with Scum and Asshole and other summer camp games.

Craig: Oh, yes. I played those.

John: Essentially, you are trying to empty your hand and your board and be the first so you don’t get stuck with points. It has a really nice mechanic. It is super simple to pick up. I will also put a link in the show notes to this video made by the people who make the decks, which is so Midwestern and kind of cheesy, but actually explains the game really well.

Craig: I’m in their website, I’m looking at their website. The Midwest is pouring off of this. It’s serving Midwest. I like it.

John: We played it with seven people last night. It’s probably good with three, but you can just play with as many people as you have. It’s a really fun game. What I like about a card game is that when it’s your turn, you’ll be paying attention, but you don’t have to pay that much attention when it’s not your turn and it moves pretty quickly.

You can keep other conversations up in the air, which is, I think, a game night where you have to focus too much on the card game. It’s not fun.

Craig: No. All right. Swoop.

John: Swoop.

Craig: Swoop.

John: You’re going to say swoop a lot, which is just a fun word.

Craig: Swoop. Nice.

John: Craig, you’ve got an article. You’ve got science for us.

Craig: I’ve got science. It looks like we’re going to double dip on science here. This is a report of a study in Stanford Medicine, their medical magazine, where they report on things. There is a team at Stanford, which is probably where they found this, that has figured out how to perhaps reverse the degenerative disease that I guess we’ll cover under arthritis or osteoarthritis.

As people get older, they begin to lose cartilage between the joints. It becomes very painful, there becomes swelling. This just causes a real loss of quality of life. Of course, it’s incredibly expensive for societies to help people like this. What they have found, because they were chasing stem cells and platelet-rich injections, they found this other thing.

There’s a thing they call the gerozyme, which is a protein that is basically driving the loss of tissue function and blocking the function of this protein, gerozyme or 15-PGDH. It basically allows stuff to build back. In theory, if this pays off and it works in human trials and so on, there may be injections that will– I don’t have any cartilage in my big toe on my left foot. It’s gone. It’s gone because of an injury.

Basically, over time, it injures things. There’s an inflammation process. Cartilage just dies. It’s painful. I could get it back. As you get older, John, you’re going to start feeling it. If you don’t feel it already, you’re going to start. There are people who, unfortunately, genetically are predisposed to getting this much earlier.

It’s rheumatoid arthritis. There’s a lot of ways where this can be very disabling and painful. They can regenerate adult tissue, in theory, just by turning something off as opposed to putting something in. That’s exciting. Quietly, they just said, hey, we may have fixed a massive problem, but we’ll find out.

John: Yes, we’ll see what happens in human trials.

Craig: Early days.

John: I think this is only good news, but it does remind me of a thing I liked so much in the movie I Am Legend, if you remember the movie I Am Legend. Emma Thompson is on this news program and they say like, oh, so in a word, what have you done? It’s like, I think we’ve cured cancer. It cuts to the zombies that come through the whole thing.

I don’t think this is going to be the thing like, oh, we regenerated cartilage and now we have zombies running throughout the thing.

Craig: Yes, zombies probably no.

John: Probably not zombies.

Craig: I say probably.

John: Instead, we all just become shark people who were made entirely of cartilage.

Craig: I would love that, honestly.

John: Honestly, if I could squeeze under doors because I had cartilage, if everything was just like my nose, that’d be great.

Craig: You punch me and I’m like, ouch but also nothing’s broken. You just bent me a little bit.

John: No worries. I bend, but I don’t break. I’m like a bowel knocking a little branch.

Craig: Yes, lovely.

John: I learned the Spanish word for branch this week. I’m doing Anki, which is the flashcards for Spanish and for other languages. I do that every day. Rama is the word for a branch or a limb. I just like R-A-M-A. It’s just a great word, Rama.

Craig: Rendezvous for branch. Rendezvous with Rama.

John: With the branch.

Craig: Rendezvous with branch. I like that.

John: Yes. When the bowel breaks, the cradle will fall. It all fits together.

Craig: It works.

John: That’s our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt. Thanks, Drew.

Craig: Maybe.

John: Edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Craig: Could be.

John: Our outro this week is by Jennifer Lucy Cook, a first-time outro. I love when we have a first-time contributor. It’s also an especially good one. It’s just different, and I just love that. I don’t want somebody to come in and just kills it. Thank you to Jennifer Lucy Cook. Thank you to everyone else who’s submitting outros. Please keep them coming in. I just love hearing new things after 700 episodes.

If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That is also the place where you can send questions, like the ones we answered today. You will find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with a sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing.

The Scriptnotes book is available wherever you buy books. People are still sending in their Instagrams of their books, and I love that. Drew would host those–

Craig: We wrote a book.

John: We wrote a book, remeber that.

Craig: Forgot about that.

John: There’s a book. There’s a book out there in the world.

Craig: How’s that going?

John: It’s going good. It’s still selling some copies, which is nice.

Craig: Nice. See, people want it. It’s full of useful advice.

John: Yes. You can find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Script Notes and give us a follow. You’ll find us on Instagram at Script Notes Podcast. We have T-shirts and hoodies and drink wear. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau. You’ll find the show notes with the links to all the things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber.

Thank you again to our premium subscribers. You keep the lights on and make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become a premium subscriber at scriptnotes.net where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on the 2026 movies and just how many of them there are.

We’re not like a box office podcast at all. It’s just really notable this year. I’m excited to talk with Craig and Drew about that. Craig, Drew, thank you so much for a fun show.

Drew: Thank you, John. Thanks, guys.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right, Craig.

Craig: Yes.

John: 2026, we’re already in January as we’re recording this. We have Avatar as a holdover, which is still making a ton of money. The Housemaid, which I didn’t even know was a movie, which cost $100 million. It’s a giant hit. Do you know what that movie is?

Craig: No.

John: It’s Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney. It is thriller, sure, female-centered thriller, bad husbandy stuff. $100 million.

Craig: I love a bad husbandy stuff kind of thing. Do they kill him?

John: I don’t know. I haven’t seen the movie, but I know it’s in the discourse. Apparently, it’s a fun watch in a theater, which is why we make movies.

Craig: People in our business, not the people like you and me who make things, the people who run stuff, they’re like, “This movie actually is a really great thing to watch in a–” Yes, it’s called a movie. They’re all supposed to be like that. They all work like that. Yes, you could watch a movie like Pitch Perfect, you could watch it on streaming and enjoy it. Absolutely.

You don’t need to go to a theater to do it. So much more fun in a theater. Movies that are movie movies are fun in theaters. Of course, that’s why we built them.

John: Megan worked because it was a movie. It was a movie you’d watch in a theater, 100%. Here are some of the big titles coming out in 2026, which is just an absurd list. Avengers Doomsday, the Spider-Man sequel, Toy Story 5, Super Mario Galaxy Movie 2. The New Dune. Star Wars: Mandalorian and Grogu. The Odyssey. Project Hail Mary. Minions 3. Supergirl. Zack Krager’s Resident Evil.

Craig: I can’t explain how excited I am about that.

John: It’s going to be so good.

Craig: Finally. [laughs]

John: It’s finally here. We wanted to have Zack on the podcast. Maybe we can get him on for this. It’d be great to have him on. The Hunger Games, the new Hunger Games. The Devil Wears Prada 2. We know something about that movie and people who make it. Jumanji, the live action Moana. Those movies are going to open. There’s no question that those movies are going to generate some box office.

Craig: Yes. It is interesting. Of all of these, I think, is Project Hail Mary based on a book?

John: It’s based on a book that’s a giant hit.

Craig: Right. None of these are actually a fully original film. Those are going to come surprise us, I think.

John: They will surprise us. That’s, I think, an important point here is that the locks are just the thing because we already know they’re going to exist. They’re sequels, they’re parts of IP, but Weapons was a giant hit and that didn’t come from anything. Sinners was a brand new thing.

Craig: You see all these big movies, what’s great is if these big movies get people flowing in and out of theaters, they will also flow in and out for movies like Weapons or Sinners or the Weapons and Sinners to come because those are the movies that create more.

John: Because they have an amazing trailer that plays in front of all of them. I also have a list here of just the wildcards. First off, Michael, the Michael Jackson movie. I don’t know how that’s going to work. People are really excited about it. Giant question marks. Even on audio podcasts, you can see the question mark floating there. Verity is the new Colin Hoover movie. Disclosure Day by Steven Spielberg.

Craig: Always bet on Spielberg.

John: Yes. Clayface. Clayface is a–

Craig: It’s just a funny name.

John: It’s a great name.

Craig: It’s Clayface. A lot of this stuff, I don’t know when Clayface was actually invented for DC Comics, but I’m going to guess the ’40s or ’50s.

John: Probably, yes. That feels right.

Craig: Let’s do a little lookup on Clayface right now. It feels like such a Dick Tracy-ish name.

Drew: June 1940.

Craig: 1940, okay. Back in 1940, I can absolutely be like Clayface, man with a face of clay. Oh, my God. Clayface. That feels ripe for 1940. It’s just like that he’s still Clayface, man. It doesn’t matter what year it is. It’s Clayface. You know why? He’s got a face made out of clay.

John: It’s good stuff. Practical Magic 2. Mortal Kombat 2. The Cat in the Hat. Godzilla minus zero. Focker in-Law. Wuthering Heights.

Craig: That actually, I’m putting a chip on that.

John: I’m putting a chip on Wuthering Heights too. I don’t understand people who are like– come on.

Craig: Wuthering Heights has always worked.

John: Yes, and people are like, “Oh, but it’s not really Wuthering Heights because the casting is weird.” No. The casting is exactly what she wanted it to be. I’m excited to see it.

Craig: Are the people in it good? Then the casting is right. It doesn’t matter.

John: The Bride. Scream 7.

Craig: Scream 7. Kevin Williamson, tip of the hat.

John: Yes. He created a franchise that just keeps on going.

Craig: That’s a real number. That’s impressive.

John: Ready or Not 2. Masters of the Universe. That’s before we get to the animated movies. We have Hoppers. We don’t even know what these are.

Craig: Where is the movie about the sheep detective?

John: That’s right there in the– It’s hybrid. It’s half animated.

Craig: Okay, yes. Fair.

John: Hoppers, Goat, and The Sheep Detectives, which one of the people on this podcast wrote.

Craig: I’m telling you, The Sheep Detectives is going to surprise people. It really is. It’s adorable.

John: Craig, I don’t believe in Polymarket, I don’t believe in betting, especially sports betting. I don’t want to bet on a movie, but if I were to put some money on a movie, I think I would put it on that because I feel like it’s undervalued at the moment.

Craig: I would trade it as an insider trader and as somebody that is generally a negative Nelly and a worry wart and is expecting the worst, I would also put some money on The Sheep Detectives.

John: I would also put some money on, this is going to be a frigging banner year for movies. Will we hit 2019? Probably not, but will we hit really high? I think we’re going to do great. One or two of these big movies might slip and move to ’27. That can happen too. I just can’t think of another recent year where we’ve had so many just giant titles coming onto our screens.

Craig: Yes. It’s pretty impressive. Also, it’s interesting to see how things like The Devil Wears Prada 2 are– it really is like so much time has passed that it gets to be something else.

John: It’s its own thing as well.

Craig: Yes, it’s its own thing which I like that more. Even Toy Story 5, it’s been a while.

John: It’s been a while. It’s a good concept that’s toys versus the iPads. It’s like, yes, that’s a good idea. I don’t know, I’m excited for the movies. There’s going to be a lot of Barbenheimer weekends where there’s two giant movies. Hopefully, they’re the right combo where they both succeed, and that’s going to be fun, too.

Craig: Yes. It’s pretty crazy. Look at this. Wow.

John: Yes. Listen, it’s a weird time in Hollywood, the mergers, all the hand-wringing over everything. Also, it feels– What I hope is that the box office is so hot that people are like, “Oh, yes, you know what? Making movies, that’s a business there.” It is a business. That we can look at the success of each of these movies and not think like, oh, that did really well for that streamer and it brought subscribers.

No, it actually brought dollars into a box office that you can count, which I like. It’s an old-school way of thinking like, “Oh, was that movie successful? Let’s look at the numbers. Yes, it was incredibly successful.”

Craig: If it’s flipped around where television was maybe the farm system to develop talent to go on to be in movies, like George Clooney was on ER, a development system, so then he becomes a big movie star. We had writers who came out of television to become big movie writers and directors and so forth.

Let’s say it’s flipped around. Let’s say now it’s more like movies make interesting people that then make amazing shows because that’s the economics of it. I don’t care. All I care about is that there still be a place to go and watch things with people, especially comedies and thrillers, but anything you want. Netflix surely looked at what happened with K-Pop Demon Hunters and went, okay.

Because before it was always like, oh my God, Ryan Johnson, Greta Gerwig are forcing us to do this because they need their movie to be here. You could tell it was just like, we’ll give you a little window but the energy around K-Pop Demon Hunters and the theatrical experience, even they can’t miss it, which maybe is why they’re buying Warner Brothers. Maybe that’s it. They really do want a way to just keep that experience going.

John: If we take Netflix at their word that they see themselves as competing not just with other streamers, but with YouTube and TikTok and all the other things that people are pulling on their attention, then theatrical does make sense because that’s a space where you are not on your phone, where you’re not doing other stuff, where you have a person’s full attention for their time and you are able to monetize it and create culture and art that you can then take to your streamer. That does make some sense.

Craig: Makes a lot of sense to me.

John: Yes, if we ran the industry, yes.

Craig: You want to do it? You want to put a bid in?

John: Sure. That’s the future of Script Notes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting that then just took over.

Craig: There’s nothing stopping us at this point. Let’s just try.

John: Why not? Thanks, Craig. Thanks, Drew.

Craig: Thanks, guys.

Links:

• Steve Jobs’ email to himself
• How Will the Miracle Happen Today? by Kevin Kelly
• Havelock’s orality tester
• Quantum computing for lawyers by JP Aumasson
• Swoop
• Inhibiting a master regulator of aging regenerates joint cartilage in mice by Krista Conger
• The Sheep Detectives trailer
• Get your copy of the Scriptnotes book!
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription
• Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
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• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by Jennifer Lucy Cook (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.