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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.

[music]

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to Episode 712 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, we welcome back one of our favorite guests and guest hosts.

Craig: Yes.

John: Dana Fox is a writer and showrunner whose credits include, taking a breath here, What Happens in Vegas, Couples Retreat, Ben and Kate, How to Be Single, Cruella, Home Before Dark, The Lost City, Wicked, and the upcoming Wicked: For Good. She’s also my former assistant and one of my very favorite people. Welcome back, Dana Fox.

Craig: Ta-da.

Dana Fox: John and Craig are my favorite people. I have to say it right away. Get it out of my system.

John: We’re recording this in our office on a very rainy day. Behind you is the couch, which you would often take naps on.

Dana: I assume you were going to have it bronzed, but it’s just the same couch. It’s still here.

John: The same couch. Lambert is now taking a nap on your couch.

Dana: I saw it, and I had a Pavlovian response to it. The second I saw it, I thought I was going to fall asleep on it.

Craig: The gravity just takes you in, and you just want to lie down and not work.

Dana: Hold me towards it and made me disappoint John because I wasn’t awake to answer his phone.

Craig: Look at you now.

Dana: It’s because he let me nap that I think I did so well in the business.

Craig: [laughs] Okay. Well, something has to explain it.

Dana: I just needed to sleep a little bit. I was so tired. I needed to prep.

John: Look at you now with those headphones on. As Craig said, you do look like Princess Leia.

Dana: Thanks, guys.

Craig: Exactly like Obi-Wan, you’re our only hope, Princess Leia, because you’re wearing a Princess Leia–

Dana: She was a real hero of mine, so thank you for that. I really wanted to be her.

John: Carrie Fisher, of course. Incredible.

Dana: Oh my God, she’s incredible, and the most amazing writer.

John: Did you ever meet her?

Dana: No, I never did. I would have lost my mind.

John: I went to a birthday party for a friend that was at her house. She was exactly as cool and weird as you would want her to be.

Dana: A dream.

John: A dream. An absolute dream.

Craig: Nice.

John: Today, with you on the show, I do want to talk about Wicked, obviously. I also want to talk about character suffering, whether the ’90s were really a great movie decade, or whether this is all just our nostalgia. We’ll get into that.

Dana: Amazing. Am I the character who’s suffering or characters that I write?

John: You will be. There’s a listener question about character suffering.

Dana: Oh, okay. I thought you were talking about me. I was like, “I’m now suffering.”

John: Well, we’ll get into suffering because in our bonus segment, I want to talk about the promo circuit because you’re on the promo circuit right now, and Craig’s been through the promo circuit. It’s just exhausting.

Dana: It’s intense. I’m really tired.

John: It’s a mark of success that you have to do the promo circuit, but it’s just it’s a lot.

Dana: Yes, and you became a writer because you enjoy pajamas and glasses and never doing your hair, and then you’re on–

John: Not being looked at, basically.

Dana: Never having a single person look at your face.

Craig: Yes. That’s my favorite thing in the world.

Dana: Craig, that is the best thing in the entire world. Then you’re on the promo circuit and all the wrong things are happening. People are looking directly at your face.

John: Sitting next to you is the Scriptnotes book, the Hardcovers, which just came in. We’re so excited to hold them. Craig, have you gotten yours up in Canada yet?

Craig: I have not received it in Canada yet. I don’t even know if you guys have my address in Canada.

Dana: You guys, it’s so beautiful. I can’t wait to read it. It’s so gorgeous. Just to say, if I may, John and Craig are the people that I call whenever I don’t know how to do anything. I’m always like, “Hey, guys, I’m sorry.” Let’s say I started with a voiceover, and then I have to do a fade-in. “Where does fade in go on the page?” Nobody knows. It all looks weird.”

John: Basically, non-creative questions then.

Dana: No, that’s not true. I call you guys with every question I have. Now I just have the book, so there’s no excuse that I’m not allowed to call you anymore. I have to look at the book.

Craig: It’s true. Dana sometimes calls. She’s like, “But is 1 also a prime number?” It doesn’t even have to be about screenwriting. It’s about anything.

Dana: It doesn’t even have to be about screenwriting. Totally.

John: One of the goals with the Scriptnotes book, as you remember, is that we wanted a book that if you were to throw it across the room, you could hurt a person. I’ll say that the book has some sharp edges to it, which is nice, but it’s actually lighter than I’d expect. Isn’t it lighter in your hand?

Dana: It’s looking wild. It looks like a trompe-l’oeil. Is it a cake? You know that show?

Craig: Absolutely. It looks like it could be cake.

Dana: Is it cake?

John: It could be cake.

Dana: Yes, because you pick it up and it’s like, “Ooh, no problem,” but it looks substantial.

John: If you throw it in your backpack, it’s not weighing you down, but it is a substantial book. Also, it lies flat, which I didn’t know was going to happen, but actually it’s nice.

Craig: Oh.

John: You can actually open up it.

Dana: [gasps] You’re right. I’m doing it. Reader or listener, I’m doing it. This is great.

Craig: You called the podcast listeners readers.

Dana: I don’t know how to do this, you guys. I’m so bad at stuff. I called my phone the internet before to John. I said, I just kept pointing at it and going, “I have to internet it later.” He was like, “What is happening with you?”

Craig: Oh, Dana Fox.

Dana: I love you guys.

John: Thank you to everybody who sent in the pre-order receipts to Drew at askajohnaugust.com, because we love those and they’re a way for us to know how many people are actually buying the book. This past week, Drew, you sent all those folks a bonus chapter. How did that go?

Drew: Really well. People were really nice about it and sent glowing emails back, which felt nice to read.

Dana: I’m going to do a thing. Am I allowed to say this?

John: Please.

Dana: I’m going to do a thing on my ‘internet’, which is my phone, on Instagram. My handle is @inthehenhouse. I’m going to give away 20 copies. I’m going to send them to people.

Craig: What? Really?

Dana: To young people, students. If you’re a student, if you’re trying to be a writer, I want to send you one of these books because these men, Craig and John, are the greatest people of all time, that they’ve spent their time trying to help other writers be better. They believe ‘rising tides raises all boats’, and they’re generous with their time. I love them. I want to send 20 books to whoever needs one.

John: Fantastic.

Craig: I have never felt anything doing this podcast until this moment.

Dana: DM me on my internet.

Craig: I’m having feelings.

Dana: Are you having feelings, Craig?

Craig: I’m having feelings. That was beautiful. Thank you.

Dana: It’s the least I could do. I just think you guys are amazing.

Craig: That’s very sweet, and it’s very generous of you, unless you’re stealing the books. If you’re stealing the books, it’s not generous.

Dana: No. I’m buying the books and giving them away.

Craig: Oh, okay. That is generous.

John: The bonus chapter we sent out is on getting stuff written. It was a chapter that was originally going to be in the book, and the book was just 600 pages, so we had to make some beautiful cuts [unintelligible 00:05:46]. We cleaned it up, we’ve formatted it nicely, and we sent it to all the people who had pre-ordered the book and sent the receipts in.

Dana: It’s amazing.

John: We’re still going to send it out. If you pre-order it now, we will send it to you. Drew will send it to you today. If you want this bonus chapter, it turned out really well.

Dana: Great. I’ll take the bonus chapter. Can I get some bonus chapter later?

Craig: Absolutely.

John: She needs to get some stuff written. One of the questions we get frequently is, are Craig and I going to do the audiobook, or are we going to read the audiobook for the Scriptnotes book? The answer is hell no. We are not doing that. That is a job left to a professional.

Dana: Correct.

John: I’m so excited to introduce the professional who actually did read the Scriptnotes book.

Craig: Woohoo.

John: Graham Rowat is an actor, a narrator whose talents span Broadway stages, television screens, audiobook recordings. You’ve seen him on Broadway in Dear Evan Hansen, Sunset Boulevard, Mamma Mia!, Guys and Dolls, Beauty and the Beast. He’s also a friend and a longtime Scriptnotes listener. Graham Rowat, welcome officially to The Scriptnotes podcast.

Graham Rowat: Thank you for having me.

Dana: Listen to that deep voice, guys.

Craig: You can hear the Broadway right in there.

Dana: Listen to–

Graham: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Craig: It’s so good.

Graham: [chuckles]

Craig: So good.

Dana: Get out of here. Your advice just got better. Everything you guys wrote in the book is better. Just look at that.

John: Come on, the gravitas of that?

Dana: Intense.

Craig: These shows that you’ve been in, just one great show after another. Congratulations. That’s amazing.

Dana: I know. Incredible.

Graham: I thought to myself, I know John gets to Broadway shows. How about the other guests on the pod today? Does anyone get to see Broadway that often?

Dana: Funny story.

Craig: Not as often as I’d like to. I live in Los Angeles, and now I live in Canada.

Graham: For sure.

Craig: I do see shows pretty frequently once they make their way to the Pantages or something like that, or I go to the bowl. I went for Jesus Christ Superstar, and I went for Into the Woods.

Craig: That’s great.

Graham: I love a show.

Dana: That’s great.

Graham: What can I say?

Dana: I love a show.

Graham: I love a show.

John: We mostly love that your voice is our book because when the topic of the audiobook came up and Graham graciously asked, “Hey, do you or Craig want to do it?” It was like, “Oh, it’ll be like four days in a recording studio.” You’re like, “Absolutely not.”

Dana: No.

John: I wanted somebody to do the book who knew the show, knew the voice of the show, had a sense of what this was like. I asked Graham who would do it, and they figured out how to make a deal for Graham to do it. Graham, I’m curious, what is it like to record this? Because the book is not Craig and I back and forth. It’s just, it’s a we voice behind it. What is your process? What is your instinct going into try to read this book?

Graham: Well, the first thing I did was I wanted to listen to every one of the episodes that featured the guests that are quoted in the chapters. It’s tricky because I want to find a neutral voice, but I hear you and Craig when I’m reading the book. There are distinct moments, too. There’s a chapter, the Die Hard chapter, where it is the two of you having a discussion.

Craig: Yes, it’s true.

Graham: The neutral voice is pretty much me. That’s always the easiest thing to work from and go back to. Then, when the two of you step out and actually are John and Craig, for example, there’s Craig’s whole chapter where he presents his approach to screenwriting, I tried to stay true to the Craig persona.

Here’s the thing: it’s a matter of very subtle changes because one of the very first things they teach you when you’re learning the old audiobook stuff is that anything too broad, that’s what the audience is going to be listening to, especially accents. They’re going to be sitting there thinking, “I don’t think that’s a very good accent.”

Dana: You decided not to do the Australian accent for Craig?

Graham: I didn’t. I gave him sort of the Maverick Ed McMahon energy.

Craig: Nice. Good.

Dana: Hot. Yes, sexy.

Craig: Not hot, no. McMahon, no.

Dana: Oh, I thought what the Ed McMahon energy was. I always thought it was really sexy.

Graham: No, young Ed McMahon. A real young, dashing Ed McMahon.
[laughter]

John: Graham, a question for you. We’re talking about the chapters that are interspersed with all the subject chapters are interview chapters. Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan, for example, we try to do a light edit on them so you can still feel their voice and how they speak. What was it like for you to figure out how to make them sound on that? They read differently on the page, so how was it actually articulating those?

Graham: Thankfully, and listening to the episodes and listening to the interviews allowed me to have an image in my head so that when I got to Greta’s chapter, I could make a very slight adjustment vocally. It’s more about the conversational tone that was a part of their interviews. If I can inject? A little bit of a more casual conversational tone in their chapters, I feel like that makes it more distinct. If I am doing a Greta, I have her in my head because I’d listen to her, so if I make a slight pitch adjustment and I just make it a little more casual, I feel like I’m doing her justice, and I’m making enough of a shift away from the neutral narrator.

Christopher Nolan was the tricky one because he’s the very first one up. I thought if he had been ninth or tenth in your list of guests and I’d reached him, I probably could have gotten away with a very subtle English accent. I think the listener would have been okay with that because they’d be like, “Well, he’s used up all the other textures. We can give him a break.” But because he was the first one up, I had a conversation with the producer when I recorded this; he was Chris [unintelligible 00:11:14] was patched in from Texas. I said, “Should we do it?” and we came down on the side of not doing an accent for Christopher Nolan.

Craig: I think that’s fair. I think it’s a smart idea, given the fact that it starts it off because some people who haven’t heard Christopher Nolan speak might think, “Oh, this entire thing is going to be read in an English accent.” Also, Christopher’s brother Jonah has no English accent.

Graham: It’s so fascinating how different they are.

Craig: I feel like the Nolan family, you’re allowed to do either English or American. You’re fine.

Graham: That’s a relief.

Craig: Yes, you’re good. They won’t be coming after you.

John: Well, Graham, we are so, so, so appreciative that you did the book. Thank you so much for reading it. For folks who want to hear Graham read it, it’s December 2nd, just like the main book is out. It’s available everywhere. It should be on Audible, but every place you can buy audiobooks will have it.

Dana: I have 42 Audible credits I need to spend. I’m going to use one of them on this.

John: This is the perfect thing. It’s also going to be fun for people who’ve listened to the whole show to hear our words and just a different person saying it, which is great.

Dana: Different way.

Craig: Love it.

Dana: That’s so great. I’m so excited. There’s no one I trust more for advice about screenplay writing than you guys. This is amazing that you’ve done this book.

Craig: Thank you, Dana. Whatever content we provided, plus Graham’s magically resonant voice, should be very effective. Everyone should write better after this. We don’t know what else to do, honestly.

John: Graham, thank you. Thank you so much.

Dana: Thank you. Nice to meet you.

Graham: It was my pleasure. Thank you so much.

Craig: Thank you, Graham.

Graham: Take care.

Dana: That’s a chill voice right there, man.

Craig: It’s a good voice.

Dana: My thing is I usually listen to voices like that to go to bed at night. I’m having an ‘all right, all right’ moment from just talking to him. I’m ready to snooze it up on that couch over there.

John: Do you listen to any of those sleepcasts where they just talk about nonsense that just goes on, it just melts away?

Dana: Yes, 100%. I like a little patter. I like a sleep timer, and then boom, I’m out.

John: We have some follow-up to get to. Drew, could you start us off with some follow-up?

Drew Marquardt: Martin writes, “I recently listened to John’s appearance on the Birbiglia podcast, and I was fascinated by his method of writing his screenplays in Las Vegas hotels. I wonder if John is aware that this technique of literary production was invented and/or perfected by one of the most successful writers of all time, Agatha Christie. I saw an image making the rounds last year, clearly a scan of an actual book, but I don’t know what book. The quote is attributed to an author named Christiana Brand, and here is the quote.

‘Agatha Christie once described to me her own particular method of getting down to work. She mulled over a book in her mind until it was ready. She said, ‘Well, we all do that.’ She would then repair to a very bad hotel. In a bad hotel, there was nothing to do but to write and plenty of time to do it in. The beds were so uncomfortable that you had no inclination to retire early or to get up late. The armchair’s so unyielding that you wasted not a minute in idle relaxation. The meals were so bad that there was no temptation to linger over them.
Any guests who would put up with such conditions must, of necessity, be so stupid that you couldn’t possibly make friends and spend precious moments in desultory chat. The book would be done in a matter of weeks, and you could pack up a few dull clothes, which were all you needed to bother to take with you and go off triumphantly home.'”

John: Dana Fox, this thing of me writing in hotel rooms, I think I did that while you were my assistant. Was I ever faxing you pages? Do you remember that?

Dana: 100%. A fax machine was involved at some point. I think, also, you did a thing involving trains at one point.

John: I took the train from LA to Seattle and wrote on the train, and then I faxed stuff back from the train. I’m not surprised that Agatha Christie has written this, except that this last April, I was in Aswan, Egypt, where she wrote Death on the Nile, and I was at the hotel where she wrote Death on the Nile. It was the Old Cataract Hotel. By the way, it is a luxury hotel.

Dana: Yes, she’s full of shit.

John: Maybe at this point, she was actually like-

Dana: The armchair was amazing. The desultory conversations occurred constantly.

John: We were able to tour the room where she wrote it. It’s like a three-room thing with a walk-in closet.

Dana: Fantastic.

John: Then a patio. So she’s kind of flying.

Dana: Yes. [chuckles] It’s kind of amazing.

John: That’s what I’m hearing.

Craig: Thank you for writing in about this. I’m not surprised that Agatha Christie has done this. Let’s move on to follow up on weirdness. Mike has a recommendation for a good, weird movie.

Drew: “You Want Weird? Friendship from Andrew DeYoung. My wife called it the worst movie she’s ever seen. I thought it was brilliant. We’re still married.”

John: I really liked Friendship, by the way. It should have been one of my One Cool Things. It’s a movie with Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd. It is just really, really strange in a way that I loved.

Dana: I remember seeing that and thinking, “I’m going to like that,” and then never seeing–

John: You’re going to watch it on the plane when you fly home?

Dana: That’s right. That’s a plane movie.

John: It’s a plane movie.

Dana: I like to cry on planes, too. Can I cry in that or not?

John: No. You will laugh and feel unnerved.

Craig: You can cry.

Dana: I like to cry, if possible.

Craig: At the end, if you feel like a good cry, just force it out. It’s funny.

Dana: Just force it out of you.

Craig: We were on a plane recently and–

Dana: Yes, we were on a plane recently.

Craig: I feel once we stopped talking to each other, we started to cry.

Dana: My daughter, who is 11, bought me a sweatshirt because she knows how much I like to sleep. I feel like this is the only thing I’ve talked about on this podcast is sleeping. She bought me this sweatshirt. It’s called ‘Comfrt’ but it’s missing a letter-

John: Of course, it has to be.

Dana: -because you couldn’t name it that.

Craig: ‘Comfrt’.

Dana: ‘Comfrt’. It’s so soft. Then you put the hoodie over your head, and you pull down an eye mask that’s inside the hoodie that clutches to your face. I was like, “Charlotte, this is crazy. I can’t wear this. It’s hot pink. I’m like an adult woman. This is crazy.” It’s got zippers all over for all sorts of things. It’s extraordinary.

John: Yes, life-change [unintelligible 00:16:50] [crosstalk]

Dana: Literally, there’s never been a better. It was absolutely life-changing. I’m asleep inside of it. I wake up, and I whip up my little eye things. I see Craig Mazin standing in front of me, going, “Dana Fox, what are you doing here on this plane?” We talked for so long on the plane. It was adorable. Everybody around us got involved in us. It was very cute.

Craig: You know what? You looked like a cute little Jawa.

Dana: Thank you.

Craig: Now you’re Princess Leia. Then you were a little Jawa.

Dana: I’m doing the whole series. I’m doing all of Star Wars.

Craig: If you want adorable, find Dana Fox in her slanket on a plane.

Dana: It’s pretty slankety. I tried to sell it to your wife. I was like, “I get kickbacks on every sale.”

Craig: I’m buying her one. I’m buying her a slanket.

Dana: It’s amazing. I was going to get it for you, but I learned about Craig that he doesn’t like sweatshirts that don’t have zippers. Good talk.

Craig: I need the pull-down. I can’t be trapped.

Dana: You need to get in and out of it that way. Are you the same way?

John: Yes. I really like a zip-up hoodie.

Dana: Are you claustrophobic at all?

John: Not especially. A sweater’s fine. I don’t like a pull-over sweatshirt.

Dana: Interesting. I don’t have many pullover sweatshirts either, unless they have an open neck, in which case I’m fine because I know I can escape.

Craig: That’s what you needed to know about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

John: Let’s just cut right to the heart of the matter. Let’s get right onto the craft and do some follow-up on cuck chairs.

Dana: What’s that?

Craig: Oh, cuck chairs.

John: In episode 710, we were discussing cuck chairs. I’m not even quite sure how we got to the–

Dana: That sounds like a swear word, like 100%.

John: Again, this is why we have a not safe for work warning on this episode. The cuck chair is the chair next to the bed for when the husband has another man sleeping with his wife, so he can watch a cuckolding.

Dana: It’s like an intentional cuckolding.

John: Yes. The cuckold sits in the cuck chair.

Dana: Oh, God.

John: You know the standard corner of the hotel room chair.

Dana: Yes, but the fact that it happens so much in this story that there’s a whole chair for it, as if so many intentional cuckolding situations where people are accepting the cuckolding is happening.

Craig: I got to say, this is a very popular thing.

Dana: Is it really? No, stop it.

Craig: No, no. The cuck chair itself, I don’t know if that’s particularly– This whole cuckolding thing, it’s massive.

Dana: I literally cannot think of anything I would like less than all of this. I have always wanted to be the kind of gal that gets invited into a three-way. I have had so many people invite whoever I’m with into the three-way in front of me without me. They’re like, I would love to take your boyfriend or husband into a three-way with me and mine. I’m like, “I’m standing right here.” I think they can tell I would be very annoying, and I would want to talk the whole time.

Craig: What? No.

Dana: Nothing sexy. I’d be like, “You guys, this seems complicated. I feel like we’re going to all have feelings later that we need to talk about.”

Craig: Actually, it feels to me like the cuck chair might be made for you because it’s not a three-way. You’re not involved.

John: No, so you’re just watching.

Craig: You’re just watching.

Dana: I’m the husband in the chair? Oh, okay.

Craig: Or the wife.

Dana: Well, then, all right. Maybe. Honestly, maybe.

John: You could [unintelligible 00:19:49] have enough.

Craig: You could spend your Audible things.

Dana: Can I put the little eye mask over my face while it’s happening so I don’t have to watch it?

Craig: If you’re not watching, is it really cuckolding?

Dana: I would like to hear it, honestly. Just not see it.

Craig: Oh, that’s fun.

Dana: I feel like that would be sexier.

John: I’m not sure if I mentioned it, as we first discussed in episode 710, but there is a great episode of Decoder Ring, which is specifically about the cuckold chair and cuckolding in general, which goes back to the history of where it came from in Elizabethan times to now, it’s where it all came from. We have some more specific follow-up, including previous guests who’ve done work in this area. Drew, help us out.

Drew: Yes, comedian Sarah Schafer is selling miniature cuck chairs. It’s not inflatable like we talked about, but I still feel like she beat us to the punch.

Dana: I love her. I’ve met her.

John: She makes miniature models, so she makes a miniature hotel cuck chair. We also talked about on episode 710–

Dana: How is this a thing, guys?

John: -that my other company needed to make an inflatable cuck chair. You just put it there when you need it, but when you don’t need it, you can just put it away.

Dana: You have a company that makes sex stuff?

John: No, not at all. I said we would never do that.

Dana: Oh, okay. I thought you said ‘my other company’ has to make it, like my already established sex chair company.

Craig: John has an entire sex toy company that he hasn’t mentioned.

Dana: I thought that’s what you were saying. It didn’t seem like that far of a stretch. I was like, “Oh, he does technology and sex chairs and stuff.”

Craig: It does seem like a stretch, Dana. It’s a stretch.

John: It’s a stretch. We do have Scriptnotes barware.

Dana: Okay, that’d be cool.

John: It turns out, on Amazon, we found two inflatable chairs that feel exactly right for this purpose. We’ll put the links in the show notes there. Craig, do you want to click through and see these? This is one inflatable chair. You see, it looks like a side chair at a hotel, but it has a logo on it.

Dana: You can carry it in the bag.

John: Absolutely.

Dana: Nobody has to know. Did I ever tell you about the time I checked into a hotel, the only time I’ve ever changed my room? Because I don’t think I’m good enough to get into a hotel room and change it, and say like, “This isn’t good enough for me. I need a better room.” I don’t believe I deserve that. One time, I checked into a room and I opened the minibar and there was a half-eaten sandwich and an open box of suppository laxatives.

Craig: No, you’ve got to move.

Dana: I was like, “I got to go.” I was like, “I love you. I can’t. I support whatever happened here. I’m open to it, but I got to go.”

Craig: Did you write the scene, though? That’s a great scene prompt. Half a sandwich, laxatives. What went wrong here?

Dana: I think you guys should make your listeners write it because I couldn’t figure out what had happened. It was like a murder scene.

Craig: Sandwich and laxatives at the same time?

Dana: To me, it was the sandwich that was so confusing. It was a half-sannie. Anyway, why are you eating if you’re sopped up?

Craig: Yes, that’s the one that’s really tripping me up. Well, I got to tell you, John, you found a great product here if you’re a cuckold. The only issue, as I can see, is that the recommended maximum weight capacity is 200 pounds. I got to figure a lot of cucks are going to be two-plus.

John: If you pop the cuck chair, that’s extra humiliating, right?

Dana: That might work for the person who wants to be in the cuck chair.

John: I think the second choice may actually be better because this is the inflatable beanless beanbag chair. Besides the bed, it’s pretty humiliating to be sitting in that. It’s loaded around.

Dana: Honestly, it looks pretty nice to me. I think it looks comfortable, no?

John: It’s also max weight 200.

Craig: Again, there’s a gap in the market.

John: Yes, for plus-size cuckolds.

Dana: Built-in possibility for humiliation seems actually in line with the cuckold chair, so it sort of feels like it works.

Craig: You know what? God bless everyone, by the way. If that’s what you’re into and everybody’s cool with it, who cares? I don’t care.

Dana: That’s how I feel. Do your thing, man. Get your sandwich in your cuck chair, and another thing, and you just eat half the sandwich.

John: 100%

Craig: You just have to recognize. I think it’s fair to acknowledge, we don’t king shame. Some kinks are innately amusing. That doesn’t mean we’re degrading you.

Dana: No, we’re happy for you that you found a thing that you like.

Craig: We’re not even laughing at you. It’s just the concept is funny. It just is. It’s funny.

John: Let’s bring it back to a more wholesome moment here. We have some follow-up here from Carrie.

Drew: Carrie says, “I wanted to thank John and Craig for being such calming voices. My dog absolutely hates riding in the car. She’ll often tremble the moment she gets in. However, I’ve found that if I have Scriptnotes on, she’s much less likely to be upset and instead settles for mild discomfort. The moment I get in the car with her, I turn on Scriptnotes, and if an episode ends while I’m driving, I’ll immediately rewind and keep listening. If I don’t, the moment it ends, she starts to huddle in the back seat. While I’d like to thank them for their invaluable writing advice, I also thank them for their pup whisperer skills.”

Dana: That’s really sweet.

Craig: Do you know, ‘settles for a mild discomfort’ is probably what the person with half a sandwich and the laxatives is thinking.
[laughter]

Dana: In the cuck chair.

Craig: Yes, in the cuck chair.

Dana: That’s actually amazing. Also, how sweet is that?

Craig: How sweet.

John: That’s really nice.

Dana: You guys, you have nice pup voices.

Craig: We have nice pup– Yes.

Dana: I believe this. You guys are really good dudes. Pups love you. Pups know you.

Craig: I’ll tell you, my dogs do not like driving around. Cookie does the same thing. She’s very trembly. Real me is talking, and that doesn’t seem to do anything at all. Maybe it’s John.

Dana: Not even podcast me. It’s just actual me.

Craig: Actual me does nothing.

Dana: Oh.

Craig: Oh.

John: All right. Enough banter before we get started. It’s the key topic here. Dana, congratulations on Wicked.

Dana: Thank you.

Craig: Woo.

John: Wicked 1 and now Wicked 2. This was a long journey.

Dana: Ooph. Yes.

John: Let’s briefly recap what the history of Wicked is. Obviously, there was once upon a time, The Wizard of Oz. It was a book. Then it was a movie. There was a book by Gregory Maguire called Wicked, which sold to Marc Platt, who wanted to do it as a Broadway show first. It is a Broadway show, correct?

Dana: No.

John: Tell me what I got wrong there.

Dana: I believe the idea was to make it into a movie without music.

Craig: Yes.

Dana: They started it as that. I’m pretty sure they maybe even had scripts. Then Marc left. He was running Universal at the time.

Craig: He was, yes.

Dana: He went to be a producer. He said, “The one project I want is Wicked.” He took Wicked. It was Stephen Schwartz that convinced him that Wicked needed music because, inherently, The Wizard of Oz was so musical. It was crazy to do this idea without music.

John: Yes, makes sense.

Dana: Thankfully, Stephen Schwartz convinced him to make it a Broadway musical first. Universal, weirdly, always owned it because they had originally bought it to make it into a movie. They owned part of the rights to the play. Then they made it as a musical first.

John: That’s right. The musical that Stephen Schwartz wrote the music for and Winnie Holzman did the stage play for was a massive hit. I remember seeing a pre– I was on Broadway but pre-opening with Kristin Chenoweth and-

Craig: Idina Menzel.

John: -Idina Menzel. It was great. You could tell this is going to become a thing. It did become a thing.

Dana: It almost felt redefining, I think, too, in terms of what Broadway was doing at the time. It felt almost part movie, part musical in the sense that it had a big hook.

John: Stephen Schwartz is a Broadway legend.

Dana: A genius. The greatest.

John: You’re talking about Pippin. To have somebody like Stephen Schwartz take something that could be a little bit more in the Disney commercial zone for what Broadway sometimes does, to just do this whole other weird thing that was very original in its own way. The whole thing about Wicked is, it’s not The Wizard of Oz, really at all. It’s such an original show and so weird. It’s a weird show with incredible music.

Dana: Oh, geniuses. A lot of them.

John: Talking story, the stage version makes huge changes from the book. The central concepts come through, but it feels really, really different in story and how stuff is structured. Correct?

Dana: Yes. I never read the book-

John: What?

Dana: -which turned out to be a bit of a mistake because I told my 12-year-old he could read it. Apparently, no way, no.

Craig: No. No.

Dana: Not a great idea. He was like, “Mom, some intense sex stuff happened in this book.” I was like, “Yes, I don’t know what it’s about, but I’ve heard it’s amazing.”

Craig: I don’t know about that.

Dana: The extraordinary Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz got together and took the main idea from it, which they thought was so brilliant, which was like, “What if this story that you knew and you absolutely were positive you knew everything about it, what if the bad guy was not who you thought they were? What if the person that was good was maybe not actually as good as you thought they were? Let’s see what that story looks like.”

John: What if they were best friends?

Dana: What if they were best friends? Interestingly, actually, Winnie told me the other day, which I’d never heard before, originally, Glinda wasn’t actually that big of a part. It was in meeting Kristin Chenoweth and becoming obsessed with Kristin Chenoweth that they decided that it had to be a true two-hander, which I had never heard before. That was pretty interesting.

John: All these things that seem inevitable were not inevitable at the genesis of this.

Dana: Absolutely.

John: It’s that process of discovery. The stage show is a huge hit, tours the world, a bunch of different languages. We all know it and love it, but eventually we’re going to make it into a film. The decision to make it from one film to two films, I’d love for you guys to talk about that process.

Dana: I think Craig maybe was around when it was more choice, actually. He can maybe speak to that. When I got involved, I was brought in by John, too. It was already a fait accompli. It was already like, “We’re making this as two movies. We can’t question it, and we can’t go back. We have to just do it.” Craig, you knew more about that stage and development, right? Where they were deciding to make it two movies?

Craig: No, it was a condition that they wanted me to work on Wicked, and I said, “Okay, but it has to be two movies.”

Dana: See, that’s amazing because you’re a genius. You knew.

Craig: Well, I don’t know about that. I’m very familiar with the show, and I read the script as it existed. What I remember saying to Marc was, “Once she sings Defying Gravity, you have to go home. You can’t stay in the theater.”

Dana: By the way, when you’re at the play, sometimes people made mistakes and we’re like, “Bye, that was the most satisfying thing that ever happened. I’ll see you guys. We’re going to go to dinner now.”

Craig: Right. You can’t. You just can’t. Also, the second act of Wicked, totally, is quite different.

Dana: Correct.

Craig: There’s too much to shove into one movie.

Dana: The songs are so extraordinary because Stephen is such a crazy genius, that you try cutting one song–

Craig: No, you really can’t, and you shouldn’t.

Dana: You were like, “I miss that song. That song’s like a short song. I love it and I miss it.”

Craig: I said, I can outline, I can make two treatments for two different movies, and I can write a script from the beginning to the end of Defying Gravity, and that’s sort of how you, “Aah, boom,” and we’ll see you next time. Marc and the executives at Universal, separately, we’re like, “Not sure Marc will go for that.” Marc’s like, “I’m not sure the studio will go for that.” I basically was like, “Everybody, let’s just do it.” Then they all said yes, and that’s it. That was the last impactful thing I did on Wicked.

Dana: Well, it was very impactful, my friend, seriously, because it’s not an obvious choice. It felt so dangerous at the time.

Craig: It feels so obvious now.

Dana: Well, now it does. Everything feels obvious now, but at the time when we were living in it, it’s like they talk about World War II, and it’s like they didn’t know how it was going to end. Back then, they didn’t know. It might have not worked out. We sort of felt like, “Oh my God, this might not work out,” because, as Craig was saying, it was never the first movie. Whenever people saw the first movie, thank God they loved it; it was wonderful. Everyone kept saying, “Well, it was obviously the right choice to break it into two movies.” I was like, “That’s because you haven’t seen the second movie yet.” I was like, “Hold that thought until–”

John: Let’s talk about this because if the decision wasn’t to make one movie and see how it does, and then make the second movie, the decision was to make two movies at the same time, that was distinct movies that are joined.

Dana: Yes, which means you can’t screw anything up because the first movie has to be a success, because you’ve already shot the second movie.

John: Were they cross-bordered? Were you shooting scenes from two?

Dana: 100% cross-bordered, and this is the brilliance of John and the group that he had around him, all the HODs that were so extraordinary, and the brilliance of Cynthia and Ari, that they would shoot the end of movie one in the morning and shoot Wonderful from movie two in the afternoon. They’re in completely different costumes, totally different hair, different characters. They talk about how they had to use different perfumes depending on which movie they were in because they had to sense things to trigger who they were. They had different playlists for the two movies for themselves to listen to because throughout the day, they had to keep it straight. It wasn’t even just–

Craig: Because it was based on location, basically.

Dana: It was all locations, basically. We had 73 sets, and we were turning over sets constantly. These sets were enormous. Nathan Crowley, who’s our production designer, is a genius. He’s Christopher Nolan’s guy. He’s absolutely extraordinary. I’m obsessed with him. Everybody, go find an interview with Nathan Crowley. He’s the greatest guy ever and totally brilliant. His wife is also extraordinary. Obsessed.

John: You know that you’re making two movies, and we’ll get into this one in the bonus segment where we talk about– The promo circuit is like, last time you had to just talk about the first movie and not acknowledge the second movie.

Dana: This is why they were all sobbing in their interviews, and everyone’s like, “Why are these people crying so hard in their interviews?” It’s like, “Because we just finished For Good. We’re crying about For Good. We’re not crying about Popular. We’re crying about the second movie.”

John: Craig and I have not seen the second movie yet, and I’m excited to see it.

Dana: I’m so excited for you to see it.

John: One of the real challenges, as Craig was alluding to and that you were also mentioning, we remember what happens in Act 1. Act 2 races through a bunch of stuff. If you look at the Wikipedia summary of Act 2, it’s like, “Oh my God,” half a line is given to things, and so you have to make much bigger choices about storytelling.

Dana: That’s exactly right. That was the exciting challenge of it, that the second act of the play is 45 minutes long. This movie is 2 hours and 10 minutes or 14 minutes. We obviously created a lot of new material for the second movie. I always used to describe the feeling of the second act as its own movie. You walked in, you sat down with your popcorn, and you got hit with the two, three-act break, and then you went crazy from there. That’s what the feeling is of the second act, because that was appropriate for the play. Then you’re looking at, “Okay, this is a moviegoing experience. People are used to a one, two, three-act structure.”

John: You’ve got to ramp up.

Dana: You ramp up. You’re a little slow. You’re like, “Where are we now? Who are we? What are we doing?” That was the big fun of trying to figure out movie two is how do we remind people where we are? How do we get them used to how much has changed in the time lapse between the two movies? That was actually a big discussion, was how much time to have passed during the two movies. You’ll see when you see the movie. We landed on something I think is interesting.

Craig: 30 years later?

Dana: Well, no. You know what it was? What I realized with my brilliant friend, Lorene Scafaria, is that the experience of people watching the first movie was so intense for them that it actually impacted how we were all thinking about the second movie as we were working on finishing it, because it raised the bar so much. It was like the expectations got higher and higher every time people were like, “Oh my God, this movie is killing me. I saw it 42 times in theaters.” The press tour of the girls became part of the movie itself. That was their friendship in a weird way because they are friends and they’re so close. Watching them be in love with each other platonically and crying all the time about For Good, which nobody knew, created this intense feeling that we knew we had to have come through the second movie.

Part of the decision of how much time passed was, we were like, “Oh, it should be how much time passed for the audience.”

Craig: Exactly.

Dana: “It should be a year,” because the movies are coming out a year later. Then Winnie came up with some brilliant word for what a year was, which was like 12 clock-ticks of the–

Craig: Clock moons or something, yes. Yes, that’s it.

Dana: She made up some crazy word for this, but we all know it’s a year.

Craig: 12 monthly [unintelligible 00:35:13].

Dana: Yes. The moon passages of the– Yes.

John: Talk about the writing process on this because you’re writing both movies simultaneously, or did you like, “Okay, we’re going to finish the scripts for the first movie and then start the script on the second movie,” or was it all blurred together?

Dana: I was pulled in by John Chu because he’s my favorite person on planet Earth. I told him, “Anytime you want me to do something, I’m going to say yes.”

Craig: Ouch.

Dana: Oh, no, you guys, I meant that I met after you.

Craig: All right, thank you.

Dana: He’s my favorite person on planet Earth who I met after you two.

Craig: Weird, late clarification.

Dana: In the podcast, we could put that before, as if I said it right before.

Craig: Now people skip.

Dana: Matthew, just swoop it out–

[rewind sound]

Dana: I love John and Craig,

[fast-forward sound]

Dana: Working with John, he’s the most extraordinary director, but he’s so collaborative, also, and he makes me want to be a better man. He’s that guy. I’m like, “I love you, John.” I told him, “I’ll do anything with you,” after he and I work together.

John: I want to back up because you worked with him first because he was a director on your TV series.

Dana: Yes, that’s right. He had shot Crazy Rich Asians, but it hadn’t come out yet, and I needed someone to direct the first two episodes of Home Before Dark, which is my Apple TV series. I met with him and he showed me the trailer for Crazy Rich Asians, which had not come out yet. From the trailer, I was like, “You’re a genius. This is going to hit. This is so universal. This is incredible. I love you. I want you to do this.” I was trying to hire him off of a trailer. I was like, “I don’t need to see anything else. I’m obsessed with him.”

He did the most extraordinary job on the TV show. He brought in Alice Brooks, who is the DP of Wicked, to do my show. He brought in Myron Kerstein, the most brilliant editor you’ll ever meet on planet Earth, to do my show. I got to work with all his people. It was extraordinary.

John: I want to stop you for a second because it’s just such a good reminder of the relationships you form and the trust you form and being able to see what a person is like as a collaborator. You were hiring him, but then he’s actually hiring you because he can see, “Dana gets it. We have a shared vision. I know that she can deliver this thing.”

Dana: Correct. Also, I think John’s very loyal. Once he gets his people around that he knows understands the way he likes to work, he wants to keep them close. I feel so lucky to be in his orbit, honestly, because he’s just extraordinary. I said to him, “I’ll do anything for you. I’ll drop whatever I’m doing whenever I’m doing it, and I’ll say yes.” He called me after I finished Lost City. He called me and said, “I have another one for you.” He had done In the Heights, while I did Lost City and other stuff. He said, “Okay, I have another one for you.” He said, “Do you want to know what it is?” I said, “No.” The answer is yes.

He was like, “I’m going to tell you anyway.” I was like, “No, no, no, let’s do a bit where I’d make part of the deal without even knowing what it is.” I thought that would be funny. He was like, “No, I’m going to tell you, you’re an idiot.” I was like, “Okay.” He said, “It’s Wicked.” I was like, “Oh my God, everybody loves– What is it?” He’s like, “Wicked.” I’m like, “Mm-hmm. I also am one of the people that loves Wicked so much,” because I hadn’t seen it. I’m literally the only American human who had not seen Wicked.

Craig: That’s crazy.

John: What did you say when he said Wicked, you’re like, “Wicked what”?

Dana: Well, I knew of it. I knew it was popular and famous and stuff, but I’m not super dialed in. I discovered Beyoncé two years ago.

Craig: I love it.

Dana: I was like, “You guys, we need to talk. This woman’s incredible.”

John: Oh my God, this is amazing.

Dana: This is always me too late on really important things. I started watching Lost in the last season and was like, “You guys, the Hatch.” Everyone was like, “We’re so over the Hatch, we don’t want to talk about the Hatch.”

John: I like, in a weird way, that you weren’t a Wicked–

Dana: I was not a mega fan. I didn’t know anything about it.

John: Sometimes it’s better to not be burdened by–

Dana: Winnie and Stephen now talk about how helpful it was to have me there, being irreverent and not being so precious, because I just didn’t know. It was the middle of the pandemic, so I couldn’t go to Broadway to see it. I googled everything I could find. I watched the entire play in shaky clips from France, Germany, whatever, blah, blah, put it all together. I was like, “I get it.” I read the play and I played Stephen’s gorgeous music. Whenever the song would come up as I was reading it, I would play the music, and I was like, “Gosh, this is so good. This is so good, the music.” I loved it.

I was, of course, impressed, and also, I had loved My So-Called Life so much. I loved Winnie’s work from that. He said, “We’re going to work all of us together. Me, John, Winnie, Stephen, and you. We’re going to get into Zooms, and we’re going to break both movies together,” which I’d never done before with a director. I was so excited to be able to do it because it felt like every day we weren’t just breaking the story or writing the script, we were making the movie because it was what he wanted to be doing, too. He was telling us about his vision as we were all talking it through. We spent 153 hours on Zoom before we ever started writing. I know it’s a lot. Craig looks so tired from the 153.

Craig: Horrifying, just so much–

Dana: I just looked over at him and he was like, “Girl, eugh.”

John: By the way, the bullet you dodged. All right, yes.

[laughter]

Craig: No, I did not dodge a bullet.

Dana: The bullet hit you squarely.

Craig: Yes, the bullet hit me pretty hard.

John: [laughs] You had all these Zooms before you started.

Dana: Before we even started writing, but that was the ideation period, where we broke them into two movies. We carded them digitally because we were all on Zoom, so we couldn’t see each other. We had digital cards that we had made, and then I started outlining from off those cards. I outlined both movies. Then John basically was like, “Okay, we’re going to split up Movie 1 between you and Winnie, and you guys are going to write it together.” We wrote Movie 1 together as quickly as we could to get it full because we had stages booked.

They were trying to make us feel that pressure. We wrote the first movie, and then I immediately pivoted. While Winnie did notes from John and Mark. I immediately pivoted and started writing the second movie. I wrote the second movie. Then from that point forward, Winnie and I were collaborating, but we were each in a different movie. When I was in Movie 2, she was in Movie 1 and vice versa, but we were still working with each other. It was like I would send her a scene from Movie 2 and be like, “This is hot trash garbage. How would Glinda say this thing, because I’d want her to blah, blah, blah?”

There was a lot of collaboration, but we were in two separate movies. That was how we got the work done. It was super collaborative with John and with Stephen. Then, being a fly on the wall to watch Stephen Schwartz do the two new songs for the Movie 2.

John: It was pretty great.

Dana: It was like childhood Dana lost her mind. It was amazing.

Craig: I have to say that this is a really good example of you’re a good writer. I think I’m a good writer. Some people should be writing certain movies, and some people should not. The thing is, I love Wicked. I love the show, but I was not the right person for that project. You were the right person for that project. That project needed somebody that not only was a writer but also, how would I put it, a clearinghouse, a diplomat, and an ambassador. For all of these people, and also somebody that really enjoys the collaboration of writing with another writer. I’m such a monk.

Dana: Yes, you’re so private. You just want to be in your little room and do your thing.

Craig: This is just a great example. I underscore this all the time, but just in case anybody’s confused, the credits for this movie are spot on accurate. I was happy to support those. I didn’t fight you. [laughs] They’re correct.

Dana: Yes. Winnie had done a lot of work before any of us came on. That’s why she has that solo credit. Only writers will understand that credit, which is Winnie’s solo because she had been working on trying to make this into a movie for 15 years before any of us were involved in the process. That’s why she has that credit. Then AND, which means she worked also with the team of me and her. It’s a weird-looking sandwich of a credit, but it does represent what happened. It was really an amazing experience.

It was very difficult because of all those personalities and all the different things, we all cared so much. Honestly, it was really hard, I think, because we cared so much. We wanted it to be so good. We all felt this profound sense of responsibility to the fans. Then after Movie 1, it was like ratcheted up to a million. The post-process of Movie 2, I would just sit around crying because I wanted to be worthy of people’s expectations of the second movie because it was so important to them.

Then also, the world has gotten even harder. I think people desperately need a time to sit in a theater quietly with their friends and their loved ones and their family and be able to express their emotions about what’s going on in the world or whatever, in a safe place to do that. I know the movie gives you that.

John: As they witnessed the rise of fascism, you see it reflected back in the movie, yes. There’s a potential to triumph over it.

Dana: Of course, we didn’t write it that way because it was five years ago that we started writing it. We didn’t know this was going to be what happened. I just think, unfortunately, the movie is so timely because this is timeless. There are always people looking for power, and they’re going to do it at the expense of the most vulnerable people.

Craig: Steven and Winnie, all the way back when they were first conceiving of the show, and this is something that Mark told me, that there was underneath it a pretty clear allegory for Nazi Germany, for fascism, for people getting disappeared, taken away.

Dana: They were writing it in the shadow of 9/11 and the persecution of the Muslim population in America. That was partly why World War II is so fresh on the mind. If we all remember, right after 9/11, it started to get really off.

Craig: Yes. Wicked, it’s really interesting how it has so many flavors and layers. On the top, it is pink and green, and it’s two best friends.

Dana: It’s floopy, yes, 100%.

Craig: It’s funny and weird. Then underneath it, there’s something bad, something bad coming.

Dana: I think that’s what people are going to love about the second movie, is that it still has all the pink and green and floopy, but it is really about something. It really has a lot of there-there. There’s a lot of there-there for both the consequences within the friendship. The political stuff, of course, is there, and it hits harder now because of what’s happening. The friendship is so beautiful. You feel like you’ve been on this crazy emotional journey. That was another real challenge of writing the screenplay of the second movie was, in the play, there’s all these reprises.

That you’re hearing that you just heard the A side of the reprise 20 minutes ago in the play, but in the movie, you’re hearing the reprise a year later. How do you get the audience to feel the feeling of that reprise the same way they would have if they had heard the A side of it 20 minutes ago? We were constantly thinking about how do we remind them of the things that happened in the first film so that that’s fresh in their minds. A lot of it had to do with planned flashbacks, but also unplanned flashbacks that came out in editing that I think were really strategic and really smart.

Craig: Dana?

Dana: My love.

Craig: What do you think my favorite song from Movie 2 is going to be? I know what it is. I’m just saying, what do you think of this?

Dana: I’m just going to say, I don’t know what I’m allowed to say or not say, but I think that No Good Deed–

Craig: You got the answer. That’s it.

Dana: That’s it. That’s the Craig one. Your brain will exit the back of your head and then come back into it at the end. It’s like the crazy– I lost my mind.

Craig: It’s such a good song. Look, I love For Good. I love it. It’s sweet. It’s adorable. It’s a nice wrap-it-up. No Good Deed is awesome. Having seen Cynthia in Jesus Christ Superstar and watching her turn it to 11.

Dana: You told me about how beautiful that was.

Craig: Yes. I can’t wait to see what she does with that.

Dana: I would reference the song you talked about, but there’s a 100% chance I mispronounce it.

Craig: Gethsemane.

Dana: Gethsemane.

[imitating song tune]

Dana: No Good Deed’s going to kill you. Buckle your fucking seat belt for good, though, because it’s–

Craig: Fuckle your bucking seat belt.

Dana: Buckle your fucking seat belt for that one because that’s a goodbye, everybody. I don’t know why. I hope this makes you, too, also feel really emotional when you’re watching it. Part of my emotional experience with the movie is that there is a feeling, a little bit, that Hollywood is dying.

John: It’s a big Hollywood movie.

Dana: This is a big, beautiful Hollywood movie from the old days. You can’t believe this movie got made.

John: They felt the giant sets.

Dana: I have chills. These giant sets that were real, and everything was real. If it’s out of focus, it’s because a person was doing it. There’s no AI. It feels so much like the movies that got us all to be in this business in the first place.

Craig: It’s going to be massive.

Dana: Oh, I hope so. It’s just so beautiful.

Craig: Hollywood is not dying. It’s just that it’s been the months after summer, the months between summer and Thanksgiving. The New York Times once again wrote an article about how Hollywood is dying. They’re like, “Yes, it’s always dying in September and October.” [laughter] That’s what it does.

John: You forget the article you just wrote about what a big summer it was for blockbusters.

Craig: Right.

Dana: Right. That’s a good point.

Craig: Thanksgiving and Christmas comes and kaboom. It’s going to be huge.

Dana: I hope that Wicked puts the paddles back onto the business too, and clear, and it’s like, [onomatopoeia] but the problem is they never seem to learn the lessons from the movies. They’ll go like, “But that’s just Wicked, so it doesn’t count.” You can’t learn anything from it because it’s Wicked.

John: Another musical.

Dana: Nothing’s ever been like this. You’ll be like, “Okay.”

Craig: Nobody knows, but you know what? You guys did a spectacular job, and I can’t wait to see the second movie. John really is a remarkably talented director.

Dana: I do need you to FaceTime me when both of you, after you see it, because I had a hard time talking about it. I was just wandering around the after-party just like a zombie, and crying in front of famous people was basically what it was. It was just so weird. I was just like, I couldn’t stop crying. It was wild.

John: It was the experience of the movie, but also the trauma of making it a movie.

Dana: I had some health issues during it that were really difficult. The narrative I had in my head was that Wicked was what killed me. Wicked is why I got sick. Then I realized while I was watching the movie that, “Oh, no.”

Craig: Oh, no. Here we go.

Dana: I just realized that Wicked actually saved me. It gave me stuff to do while I was feeling so sick. Every day gave me a reason to get up in the morning and try and care and feel something again. It is what ultimately made me feel better. It’s what got me better from the sickness. It’s not what killed me.

Craig: That’s fantastic.

Dana: That was part of why I was weeping around the stupid after-party, like an animal.

Craig: When you were working on it, before it was in production, you and your husband were in Calgary for some reason.

Dana: Oh, boy. That was a– Yes.

Craig: I was there, and the two of us were just–

Dana: That was my breaking point. That’s where I was like, “I might have to quit because I think I’m going to die.” I was like, “I have to.” You were working on The Last of Us.

Craig: On the first season of The Last of Us, which was chaos.

Dana: You were like, “This is crazy.” Yes, and I was like, “Our health might be in danger.” [chuckles]

Craig: Yes, we were standing in a park going, “We’re dying, right? We’re dying.” [crosstalk]

Dana: Yes, and you were so nice to me. I was like, “I think I’m dying.” You’re like, “It’s okay, because I’m also dying, so we could die together.” Then I encountered a bear, and there was a moment where I was like, “Maybe it should eat me.”

John: Wow, it would be a way to go.

Dana: I was like, “This would be a killer story, first of all.”

Craig: How would I identify with that?

Dana: Then I would get out of doing the rest of this work, which is so intense.

Craig: That is what like writing is so hard that a lot of times–

Dana: That you want a bear to eat you.

Craig: I have told my assistant a number of times, listen, at some point today, don’t approach from the front, but from behind, hit me with a hammer as hard as you can on my head, and just end this, so I don’t have to do this.

Dana: I’m so glad you and John say those kinds of things because– John less so because John is just like–

Craig: John’s healthy.

Dana: He’s just too healthy. I can’t talk to you, John. I’ll talk directly to Craig. I’m so glad to hear you say this, Craig, because you’re so brilliant and so talented. I always think of myself as just a really hard worker. That’s why my work is good. Not because I have any innate talent. I’m just like, I just work harder than everybody else.

John: No. That’s an eldest daughter thing.

Dana: I’m the youngest daughter.

John: You’re the only daughter, right?

Dana: I’m the only daughter, yes. I guess you’re right. I’m still the eldest daughter.

John: The eldest daughter.

[laughter]

Dana: Hearing you say that, Craig, I think that helps me, and also all your listeners who are trying to be writers, that you also feel that way is amazing. [crosstalk] I want to die every day. I’m like, “I cannot believe how hard this still feels to me.”

Craig: Yet, every time I have a chance to stop, and I could stop, I do not stop. I never stop.

Dana: Oh, I could stop tomorrow, and I don’t stop. I’m crazy.

John: No. You’ve set up nine more shows and movies. While you’ve been sitting here.

Dana: While I’ve been sitting here, I set up 42 new things. It’s like I have a problem. I literally have a Post-it note on my desk that says, “Say no.” Then I just said yes to all the things.

John: All the things. All right. Let’s answer some listener questions here.

Dana: Yes, please.

John: James in Vancouver wants to ask about torture.

Dana: We just talked all about torture. [crosstalk] We don’t need to talk about torture. James, that was your answer to your question.

John: You guys always talk about needing to make your characters suffer in order to see them go through the maximum amount of growth possible. However, how much suffering is too much? At what point does it veer into emotional torture porn as opposed to genuine trials and tribulations?

Craig: That’s a good question.

John: I think it’s a very good question. Torture your hero is fantastic. If there’s a moment where it’s like, “I don’t want to watch this anymore,” or it feels gratuitous, I’m going to stop. You have to make sure that you are giving your character some victories, some hope along the way. If it’s just despair, if it’s 1984, people are going to stop. Then you’ve failed as a storyteller, I think.

Dana: I also feel like you ask yourself, what do you want to go through? I have to close my eyes when torture is happening, actual torture is happening in things. I feel almost the same way about emotional torture, which is like, I want to stop just shy of that because I just think that’s gratuitous and weird, and I don’t need to see it. Also, we’re in a world and a time where everything feels like torture. I tend to go with what I feel and what I think the rest of the world is feeling because I’m also feeling it. Craig, what were you going to say?

Craig: I definitely like to echo the feelings that we have, but give people a way to go through these things somewhat safely. Torturing your characters has to be purposeful. Remember, you’re not just torturing them, you are choosing what to do to them. Therefore, you have a plan, and the plan is such that the torture must be matched to their ability to withstand it and then surpass it. The real question, James, isn’t how much should I torture them? The real question is, what would make this person’s victory feel really earned and satisfying?

Dana: That’s great.

Craig: That’s all.

Dana: That’s great. Also, for each individual character, the definition of torture is totally different. For my husband, the definition of torture is me chewing food that he can hear. Literally, that could be an entire scene where he’s tortured. He says it makes him want to actually murder me in cold blood.

John: Misthonia.

Dana: Misthonia. Yes, he has that thing. You can calibrate it based on who the person is because torture is something different for each person, but that’s so smart.

Craig: You calibrate it depending on the person, and you also calibrate it depending on the tone. In comedies, torture could be as “torturous” as, “The girl that dumped me is with the guy that beat me up yesterday, and I have to sit here and watch them dance.” That’s torture. It’s not Zero Dark Thirty torture. [laughs]

Dana: Yes, nobody’s strapped to a chair in that story.

Craig: Right, but sometimes you do strap someone to a chair, and that’s–

Dana: To a cuck chair. Bringing it back.

Craig: If they’re only 200 pounds.

Dana: We’re going to make it a runner. [crosstalk] Don’t worry about it.

John: To recap, when you’re thinking about torturing your characters, you’re thinking about what is it that you want. What is it that makes you feel uncomfortable or comfortable? What do you as the writer want? You’re thinking about the audience. Where is the audience in this? Also, crucially, you’re thinking about the character. What is it about this character and their journey that this torture is allowing them to grow and progress and do the things you’re going to do?

Dana: I particularly like what Craig says because that almost reframes it for me in a way that I understand that question even more, which is what will make their victory feel more earned, which is such a smarter way of saying what specific torture is right for this person and what level. If you think about it, in Wicked Movie 1, we realized, like, since it was ending at Defying Gravity, she can’t be defeating the wizard. That was what her I Want song was about, but she can’t defeat the wizard because she can’t do that until the second movie.

What she had to defeat was the part of herself that didn’t believe that she could do it. That led to all these discoveries of she was going to see herself as a child and all these different things. It led to different forms of torture for her in Movie 1 than are the ones that she experiences in Movie 2. It was all about making those victories feel earned and/or the bittersweet ending feel as sad as possible.

Craig: That’s a good question, though. You know what? Vancouver representing.

Dana: I love Vancouver.

John: One other quick question here from Zach. Was the 1990s a great decade for action movies, or am I just experiencing whatever generation thinks that the decade they grew up in has the best media? Some of the films that he’s listing here are The Fugitive, Bad Boys, Mission Impossible, Independence Day, Speed, Armageddon, Twister, Men in Black, and many others.

Dana: They’re all perfect.

Craig: Amusingly, none of those movies are even in the top 50 of the best movies of the 1990s. The answer is yes. The 1990s were incredible.

Dana: It’s insane. Yes.

Craig: I grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, and I’m here to tell you the ’90s were the best 10 years of movies that I’ve experienced in my life. When I look back at what they did there, it’s astonishing.

John: The danger is that we are all roughly the same age cohort and that we were in our young 20s there. You always think about that period of your life as being like, “Oh, that was fantastic.” The way we would test that is we should get younger people to watch movies of the different decades and have them–

Dana: Shouldn’t that be a follow-up question? [crosstalk] Can you ask your audience, to younger people, “Watch those movies and see if they’re bangers like we think they are”?

Craig: I have been showing great hits of the ’90s to my assistants and the office PAs and basically all the kids that are–

Dana: What do they think?

Craig: It’s been just one home run after another.

John: That’s great.

Dana: That’s great. Will you share that list, though? Share that list. Put that list out for me. Give me your top 10 because I want to watch them.

Craig: This list right here, all these movies are fun, but it’s like he’s not even listening. Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas, Silence of the Lambs. [crosstalk] I can just go on. Fargo. There’s so many incredible movies.

John: He was specifically talking about action in his days. Yes, there are incredible movies. 1999 was a banner year. You look at the movies that came out that year, it was absurd. Yes, you’re right.

Craig: You know what? Fair, Zach. You were talking about action movies. I’ll give you a pass on that. All those were great action movies. The Fugitive is like–

Dana: The Fugitive is a perfect movie. Have I ever talked to you about the movie? Okay, I want to tell. Super quick, though. We may have learned this because we went to the Stark program, so we may have learned this the same. I always learned structure was character, and it was all about how the character’s going through a specific journey. We learned there’s the character’s need and there’s the character’s want. The movie is all about where they start off the movie, where they want something, and they’re making a journey towards needing something.

Wherever they are along the way, those key plot points are always about whether they’re getting what they need or whether they’re getting what they want, that kind of thing. The other thing that I learned was that the protagonist is the character who changes, not the lead of the movie. It’s the character who changes, and the antagonist is the character who causes that person to change. The protagonist of The Fugitive is Tommy Lee Jones, of course. The antagonist is Richard Kimble because Harrison Ford, of course, is the lead of the movie.

Craig: He doesn’t change.

Dana: He doesn’t change at all. He’s like, “I didn’t kill my wife,” in the beginning of the movie. In the middle of the movie, he’s like, “I swear to fucking God, I didn’t kill my wife.” At the end of the movie, he’s like, “I fucking told you I didn’t kill my wife.” Tommy Lee Jones, the whole structure is key to Tommy Lee Jones’s arc in understanding that Richard Kimble is telling the truth.

Craig: Yes. This is all correct.

Dana: That helps me with structure more than anything else.

Craig: Nice.

John: All right. It’s time for our One Cool Things. My one cool thing is sitting between me and Dana. It’s a thing called the Owl, and it’s this little camera device. It looks like a speaker. It looks like a tall speaker, but it has a camera at the top that is a panoramic camera. We’re on a Zoom like we are right now with Craig, and Drew, and Graham. It is showing individual slices, individual shots of me and Dana, so that we actually look well framed in it. It is just a piece of magic. It’s the Owl.

If you’re doing any sort of situation where you have some people in a place and other people are on Zoom, it is a game-changer. When we’ve done other things like this, Scriptnotes, you have to move the laptop back far enough so that everyone can see each other, or there’s a camera up on the wall.

Dana: I’ve done so many things like this, I’ve never seen it work as well as it’s working right now. We’re all seeing each other’s faces. Everybody’s in the frame. It’s amazing.

Craig: It’s really effective.

John: What’s so smart about it is it has the panoramic view, and it shows you at the top, but it’s smart enough to individually slice out when someone is speaking to give them framed as a single.

Dana: I urge every studio to get one of these because all of those Zoom calls I have with you guys, where 27 of you are in one frame, I can’t do it anymore.

John: I was on a Netflix call, and literally, it was like a satellite shot of two executives at a table.

Dana: Yes, satellite, literally, like a Google Earth shot of the Netflix building.

John: It’s hard for me to read it in attention. I’m like, “All right. Do they get it?”

Dana: I was like, “Do they like it? Do they want it?” I can’t tell.

Craig: I’m going to get one of these for the production office. I’m going to get one tomorrow.

Dana: Oh, for the production office. It would kill for that. For production meetings?

Craig: Yes.

Dana: Everybody. Great.

John: Craig, for D&D, when we’re a hybrid, like while you’re up in Canada, game changer.

Craig: Yes. [laughs] John and I–

Dana: Did you just slip in that Craig is doing D&D?

Craig: No, we play D&D together.

John: Play D&D every week.

Dana: Oh, I thought you guys were making a movie together. It’s cute. You guys are cute.

Craig: We are. We’re adorable. We talk about torture. John and I were playing in a game on Thursday evening, where we were subjected to a three-hour pointless combat, where we ended up captured and shoved into a mine.

Dana: Oh, my God. Are you with other people in this story? Who else is in there?

John: Oh, my God. Who’s who? It’s me, and Craig, and Chris Morgan. We’ll talk about it. We’ll tell you after. We’ll sidebar.

Dana: Yes, sidebar. Chris Morgan made it in, though. We all know he was there.

John: Dana Fox, do you have a one cool thing to share with us?

Dana: I would love my one cool thing to be my husband’s podcast, which is called The Most Important Question. It’s mostly about climate change, and science, and all sorts of interesting stuff. Because it’s not a thing, I am going to say my one cool thing is heating pads. Because what it allows you to do is lower the temperature in your bedroom to 55. If you can’t see your breath, you’re not doing it right. Then you get the heating pad so that you don’t die. It allows you to keep the room as cold as you need to keep it. Amazing sleep.

John: Love it.

Dana: Please enjoy.

Craig: That’s good.

John: I also am a big fan of the heated seats in your car.

Dana: Stunning.

John: It can be the middle of summer, but you just want a little–

Dana: Summer? A little back warmer?

John: Yes.

Dana: Heat up that lumbar?

John: Absolutely. Loosen up your back.

Dana: Not getting back pain? Loosen it up?

John: Fantastic.

Dana: Love it. Great story.

John: The new car also has seat coolers, and so it blows air through the seat. Game changer, so you don’t have the sweaty back when you go into a meeting.

Dana: Not to steal another one cool thing, because I totally want to hear one. We also got the ID. Buzz. Let me tell you, this is the electric VW buzz that looks like the hippie thing.

John: You have 19 children.

Dana: We have 19 children. We put them in this hippie bus. We drive around, and it brings so much joy.

John: It’s a beautiful car.

Dana: It’s a beautiful car. We got the peel. People are like, “All right, all right.” Everybody becomes Matthew McConaughey when you drive by. You get peace signs. You get smoking weed signs. We’re in Virginia. We’re in southern places where nobody does shit like that. Everybody is so happy around this car. It’s the cutest thing. My husband got me a little bumper sticker on it. Surprised me one day. It says, “We can’t all come and go by bubble,” on the back of the car. It’s really precious. He’s a great guy.

John: Craig, what’s your one cool thing?

Craig: Yes, please. My one cool thing this week is a set of puzzles, a nice puzzle suite from Eric Berlin, who’s a pretty prolific puzzle constructor. He’s a big participant on one of the big teams in the MIT puzzle hunt that happens every year. This one is actually a great one if you’re thinking about getting into this sort of thing. It’s not far off, difficulty-level-wise, from the one that David Kwong and I ran back in the day at the Magic Castle. This one is called Have Fun Storming the Castle. We’ll include a link for you.

Dana: I went to the David Kwong at the Magic Castle one with you guys. That was great.

John: It was with him.

Craig: Difficulty-wise, it’s right about there. You should be able to get through it. Maybe you might need a hint or two, but probably not.

Dana: I’ve never felt dumber than when I was– I was like, “I’m so smart.” I came in, I’m like, “I’m so smart. I went to Stanford, I’m so smart.” I’ve never felt dumber than that night.

Craig: It’s because you use different skills. This one’s got eight puzzles and then one meta puzzle.

Dana: How do I engage in it? Is it online, or is it on my internet phone?

Craig: Yes, you can pick up your internet, get your internet out of your pocket,-

Dana: Okay. That’s my internet and whatever.

Craig: -turn your internet on. [laughs] Then switch your internet on.

John: Unlock your internet on your face.

Dana: Unlock your internet with my face. Copy that. I know how to do that.

Craig: Exactly. Then follow the link, and it will cost you a whole eight American dollars.

Dana: This is great. That’s a great one cool thing.

John: That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by [crosstalk]

Dana: Wait, hold on. Don’t do a thing. I love you guys. You’re amazing people, and I really love you, and I miss you, and you’re great, and thanks for being such great people.

Craig: Dana, you are just a permanent ray of sunshine. I can’t explain how happy I was to see Dana in her slanket on that plane. I was so happy.

Dana: Comfort. One of the vowels is gone. I don’t know which one. I can’t help you get the sweatshirt because I don’t know which vowel disappeared.

Craig: Like 70% of people that I know, if I had seen them on a plane in their slanket, I would pretend to have not seen them.

Dana: You would pretend that you had not seen them. 100%. No, I know. I get that about you.

Craig: I’m on a plane. I don’t want to do all that.

Dana: I felt so touched. I was like, Craig usually ignores people on planes. This is special.

Craig: Then Jack McBrayer just chimed in, and we had the best time.

Dana: We had the best time. I really do love you guys, and you’ve been amazing friends and mentors to me forever, and I appreciate you. Truly, I’m so grateful for you guys. It’s hitting me because I’m here in town for Wicked, and that took five years of my life. There are certain people in your life who just don’t leave and don’t stop being amazing, and it’s you guys.

Craig: I will say, Dana, I don’t know if I’ve been changed for the better, but I know that I’ve been changed for good.

Dana: I’m going to get you something. I’m going to get you a present. I’m going to get you some merch. Don’t worry about it.

Craig: I want merch. I want pink, and I want green.

Dana: I’m going to get you a mirror that has lights on it.

Craig: By the way, that’s how you know that no one’s ever sent me a mug.

[laughter]

Dana: I’m going to do it. I’m going to send you the mug. I’m going to send you the Owala water bottle. Everybody loves these water bottles. They did a Wicked collection. I got 72 of them for Christmas presents.

Craig: Good, because Melissa doesn’t have enough water bottles in her house.

John: No, it’s a huge shortage, yes.

Craig: We have a room that’s called Water Bottle Room.

Dana: By the way, I have 757,000 water bottles, and I somehow don’t have enough water bottles. There’s never the cap. It’s never the right thing.

Craig: This water bottle thing– Anyway.

Dana: They’ve got us by the balls. By the way, if anybody wants to have fun, look up Hugh Grant talking about water bottles. It’s a delight. I have a whole side career where I just watch Hugh Grant do interviews. It’s so fun.

Craig: Second one cool thing. I like that.

John: Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Spencer Lackey. To view 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 transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with sign up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. You’ll find clips and helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes and give us a follow.

You’ll also find us on Instagram at Script Notes Podcast. We have T-shirts and hoodies, and drinkware, but no cuck chairs. [laughter] You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau. You’ll find the show notes with links to all the things we talked about today in the e-mail you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to our premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become one at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on the promo circuit.

Dana Fox, thank you again for joining us on Scriptnotes.

Dana: Thank you for having me. I love you guys.

Craig: Thank you, Dana.

[Bonus Segment]

John: Dana Fox, the reason we get to see you in person in Los Angeles is because you are here doing a promo for Wicked For Good. I just want to talk about the promo circuit because on so many levels, it’s a celebration. Congratulations, you made a movie. It’s out there in the world. You made a series of a new season of television, it’s out there in the world. Then, like, oh my God, you have to just schlep around and promote it. You have to do all the things.

Dana: It looks really fun when people see it, and everybody’s dressed up, and you’ve got all the hair and makeup, and everyone’s like, “You’re great, everything’s great.” It’s so hard. It’s like a job. It’s a real job, and it takes you away from the job you get paid for, which is typing on your computer.

John: You don’t get paid to [unintelligible 01:08:43].

Dana: For months, I didn’t work because I was promoting the first movie, and thank God, we had a lot of people who wanted to talk to us, which was amazing. I felt so lucky, and so I really wanted to take advantage of it. Then it was March, and I realized I hadn’t written a single word for the year. I was like, “Oh my God, I have to pack my entire year worth of work into the next couple of months because the next promo tour is about to start.” That was very intense.

It is a lot of work, and I hate to say that because you imagine normal people with their normal jobs sitting there rolling their eyes at me, being like, “Oh, getting makeup on is really hard.” It’s like I became a writer because I’m terrible at that stuff. I’m so bad at blow-drying my hair. What even is that? It takes hours. I don’t understand it. Then I see the girls, Cynthia and Ari, and I’m like, they look like they’re going to the Met Gala every time they step out. I’m like, that is a lot of work.

John: Hours to get to that place. I remember back when I was in Startup Program, you were just a couple years behind me. There was a writer-director who was talking about, like, “Oh, yes, I do that, but I’m going to have to do the awards season starting for this movie.” Oh, that’s presumptuous. They think that movie’s made up for the awards. He wasn’t wrong. He was just like, he’d been through it before. He knew that, “Okay, those are three months I’m not going to get back.”

Dana: I’m very superstitious, so if something goes well, I have to wear the same clothes. It’s gross. It’s like, I’m that lady. I can’t talk about anything in the future. I’m like, I’m done. The premiere’s on Monday in New York, and I’m going to do that and do a couple more interviews. I’m assuming I’m done because I can’t–

John: You’re not done.

Dana: Ooh, but I can’t say it out loud.

John: Let’s talk about the gendered expectations of this, though, too, because for you need to have a great-looking outfit. Hair and makeup, but also great outfits for things, where Craig and I don’t– We’re just sticking to our suit.

Craig: I got to tell you that [crosstalk]

Dana: No, I was going to say, have you seen Craig lately? Look at his glasses. He looks so cool.

Craig: They send over a stylist who’s a lovely man, and they send over a makeup lady. Now, for me, makeup is, “Can we please make your head not so shiny?”

Dana: That takes a life time.

Craig: That’s really what makeup is. “Can we do something about the eye bags?” It takes about 20 minutes, maybe 30, but–

Dana: I’m in there for two hours and 30 minutes.

Craig: That’s the gendered part, right? That is a big one.

Dana: Can we make her look like she doesn’t have three kids?

Craig: They send over a rack of clothes, and I’ve got to try things on and make decisions. I’m not good at that.

Dana: I think that’s nice that they do that. They’ve done that for me, and I felt so appreciated. I appreciate Universal so much for treating the writer that way in features because, Craig, you’re the writer in a television show, which means you’re like the king of the castle. I’m a writer in a feature movie, which means they’re like, “Who? What’s that girl doing here?”

Craig: They don’t have to do it, and it’s nice that they are doing it.

Dana: They don’t have to. It’s very nice that they’re doing it.

Craig: It’s also a sign of how much they respect and appreciate you. For me, it was interesting hearing you say you had to take all this time off. For me, that stuff happens while we’re in post. It starts happening, I would say, two brutal months, maybe three, and I’m working all day. Then you just have to go and–

Dana: For me, when I have an interview and I have to get glammed, that’s my day. He killed my whole day. Does it do that for you?

Craig: Most of the stuff that I end up doing are interviews. There’s the junket days and all that stuff. The phone interviews or Zoom interviews, I don’t need to do anything. When somebody’s coming for a magazine and they’re doing photographs or you’re going to an event, then, yes. I got to work on a Saturday now because I did this thing on a Thursday.

Dana: Part of the reason that I accepted the whole idea of the stylist and all that stuff was because Franklin Leonard from the Black List pulled me aside and was like, “Writers are always wearing black, they’re hiding, they’re in the background, especially women, and they look like publicists for someone else. Don’t do that.” He’s like, “Wear color, be out front, make yourself look good because that is part of raising the profile of writers in Hollywood.” That’s part of people understanding that we actually work on the movies. We do stuff.

Craig: I have this thing that I think I’ve successfully articulated to the stylist I work with, which is because part of his job is to try and get me to be a little bit more adventuresome in what I wear because I’m not. Where I draw the line is I’m like, okay, but when I’m up there, like we’re doing a FYC event and it’s me and the actors, it’s about the actors. More importantly, I cannot try to even seem like I think I’m as cool as them.

Dana: I’m trying to compare myself to Pedro.

Craig: Exactly.

Dana: 100%.

Craig: I’m Dad. I need to always be Dad. As long as you can keep me Dad, and let the actors have their beautiful aura of coolness.

Dana: As long as it’s clear that I am Ariana Grande or Cynthia Erivo’s nanny, then we’re fine. [laughter] I’m not up there to try to be like them. I do stare at them lovingly during all of the Q&As [crosstalk] and just tear up because they’re just so beautiful and lovely.

Craig: You’re so important to the movie, and John is so important to the movie and the editors and everybody. These events are entirely about the actors. I reiterate this, too. I’m trying to explain this. Because sometimes, especially when we do–

Dana: They do a lot of events where the actors are not there. These are more the craft ones, like the BAFTA.

Craig: Those are fun.

Dana: It’s about craft, and then they really do listen to what–

John: What’s so interesting about those roundtable-y things is that you are having genuine conversations, but you’re done up because you’re taking photos at the same time, and so you’re looking at stuff. I find if I get makeup for something, I feel it the rest of the day, my eyes get itchy, and I hate having it on. I have to scrub it all down.

Craig: What is that? Dana, why do our eyes get itchy?

Dana: It’s the powder in it. Do your eyes get itchy?

Craig: Yes.

John: Yes. From the–

Dana: You guys are allergic to something. You got to tell your makeup artists that they need to do sensitive skin stuff.

John: I think it’s just the powder that they use to keep my shiny head from–

Craig: I think it’s anti-bald powder. Because like John and I, our heads are bounce cards, basically. Whatever they use for that clearly makes your eyes itchy. Honestly, no man can complain about makeup. It’s just like–

Dana: Thank you for saying that, because I, as a woman, feel that I could have been president of the United States if I had not had to blow-dry my hair throughout my entire life, because that is how much time I would have gotten back. I could be the president right now.

Craig: Really, you should have been.

Dana: I mean, please.

John: Dana Fox for president. Once again, we’ve–

Dana: Solved it all.

John: We solved the problem.

Dana: We solved everything.

John: Dana, we love you. Thank you so much for coming on.

Craig: Thank you, Dana.

Dana: I love you both so much.

John: Bye.

Dana: Thank you. Bye.

Links:

• Dana Fox on Instagram and IMDb
• Wicked: For Good
• Graham Rowat
• Friendship
• Comfrt travel hoodie
• Sara Schaefer’s miniature cuck chairs
• Pittman Inflatable Camping Chair
• Inflatable Beanless Bean Bag Chair
• What the Cuck?! | Decoder Ring
• Wicked the book and the stage show
• The Fugitive (1993)
• Owl Labs’ Meeting Owl 3
• Eric Berlin – Puzzle Snacks
• The Most Important Question podcast
• Heating Pads
• VW ID Buzz
• Preorder the Scriptnotes Book!
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription (now with fewer emails!)
• Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
• Scriptnotes on Instagram
• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by Spencer Lackey (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: Whoa, my name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to episode 710 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, Craig, whatever happened to weird?

Craig: I’ll show you.

John: I would argue that our modern world is safer in most ways than it’s ever been. The arguably edges of that are not safer, but it’s also less interesting. I want to root out the causes and potential solutions for what feels like cultural stagnation and what it means for writers and the entertainment industry. I also want to discuss the tipping point between wanting to write and actually writing. Not just on a daily basis, but like, “Oh, this is the thing I want to write.” What is the actual turning point for going for I want to write this thing, and I’m actually writing this thing?

Craig: Moving it from the, I think maybe one day I should do this pile to the, I’m doing it pile.

John: From the someday list to the active project list.

Craig: It’s happening list.

John: In our bonus segment, premium members, let’s discuss self-narrative and the pros and cons of remembering stuff about your past and having a continuity of who you are over time. We talked months and months ago about aphantasia, people who can’t summon images in their head. Correlated with that is, a lot of times people don’t have a clear memory of who they were over time. There’s a lot of disadvantages to that, but there’s also some advantages to that. You’re not weighed down by your history.

Craig: I may be one of the weird ones on that front. We’ll get to that if you pay the $5, which honestly, come on, it’s $5.

John: $5. Big news. We have a live show coming up. Our LA live show. We typically do a holiday show. We’re doing it November 30th at Dynasty Typewriter, our home base for live shows. Every ticket gets a signed copy of the book.

Craig: Oh my God. Really?

John: That’s it.

Craig: That’s amazing.

John: Usually, we’re doing a fundraiser for somebody. Now it’s a fundraiser for ourselves and the book.

Craig: Oh, my.

John: Oh, my.

Craig: Take that, poor kids. Look, all I’m hearing is that I have to sign more books, but do I? No.

John: You will have to sign some books. About the hour before the live show, we will be signing every copy.

Craig: That’s what I heard. I know you said other words, but what I heard was signing more books. I will say we have a great time at that particular venue. It’s a fun time of year. We always have good guests.

John: We do.

Craig: It’s a great rollicking time for the audience. Plus, free book.

John: Free book.

Craig: Free book and free book at the perfect time to then wrap it and regift it off to somebody else.

John: If you already pre-ordered a book, and thank you for everybody who pre-ordered a book this last week. It was crazy the number of new people we did. Your inbox, Drew, has been overwhelmed by people sending in those receipts.

Drew: A little bit.

John: A little bit, yes. You pre-order your book. You send Drew a copy of the receipt. We are going to be sending out a bonus chapter that didn’t make it into the cut of the book on getting stuff written. That’s coming out this next week.

Craig: Fantastic.

John: All that is great, but if you want to see us in person and get an early copy of the hardcover of the book.

Craig: Like a real book.

John: The real book, book, book. Not a gallery, the actual book.

Craig: The actual book you could hit somebody with and hurt them.

John: Yes. That will be November 30th, 3:00 PM. It’s an afternoon show.

Craig: Oh, I love that. I mean, at my age, get me to bed.

John: I like it. You can get back. You can be playing a game on your Steam Deck.

Craig: Yes. I’ll be back on my Steam Deck before you know it. That’ll be lovely. Everybody’s at home for Thanksgiving. Bring your friends, bring your family, bring your stupid little brother. Let’s have some fun.

John: Tickets are up on sale right now. There’s a link in the show notes for those. Get them quickly because it’s a pretty small venue, and we will sell out, and it’s a good deal.

Let us get to something I wrote down last night. I was thinking about how, in 2020 and 2021, when we were in the midst of the pandemic, on this show, we did acknowledge that we were in the midst of a pandemic. We didn’t do a lot of episodes that were specifically about it.

Craig: Right.

John: If you go back and listen to the episodes from 2020 and 2021, oh, yes, there was a pandemic happening. It wasn’t erased from history. I was thinking about the time that we’re currently in, and I feel like on this podcast, we’re maybe not acknowledging that things are just upside down and weird and wild. I wanted to just take a moment to acknowledge, as we’re recording this in the end of October 2025, stuff’s nuts, and it’s just easy to forget that stuff is crazy because it’s just so crazy each and every day.

Craig: Let’s distinguish that from weird, which is–

John: Oh, different, yes.

Craig: Things are chaotic.

John: Chaotic, unprecedented.

Craig: Yes, a lot of that.

John: As I started to put together the list, I realized, oh my God, I forgot that also happened in the past six months.

Craig: Our capacity to forget things is simultaneously our greatest asset.

John: We’ve limited attention. Our attention gets dried onto the next thing, and we forget the thing that happened before that.

Craig: I also believe, I have come to believe, in an age where everybody has access to information whenever they want it, at all hours of the day, and that information is generated extremely quickly after an event occurs. Most people don’t pay attention anyway, have never paid attention, and we are, as a species, far less plugged in than we think we are. The issue is that the people who are plugged in presume everyone else is, and all the people they talk to are plugged in. You’re in a plugged-in bubble. The biggest bubble on planet Earth is not plugged in.

John: I want to put this in here as a historical record of over-acknowledging these things have happened during the time. I think about someone five years from now, it’s weird they didn’t talk about this thing that was happening.

Craig: It feels like John’s trying to get us acquitted from some military tribunal. It feels like later when they’re like, “Who spoke out against all this?” You guys didn’t.” No, we did. Note this.

John: We did. I’m focusing mostly on domestic stuff here. Currently, as we’re recording this, the government is shut down. This question is, do you book flights to places? Because TSA is getting slower and slower. Air traffic control will stop at a certain point, unless those people get paid.

Craig: People are not paying attention. Thanksgiving travel will be insane.

John: Yes, it will be.

Craig: As always.

John: We have the US military in American cities in a way that we’ve never seen before. We have masked agents grabbing people off the street. That’s not a thing that happened before. The president knocked down the east wing of the White House just to do it, to build a ballroom.

Craig: I will say that the White House is a really decrepit building.

[chuckling]

Craig: In particular, the east wing, I don’t like– This is not a defense. I don’t defend anything that man does. Just in case people didn’t know, the east wing was not part of the original building. Also, the original building isn’t the original building because it was burnt down by the British in the War of 1812. The original building was built by slaves, yuck. There is an argument to be made that, in fact, the White House is garbage and should be completely razed and reconstructed in a way that is secure and impressive, and maybe ecologically better. There’s got to be chunks of asbestos in there that they put. God only knows what’s going on there.

John: I think the demolition and the new construction will be done to the highest standard. There’s no question that this is all going to turn out just fantastic.

Craig: The White House needed gold lions and a lot of Lucite.

John: I feel like the foam gold stuff that’s on there right now, it’s easy to scrape off, but you’re not going to rebuild the east wing the way it was. It just won’t happen.

Craig: It’s possible that a new tradition has begun. The new tradition is when a president is elected, they just knock the east wing down.

[chuckling]

Craig: Oh, that’s what it’s going to be this time? Okay, cool. Oh, this time it’s a GameStop? All right.

John: As we’re recording this, we have extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean. So far, this has happened in international waters. The concern is, what happens when you start attacking and killing drug people inside the US borders?

Craig: We have been doing this for a long time, actually.

John: Did we use our military to do it?

Craig: We’ve been using our military to do it for a long time, just usually coordinated by the CIA. I’m not recommending it. I’m just saying what it is is now we have an administration that doesn’t mind boasting about it because they’re jerks. That’s really what it comes down to.

John: We have mass firings of officials or anyone with expertise.

Craig: Yes, we certainly do. All the smart people, get out. Dummies, welcome.

John: Welcome aboard.

Craig: We should put a certain guy in charge of the nation’s health. Let’s do that.

John: Yes, that’d be good.

Craig: Yes, he’s going to great. He believes a lot of great stuff.

John: He does. Idiot. When will we have a flat earther in charge of something?

Craig: We might already have a flat earther in charge.

John: Yes.

Craig: What I understand, the earth is very flat. It’s flat, folks. Look at it. It’s flat. You can’t see it. No one can see the curve.

John: I’m not surprised you have a decent president, but it’s evocative if not duplicative.

Drew: You get the hands.

Craig: That’s the idea. If you can see the hands-

John: Once you come into video, that is all the–

Craig: -if you could see the invisible accordion, then it’s spot on.

John: Extortion of universities and law firms. President demanding $230 million from taxpayers for some bogus claim that he was wrong. We have ICE grabbing people off the street. The trade wars, but now potentially a new Cold War era nuclear arms race or nuclear testing thing. That doesn’t feel great. The economy seems really brittle, and the stock market is still booming, which is just a weird state.

Craig: Since we are laying down some stakes here for the future so that we can look back, it sure feels like we are in for an enormous market collapse because AI is garbage. I’m not saying that AI won’t eventually be useful or power the economy in some positive way as opposed to the negative way it’s doing now, or that it won’t be effective or integrated into our systems one day.

The quote, Alan Greenspan, the irrational exuberance around AI, it feels like everybody in the marketplace and large corporations have just gotten excited about something they think is going to be awesome. They don’t know why or how, and it is not yet awesome. At some point, it feels like this is all tumbling down, at which point the tower will be reconstructed again, as it always is.

John: I think what I’m feeling is that everyone’s banking on it being a transformative technology that would be worth all of the leverage that we’re taking to get there. You could say that’s going to happen. It’s not going to happen. The bubble pops, the bubble doesn’t pop. My other concern is that most of the growth in the economy is in that sector. If you’ve stopped paying attention to that, the real economy beyond that is not doing so great. These are all concerns that economists can debate. I mostly just wanted to put this all in one package so that five years from now, as we were recording episode 1,000-something–

Craig: People didn’t think we were out of touch.

John: Didn’t acknowledge that these are things that are happening right now. A thing you said shortly after the election was focusing on what is in your locus of control versus your local locus of interest. Again, a lot of these things I’m seeing right here are not things I can directly control at all. It’s not worth despairing about them, but also, at some point, you need to acknowledge them and not just bury your head in the sand over them. It’s not going to be useful either.

Craig: It is good to be aware, if only because it helps inform the decisions about the things you can control and influence.

John: Exactly.

Craig: Who you donate money to and who you volunteer for, and who you buy things from, how you save your money.

John: The plans you make for the next short period of time. Is it Thanksgiving travel? It’s like we decided again, Thanksgiving travel just because it’s going to probably be an absolute disaster, or we’re going to drive places rather than fly places, just because that’s going to be potentially a challenge.

Craig: I think Thanksgiving travel will be safe, and it will be exhausting and miserable, which is pretty much an evergreen statement. We’ll see. I’ll be one of them.

John: We’ll be flying back here for the live show.

Craig: I’m flying back, but I’m flying from Canada and to Canada, which feels somehow–

John: At least on the Canadian side, they probably still have air traffic controllers.

Craig: I don’t even know. Who knows? I don’t know. It may just be that they let the planes just decide themselves.

John: Unless the government of Canada says something that infuriates our president, then it’s beyond the topic.

Craig: They do have air traffic control, of course, but what they don’t have currently in Canada at proper capacity is the mail. There’s been a postal strike in Canada for months now. At first, it was a federal strike, but no mail. Then, I think because the government can do some sort of there’s got to be some mail, they have these rolling strikes now that I think are province by province. That said, I don’t use Canadian mail.

John: Our daughter’s in Australia, and they can’t mail anything to us in the US because Australia won’t basically send mail to the US because they can’t guarantee that there won’t be a tariff hit on it. Essentially, she’s not able to send us anything.

Craig: What about a PDF?

John: Digital goods, at this point, to this point.

Craig: Tell her to stop printing the PDFs and mailing them. She can just email the PDF.

John: Totally. Let’s do some follow-up. In episode 708, Craig was talking, This is going to be the best orange book–“ I’m assuming this will be the best orange book on anyone’s shelf.

Drew Marquardt: Zach wrote in, “Please let Craig know that claim is going to be immediately tested as Cameron Crowe releases his memoir at the end of this month with a completely orange cover.”

Craig: Wait, hold on, Cameron Crowe. Hold on. That’s our thing.

John: It’s our thing.

Craig: Orange is our brand.

John: 14 years, we’ve been orange.

Craig: 14 years of orange. How long has he been orange?

John: I don’t know.

Craig: How orange is his orange? Do we know?

John: It’s orange enough.

Craig: It’s orange enough. Oh my God, it’s very similar.

John: Pretty similar orange.

Craig: It’s very similar.

John: It has a picture of his– It has his face on it.

Craig: Look, we can’t say no one can have an orange cover.

John: I’m looking at the date here. His book actually already came out.

Craig: Oh, okay. Actually, he’s annoyed at us, probably. Now I’m apologizing to Cameron Crowe. The script for Jerry Maguire is one of the scripts that taught me how to write. You know what, he can– Go ahead.

John: Go ahead.

Craig: Fine. Second coolest book on your shelf that’s orange.

John: Same episode, we talked about printer prices and there was a debate, I remember, between the two of you.

Drew: There was.

John: Shelley wrote in that Drew is right.

Craig: Sure, because she found one guy that was selling one thing for $10.

Drew: She bought a printer on sale from Walmart for $29.97.

Craig: Yes, I’m sure you can also buy a car somewhere on sale for $29.99. Generally speaking, I knew this would happen. One person would be like, I’m going to spend all day because it cost them $29. By the way, is that printer, do you have to hand crank it?

Drew: Apparently, it can scan and copy as well as print, but the ink is $60. She gives you that credit.

Craig: Yes, it’s normally $60.

John: It’s $60 to refill both the black and white and color thing. It’s the razor and the blades situation.

Craig: Come on. What was her name?

John: Shelley.

Craig: Boy, she just loves you, doesn’t she? I’m going to remember this.

Drew: She likes truth, I think is what it is.

John: I think what we learned from Austin is that lots of people love Drew.

Craig: Yes, but they’ve chosen sides in what will soon become a great war.

John: My friend Quinn was misidentified as Drew. Quinn and Dana were–

Craig: Oh, somebody thought Quinn was–

John: Was Drew.

Drew: I didn’t know this.

Craig: By the way, let’s agree Quinn is a handsome guy.

John: He really is.

Craig: Quinn is one of the best-looking guys.

Drew: They met me, and they were like, “Oh no.”

Craig: No, you look like a podcast producer.

Drew: That’s just mean, Craig.

Craig: Yes, thank you. You’re welcome. Hey, it’s war. You started this.

John: Quinn is podcast host. You’re a podcast producer.

Craig: Oh, it’s getting worse. It’s getting meaner.

John: 708, Adriana and Veronica was one of the properties that we talked about on the How Would This Be a Movie? Craig, you were of the pitch that it’s only the real people are the interesting thing. That’s the only thing you want to see is a docuseries about the two of those women.

Craig: Right, like a reality show.

John: I was more convinced that it was a fictionalized version, but it’s one of those rare cases where the rights’ sold. Tell us about this.

Drew: Chris wrote in, “I’m a writer and producer, and been a fan of your show for years. Imagine my surprise and delight when I heard you cover my project on How Would This Be a Movie?. I’m a former book scout for Fox and have an IP-driven company called Winterlight Pictures. One thing I love to do is reverse engineer articles to sell for film and TV. I have an idea, the journalist writes it, and we sell it together. Nobody is better at this than Mickey Rapkin, who wrote the article that Pitch Perfect is based on. We’ve done it a bunch, but never at the level of Adriana V. Veronica.

I moved to East LA recently. My neighborhood has Adriana and Veronica on every bus stop. I started to wonder, who are these ladies? I saw a rumor on TikTok that they’re sisters, but that they never publicly talked about it or even acknowledged each other. I called Mickey, and he did his thing. He’s a genius journalist. After months of trying, he finally got them to crack and got both to talk. When the article came out, we must have had 15 meetings with producers, and there was a four-studio bidding war.

We just closed a deal. We can’t announce it yet. It was fascinating to hear your expert takes, as we’ve had many similar conversations. We met with unscripted folks, and there could still be a reality TV version, but we’re on the same page as you guys. We’d love to see an ongoing scripted show. Succession and Mad Men are good coms. Anyways, wanted to share that, and thank you for a terrific podcast and for covering the story.”

John: Great. I also love, it answers a question I had. It’s like, why does this article exist, and why was it in The Hollywood Reporter? The article exists-

Craig: To be sold.

John: -to be sold as a thing.

Craig: It is interesting. I guess there isn’t really any currency to hiding the fact that it is an artificially inspired article. I don’t mean artificially in a bad way, but it’s contrived to sell. I guess the fact that it is doesn’t impact the fact that people want it anyway. He’s happily saying, “Yes, this is how this works.” I’m like, ‘Oh, this could be cool if it were an article.” Then a guy writes an article, and then they sell it. Congratulations to them. It’d be fun to see how this goes.

John: I want to go back to the article. I thought the article was great as I read it. While it sets up a world that feels cinematic, it feels like it could be a series, I like that it didn’t explicitly try to make it– It didn’t feel like it was a pilot. It didn’t feel like it–

Craig: It wasn’t a pitch.

John: It wasn’t a pitch.

Craig: That probably would be a step too far, where people would read this and go, “Oh, this isn’t really–“ It’s a funny thing. People want something that isn’t a story so that they can make a story, but they want it to have a story.

John: They want it to have characters and a setting and a world, but they don’t want it to be predigested.

Craig: Just tell them what to do. Don’t tell me what to do.

John: Yes. All right. I want to talk about Weird. Two bits of inspiration for this. First off, there’s an article by Adam Mastroianni that argues that people are less weird than they used to be. That might sound odd, but data from every sector of our society is pointing strongly in the same direction, that we are in a recession of mischief, a crisis of conventionality, and an epidemic of mundane. Deviance is on the decline. It goes through, statistically, you can see we don’t have the same number of weird cults and serial killers. That kind of deviance is just down a lot. There’s arguments for what happened, if it was lead in the gas or whatever, that kind of stuff.

But also, it feels like there’s bumpers on the bowling lanes right now, like everything is just safe. The edges are rounded off a lot of things. Weirdness is discouraged. Things are more predictable. As I was reading this, I was thinking back to a project I got sent for a rewrite recently that was based on some really wild source material. Then I read the adaptation of it, it’s like, wow, this is just the most sanitized, cleaned down, just like the most mainstreamified version of a thing. It took something weird and just un-weirded it.

I just wanted to spend a little time talking about the value of weirdness, oddness, not even performative weirdness, but just the sense of just things that are following their own weird rhythms. Adam makes the point that creativity is just deviance put to good use. It’s the ability to not do the thing that everyone else is doing and create something that is just unexpected and surprising.

Craig: I think that there’s certainly some value to this argument. One of the things that happens over time is that things that are weird that attract people eventually fall apart because they were too weird, and also they were just wrong. Cults are a good example. Cults fall apart. Scientology, which on, I guess, the surface hasn’t fallen apart, it’s fallen apart. Nobody’s a Scientologist anymore. It’s just not a thing. There’s like 12 of them now. They’re mostly just a real estate holding company. It’s because people get wise to it. Over time, it becomes harder and harder to start a cult.

If you were to start a cult right now, you got to get over the hump of everybody going, “But all the cults end with a building on fire, or we lose all our money, or I can’t talk to my mom anymore.” You get smarter, and so a lot of the weirdness gets eliminated in that fashion.

The other thing that happens to weirdness is if it is successful, then there’s money in it. Then a company comes, and it’s not weird anymore. Best example I can think of is Goop. Goop is a large corporation that is primarily owned and controlled by Gwyneth Paltrow, I believe. Goop contains a lot of weirdness that is institutionalized and packaged, and sold. Which, by the way, thumbs up, well done. She employs a lot of people, helps the economy. The idea of, oh, throwing some bee pollen on my food is going to make me better, which it does not, used to just be something weird people did.

Lastly, because everybody weird feels the need to self-promote, it’s hard to be weird when you’re popular. We end up in a popularity machine where people pluck all the weird stuff out immediately. There’s no time for it to live underground.

There’s no chance for you to be like, “Oh, I knew them before they were famous.” Everybody’s famous all the time immediately. Nobody got in there early. There is no weirdness because we all know about it. There’s either just popular or unnoticed, which doesn’t mean bad. Lastly, corporations just take everything now. They just take everything.

John: I hear all that stuff, and I think you’ve hit on some really key things for why weirdness seems to be declining. I think there was a time when we grew up, people could be locally weird because you were the weird person in this group. With the rise of the internet, those weird people can find each other, and suddenly they have a base. They’re not weird within the group. That’s a thing that happened with comic books and the comic book culture, which was weird. It was a little bit more fringy, but then it became just more and more. Once everyone could find each other and Comic-Con became a thing.

Craig: Comic-Con is now a place where corporations go to sell stuff. It was, in fact, a niche thing. Hey, we play Dungeons and Dragons all the time. More people play it now than ever, but it used to be something that weird kids did, like me. [chuckles]

John: I also say that you talk about the corporations, but honestly, sometimes there is an ambassador or some person who can take a fringe thing and pull it into the mainstream and just make it approachable. RuPaul and drag. Drag, it was a very fringe thing that only a very specific subculture knew about, and the rise of Drag Race. Much good was done, but it also made drag less weird. Less weird in ways that are always going to feel. Yes.

Craig: It’s not that it’s sanitized as much as it is popularized. It’s not–

John: You can’t be weird and popular.

Craig: You can’t be weird and popular. That’s the bottom line. If you get popular, you’re out of weird zone. Now you’re just interesting and trendy. Drag culture is trendy. When my daughter is saying boots the house down or whatever, I don’t even know what that would be. Boots the gag me with your boots, I don’t know what. It’s something from Drag Race. A lot of people that watch Drag Race are laughing at me now. I’m cool with that.

John: That’s fine. I’m fine.

Craig: I’m weird, but everyone knows it.

John: Even within the culture of Drag Race, you have a performer like Jimbo who’s throwing bologna slices on himself. That’s weird, but you have to really go to a different thing. It’s bringing in a clowning culture into drag, which was related but not the same thing.

Craig: Boots the house down. Boots the house down. Slang expression that means to perform exceptionally well with great style and energy, or to look amazing. Just side note, I boots the house down all the time. I do not. That’s exactly right. There’s also, let’s talk a little bit about the popularization of kink.

John: Yes, for sure.

Craig: Kink, the concept of kink is weird. That’s kinky. That’s weird.

John: It’s not just sex, which is taboo or porn that is taboo, but it’s a special, that’s not weird enough anymore, so you have to go–

Craig: It’s like among the people who are doing weird stuff, you’re into the weirder stuff.

Craig: Then it became like, “Don’t kink shame.” Then it was like, “Oh, that’s your kink.” Meaning like, “Oh, you like rock?” I like BDSM.” Everyone’s like, “Yes, great. That’s your kink. That’s cool.” No one’s kinky.

John: There’s a great episode of Dakota Ray, and we’ll put a link in the show notes too, which is about cucking and a cuck chair. The degree to which–

Craig: [chuckles] There’s just something about seeing you say the word cucking that is so funny.

John: The Democratic Party can send out a meme, which is just a chair in relation to another political figure that’s clearly a cuck reference. It’s like nothing is taboo, nothing is weird too much.

Craig: How is the chair a cuck reference?

John: The cuck chair. The man who’s watching his wife be–

Craig: Did someone sell a cuck chair? It’s not a bad idea. A branded, this is actually a great chair for you if you’re a cuck. It’s comfortable.

John: It’s because it’s not a La-Z-Boy. It has to be a chair that feels like it’s appropriate in the bedroom.

Craig: Right. You don’t want the arms of the chair to be too high because you can get in the way of your self-gratitude. [chuckles]

John: I want to talk about–

Craig: That’s not a bad idea, right?
[chuckling]

Craig: Cuck chair.

John: Let’s bring it back to the things that we are actually doing, the films and television that we’re writing, because I think that sometimes we underestimate the degree to which weird does work. Everything Everywhere All at Once is a very weird movie that was a giant hit.

Craig: So weird. Sinners is weird.

John: Sinners is weird.

Craig: It’s weird.

John: It’s weird. It has this big musical number in the middle of it. Great. Love it.

Craig: It’s just Irish guys showing up and playing that weird song. It’s weird. I love that.

John: Weapons is weird. It’s really weird. It uses its time really strangely. Gladys is just a fundamental weirdo.

Craig: We crave it.

John: Yes.

Craig: Yes, it is hard to– Look, it’s not probably possible to make an equally weird Sinners 2 because, at that point, then it’s being repeated. It is absolutely true that what we used to call weird, people now call a little dangerous and risky. My least favorite term is punk rock because anyone who says, “Oh, yes, that’s more punk rock,” is never a punk rock person.

Anyway, point is, yes, weird is risky and dangerous properly, but what we get a lot of now is what I would call weird acceptance, where this is like, this movie is about defending the weird and promoting the weird and accepting the weird. We’re good with that. We’ve done it.

John: What I like about the examples you were giving, I’ll throw Poor Things in there, Lighthouse in there, One Battle After Another, so weird.

Craig: So weird.

John: But they’re not performatively weird. They’re not to feel like, “Look how weird I’m being.” They’re not just trying–

Craig: No, they’re just honestly weird.

John: From a fundamental level.

Craig: Inside of themselves aren’t weird. If you watch those movies, when you get to the end of Poor Things, you go, “That was weird, and yet by the time I got to the end, it was actually quite a conventional narrative in its own way.” That’s wonderful. It was just that it was doing something creative. It wasn’t afraid to wander off and do some stuff that is different and challenging and odd and kinky in a proper way, not in fake kinky way.

John: Here’s what I think these movies are succeeding on is that they are– The challenge I’m always putting to everyone when they’re talking about what they should write, it’s like they’re writing the movie they most want to see. These filmmakers are making the movie they most want to see on a big screen, and they’re being honest with themselves about what it is, and they’re finding ways to make the movie that is exactly their movie and not someone else’s movie.

Craig: I completely agree. I still think that we have a side business, by the way, in this culture. I just–

John: Craig, you’re not generally the entrepreneur, so I’m curious to see–

Craig: That’s what I’m saying to you, really. I’m not going to do it, but see, you have a company. I mean, Highland, right?

John: Yes, furniture is a real venture.

Craig: Sure.

John: Like an inflatable chair that you can inflate when you need it, because it’s also humiliating to be in an inflatable chair.

[chuckling]

Craig: God, I mean, you can almost charge extra for that. That’s the other thing about this plan is these people like to be humiliated, which means you can take even more of their money.

John: Absolutely, but I feel like if you could, I think an inflatable cuck chair is weird.

Craig: Is weird.

John: I mean, it actually pushes it–

Craig: That goes back around to now, even in the cuck community, people are like, “Dude, you know, he bought the inflatable chair from “apps.” [chuckles]

John: Other things I think we should acknowledge as being weird and wonderful. We’ve talked about Too Many Cooks, which is just such a strange video. I showed it to my daughter, and she’s like, “I don’t know what that is. I don’t know why you showed that to me. I’m angry that you showed it to me,” but it’s just so–

Craig: Then she showed it to somebody else, I guarantee you. It’s like a virus.

John: Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.

Craig: So weird.

John: So weird.

Craig: Pee Wee himself. That character is weird. Tim Burton, of course, been weird the whole time. Tim Burton, I think some people may have felt like, “Oh, you are now–” At some point, he crossed into, “Oh, you’re doing an impression of Tim Burton being weird.” Except I think that was just Tim Burton being weird the whole time. That’s just what he does.

John: Yes, that’s Tim Burton being himself.

Craig: Because they were popular, people were like, “Oh, it’s just not weird anymore, but it is. It’s weird.

John: What advice can we give to our listeners who are thinking about, “I want to embrace what this is?” It goes back to, really, what do you actually want to watch, and how do you make that thing that you want to watch that is specific to your experience? If you have really mainstream taste and you want to make mainstream stuff, go for it. We’re not steering you away from that. I’m also just saying, also look for what is specific to your experience that helps.

Craig: Coming back from Austin, there’s a certain trend I’ve noticed, and I would caution people to maybe consider not going down a path of what I would call well-traveled weird. There are a lot of stories about people who are struggling with their sexuality or their gender, and then they get thrown on a road trip with somebody. There are so many of them that you get the feeling that people are like, this is in and of itself, the point. I think about the movies that I’ve seen where there was the most interesting commentary on gender or sexuality, they were not movies about gender or sexuality. They were movies with people who had honest questions about these things.

There’s a commoditization of it. It’s almost like, “I think this is selling. Let me write a conventional version of a film about weirdos.” It’s also, we’re all like, we’ve all changed. Society has changed. It’s not so weird. If we’re all talking about the same weird thing, it’s not that weird. Here’s a movie that was weird. 1998, a movie called Happiness that was written and directed by Todd Solondz. That’s a weird movie, and that confronts some pretty weird stuff, including pedophilia. That movie felt dangerous. It felt like it was going to a place that made you uncomfortable and scared because you knew it was real. That is legit weird and fascinating and upsetting.

The other thing is, what’s actually upsetting? Horror, a lot of horror to me is not weird. It’s just pushing on the same old things. Then every now and then something comes along that is legitimately upsetting because it is weird.

John: May December, a weird movie.

Drew: I love that movie.

John: I love it too.

Craig: Weird?

John: Weird.

Craig: Weird?

John: Half the Nicolas Cage movies are just weird. Nicolas Cage is a fundamentally weird person.

Craig: Absolutely.

John: There’s a whole episode of Community, which there’s a class being taught to figure out whether Nicolas Cage is a good actor or a bad actor. The answer is, he does not fit on any spectrum.

Craig: The answer is, he’s Nicolas Cage. His movies are weird because of him because he is fully weird. Some of them are weirder than others, Bad Lieutenant. What the hell? That’s another disturbing movie. So weird. By the way, weird doesn’t mean good.

John: No, it doesn’t mean good.

Craig: Sometimes, weird movies are bad. In fact, a lot of times they’re so weird, you’re like, “I don’t know what to do with this.” Ken Russell used to make some weird-ass movies. I’m a fan of his weird. Layer of the White Worm, one of the weirdest movies you’ll ever seen. Tommy, based on this massively successful rock opera, weird movie, super weird. One of my favorite Ken Russell films, Gothic, which is the story of the night Mary Shelley conceived and wrote Frankenstein. So weird. Love that movie.

John: Emerald Fennell with Saltburn.

Craig: Weird.

John: I love that she’s getting to keep making weird movies because they succeed. Sometimes they break out because they’re strange. M3GAN broke out because it was weird.

Craig: So weird. Also, we forget because he’s become so, I don’t know, integrated into our understanding of modern cinema. Quentin Tarantino was weird.

John: Wes Anderson, weird, so weird.

Craig: Wes Anderson, we think of him now as just mostly twee, but he was and continues to be weird and honestly weird.

John: You love honestly weird. That’s the pride we’re having because you don’t have to love all the movies. I don’t love all these filmmakers, but I love that we’re continuing to make these movies.

Craig: Yes, and to the extent that you can either make something that is truly and honestly weird that comes from you, that feels authentic to you, that is interesting to people, or make something that is not weird, that’s really good. Pixar makes not weird, really good movies. Just try and avoid fake weird. That’s where I think there’s a lot of fake weird, and people can smell it from a mile away.

John: The little weird dust to sprinkle on top of it.

Craig: The weird dust, exactly. You don’t need to do that.

John: No. Let’s transition to talking about going from you have an idea, like, “I’m going to write this thing, this is the thing I want to do,” to actually doing it. Because I suspect we have a lot of listeners out there right now who is like, “Oh, I want to write a movie about this thing. I want to do this pilot.” Maybe you’ve written something before, maybe it’s the first time you’re doing it. But I want to talk about that transition from this is the thing I want to write, to actually doing the thing, and what the steps are in between. Because in previous conversations we’ve talked about, when do you know that you’re ready to start writing? Not doing too much, not doing too little. Unlike a song or a poem, you’ve got to have some plan going into it, or else it’s going to probably be chaos. But that transition point from, today I’m going to sit down and start doing it because I feel like so often it’s that worry that if I actually start doing it, I’ll hate it and I’ll fail.

Craig: You get married and you wake up and go, “What did I do?” It is scary. I think the truth is, we don’t really know.

John: You don’t.

Craig: Ideally, you have an ending. If you see the beginning and the ending, then it’s worth doing, and you’ll make it because you know where you start, you know where you finish, but you will be afraid and you will regret. Everybody regrets it. I regret when I get my food in a restaurant. I regret I couldn’t order something else.

John: I always want what Mike ordered.

Craig: Yes, exactly. I always want what Mike ordered, and I’m not even there. You have decision sickness, and it happens, but also, you must learn the value of commitment because commitment is not, “Oh, I made a great decision at the beginning of the process.” Commitment is, “It doesn’t matter if I made a good decision. I committed.” Through time, energy, and effort, it will be rewarding, hopefully. At worst, you finish, you have a finished script, you wish you hadn’t spent time on that one. You got better. You learned something, put it aside, start something else. You just have to pick and hope.

John: Nora Garrett was on the podcast a few weeks ago. She was talking about her first script, which ended up getting produced as After the Hunt. She went through a writer’s boot camp, basically, to do it. I think the value of write your screenplay in 21 days or NaNoWriMo is that it provides some excuse for why you’re starting.

This is why I’m starting to do this thing. It’s signing up for a gym on January 1st. It’s some reason to get there and actually start doing the thing, because once you’re in the middle of doing the thing, you’re more likely to keep doing the thing. You have to have some rationale for why it is now. Aline also has a metaphor of the easing yourself into the water, where you stand on the beach and let the water roll over your toes, and before you know it, you’re actually writing.

Craig: You ease in, yes.

John: I’m also remembering Katie Silverman coming on the podcast, talking about how, before writing the actual script or even writing treatments for things, she’ll just have those characters have conversations. Just have a long conversation.

Craig: That’s what I do. In the shower, I start doing weird– I’m weird. I’m weird in the shower, you guys, [chuckles] because I’m talking to myself.

John: You’re starting to hear those characters and what it sounds like when those characters are talking to each other. Those are all ways to get started. Then you’ve got to, at some point, bite the bullet. I’m writing a scene. Whether it’s on paper or you’re firing a pilot or however you’re doing it, you write a scene, tweak it a bit, and then write the next one, write the next one, and you got to keep moving. I feel like there’s so many unwritten things out there because people are just afraid to start because they will recognize all the problems with it once you start it, but that’s part of the process.

Craig: Also, starting implies you have to do work.

John: Yes.

Craig: We are afraid, and we’re also lazy. Sometimes we accentuate our fear because it is in service of our laziness when, in fact, really, it’s not that you’re scared, you just don’t want to do it.

John: Yes. Almost anything else is easier than writing.

Craig: Absolutely.

John: A video game, cleaning your kitchen is easier. Some of those are the excuses for why you’re not doing your daily writing or you’re not doing the stuff that you’re doing today, but it can back into the excuse for why you’re never starting on the actual project itself.

Craig: I would argue that if you are a writer, meaning you are a professional writer, or it’s not your job yet, but you would like it to be, and so you work when you’re not working, you should be writing. If you are trying to figure out which thing to be writing, pick one now and keep thinking about the other ones. What you don’t have an option of doing is hamleting around going, “Woah, this one or this one or this?” If you get into that mindset, then at least if you find yourself terrified at the thought of writing something, it’s because you’re actually terrified by it, not because you just don’t want to write.

John: Yes. To wrap this up, we talk about pick the project that has the best ending, which is my general advice for which of the projects you should do. If you don’t know what the ending is, that’s the right place to start. Think about you probably have a good sense of how it starts, how your project begins. Really spend the time to just work through the ending and try writing that out. If you can find it, great, and that’s going to make you really excited to do it. If you can’t find it, probably don’t start because you’re unlikely to finish it.

Craig: It’s going to be bad and you won’t know where to go and you may get to a place where you finally have to pay the debt. Then the debt is what the ending is that I don’t know. The other thing I would recommend is when you have the beginning and you have the ending, ask yourself, “Yes, but what is this about? Why would anyone care?” It’s never about what it’s about, as we know. Having that can be some nice rocket fuel for you because it gives you some mental guidance for what parts of the story would be important to tell and what parts you maybe don’t need to tell.

John: Yes. All right, let’s answer some listener questions. We have one here from Grace in London.

Grace: Hi, John and Craig. I’ve been screenwriting as a passion project for the last 10 years, averaging a screenplay a year, and I’m writing my first animated feature. I think the story and movie would work best as a musical akin to a Disney animation or even though these aren’t animated Barbie or The Greatest Showman. Do you have any advice for writing a screenplay that will integrate with an original soundtrack?

John: Sure. First off, great. She’s written 10 things. She writes a screenplay a year. That’s awesome. She’s a person who has an idea, and she’s like, “Okay, this is the thing I’m writing this year.” Love it. Good on you, Grace. I’ve written a lot of animated musicals. What I’ll tell you is that you plan for where those songs are and plan for what the function of those songs are. I always put the song in there, the original song in there. Will it get replaced? Yes, but if the song is in there serving a story purpose, my temporary song does that purpose, and you really have to think about that. If it’s not a story plus songs, the songs are crucial story elements.

Craig: Yes. Worked on somewhat popular musical film. One bit of advice I would give you is to write stuff to happen during the song.

John: Exactly.

Craig: I think a lot of people will write up to a point, and then someone starts to sing, and then they just put the lyrics in, and then the movie re-continues. No. What’s happening?

John: Yes.

Craig: Where are they? Do they move around? Who are they singing to? Do they go outside? Are there other people in the scene? How are they reacting to that? Write it in. Basically, songs are the action scenes of musicals.

John: Yes, 100%. Next question comes from Nyasha.

Drew: “I wrote and directed an audio podcast for Audible. I’m very proud of it, but I’m now in the process of trying to adapt the podcast into a movie. I’m really interested to get your thoughts on the process of adaptation. What are the pitfalls to look out for in adapting a podcast script to a screenplay and what do you think are the advantages?”

John: Nyasha, we don’t know whether yours is like a documentary podcast or a fictionalized version. I think they’re two very different things. If it’s a documentary podcast, it really calls back to Adriana versus Veronica, which is that you probably told the story in a way that really made sense in a podcast medium, but now you really need to think about what is it going to look like with visuals, taking place in time, and that kind of thing. If it is a fictional podcast, who are the characters that worked in the audio version, and how do they work just as voices, and how is it going to feel different when you actually are seeing places and time is more continuous the way that it is on video?

Craig: Yes. I’ll presume that this was a fictional podcast just for the sake of the question. You want to make sure as you adapt something like that, which is an audio-only medium, to not only think as visually as possible, but also think about how much freedom you have to go places and to see things. Show me where you are. Go outside, and don’t be afraid to spend a little time in silence as long as something interesting is happening. Some of the more interesting sequences on film are ones where people aren’t talking.

When you’re doing a podcast story, I assume people are constantly talking. Otherwise, it’s just hammering noises. You’re allowed to not talk as long as you’re showing me something fascinating. When you look at how Christopher Nolan opens the Dark Knight movie, that big robbery sequence, there’s almost no talking. Every 80 seconds somebody says, hey.

John: Yes, things that would not work in there. We often talk about how screenplays are limited because you only talk about what you can see and what you can hear. In your audio podcast, it’s just what people can hear. You’ve got one vector there. You’ll have a lot more, which is fantastic.

Craig: You have to break some things, too, because there are things that just simply won’t work well because they were designed for audio only.

John: A good example I’d point you to, I thought the adaptation of Homecoming, which is a podcast, Michael Bloomberg and Eli Horowitz did it, and Sam Esmail did the adaptation for series. I thought it was really well done. It took the best elements of what made that work as an audio fiction podcast and turned it into something that feels like a series. It had its still strange energies to it. Again, look for examples, but there’s not going to be a lot. You’re flying blind here.
Let’s answer one more from Owen.

Drew: Owen writes, “I wrote a short film based on a personal experience. A director loved it and will be shooting it next month. The collaborative process has been great, but I haven’t been involved in a lot of the creative production decisions, including casting. I’ve loved the director’s attitude and I’ve tried to stay out of the way in certain areas, telling myself it’s my story but the director’s execution. I’d love to hear about how you navigate your feelings of ownership over an idea, a story, or even a draft, and if that’s something you’ve had to practice, what that journey was like.”

Craig: Well, this is an argument for producing your own work. You’re making a short film, right, so nobody involved is some big shot in Hollywood. Everybody involved is trying to make a good calling card. They’re practicing. They’re sharpening their tools. If it’s your story, that is literally your story. Even if it’s not, even if it takes place on Mars with aliens and you control it and it’s original, you have to, I think, have to insist that you are producing this as well. I mean, unless some financier is coming in to back this big short film, you have to produce it, which means you have to have some kind of approval over the process of casting, and some general approval over the process of the schedule and the budget and all the rest.

First of all, you need to learn that stuff. Second of all, I don’t care who it is. This whole, “You got to get out of the way of the director,” unless the director’s wrong. Then you need to be in the way. They’re wrong. There’s this presumption that you’ll get notes because you’re wrong, but the director, their authority can be unchecked because they’re not wrong. Incorrect and also insane. My strong suggestion to all of you out there who are in this position that Owen is in is to be a producer on your own work so that you do maintain, at a minimum, participation this process.

John: Yes. Owen is saying that the experience has been really great, yet he’s writing to us because he’s also feeling like he should be more involved.

Craig: Stockholm Syndrome seems to have set in.

John: Absolutely. Yes, I think so. Listen, it sounds like the director is doing a good job, and you’re mostly happy with stuff. You just feel like you’re on the sidelines. Get yourself a little closer in there. It doesn’t mean that you have to weigh in on every decision at all. Just be there as a resource and learn from it because the process of making a short film is to end up with a great short film, but also so you learn about the process of making a short film, so you know what this is. By keeping yourself involved, and seeing how casting works, and what production is like, and whose job is it to do that thing on set, these are all things you should be taking in.

Craig: All of it. I think it’s important to come to the table with an open mind and a dedication to best idea wins. Even, I would argue, giving the other person a little bit of an extra edge over your opinion because you’re counteracting the fact that it’s your opinion. If you sit with someone and you really consider what they’re saying and they make a good argument, you’ve learned, and they’re right. It’s not a contest, and it’s not a game of who’s in charge of whom, but you have to be at the table of a short film that you wrote, the end.

You cannot– this nonsense– this is where it begins, where directors literally who haven’t directed things, but are like, “but I am a director. Therefore, you need to get out of my way. Everybody’s got to be worried about my feelings, my domain, etiquette, blah, blah blah, blah blah.” Everyone’s walking on eggshells around a director because the world of directors has created this culture. I’m a director and I’ll tell you, “I don’t need any of that. I don’t want any of it.” I don’t want people walking on eggshells around me. I don’t want them overly concerned with etiquette.

Yes, okay, can the guy with the boom mic give my actor’s direction? No, that’s bad for the process. Can he come and tell me that he thinks that maybe they’re saying something or doing something that might not make sense? Absolutely. Then I’ll make a determination, but there’s nothing– It’s actually the worst job to put in bubble wrap, so get the bubble wrap off that guy.

John: A practical bit of advice here, Owen. There are going to be conversations where the director’s talking to the production designer, talking to other department heads by himself, and that’s fine, that’s great, and that’s natural, but there are going to be some things which are production meetings. They’re going to be either in person or on Zooms. You should be in those meetings.

Craig: Absolutely, and helping to answer questions. If there is a disagreement, it is important that all the people working on something feel like there is a common marching order, that the instructions are consistent. If there’s a disagreement, then you can always– and this happens in meetings all the time, where– I’m in charge of my show. If somebody has a thought that is different from mine, and I’m not sure which one of us is right, I’ll say, “Okay, let’s table that. We’ll talk about that,” like my DP, “we’re going to talk about that, and we’re going to come back to you guys with an answer.” Not, “Don’t question me in front of people.” Question me in front of– What are we doing here?

Come on, the sensitivity around directors is astonishing. It’s perfectly inverse to the sensitivity around writers, which is to say everyone gets to kick them as hard as they want, and no one can even, like, “Oh my God, don’t breathe on the director. They’ll collapse. Please.

John: My first experience in production was on Go, and I was involved in every bit of casting, every production meeting, all that stuff. Did I know what I was doing in a lot of it? No, but I learned a lot of what I was doing, and I definitely had the right answers to questions as things came up. Because I was in all those pre-production meetings, when it came time when I needed to direct a second unit, I knew who everybody was, I knew what the brief was, I knew what our schedule was, I knew how to do all those things. In most of the movies I’ve written for other people, have I been that involved? No.

The Tim Burton movies, I’ve been there through pre-production, and I’ve gotten stuff up on its feet and running, could answer questions from department heads as things came up. Our director on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory could send me, “This is what is in the newspaper articles that are on the background of this wall? Does this all look right?” “Yes, and thank you for that.” That’s because I’ve made myself available, and I tried to work with people who would include me in the process, and basically wouldn’t try to shut me out of the process.

Craig: Exactly. I worked with Todd Phillips. Todd is a very strong director, this firm hand clarity, but we collaborated constantly on all aspects, casting, everything, all of it. The idea is for you to know how to do it in a way that is graceful and that doesn’t confuse people, because there have been situations where people are like, “Who’s actually directing this movie?” That comes up sometimes because there’s a weak director and somebody seems to be steamrolling them. Typically, a producer or a star. There is a way to work with a director who is confident enough to let you in because it’s help. If you make it better, you make it better.

The directors that get really fussy about this stuff are the ones that are insecure because they’re not quite sure what their actual value is, and so they need to invent it.

John: All right, it’s time for One Cool Things. Mine harkens back to our celebration of weirdness. It’s a thing called Channelvue. It is just channelvue.biz. We’ll put a link in the show notes. Written by Joe Veix, directed by Brandon Tauszik. It looks like in late ’80s, early ’90s, cable listing, a cable TV scrolling guide with a little video on top that has ads and things, but things go very wrong. It’s really very smartly done. It was clearly so much work, and just the payoff is just great. It’s also just weird. It’s deeply baked down in weird. It’s weird in the same way that Too Many Cooks is weird, but it’s its own special flavor.

Craig: Its own weird. Well, that’s fantastic. I, too, have something on theme for weird.

John: I love it.

Craig: Our Dutch friends who work at Rusty Lake, one of my favorite game creators, have a demo out for their upcoming game, Servant of the Lake. Rusty Lake has made a lot of what I would call shorter, they call them cube escape games. They’re a few hours. Then they have a couple of big ones, which are my favorite. Rusty Lake Roots, big one. This is going to be a big one. They put the first, I don’t know, maybe 20 minutes of puzzle-solving little stage on there. It’s like, you show up at this place, you have a few interesting things you do.

Unfortunately, it’s only available currently on Steam. It’s not something you can play on an iPad, but eventually, of course, it will come to iOS. They always do. I played it. It was fantastic. Rusty Lake are so beautifully weird unto themselves. They have this thing. Do you play those games?

John: I have played a few of them. At your recommendation, yes.

Craig: Yes. There are a few things that always show up, no matter what. The storyline is impenetrably weird. Then there are also these things that happen. There’s always a shrimp. When you find stuff, you find matches, and you find, oh, the code sheet and the thing, but then you often will find a shrimp. That’s how you know you’re playing Rusty Lake. They put a shrimp in a drawer. Why? Don’t know.

John: Yes, but it’s specific to their taste.

Craig: Yes. Check out the demo for Servant of the Lake. I am very excited to play that.

John: Cool. Great. That was our show for this week. Scriptnotes was produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. We have a bonus holdover candy spooky outro by Jim Bond. It’s out of spooky season, but it’s–

Craig: We are recording this on Halloween.

John: We are recording it on Halloween.

Drew: It’s weird.

John: Yes, it’s weird.

Craig: That’s weird.

John: That’s weird. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. It’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll 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. You can find clips, another helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for ScriptNotes and give us a follow. You’ll find us on Instagram at ScriptNotes Podcast. If you need T-shirts, hoodies, and drinkware, you’ll find us at Cotton Bureau.

You’ll find the show notes with links to all the things we talked about in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you again to our premium subscribers.

Craig: Thank you so much.

John: They showed up huge to pre-order the book. Thank you for that.

Craig: Second-best orange screenwriting book.

John: You should pre-order your Scriptnotes book today. That way, it’s in your hands December 2nd. It also gets us closer to being on lists and gets us in more libraries and bookstores. Thank you again for everyone who’s pre-ordered the book.

Craig: I like that you care about libraries. That’s very nice.

John: Yes, libraries are great.

Craig: Libraries are amazing.

John: I’m not opposed to– Like, “Oh, I’m not going to sell a book because it’s in the library.” No. Libraries are good things.

Craig: They’re amazing things. My dad, if he were alive, would absolutely take this book out from the library. I’d be like, “Dad, you know I can just send you one?” “No, I’ll get it from the library.”

John: “No, no, I’ll put it on reserve.”

Craig: He puts a request. Every week, he would go there and fill out cards. He’s like, “I’m not buying a book. I’m borrowing it.”

John: I love it.

Craig: It’s my dad.

John: I salute that. That’s good stuff. Please, pre-order your book so more libraries will be there for great staff.

Craig: Leonard.

John: Leonard will–

Craig: Leonard, well, he’s not anymore.

John: Yes. The Leonards of the world-

Craig: The Leonards of the world.

John: -will have it there.

Craig: He’s left behind legions of Leonards out there, gray-haired men in polos tucked into khaki shorts at the library with their reading glasses ready to go.

John: We’re finishing up the bonus chapter, which we’re going to send to all the people who pre-ordered the book. Remember, if you pre-ordered the book, send the receipt to Drew because it’s on the list for this bonus chapter.

Craig: Yes. ask@johnaugust.com.

John: Circling back to thank all of our premium subscribers. You can sign up to become our premium subscriber at scriptnotes.net. You get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on this sense of self-narrative and remembering who you are. Craig, you never forget who you are.

Craig: I’m not sure who I am right now.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right. Craig, maybe a year or two ago, we talked about aphantasia, which was this actually relatively recently discovered thing that certain people don’t have the ability to visualize things in their head. When everybody hears things like picture in your head or think back to a time, they’re like, that’s metaphorical, right? You’re not actually seeing a thing. Most of us around this table, and most screenwriters, I would presume, we can actually see things in our heads. We can sum up an image.

As they’ve done more studies on it, they see that it’s actually of a whole spectrum. There’s aphantasia, which is the inability to do this thing, and there’s hyperphantasia, which is you can do it too vividly and it’s actually not–

Craig: Disabling.

John: Disabling, yes. There’s a happy sweet spot, which is a great place to be in. I’ll put a link in the show notes to an article that I was reading recently, which went in much greater depth about it. It turns out that a lot of people with aphantasia don’t have a strong sense of their own history. They don’t have the ability to form a self-narrative, and they can’t think back to things. Sometimes they can’t picture places they’ve been before. They can’t picture their children. They can’t see these things. It’s not just face blindness. They just really don’t have the–

Craig: Gone.

John: It’s gone. That would feel strange and sad to most of us, and yet, some people are actually kind of happy. Their philosopher is just like, “I just move forward. I’m the person I am now, and my life is entirely present tense,” which feels like some of it, I read this and think about how would this be a movie? It’s interesting to reflect upon how freeing would it be to not be burdened by who you were.

Craig: Well, there are two things that we have to think about who we were. One are these specific memories, places, faces, times, imagining events, remembering, oh, the time I did something embarrassing. When we tell stories about something that happened, we begin to narrativize these things. There’s also the stuff that we don’t realize we remember from the past, that work underneath the surface. Those are the reasons we go to therapy because those are running in our minds. We just don’t realize it. Probably, I have just as many of those as anyone else. I think I do have a little bit, I wouldn’t say less ability to remember the past actively. We’ll call it active memory. I just have less interest in it. I don’t think much about it.

John: I’ll put a link in the show notes to this article by Larissa MacFarquhar that talks through what we know scientifically about it. What’s clear is that just the same way that some people have a kind of blindness where they actually really are seeing some things, like they literally can avoid walls. If they ask, “What do you see?” they can’t tell you, but they clearly are seeing something. There’s people who actually do have historical memory of themselves. It’s just that they can’t–

Craig: Summon it.

John: They can’t pull it up. They can’t do it.

Craig: I think that for most people, what we think of as the past is, in fact, a highly narrativized, reconstructed thing. It is not what happened. Our memories are notoriously terrible. Human memory is junk. We do not record things like a videotape. We take information in and rearrange it into a story. Our personal narratives are, in fact, narratives that are somewhat accurate, but oftentimes completely inaccurate.

John: The challenge, though, is that obviously, narrativizing is efficient. It’s a way of getting rid of the extraneous details and creating a consistent story which is useful, which may not be accurate. Narrativizing gives you the possibility of learning from your mistakes, and making different choices, and recognizing patterns that you don’t want to repeat again, or patterns that you do want to repeat again. They talk about some of these people who have the aphantasia who have a hard time with friendships because they don’t think about people when they’re not in front of them. It’s a kind of solipsism. It’s not intentional. It’s just like they literally don’t think about people unless they’re in front of them, but they sometimes worry, like, “Is everyone going to forget about me as well?”

Craig: Yes. I definitely don’t have that. I do have a healthy skepticism of my self-concept. I do feel like if I remember something, it means it probably has been processed. It’s like processed food. I’m suspicious of my own memories. I’m suspicious of my own memories of things that were good. I’m suspicious of my own memories that things were bad. I do note that I tend to memorialize things that are embarrassing, which is unfortunate. Ask me, like, “Oh, do you ever think about happy times?” No.

John: Well, probably because you’re not rehearsing those memories. Those bad things, they come up again, and they stew on them for a bit, and it reinforces them.

Craig: Well, I am a forward-looking person because I’m curious. More than anything, I’m curious, which means I want to know what’s around the bend. I’m always thinking about what’s coming next. It’s so exciting to me. The unknown is exciting.

John: One of the things I’ve noticed that they do in these studies is that people who work in scientific fields are more likely to be aphantasic than folks who work in creative fields. It makes sense, not just in the pre-sorting of it all, but the things you are– As your brain is growing and developing, if daydreaming has not been a thing you’ve been doing a lot of, you’re not doing that. I was a huge daydreamer, a crazy big daydreamer.

Craig: That would probably be the best word to describe me as a kid, as an adult, as an old man.

John: Absolutely. The parts of your brain that you’re exercising to do the things are going to reinforce. Imagining things a lot is what I get paid to do. It’s my default mode.

Craig: Well, it’s like in D&D, which of course is the answer to everything, you have abilities. The higher that ability is, the more likely you are going to use things that are connected to that ability and it all self-reinforces. I think daydreamers, we’re predilected to daydream. They daydream more. They really get a daydream. People that aren’t– Scientists have recorded data. They don’t have to remember the data. They don’t have to remember where they were when they recorded the data. There’s no story to the data. It’s just facts that are written down that can be referred to and compared and thank God for those people.

John: Yes, there’s a base truth, which is just very different from what we do.

Craig: They make miraculous things for us.

John: Drew, a question for you. Going through acting schools and stuff like that, to what degree, when you are in scenes, and did this change at all over your acting trajectory, are you literally envisioning yourself in a different place when you’re in a scene doing a thing? It’s always interesting to talk to actors like, “Are you getting rid of the camera and everybody else, or are you just in space?” Talk to me about that experience.

Drew: Oh, it’s been a while. That’s a good question. My gut was no. My gut is more about the way I was trained. It’s more about what you’re doing to the other person. That’s all actions and verbs. Just being with that other person and everything around you doesn’t matter. That’s all trappings on top of that connection.

But in improv and stuff like that, you have to imagine a room around you. Then, if you’re baking, you have to pick up the right thing. We did clown work and that kind of thing. There was a lot of that. Once it’s said, it’s said. If you’re putting out a table, you have to remember where you’ve left the forks and those kind of things. That is a different type of imagination.

Craig: Can I tell you something that bothers me about improv? People pick things up all the time. I have a water glass in front of me that you’ve so nicely provided. I’ll do this. People that pick things up in improv, it’s like they’re robots picking things up. They have to make this weird hand gesture and do this, or they put things away with both hands. It’s so weird. What is that?

John: Again, once we do this on video, all that makes much more sense. What you’re describing is, it’s the overperformance of a thing. It’s probably to sell it to the back row.

Drew: I think it’s an establishment thing.

Craig: When they reach for a door, they reach out, grab it, and pull it. They don’t just go pull.

Drew: It’s so weird.

John: It’s also because you’re establishing it for the audience, but also for other people who are on stage, that this is where the door is and this is how it swings and that stuff.

Craig: It’s very odd to me and amusing, that it always works that way. It’s just been taught and taught and taught, and now it’s inculcated. You know what? You got to imagine stuff in that space. I get it.

John: I have a focus group of people who have to watch Lars Von Trier’s Dogville, which is the movie. It’s just lines on the floor and everything is pantomimed.

Craig: I don’t want to watch that.

John: Yes. I really enjoyed it when I watched it the first time, but you are having to just imagine everything else around you.

Craig: It’s their job. That’s like, you go to an avant-garde restaurant and they just dump the ingredients on your table. Go ahead. Cook it. Make a thing. Here’s two eggs, some cheese. Make yourself an omelet, buddy.

John: I want to circle back to the sense of self-narrative. Craig, at what age do you feel like you are actually yourself? At what age does Craig Mazin begin?

Craig: I feel like I was probably 12 or 13.

John: That’s the same age I would put for myself. Before that, I acknowledge there’s a little kid who I see in photos, but it’s not really me.

Craig: No, it’s not me.

John: I feel like I can draw a continuous line back to that kid who was about 12 or 13, and it is consistently me. After moving to Los Angeles and people would make references to things, I have surprising gaps in popular culture before that age or around that age, like H.R. Pufnstuf, I just never saw.

Craig: Yes, I did see that.

John: There’s things you feel like, wait, it’s just weird, things I must have experienced or seen that just have disappeared because they never got rehearsed.

Craig: There are definitely things that I remember. I remember in first grade, kids would talk about The Rockford Files, and I was like, “What?”

John: [sings]

Craig: They loved singing the song. I’m like, “What?” I have a very specific memory. Maybe I told the story in the podcast before. We’ve done 7,000 episodes. We did charades in first grade.

John: Oh, yes.

Craig: I was young for first grade. I think I was six. This is a memory from when I was six years old. There were charades where somebody would go up and do something, and we would have to guess what it is. Three different boys went up there, and their charade was just playing a guitar and pretending to sing. Everyone was like, Rockford Files. I’m like, “What is happening? What is this? What is The Rockford Files? Why would you know that from somebody playing guitar? Other people play guitar? What the?” See, I said Rockford Files, and what did you do?

John: [sings]

Craig: You did the song. As far as I know, The Rockford Files is a song for 45 minutes, then James Garner shows up, punches the guy, and it’s over.

John: That’s about right. Not entirely inaccurate. It has its scruffy charm. Again, it was a thing that was on in afternoon reruns that I was aware of,-

Craig: So weird.

John: -but I wasn’t really watching it.

Craig: Everybody was really plugged into that in 1976.

John: Yes, it’s wild. I would say 12 or 13 is when I first feel a continuity back to that person. Yet it’s strange because we are constantly creating fictional worlds and other things. We’re also in other places. All the time that I was doing Arlo Finch, those three years of writing those books, I was also simultaneously inside Pine Mountain. I could see everything. I knew the layout of everyone’s houses. I could do all that stuff. Now I don’t. As I go back, all of a sudden, I was doing a little thing about Highland, and I pulled up a chapter of Arlo Finch just to show some stuff. It’s like, “I don’t recognize these names. I don’t recognize these people. Who is that kid?” It’s weird how–

Craig: “Who wrote this?” I think about that all the time.

John: Yes. I recognize it as my writing, but I don’t remember it.

Craig: Yes, I don’t. I know I wrote it. It just was somewhere else when I did it. It is a strange thing to become other people because when you become other people in your head and you go to other places, it isn’t you. That’s why I get a little grouchy when people– and it’s inevitable. Somebody asks the question every single time when we go to Austin, like, “What stories do you feel you have the right to write?” All of them, everything. I can write anybody. That’s sort of the job is to be other people. Now that requires empathy and insight and attention and care and studying and doing your homework, but that’s what it is.

It is not surprising to me that you forget these things because you stop being those people. You start becoming other people. Well, I don’t know if this is true, but I was just thinking why the two of us thought 12 and 13. One argument is it’s because when you roughly start to transition into adulthood, which is what we are now, and so therefore that’s when you kind of remember being you. Every now and then, I do think that there was that time, I think between 12 and I’m going to say 16, where life was sort of magical.

John: Oh, yes.

Craig: Everything that happened was powerfully magical. Becoming attracted to people was magical. The social stuff was magical. Drugs were magical. Everything was magical because it was all new, and it was all weird. There isn’t much magical left. I will say one of the bummers about growing old is I never have an experience where I feel like, “Oh my God.” Occasionally, I do, but generally speaking, the thrill of becoming someone is gone.

John: Well, you look at people complaining about like, “Oh, the experience of renting a movie at Blockbuster was just so much better than the current version of seeing a movie because we would go there and we would do this and sometimes you wouldn’t find the movie and that was half the fun,” and stuff. It was like, “No, you miss being 16.” That’s what it is.

Craig: Exactly.

John: You miss your youth. They do studies like when was America’s best decade and they also track their age, it was always when they were 12 to 18.

Craig: Of course. Basically, we are living through some dying boomer’s fantasy about that time, which had higher crime, and social justice was way worse. Social injustice was profound and now we’re like, “Oh, being queer isn’t weird anymore.” It was weird. That’s why they were called queer. They didn’t come up with that word.

John: Yes. It was a stronger word for weird.

Craig: Other people did. They were like, “You’re not normal.” That’s what life was back then. Then, when you look at somebody like Walt Disney, who when he designs Walt Disney World and Disneyland, what does he make? Main Street USA. Early 1900s. How old was he in the early 1900s?

John: It’s harking back to this vision of Americana, which was all the good stuff.

Craig: When life was magic. Born in 1901. Boom.

John: Exactly.

Craig: 1917, he was 16. If you look at Main Street USA, it sort of looks like what 1917 looked like in Wichita, for white people.

John: Exactly.

Craig: Those are the good old days. I guess for us, the good old days are the early ’80s, which were crime-ridden. There was a plague. It was really bad.

John: That’s part of the reason why I wanted to acknowledge in the main part of the podcast, they are not good things happening here, and just reflect note. We don’t have the ability to perfectly remember everything. I always go back to my photo roll. When was I there? What happened? That’s become my extra set of memories for things. Other references, like the podcast, it’s like, what was the context around things? You can find those.

Craig: I don’t look back.

John: You don’t look back? Only forward?

Craig: [singing] “Don’t look back in anger. I heard him say.”

John: Oh, my last thing is twice last week, I’ve watched videos of people watching my movies for the first time. It’s a really interesting–

Craig: Wait. How do you find a video of somebody watching your movies?

John: There’s a whole genre on YouTube of reaction videos where people watch a movie for the first time. It’s really fun to see people experiencing Big Fish for the first time. It’s like a couple watching Big Fish. They don’t know what’s going to happen. They’re narrating as they’re doing it, and they’re talking about what they expect. It’s a really interesting genre or media because it’s just like you’re seeing the live things. It’s intercutting, sometimes, with the scenes of what they’re saying.

Craig: Oh, yes. They send me a lot of reaction videos. HBO compile reaction videos to when we put a trailer out. They’ve had the trailer, the little box and the people in it. That is fun to watch.

John: It’s fun to watch it for your movie. You end up fast-forwarding through some stuff. Looking at the big twist revelations in Big Fish and how people take it, or I watched somebody watch Go, and I’m realizing how much I had forgotten about what actually happens in Go, but then seeing the person watch it for the first time and the revelations that happen in Go, it’s a fun thing. It’s nice that we have this in existence.

Craig: Yes. Some people are stuck in the past. I’m stuck in the future, which is a weird thing to say because I’m not there yet, but that’s where I am.

John: After I finished this little rewatch of Go, the algorithm showed me behind-the-scenes making of Go, which I’d never seen. I don’t know where this footage came from. They have a little interview with me and so here’s me on set of Go. This would be 1999.

Craig: Yes. It looks like you.

John: It looks like me.

Craig: You look the same.

John: I don’t remember this ever happening, but it was me.

Craig: I absolutely don’t remember any of those things. They’re gone. They happened, and then they’re gone. When we watch The Last of Us with our friends, Derek and Christy, they like to come over, and we watch together because they like the show, and it forces me to watch it. Then they make me watch the thing after the credits. They make me sit there and watch the talking head bits, the after-the-show stuff.

John: Then seeing how they cut you.

Craig: I don’t remember a damn thing from that stuff.

John: Those are all shot on one day, right?

Craig: Yes, those are all shot on one day.

John: Now we’re talking about this thing.

Craig: Hence, the single shirt, so pick a good shirt, I guess.

John: That’s the lesson we’ve learned from this discussion of aphantasia.

Craig: Pick a good shirt for behind-the-scenes.

John: Thanks, Craig. Thanks, Drew.

Craig: Thanks, guys.

Links:

• Scriptnotes LIVE! Book release show tickets at Dynasty Typewriter in LA
• The Uncool by Cameron Crowe
• Meet the Sisters Battling to Become L.A.’s New Billboard Queen by Mickey Rapkin for The Hollywood Reporter
• The Decline of Deviance by Adam Mastroianni
• Too Many Cooks
• Happiness (1998)
• Ken Russell
• Community tries to figure out if Nicholas Cage is good or bad
• Homecoming on Prime Video
• ChannelVue
• Servant of the Lake
• Some People Can’t See Mental Images. The Consequences Are Profound by Larissa MacFarquhar for The New Yorker
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Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to episode 700 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, we are doing something we haven’t done since 2020, a live show with our listeners on Zoom and on YouTube. Hello, listeners. Like a lot of things about the pandemic, we only half remember what we’re doing. [laughter] While we’re still an audio-first podcast, we are going to be doing some things in this episode that benefit from being able to share screens and look at things.

If you’re listening to the audio version at home or your car and happen to be close to a screen, consider going back and watching some of this later on YouTube because there’s actually images to see. We’ll also be answering listener questions live on air, including a few in the bonus segment for our premium members. To help us celebrate 700 episodes, we are joined by some Scriptnotes champions over the years. Let us welcome to the podcast, Stuart Friedel, our very first producer of the show.

Craig: Stuart.

John: Stuart.

[applause]

Stuart Friedel: There we go. Hi.

John: Oh, my God. Look at that background. Stuart Friedel.

Craig: Oh. Such a good background. Classic.

Stuart: I need a Scriptnotes poster or LP or something to put on the back.

John: Yes. We’re going to release the whole show on vinyl. It’s a lot of vinyl, but it’s worth it. I’m just to have that for that perfect audio quality.

Stuart: It’s a weight. It’s for working out.

John: Absolutely. We have Megan McDonell, Scriptnotes producer. Megan McDonell, welcome back to Scriptnotes.

[applause]

Craig: It’s Megan.

John: Oh, my gosh. We’re so excited to see you.

Craig: Another good background.

Megan McDonell: Thank you.

John: Megan, you were a crucial part of the professionalization, I think, of Scriptnotes because when Stuart first came on board, it was– [laughter] We were just winging it. We were just trying to figure out what it was. We didn’t know how long it was going to go.

Craig: He’s right there.

John: He’s right there.

Stuart: It is true. It’s absolutely true.

[laughter]

John: You were a crucial part of that and also helped me out so much with the launch podcast, which we were, again, figuring out along the way. How are you, Megan?

Megan: I’m great. It’s nice to be here. Thanks for including me.

John: Of course. Drew, do we have Megana?

Drew Marquardt: We do.

Craig: We always have Megana.

John: Megana Rao is the producer who people first heard on the air. I think she was the one who sort of crossed the barrier and became like, “Of course, it’s Megana. She’s talking on the show.” Megana, it is always a joy to have you here. Oh, my gosh, it’s Megana.

[applause]

Megana Rao: Hello.

Craig: Megana, she was really the first star, right? Maybe the only star. I don’t really think you or I qualify, but Megana gets stopped on the street. I’m sorry.

Megana: I hate that you can see my face.

[laughter]

Craig: You look beautiful.

Megana: Oh, I just want to cower.

Craig: You have such great hair. Look at this.

Megana: Wait, where is your beard?

Craig: Oh, I got rid of it.

John: He got rid of his beard and the hair on top of his head. He’s basically just trying to steal my look.

Craig: I did. I do like it when people are like, “Where’s your beard?” I’m like, “Where do you think?” Yes, it doesn’t come off in one piece.

[laughter]

John: Ripped it off. Yes, absolutely. Is this with hair and makeup? It’s back in the van. Megana, thank you again for being awesome on the show and for joining us here today. If Stuart was the originator of the show, he was the one who got the train running. Megana sped it along and got us figuring out a little more stuff. You were the heart, the soul, the smile, the laugh of the show.

Megana: Oh, thank you.

John: Then there’s Drew, but whatever.

Craig: It’s just really hard to work for John. That’s what I’m getting.

Drew: Grinds you down.

John: Now, the very first episodes of the show were edited by either me or by Stuart, but at a certain point, we’re like, “Somebody who don’t know what they’re doing should be doing this.” That’d be Matthew Chilelli. Matthew Chilelli, cross from post-production into production. Join us here on the Zoom as we celebrate 700 episodes.

Craig: Ooh.

[laughter]

Matthew Chilelli: I beamed in somehow.

John: Oh, wow. Yes, Matthew. He had to pipe in a studio background so it would feel really impressive. That’s actually where you do all the work on the show. It’s like this high-tech launch center for the show.

Matthew: Absolutely. It’s so you can’t see my husband working behind me.

John: Yes, there is that.

Craig: I like that Matthew works in a studio that is carefully painted to be blurry.

Matthew: Yes.

John: That’s good stuff. That’s a highly selective focus. 700 episodes, guys. Thank you so much for getting us here. I have to say, 700, Craig will attest to, that was always my goal was to make it to 700 episodes. [laughter] I said that from episode two. It’s like, “My goal is just to make it to 700 episodes.”

Craig: Had you said that, I would have been gone within minutes.

John: Yes. As we talked about in episode 100, I was hoping to make it to 100 and had no instincts beyond that point. It’s crazy that we’re here now. With a book coming out, so many people on this Zoom were so crucial to getting this book in good fighting shape. Drew, we’ve been getting a bunch of people sending in their receipts from the pre-orders. Thank you to everybody who’s ordering this book. It’s out December 2nd worldwide. People should order it now so that there’s enough copies so that everybody can enjoy the book for the holidays.

I have a topic that I want to discuss with this group before we move into other things, which is how do you talk about a movie or a show without spoilers and where is the boundary between, “Okay, this is just a thing in popular culture we need to talk about,” versus, “This is a spoiler and I have to be really careful to discuss this thing.” The specific thing is the movie Weapons, which I really enjoyed, and it went in without any spoilers at all, which was fantastic. I managed to not know anything about the movie.

Yet there’s, I think I want to talk about on the show in a very specific way that I think won’t ruin things, but what is our feeling about talking about a thing without ruining a thing for other people? Craig, start with you. What’s your instinct when it comes to a spoiler?

Craig: I think I’m pretty good about this. There are things that I feel like, okay, if you know this, it actually won’t ruin any surprise. In fact, you’re going to hear about this or find out about it as part of the general setup of the movie or story. I’ve been trying to get everybody to watch Hunting Wives, and it’s worked because it’s the number one show on Netflix, I assume because of me.

John: Yes, absolutely. You are the salesperson for it.

Craig: Yes. When I talk about it, I’m like, “Okay, none of this is a spoiler. It’s going to sound spoilery. You’re going to hear about this as part of the setup.” I feel like setup is fair game. Once you get past setup, then you get into that territory of, “Are you ever going to watch this or not? Because then I’ll just tell you what happens.” [laughter] I keep it inside of setup. I think that’s safe.

John: Stuart, what’s your feeling on spoilers?

Stuart: I think it’s context dependent, and it is dependent on the person hearing to make their boundaries known. If you want to talk about a movie on a podcast that’s educational about movies and how to make movies, I think you just need to tell the audience, “Tune out now,” and then go ahead and talk. Don’t hold back the efficacy of the conversation because you don’t want to offend somebody who had the opportunity to push stop.

John: Now, Megan McDonell, you’ve been working on a lot of shows that are either under NDA, so of course, you can’t talk about those things. Even a WandaVision, you know what’s coming up. You have a sense of what it is. When on WandaVision, did you start talking about– was it only after an episode dropped or after you made sure that people had a week to watch it? What’s your feeling about it?

Megan: Stuff I’ve worked on? I don’t know. I still don’t talk about it. [laughter] I’m context dependent. I’m one of the people that spoilers don’t affect me at all. Like, “Oh, he was dead the whole time?” This does not affect my enjoyment of the movie. [chuckles]

Stuart: What movie would that be?

John: Stuart Little, which is so surprising. I had no idea that mouse was dead the whole time. It was dead?

Craig: That would have been an improvement. No offense to E.B. White, but that would have been awesome.

John: Now, Megana, you and I are chatting a lot about things, and I feel like we have a good shorthand. We have a friendship where you can say like, “Oh, have you seen this thing? Are you going to watch this thing? Can we talk about this?” How about you with your other friends and people around you? How do you communicate about what you want to know and what you don’t want to know?

Megana: I’m like Meg and Stuart, especially working in this industry. Spoilers are just craft. If there’s a big twist coming up and you tell me about it, it’s like then I’m watching it with a different lens, being like, “Okay, how did they set this up? How does this work?” I do try to be respectful for people who don’t work in film and entertainment and not spoil things for them. I feel like as soon as you land at LAX, spoilers are free game.

Craig: Wow.

John: Yes. I also feel like there’s some time limit that happens where Mike hasn’t watched Severance, but it’s like, I might watch Severance. It’s like, oh, well, I can’t talk about anything Severance-wise in your presence. On work Zooms, just for daily office stuff, we do have to have a conversation about like, “Okay, are we going to talk about this thing or not talk about this thing, or people will mute themselves during part of it,” which can be rough.

Specifically, the thing I want to talk about in Weapons, which I really genuinely think we can have a good conversation about without any spoilers, is midway through the movie, a character is introduced for the first time. I thought it was a really smart introduction in that an assistant comes into the office and says, “Your two o’clock is here.” He’s like, “Okay, send her in.” She just lingers a bit to set up, “Do you know who this person is?” This is so strange and weird. There’s a lot of screen time spent on what would just be, you could cut out the scene, but it was so important because it sets up this expectation of the audience.

It’s like, “Who is this person coming through the door?” Without it, we would not have an appreciation for, like, “Oh, wow, that is just so odd.” It made me believe that we out of the world more that like this assistant was like, “This is a strange situation that’s about to happen.” I just really enjoyed that. To me, it doesn’t feel like a spoiler. You’re going to encounter that moment, and you’ll say, “Oh, John talked about that,” but I didn’t ruin anything for you, hopefully.

Craig: Feels ruined.

John: I’ve ruined the movie for you?

Craig: Yes.

Megana: I’m holding back tears now, actually, I really am upset.

John: I’m sorry.

Craig: That’s Megana’s upset?

[laughter]

John: A giant beaming smile.

Craig: Yes.

John: Matthew, did you see Weapons, and do you know the moment I’m talking about?

Matthew: No, I haven’t seen it yet, but I still feel like that’s fine to talk about and also not that this is a judgment at all, but editing this show so many things have been ruined for me [laughter] plot-wise, and then I just keep it inside and turn it off and don’t share with anybody, but it hasn’t affected my enjoyment of movies.

Craig: You just let it out. You just shared it. Now everyone knows. I feel terribly guilty. Here’s why I feel guilty. I never even considered that. I took you for granted, and I’m sorry. I’m not going to stop. I’m going to keep doing it. At least now, I’ll be guilty along the way instead of just suddenly all at once on YouTube.

John: Yes, there’s two things I’m realizing now that we’re doing this live, is that first off, all the mistakes that Matthew cuts out, and it’s mostly my verbal mess-ups that Matthew fixes that he can’t fix on a live stream, which is great, good for the world. Second, there’s so many cases, not every episode, but every second or third episode, where Craig and I will say, “Oh, Matthew, you have to cut that out. What I just said cannot be in the air.” You know as much stuff that is sealed in the vault. So good.

Craig: Because Matthew’s so good about cutting all this out and you rely on him, what people don’t know is that John and Drew have the exact same thing they do when they do a verbal flub. Matthew, can you do it for us? I know you know what it is.

Matthew: Oh, right, yes. It’s almost the sound of a tape rewinding. As a person, it’s like, you’re in the middle of something, it’s like, “If you don’t put it up, blah, blah, and then you go back to the beginning. [laughter]

Craig: Yes, it’s [onomatopoeia]. It’s like that.

John: I listen to the Slate podcasts, and when their hosts mess up, they must be trained to go, “3, 2, 1,” and they read the line, and so it works for them. Every once in a while, a 3, 2, 1 will make it into the show, and like, love it, oh, just, it so reveals the process behind stuff.

Craig: That’s what lets us know it’s not AI.

John: Yes, before we get to our main topic here, we have two little bits of news. Drew, we have a new video in the ScriptNotes channel. This is on Breaking Bad, it’s Vince Gilligan’s interview, and it’s really well cut together.

Drew: Yes, it’s a really good one. It’s him just talking about how to be a good showrunner and running a room, and it’s really great.

John: That was a great episode. You have a new Weekend Read collection up this week.

Drew: We do, we’re back to school.

John: What are some of the titles in the back-to-school collection?

Drew: We’ve got 10 Things I Hate About You, Big Little Lies, Bottoms, Clueless, Dead Poets Society, Dear White People, Easy A, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Friday Night Lights, Mean Girls, Napoleon Dynamite, Never Have I Ever, School Days… loads. Wednesday.

Craig: Do you have Back to School?

John: The Rodney Dangerfield classic?

Drew: Ironically, no.

Craig: What the?

John: Some of those scripts are really hard to find, Craig. For some reason, there’s not a staggering demand for people trying to find those scripts.

Craig: That script actually is a really well-structured.

John: Oh.

Craig: It’s very well done for like a classic comedy. The structure was actually quite smart.

John: While he’s going to hype up Back to School, I’m going to hype up Bottoms just for folks who haven’t seen Bottoms for whatever reason. It is gonzo, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s why these people are stars.” They’re just so well done. All right, a topic for the group. Since we have a screen that we can all look at together, and our listeners can look at the screen together with us, I wanted to talk about the challenge that all writers face about how we describe the things we see in our head, so that the readers are seeing the same things in their heads.

Today, this exercise, Drew put together this slideshow of images we took off of ShotDeck. These are all from different movies and TV shows, or documentaries, all that we’ve pulled from there. What I want us to do is work together to figure out how would we describe this thing in a screenplay so that our readers are seeing the same thing that we’re hoping for them to see. We’re calling this People, Places, and Things. We’ll start with four different people, and we’ll talk about who these characters are and if this was the first time we’re showing them on screen, what would we talk about?

Because Craig, I know you love to talk about hair, and wardrobe, and makeup, and all those things, and help us get character details. Let’s start with our first image here. For folks who are just listening at home, again, you should really look at the YouTube for this so you can see what the images are, but it is a woman in an office situation. Craig, you’re looking at this. Who is this woman? What are we seeing? What are the details that you think might make it into a scene description for her?

Craig: Depending on where we are, if this is the beginning of the scene, I would probably make a point of saying intentionally whether or not this is how it actually turns out. Medium close on Brenda, 50s, standard office attire, practical short blonde hair, sitting in an office populated by late ‘90s, early 2000 equipment. She looks appropriately tired for a nine-to-fiver.

John: Those are all things I love about that. I love Brenda as a name for her. It feels like it puts her in the right decade. I get what that is for her. There’s something about her expression that I feel is good to sell, and you can give that one sentence. She has a face that she’s always looked like she just smelled something terrible. [laughter] There’s something uncomfortable about her. I like standard office wardrobe, but also, it’s like sort of a fun pattern underneath a blue blazer that she’s trying to inject some spark there under this.

Craig: And failing.

John: And failing, yes. If we were talking about the overall thing, it’s like flat office lighting is doing her no favors. It’s not a glamorous look. Stuart, Megan, Megana, do you have any more suggestions for things we might talk about with this woman if this were the first time we were seeing her on screen?

Stuart: I’d say something like, in a happier life, she’d be a school librarian.

John: I like that. It’s sort of the “as if” or the replacement thing gives her a sense of who she is.

Megan: I might mention something in relation to who she’s talking to. If she’s talking to her main character, maybe something like– and she is not pleased to see this guy.

[laughs]

John: Yes, I like that a lot, because it gives you a sense of relationship to the space around her and to what’s actually really going to happen in the scene. Megana, anything else jumping out for you about her?

Megana: Just a suit jacket that doesn’t quite fit. Shoulder pads that extend beyond the shoulders.

Craig: Maybe that was her look.

[laughter]

John: It’s probably clothes that she’s had for the last eight years. She has a standard uniform and hasn’t updated it with time. That feels fun. Drew, show us what this is from. It’s the Snowtown Murders, written by Shaun Grant. Jenny Hallam is the actor we’re seeing there.

Cool. Next up, we have another young woman in this case. The image we’re seeing, if you’re not watching this, is a young woman. She’s sitting on the grass. The wind is blowing through her hair. She’s looking over her right shoulder. It is a beautiful painted– it feels like a painted backdrop, but it’s outdoorsy grasslands. Who wants to start with this image? It’s so striking, but I want to know if this was the first time we’re seeing this character, how do we describe her?

Craig: If this is the first time, I would say something like, again, medium-close on, let’s call her Anita. I’m going to say late teens.

John: Yes. Age is ambiguous in a way that I think is worth noting.

Craig: Late teens, staring off at everything and nothing at the same time. She sits in a windy field somewhere in the great plains. Her hair blows in the wind, as beautiful, messy as it would be done up.

John: Yes. The wind catching her hair is such a striking thing about this. We have to establish that her hair is long. That feels important. I think we need to acknowledge her race, and as the writers, we can choose what we want to say here, but mixed race. I think we need to acknowledge that she’s not white because there’s that default white thing that happens.

Craig: Isn’t that the default white thing? We didn’t talk about the last lady being white. I don’t know if her race is relevant here. It’s hard to say. I don’t know.

John: Yes. Choosing Anita doesn’t tip us one way or another, but if we could pick a name that would obviously it’s still on race.

Craig: Why did I say Anita? Is anyone named Anita anymore?

John: No.

Craig: No. Possibly it’s cool. [laughter] I don’t know. I just went with Anita.

John: Stuart.

Stuart: You bring up a good point here that I think applied to the last one, too, with era and decade. There is a little bit of context that informs what’s important about the character and what happened at casting.

John: Yes. That’s a great point, too, because we haven’t been talking so much about character here, but I think Craig was noticing that she’s looking off to the side. Basically, she feels like an observer. She’s constantly surveying things. What I see there doesn’t feel like an extroverted character, it feels like someone who sits at the edge of things and observes, as perhaps like a sniper energy rather than a driver. Megan, Megana, other thoughts?

Megan: Back to the air thing, I feel like there’s a little bit of a timelessness about the scenario, which I might mention if it’s worth mentioning.

Megana: There’s something nice about how she’s holding her knees and holding herself together, but seems very comfortable outside with this windswept hair.

John: Let’s talk about wardrobe because of at least what we’re seeing with wardrobe, because I thought it was so helpful with our previous example. She’s wearing a tank top. Megan, Megana, what would you describe that as? At least as far as what we’re seeing.

Megana: A spaghetti strap.

John: That could be jean shorts, it could be jeans. We’re seeing a bit of denim there.

Craig: Jorts. I’ve never typed the word jorts in the script, but I’m tempted. It’s hard to tell exactly.

Stuart: It seems like an outfit that could be like out of any time and any place, but depending on the time and place would inform if it were a hipster getting ready to go to the mall, or like in modern day, or if it was something from the thrift store bin in a small town, or not even a town, in a rural–

Craig: Also, I think in an image like this, one thing I never shy away from is just saying, she’s beautiful. Because I believe that beauty should be an intentional thing. Meaning, we don’t just, everybody, it’s like, okay, there are shows where everybody just happens to be beautiful, it’s part of the tone of the show, I get that. In something that’s a little bit more grounded, not everybody is beautiful. Beautiful people are beautiful, and they’re notable, and so someone like this, I think you need to point it out. It feels relevant.

John: Yes, we’re talking about her and trying to describe her, but if we were describing the overall scene, I feel like I’d also want to call out the watercolor sky behind her. Everything feels painterly, and she feels like she’s in a painting at every moment. Craig, your point about, like, she’s beautiful, especially within the context of this world, is notable, because anybody who would see her in this world would acknowledge that she’s beautiful.

Stuart: It’s a beautiful shot. If it’s the first time we’re meeting her, too, I don’t want to direct on the page too much, but it does feel like a very intentional placement within the frame where she’s looking and where she’s looking back.

Craig: It’s hard to call those things out. It’s hard to call out placement of frame, but what I do think you can do as the advocate for always directing on the page, if it’s important here, John mentioned this watercolor sky, is to say, she’s somewhere in an open plane that stretches on forever. Long lens turns the background into this beautiful watercolor blur.

John: That helps me see what I’m looking at. Drew, show us what this is from.

Drew: This is not the first time we meet her, but I included from the script, the first time we meet the character.

John: The actor is Taylor Russell. This is from Bones and All, screenplay by David Kajganich. First time trying to pronounce that. We have a description from the script. It says, “Maren, 17, mixed race, haltingly plays Sibelius’ Swan of Tuonela. She wears a cardigan big enough to be her father’s and no jewelry or makeup. Sherry, 17, comes in looking more like an American teen in 1988. Oversized top, lip gloss, and bangs.” That oversized cardigan feels right. It feels like it’s not what we’re seeing on screen right now, but it feels like the same clothing vibe.

No jewelry or makeup also feels like what we’re seeing here.
Craig: I was pretty close with Anita. Maren, Anita, very similar.

[laughter]

John: The script did call out mixed race for her, which I have not seen the movie, so I don’t know whether that becomes an important plot point. It very well could. All right, our next example, let’s take a look at a gentleman here. [chuckling] For folks who are at home and can’t see this, we have an older man looking just off center of lens.

Craig: [laughs] Oh my God. What did they do to Scott Glenn?

John: They did a lot to Scott Glenn because it’s not Scott Glenn.

Craig: That’s not?

John: No. That’s Ed Harris.

Craig: Oh, sorry, it’s Ed Harris. You know why I do that? I do this all the time because Ed Harris was John Glenn in The Right Stuff, I believe, and so I just Scott Glenn Ed Harris constantly. What did they do to Ed Harris? They turned him into the Crypt Keeper.

John: Yes, I cannot look at this without seeing Crypt Keeper, and I feel like you’re going to go for it, and why not?

Craig: Just say Crypt Keeper.

John: A very tan bald man with long pale brown hair hanging like a broken crown. You have to describe that he’s both bald and has long hair.

Craig: Crypt Keeper.

John: Yes, exactly.

Craig: It’s right there.

John: It is.

Craig: I would say it.

John: Yes, I think you say Crypt Keeper. The glasses also feel important. He’s wearing almost like Bjorn Borg glasses. They feel like very ‘70s thin-framed glasses. His shirt is specific and wonderful. It feels like a rare find in the ‘80s bin. A lot of it’s just great.

Stuart: I’m always cognizant of trying to match my prose to the tone of the script, so I wouldn’t necessarily say this in everything, but I think he looks like Dave Gruber Allen’s mean older brother.

John: I wonder if we could marry Crypt Keeper and how tan he is. He’s like a South Florida Crypt Keeper.

Craig: Yes, weathered skin, Crypt Keeper style hair flows from his otherwise bald head. He has the strange panache of an aging hippie who is now stuck as a motel clerk in Tallahassee.

John: It’s worth noting that you were able to read Motel Clerk just because, in the background, we see a bunch of keys hanging on a board and just shows how economical you can be in terms of setting up where somebody is and what a place is. Those keys did the job.

Craig: Unless he’s a key maker.

John: Megan, Megana, any other thoughts on our Ed Harris here?

Megan: Not really. There’s something about his eyes that feel worth mentioning. I don’t know if they feel like wet or something, but there’s like a sparkle, maybe that I would mention.

John: Yes, I think that’s a good point because they do still catch the light even though they’re sunk pretty deep in there, and they’re hidden behind the glasses.

Craig: I would also add, even though he’s not Scott Glenn, you can’t help but feel like maybe something about him.

John: A Scott Glenn presence. Also, granted, we know this is Ed Harris, but even though I didn’t know this was Ed Harris, I have a sense of what his voice probably sounds like, which is like a raspy smoker’s voice. You sense the age in it. Show us what this is from, Drew. This is from Love Lies Bleeding, written by Rose Glass and Weronika-

Craig: The great Rose Glass.

John: -Tofilska. All right, our last person. This is actually two people. What we’re seeing is two kids on a basketball court. The one on the right is holding a basketball. He’s walking next to his friend, who is counting something emphatically on his fingers. How do we talk about these boys? How do we set them up individually and together? Let’s assume that they are principal characters in a story, and this is the first time we’re meeting them. All of our attention goes to the one on the left because he’s counting and he just has an energy to him.

He has this purple sweatshirt that feels great and iconic to him. The way he’s counting, making his points on his fingers, he talks with his hands clearly. It feels like a thing you can establish early on about him. He has gold-framed glasses. They both have high and tight hair, so I don’t know if that establishes them well. The one on the left has a rounder face. What else are we calling out about these two?

Craig: On the page, since you have to do this before you get here, right? We have two kids, about 10 or 11 years old, on a basketball court. Let’s call Brian taller, thin, quieter, nervous. Walks holding the ball with his friend. Let’s call him Anthony. Shorter, stockier, constantly talking, emphatic, bright colors. He’s smaller, but he’s the one who stands out.

John: Yes, smaller but a giant personality, a giant presence.

Stuart: Feels like LeBron and Maverick Carter. [laughter] Anthony focuses on the stats so that Brian can keep his focus on the game.

Craig: I like that.

John: Megana, what are you thinking?

Megana: There’s also something about their expression which lets you know that these characters have this conversation or this argument several times a day.

John: Yes, we want to hear that in a scene that follows. The first lineup needs to be from, we’re calling him Anthony on the left, and just him listing all the points of things. It just feels so right. Yes, you can get some of that in the description, but the first bits of dialogue are going to tell us a lot about what their dynamic is. Let’s just show what this is from. This is from He Got Game, written by Spike Lee. I would say Anthony on the left feels like a Spike Lee character. I feel like I see him, and I love to see him in these movies.

All right, so that’s people. Let’s talk about some places. These are some settings for actual movies that have happened. This first thing we’re seeing, they’re islands. There’s cliffy islands in a very blue sea. Let’s be more specific about where we are. If this is a setting that we’re traveling to in the movie, imagine this is a helicopter shot bringing us in here.

How are we describing this? Megan, let’s start with you. If this is a thing that you’re putting into your story as an establishing shot, how might you describe what you’re seeing?

Megan: I would call it like an untouched island in a beautiful blue sea, not a person or a building. I don’t know. I feel like dinosaurs should be here.

John: Yes. It feels super vibrant. One of the challenges with the island is my default goes to survivory desert island, and this is not that. To me, this feels like Greece or Thailand, but high cliffs are what really establish it, that it’s like a forest atop cliffs over this vibrant blue sea.

Craig: I’d probably go for a sprawl of islands just so that we get the sense it’s not just one, because that’s what people go to, sprawl of islands, high-cliffed islands, covered with low, dense clumps of trees. They sit amidst the peaceful blue water. We’re not in the open ocean. I hate describing shots like this, personally. I hate it, it’s just–

John: People skip it.

Craig: Yes, because like–

John: Because nothing happens.

Craig: Right, the truth is, in a shot like this, just looking at it as a picture, because the drone isn’t moving, this isn’t a moving picture for us, but would be in whatever it is, it just feels like a tourist, like a pamphlet cover. If it were moving, then maybe something would be happening, but really, it’s just sort of establishing.

John: Yes, it is establishing. Any more thoughts? Megana?

Megana: Okay, say this is the first shot of your movie, and you are establishing tone through this, there’s something so glossy about this image. It makes me feel like this is going to be like a fun rom-com or a screener sort of thing.

John: Yes, I feel like Meryl Streep is going to be singing a song at the edge of one of these cliffs.

Megana: I was just going to ask, like, how you guys would describe this image to set up the tone of that.

Craig: I wouldn’t. This is not to me, like you can’t set up the tone of a movie with this, because you might as well just say opening, fairly conventional shot of beautiful islands. [laughter] This is going to be one of those. You don’t want to do that, you don’t want to undermine your own cause.

John: Craig, I’ll say, like, if you’re talking though about bright, joy– I don’t want to say joyful sunlight, but a sense of, like, it’s bright and sunny and fun and poppy, that feels like a certain thing. Describing the weather and the tone and the mood, because these same islands in the middle of a rainstorm would feel very different and feel very dark. Establishing the tone of a place, you can do.

Craig: I would want to connect that to people.

John: Yes, I agree.

Stuart: It feels to me like this is the flyover shot before we get to the layer of the bad guy in an Austin Powers, like a parody of a spy movie.

Craig: To me, I feel like this is midway through a rom-com, they’ve arrived at this beautiful lagoon. Then this is the shot revealing how beautiful it is, although there are no boats here. Who the hell even knows? [laughs] I don’t know.

Stuart: In any of those contexts, there are different ways to do a one-line, quick establishing. If it’s a parody of a spy movie, I’d say the craggy cliffs of a Windows default background. If it were a rom-com, I’d say uninhabited seas, we might be the only people for miles. One, it doesn’t even go on the line two, but either way, quick and snappy.

John: Everyone thinks this is something funny or it’s a rom-com. It’s not, it’s Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Screenplay by Andrew Adamson, Christopher Markus, and Stephen McFeely.

Craig: This is why we were struggling. This isn’t even on earth.

John: Yes, it’s not.

Craig: This is Narnia, you guys. Really, the way I would describe this is, Narnian Islands in the great whatever sea. Beautiful Narnian Islands.

John: Cerulean seas, yes.

Craig: Yes, it’s Narnia.

John: It’s Narnia, dude.

Craig: Of course.

John: Of course. All right, we’ll be getting back to Narnia with Greta’s new movie. I’m excited to see that happening. All right, next setting. Speaking of villain’s lair. In the shot we’re seeing, there’s a very overcast, a storm, but we’re seeing this, I guess we can call it brutalist, but brutalist modernist building that it’s all concrete and glass. We’re seeing soldiers or police people approaching the front doors of it. How do we talk about this? To me, it feels like a Tetris piece that’s turned into a house. I think you want to talk about the square angles of it all. It feels like some sort of discarded piece of a puzzle.

Craig: To me, this would be all about the movement. A single file line of SWAT team members move guns out, pointed forward towards the glass wall of an angular, concrete, and glass modern home, two stories, sitting in the middle of this absurdly perfect lawn under gray skies. The house is actually not– it’s John Wick house, basically. It’s like a smaller John Wick house. Oh, actually, there’s a whole other row of soldiers. Sorry, there are two lines of soldiers. It’s hard to tell because the other ones were blending into the background.
Yes, I would just say SWAT soldiers in two streaming single-file lines move towards an angular concrete and glass home.

John: Yes. I might also, clad entirely in black. There’s something futuristic about just how black and minimalist the police officers themselves are. Megan, Megana, Stuart, other thoughts on describing this shot?

Megan: I got to go talk about that hedge. It’s extremely perfectly manicured.

John: Yes, it’s all straight lines in this space. All right, let’s show what this is from. Mickey 17, written by Bong Joon Ho.

Craig: They haven’t seen it.

John: Yes, I saw it and it’s a little, I don’t remember the shot in the movie, but it is delightful, and it feels of like a part of the movie.

Craig: It’s on earth. It’s not on Narnia, so it’s fair.

John: This one is on earth, and it looks like– What we’re looking at is a shot of what seems to be a Middle Eastern city. It is all tan, multi-story buildings jammed incredibly tight together. This is a very long lens that is making everything seem incredibly compressed. Buildings nearly fill the frame with just a tiny strip of white sky at the summit of this. Hey, if you put this shot in a movie, we know we’re someplace Pacific in the world. I do like this as an establishing shot. How else would you describe this? What’s interesting to say about this?

Craig: One road, there’s one road.

John: A single multi-lane road bisects an incredibly dense city of all yellow concrete buildings.

Craig: What city is it? That’s what I would do. I would say, da, da, da, and then point out a compact sprawl of hundreds of squat yellow buildings. They all look the same.

John: Yes, the uniformity of it is, I think what’s so striking about the image. What was this from, Drew?

Drew: This is from War Dogs.

Craig: Oh, yes. My boy, Todd Phillips.

John: Do you know what city this is supposed to be, Craig? I feel like this is probably Jordan, maybe?

Craig: I can’t remember, I’m going to guess Middle East. I don’t know where it was set versus where they shot it, but sounds right.

John: Great, but that was fun. We’ve never done that on our show before, and I liked it as an exercise to go through this. Let’s do some listener questions. We have some listeners who have joined us on the Zoom, and so bring them on. I’ll have them ask their question. All right, first we have Eddie.

Craig: Eddie.

Eddie Hamilton: Hello. My name’s Eddie Hamilton from London. I’m a film editor. I’ve listened to every single episode of Scriptnotes since the show started.

John: Incredible.

Eddie: I started around episode 40, and I listened to the back and listened every week. It’s the only podcast to listen to every week. My question is, John and Craig, please, would you briefly discuss your experiences of rewriting and restructuring your own scripts and advising other filmmakers while in post-production? Editing is the final rewrite. Every movie I’ve cut has been refined enormously once the shoot is over, and the editorial adventure begins after the first assembly, and I would love to hear your perspective on this, please.

John: Yes, it’s a great question, Eddie. My experience with movies, specifically in post, where I’ve not directed the thing, generally I’ve gotten them up to production, and then I’ve walked away and done other things. Then I’ve come back, and I’ve seen that first assembly, that first cut or first audience screening, and I find where I’m most helpful is coming in with a set of notes that is really responding to the movie that I saw, that it has a memory of what the intentions were behind those things, but it’s not trying to get us back to the script that I wrote.

It’s really reflecting, this is the experience of watching the movie now. This is where I was curious, where I got confused. These are the opportunities I see, and I try to be the first person with the most clearest notes. I give those to the director or the producer. They agree with what they agree with, and then they bring those to the editor and start working on the next cut.

Eddie: Are you always invited in?

John: I am not always invited in. In the movies that have turned out well, I’ve basically always been invited in to do that function, and I feel like in many cases, like on Go, I was there for every frame shot, but in movies where I wasn’t, like Big Fish, being able to have some fresh eyes was so important because I could have the memory of, like, this was the intention, but this is what I’m actually seeing was really helpful because editors, obviously, they’re finding all this footage. They know what they have and what they don’t have.
I’m just looking at sort of, here’s what I’m seeing. Here’s where I’m engaging. Craig.

Craig: Actually, I was talking about this last night with– I did an event with Tim Good, who is one of our editors on The Last of Us and is yet again nominated for an Emmy, and we talked about this very thing. Once I get into the edit, I’m really trying to work with what I know we have, which is, it’s different. There are times where I will watch an editor’s cut and go, “Okay, this scene, I’m not going to give you notes on this scene. I’m going to give you the script back, read it. Go back to the script now, because you edited what you saw, but the script had more information.”

I want you to go back and conform this, not moment by moment, but feeling by feeling, speeds, adjustments, tempos. It’ll give you a sense of when to get close, when to further back, and then we’ll go from that. Usually, it’s pretty close. What you’re talking about, Eddie, that does happen sometimes, is you will watch and you’ll go, “Okay, structurally, our theory was incorrect.” I’ll give you an example. Our second episode of season two, for which Tim is nominated for an Emmy, initially, there’s this battle that’s taking place at Jackson, and then there’s this encounter that’s happening in a ski lodge.

We go back and forth between them a few times, and what we found was once Kaitlyn Dever says to Pedro Pascal, “I know who you are, and I’m going to kill you,” we can’t leave. We really can’t leave, and so we did some restructuring there, which worked, and there’s a lot of problem-solving to that, and it’s a joy because you understand you’re doing the right thing. You have to be as open to the new possibilities as you can be, and you also have to be as respectful of what led you to that point as you can be.

If you can have both of those in balance, then you are able to steer back towards the plan when needing, and you’re able to steer away into something better when you are needing it.

Eddie: That’s great. When I saw that episode, as an editor, all that intercutting and the structuring of the battle, I could feel how hard that was because I’ve done that on many films, and so I contacted Tim on Instagram. [laughter] I gave him a massive thumbs up and said, “Dude, that episode rocked, and congratulations. Just editor to editor, I wanted to let that your hard work was seen and understood, and appreciated from another post-production expert who’s sharing your pain. When I’m watching that episode, I can feel the amount of work that went into it to balance all the plates.”

It was astonishing, it was really great. The episode that you did about giving notes to producers or producers giving notes to writers applies to editors as well, and I make careful notes. I quite often tell my assistants when they ask me about getting notes in the edit and how to respond, don’t lead with your personal pain, all that stuff you said, Craig, it’s totally valid for editorial as well. If anyone is working with editors, please have a listen to that episode. Anyway, thank you so much for your time.

John: Thank you so much for listening to all the episodes, it’s incredible.

Craig: It’s amazing.

Eddie: My pleasure.

John: Thank you.

Craig: Thank you, Eddie.

Drew: Next question is from Ruta.

Craig: I may be wrong, but I believe we have a Lithuanian in the room.

Ruta: It is true.

John: Ruta, thank you for joining us on this live show. What question could we try to answer for you?

Ruta: Thank you so much for having me as a person with a question on the show. On episode number 626, I think Craig mentioned that accents are a little bit like actor bait, and it can become a trap for them. I was wondering if you know of any production designer baits. Is there anything you’d like designers not to do when bringing your scripts to screen?

John: Oh, it’s such a good question. Man, I could go on for a long time about this. Let me talk about like great examples of production designers who just got it and ran with it. I’m like, “Oh my God, thank you so much.” On Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alex McDowell and his team would e-mail me with like, “This is what we’re thinking about for the newspapers on the wall of Willy Wonka’s father’s house.” It’s like, “Great, that’s a thing that I can engage with, I can help out with that.” What you’re showing me is, oh, you really do get, like, who this person is, and that is fantastic.

Where I have had issues in the past with production designers who will take a scene they see in the script and create a whole new setting for a thing that doesn’t exist. Or there was an animated project where I delivered a script, and they were showing me scenes that did not exist in the script. That’s not helpful for me. I think you’re going too far with the world-building. You’re trying to paint way outside the lines of what this project needs to be. Craig, bait for production designers.

Craig: One thing that comes to mind, when you have a script where there is a town, oftentimes it’s a fantasy or it’s science fiction, but there’s some sort of place. What ends up happening is production designers working within the framework of the space that they have in the footprint will often over-design the street. There’s like a street of 12 things, and everybody walks the set and goes, “Oh my God, look at how great this is.” You’re like, “Yes, but what’s down the street? What’s on the next street over? Why is every scene only on the street?”

Suddenly, even if you extend it digitally, the town feels very small. Over-designing portions of a thing that you’re going to be stuck in over and over and over. When we made the Boston QZ or when we made Jackson, I was like, “Let’s not throw all of our resources onto one street.” Give me a little side streets. Give me little alleys. Give me little tiny things that we can do because we’re going to want variety more than anything. It’s more important than the one big “ooh-aah” shot variety. Spread it out a bit and let’s see what we can do.

Sounds like maybe, Ruta, you are a production designer or you work in an art department?

Ruta: That is the truth. I am a production designer, yes.

Craig: Great. You know what I’m talking about.

Ruta: Yes.

[laughter]

Craig: Generally speaking, production designers these days do a very good job of integrating with the visual effects supervisor to work hand in hand with production to make sure that they are building enough practical for the actors to be inside, but also leaving space then for visual effects to complete things beyond that. Poor Ruta knows that everybody in the creative side wants the production designer to build the world, and then somebody from the production manager’s office comes in and says, “You have 12 cents.”

The compromise is always there. That one street B, that’s what I would call it.

John: Last bit I’ll say is that really great production design, and I think the point I was trying to get to in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is that it’s specific and that it feels specific to the needs of the scene and who that character is who would live in that space. That is the right instinct. The only danger is sometimes they can spend so much effort to create a character that doesn’t exist or doesn’t sort of mean anything, that you’ve wasted some time.

I would always prefer a specific place rather than a place that is just looks cool and doesn’t actually resonate, doesn’t tell me anything about who the people are who live and work in that space. Ruta, thank you so much for your question.

Craig: Great question.

Ruta: Thank you so much. I love your podcast.

Craig: Oh, thanks. Thank you.

Drew: Next up, we have Caroline.

Craig: Caroline.

****Caroline:**** Hello, long-time listener. I guess since 2020, really.

Craig: That’s a while.

Caroline: Yes, I guess I’ve been doing a lot longer. My question is a bit existential. It’s what do you think of people that leave the film industry? I’ve been working in it for almost 10 years and have found it to be quite detrimental to my mental health and with the lack of routine, low pay, long hours, high-stress environments, slimy, unprofessional producers. I work in posts. I have kept plugging away for the next gig, hoping it’ll be better, but I’m just not sure if it makes sense to keep going on the roller coaster that is having a job in film.

I’m sort of damned if I do. Have you ever had your own doubts about the longevity of having a career in this industry, and how do I work smarter and not harder in this line of work? How do you rationalize it all?

John: Oh, Caroline.

Craig: Ooh, I said brief question. The answer is no, yes, maybe three. The answer is three.

John: First off, this resonates with me because I’ve just been having this conversation so many times over the last few years with people who are like, “I don’t know whether to stay or to go, whether to, what actually makes sense.” What I like about your question is you are trying to face this honestly and look at what is best for you in this moment and what is best for you long-term. You aren’t making assumptions about how things are going to shape up and how it’s all going to be like, that you’re one job away from everything being perfect.

I love working in the film industry, but the film industry and the television industry can suck. Your job is not who you are. Your job shouldn’t be your identity. It sounds like you have other things that probably are considering, at least for what you would do if you weren’t going to do post. It’s worth taking those things seriously. We don’t know what the future is going to hold, but if you’re relatively young in this industry, you’ve been doing this for a while, it’s okay to leave if you decide you want to leave.

You don’t need my permission or Craig’s permission or anybody’s permission, but you need to be able to feel okay about going on because it doesn’t mean that you failed. It means that you recognize it wasn’t for you if that’s a choice you decide to make. Craig?

Craig: Yes, the very first question you ask is, what do you think about people that lead?

John: Hear us. Yes.

Craig: No problem. There’s no judgment whatsoever. The same way I feel about people that were in real estate and decided to make a switch, also. It’s whatever’s– This isn’t like, “Oh my God, she couldn’t hack it.” She couldn’t hack it, would be a thing if you were trying to be a Navy SEAL, I guess?

John: Yes.

Craig: No. This is a business like any other. John’s absolutely right. You can transition to something else whenever you want, as you wish, but I can tell that you– Well, I can’t tell. I suspect that you don’t want to. I suspect that you would like to stay. I suspect that you love it. I suspect that the problem you’re dealing with is the frustration of not being able to do the thing you love in a way that feels good.

We’ve been there, all of us, every single person who does this. That’s in different ways. We have all gotten it in different ways. There’s ways that the business treats you poorly because of your gender or your race. I always like to say like, and then underneath that, because you’re there. A lot of people will just treat you bad because you’re there, which is brutal.

Show business is one of the few things that people are so passionate about, they are willing to bear an enormous amount of bad behavior in order to keep going. What I think is important is that you’ve identified that you have a limit. Setting up boundaries is important. If in your mind, you’re giving yourself permission to go, you will immediately feel quite a bit freer.

See, one of the problems is when we feel trapped, that’s when we feel powerless. You’re not trapped, ever. You can get up and go. Yes, it may mean that you’re not able to do the thing that you really want to do, but you might find that just knowing you can get up and go will give you a little bit more confidence to go, “I’m good at my job. I love being here. This is my boundary.”

What the bullies know is that there are systems in place to keep them from bullying. Those are real. I think you should take advantage of those if those moments come. The difficulty of getting work, that is the cross we bear.

John: Yes, that’s the structural problem of what we’re in.

Craig: That is. I wish I could tell you that there was a moment or an event or a thing where you will wake up one day and go, “Oh, I’m in this business now forever. They’ll never let me go,” which is what happens when you’re good at what you do and you get to that place where suddenly they realize it.

The most frustrating thing is you were you all along. You’re just waiting for them to flip their own switch to get it. In your circumstance, with my guess, I would say don’t quit yet. I feel like you don’t want to. Give it a go as best you can with your boundaries firmly in place. If that doesn’t work, then you know what? There is an unfelt joy that is waiting for you in something else. I do not believe we are meant for one thing in this world.

John: Caroline, one of the things that this is reminding me of is that there’s so many books about, oh, transitioning careers, or moving from this job to that job. They are always focusing on people who show up and go to work at a normal job.

The things that we do, which is scape work and we are imposed or us as writers, piecing together a bunch of different things to create enough of a career, is just so challenging and so different. If you decide that you love this work in post, but you don’t love going gig to gig to gig, it may be worth looking for, like, what are the positions that let you do the things you love that are more like a job rather than this?

You can actually not have to stress about the next gig, the next gig, the next gig. Working at a post house or a place that is like a longer-running thing, so you’re not constantly seeking the next thing, might feel better. I think Craig’s advice, on the whole, I think is really good. Is this resonating with you? Is this helpful at all?

Caroline: Yes, it’s a bit heavier than the other questions. It’s almost quite spiritual in a way, to have to think about this like existential question and to really just be in touch with myself and know what I need.

John: Yes, and listen, there aren’t great career coaches for stuff like this. There’s not an industry for that. I think just having a structured conversation with somebody about, these are my priorities and these are what I’m setting as my boundaries might also be helpful too.

If you can find somebody like that, it could just be a friend, but it’s where you both hold each other accountable for like, these are my red lines, these are the choices I want to make, that could help you as well.

Caroline: Totally.

John: Caroline, thank you so much.

Craig: Hang in there, Caroline.

John: Drew, let’s do one more question, and then we’ll save these other questions for the bonus segment.

Drew: Sounds good. Let’s do– This next question is from Sarah.

Craig: Do you think it’s going to be Sarah with an A or an H? Quick guess– Oh, too late, it’s H. Oh, it could be either. This could be Sarah Hadelman, or it could be Sarah Adelman. I think it’s Sarah Adelman.

Sarah Adelman: You’re correct. Jew, H, you got to go do it.

Craig: Jew.

Sarah: Yes.

Craig: Jew knows Jew. Sarah, welcome to the podcast. Welcome to our live show. What question can we try to answer for you today?

Sarah: Sure. I’m Sarah. I’m a stand-up comedian and writer, and I finally sent my first feature script to my lit manager, and she gave me really helpful notes. One of the biggest ones will require redeveloping the male love interest for my female lead.

I originally wrote him as a super naive, big-eyed guy from the Midwest who’s intimidated by my spunky female girl. She has suggested that I change him to be a little cooler so we can root for him, a little less pathetic, for lack of a better term. I really want to make this change, but I’ve lived with this man in my head for a year as I wrote the script.

Should I give him a new name and just totally rewrite him? How do I let go of the original person? How do I make sure that I’m not just adding new traits to someone who already existed, so it becomes like a caricature? How do I deal with that I’m going to miss him even though I want him?

John: Who gave you this note? Was it your agent, you said?

Craig: Literary manager.

John: Manager?

Craig: Yes.

Sarah: Sorry, Craig.

John: Yes.

Craig: Yes, it’s okay.

John: You know where this is going?

Sarah: I know. I love her.

John: Fire the manager.

Craig: No, you don’t have to fire her.

John: Sarah, you think this note is actually the right note for the script. You think it actually will improve the script. That’s all that matters. No matter where it came from. She thinks it’s the right choice for it.

My instinct, Craig, is she needs to rename the character because otherwise she’s going to try to be gluing things onto the existing character that she already wrote. I think she needs to create a clean space in her head for who this new character is. What’s your instinct?

Craig: There’s something about this character that matters to you. There was something about this character that made him your instinct to pair with her. There’s something about her, therefore, that is relevant here. Get to that. Figure out what that is. That something, hopefully, you can preserve. Also, you don’t need to say goodbye to this guy. You’re making a new guy. What’s this character’s name currently?

Sarah: Milo.

Craig: Milo. Let’s say you’re going to make a new character called Adam. Your female lead, her name is?

Sarah: Katerina.

Craig: Katerina goes over to Adam’s house, and he’s just got to go quickly deal with his idiot brother, Milo, who’s there, and who they can talk about and who may– You know what I’m saying? He doesn’t have to go away. If there’s value to him there, then keep it.

I guess that’s really what I’m getting to, is don’t ignore what your instincts were. They were your instincts for a reason. Follow that thread as you do, but also then really do think, hey, who is this other guy, and how can I get as attached to him and as protective of him because of the way his purpose interacts with hers?

John: My suspicion, though, is, Sarah, you will fall in love with this new guy, too. The old guy’s like, oh yes, I learned a lot from him, but this is the right guy to be in this movie relationship now. I think it’s a really smart question, though, because it shows that you’re thinking about what your intentions are, but you’re also thinking about what’s actually working.

That’s the crucial cycle that we’re going through is rewriting it’s really recognizing what worked, what didn’t work, and how to move forward, and not being too precious about the things you loved. Good luck.

Sarah: Thanks, guys.

John: You got this.

Sarah: I love you.

Craig: Thanks.

Sarah: I really love you.

Craig: We love you too.

John: Thank you. Big hugs. All right. My one cool thing is a thing that’s going to seem so obvious, but for folks who are not working in the film industry or theater, you might not know about spike tape. I want to sing the praises of spike tape. Spike tape are these little narrow colored tapes. We use them on film sets and on stage to mark where things belong on stage or on the set.

It could be actors’ marks. It could be where things are placed. You put it down, you take it up. It’s a really stiff tape. It doesn’t leave bad marks, but have some of these around the house because there are things you want to label.

We just did it for, we’re repainting and redoing a bunch of the windows. That’s the noise you hear in the background. We marked this purple tape is for the screens to go in these places. It’s just useful when you need to identify things, and you can write on it. It’s smart stuff. It’s a spike tape. It’s just delightful. You will find yourself using it all the time.

Craig: I had no idea that was– I just called it marking tape because the AC would just come with this marking tape to mark stuff.

John: I’ve always called it spike tape.

Craig: Spike tape.

John: I find it just incredibly useful. I love it.

Stuart: A store on Magnolia and Burbank that has the rainbow of every imaginable color.

John: That’s what you want. We’ll put a link in the show notes to the cheapo Amazon version. I love– God, Megan, I remember when we went to the– We had to get a special light for one of our live shows.

We had to go set up an account to get a light for one of our live shows. It was so fun to be in a place that just had like all the film stuff you could ever want. It’s so great. All the supplies.

Craig, what’s your one cool thing?

Craig: My one cool thing this week is Bridge Base Online. I don’t know if any of you play Bridge.

John: I don’t. Tell us about Bridge Base.

Craig: I’ve played Bridge in the past, and I loved it. My wife and I would play with her parents. We can’t play with them anymore because they’re dead.

John: Yes, it’s hard.

Craig: It just doesn’t work well. They were great Bridge players. They were competitive Bridge players in New York in the 60s, like ranked and everything. They were really good. Melissa and I were more like, we learned in college, and we would play. There was like a bunch of people in our little eating clubs, which is a stupid Princeton term, that we’d play Bridge.

I played easy Bridge. I learned quite a bit playing with my in-laws. Melissa and I haven’t played forever. The thing about Bridge is you need four people. It is a fantastic game. It’s a game that is very simple to understand in terms of the rules, but all the complexity and joy is in the bidding and the strategy.

There is a website called Bridge Base Online that is just this massive venue for, you can play against the computer, you can play 1,000 hands, you can do practice sessions, you can learn bidding conventions. You can also play pickup games with about 14 trillion people. The reason I started looking back at this is because Melissa’s been playing a lot herself on her phone.
Then our friend, Dave Shukan, who I’ve mentioned before on the podcast, puzzle master, lawyer extraordinaire, and exceptional bridge player, no surprise, had been talking to us. He’s been playing quite a bit himself. If you are interested in learning how to play Bridge, or you just feel like doing a little solo practice, bridgebase.com.

John: I love it.

Craig: Yes.

John: That is our show for this week. It’s produced, as always, by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Oh, thank you, Matthew Chilelli, right there. Matthew, for this week’s outro, pick one of your favorite ones from the past, one of the ones you’ve done, and let’s play that again.

Craig: One of yours.

John: One of yours. It has to be one of yours.

Craig: Yours.

John: If you have an outro, you can send a link, blah– See, that’s what I did.

Craig: See, that’s it.

John: Blah, blah.

Craig: That was it.

John: That’s what I did.

Craig: I’m so glad it happened.

John: It happened live. 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 the transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with a signup for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing.

You’ll find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Script Notes. 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 today’s episode. With the email, you get each week as a premium subscriber.

Oh my gosh, thank you to all our premium subscribers. We sent out the notice to them about this live show. Drew, how many questions did we get in from those?

Drew: Hundreds of questions. I woke up with hundreds in my inbox. They were all great. It was so hard to pick.

John: Yes.

Craig: Oh, at least one of them was bad.

Drew: Not a single one.

Craig: Mmm-hmm.

Drew: Mmm-hmm.

John: We’re going to be answering a few more of those live in the bonus segment for premium members. We’re also holding on to those questions because so many of them were so good, we’ll save them for future episodes.

The one coolest thing, so at least four of the coolest things are already on this Zoom right now, which are our previous Scriptnotes producers and our editor, Matthew Chilelli. Megana Rao, Megan McDonald, Stuart Friedel, Matthew Chilelli. Thank you so much for all your hard work on this.

Drew, thank you so much for your hard work every week on this show. You guys are the best. Thank you everybody who watched us live on YouTube. That’s so exciting. Bye, guys.

[Bonus Segment]

John: Let’s answer another question, if we can.

Craig: Yes.

Drew: Okay. We have Ben Adams coming up.

John: What a great name. Ben Adams.

Craig: Ben Adams.

John: It feels like a founding father, a merged founding father.

Craig: Founding father’s ne’er-do-well brother.

John: That’s what it is.

Ben Adams: That’s exactly right. Funny, because I always get picked for jury duty with that name, because I’m like a founding father’s name.

John: Yes. That’s good stuff.

Craig: I’d pick you.

John: Ben, what kind of question might we be able to answer for you today?

Ben: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on. I’m so thrilled. My question is, a little preface here, I’m going to be shooting a short film rom-com next month with some friends. My script, I feel like, is ready, but I keep hearing things about having alt lines or alternative lines on set.

I have so little experience with that, and so I want to know how many alt lines are good to have for jokes. How many is too many? I want to give my actors room to improvise, but at the same time not lose the meaning of the scene. I just am trying to figure out a good middle ground of how many to have on set.

John: That’s a great question. We had Brittany Nichols on the show a while back, and she was talking about Abbott Elementary. They do come to set with like a whole series of alt lines they’ll go after they’ve gotten through a take, and they’ll practice other things for specific stuff to replace.

I think it’s good for you to have those in your back pocket. I wouldn’t share them with your actors ahead of time. I would say really look at what’s happening in front of the lens in the moment before you change setups, and then see what feels good to explore.

That’s a chance for you to, okay, here are some things I’m thinking. Let’s see if any of these work or land, and then that opens the door for them to try some different things themselves, in the Apatow sense of, you shoot a couple clean and then you get messy. Craig, what’s been your experience with alt lines?

Craig: Never wrote them for the comedies. When I was working, like for instance, on the Hangover movies, Todd and I would write the lines we wanted to hear. Then on the day, first of all, you’re going to have funny actors, and you’re also going to feel things, right?

You may feel in the moment like, eh, it’s not quite working, is it? Then you just do a little powwow. What would be better? Or why don’t we try this? Why don’t we try that? An actor may just toss something out in the moment. You’re like, “Ooh, that was great.”

Todd and I used to have Zach Galifianakis repeatedly would come up with the best lines after we had turned around and the camera wasn’t on him, and we’re like, “Zach, got to go do this, too, when the lens is pointing at you.”

Also, a guy like Zach, it’s every take, he could have a new line that’s amazing. You find those there. There’s something that is so wonderfully spontaneous about those. If you prepare them– First of all, you’re inviting people to go, “Well, I don’t want to say this, but I will say that.” Remember also, lines interact.

John: Yes, totally.

Craig: If somebody is going to get an alt here, the response is going to be different. We would let that happen on the day.

John: Here’s what I think, going back to the Abbott Elementary example, when she has alts for things, when a person has a funny name for a thing or a funny thing they call the other person, having alts for that snipers those comments, because then, it’s not inviting a different response back on the other side.

It’s a little more clean. You can see what works. I would say on your list of priorities for what you should be thinking about going into this rom-com shoot, it’s pretty low on that list of priorities. Really think about all the other stuff and making sure that you have all the materials to make the best possible scene.

Craig: Agreed.

Ben: I have my shot list, my storyboards, my script. I have all my actors, and everyone agreed to do it for zero dollars, which is great. I have good friends. I called in all my favors. Really quickly, I invited my friend, Tom, who’s now a SAG actor. He was starring it, but he’s like, “Sorry, you got to pay me now.” I go, “Oh, do you still want to come on set and be funny?” He goes, “Sure.” He’s going to maybe help me riff. Do you recommend that? Is that cool?

John: There are people who that works out great for. Behind the scenes on a lot of the Apatow movies, they were just finding people around who just did stuff. If your friend’s helping you, great. If you’re finding it’s not actually helping and it’s slowing stuff down, you can send your friend away, or you can go grab pizza or something.

Craig: That said, ethical point of view, if he’s in the Writer’s Guild, no. If you’re a Writer’s Guild member, you can’t work for free. You can’t work for free.

Ben: Okay. Got it. Yes. As far as I know, he’s not. He just got his SAG card, and this was like– We were talking about doing it together. Then he said, “Hey, sorry, I got this feature,” and I’m like, “Oh, okay, cool. Let’s do it right.” I’m still figuring that out because I’m new. Thank you all so much. This was such a thrill. This kind of thing makes me a guest, right?

John: Yes, you’re now a guest on Scriptnotes.

Craig: Yes.

Ben: All right. Thanks, all. Appreciate you.

Drew: Two more. Next one is from Katie. Hello, Katie.

****Katie:**** Hello. Hi. Thank you guys for having me on.

John: Thank you very much for coming on and for waiting to ask your question. What can we help you with?

Katie: I was wondering, how do you guys, with your fingers in so many pies being projects at once, how do you handle working on multiple projects? Whether you have something that you’re pitching while you’re working on something being developed while you also are in production or even distribution on another project, how do you find brain space to not forget about one?

John: It’s a great question. Increasingly, I’ve had a bunch of stuff recently that I’ve had to. On a given day, I may be pitching on one project, having a meeting about a different project, and writing the other thing that I’m writing. It can be tough to switch gears, except they’re all in clean lanes.
I try to prioritize, this is the thing I’m writing, I need to block out this time to actually do productive work. The stuff that I’m pitching on or meeting on, I find in the half hour before thing, I can get my brain back up to speed on what that thing is. I’ll go back through the notes, find the stuff, and get myself there.

I’ve said this on the podcast many times, I’m sure, over the years, but with a new project, I’ll try to make myself a playlist in music for, like, these are the songs that remind me about it. Sometimes playing that will also get me back in the mood for something.

There’s times where it’ll be like two months since I’ve thought about this thing. Hearing those tracks gets me excited about it again and reminds me like, “Oh, that’s right, this is what this project feels like.” Craig, you’ve had to do this.

Craig: Sure. There are some people who really are producers at heart, and they love working on lots of things at once, because there is an entrepreneurial aspect to their character. There are other people who are a bit more monk-like, I think.

John: I think you’re monk-like, I’m more produce-y, yes.

Craig: Yes. I’m a full focus-on-a-thing guy. I do still– There are things that I help develop with other writers and filmmakers. When it comes to what I’m doing, I can write one thing at a time, really, because I put everything of myself in it, 100%, all the way tunnel vision-y. That’s just one of the ways that our mental architecture is expressed, and everybody’s is different.

If you find yourself really struggling to do that, it may just be that your brain is attuned to the narrow lane. There’s nothing wrong with that. You just follow the path of least resistance because it’s hard enough. Why make it harder by moving against? If you’re a righty, don’t throw a ball with your left hand.

John: It’s such good general advice, is so much of this is recognizing what are your patterns and not trying to label those as bad habits or something like, no, this is just how stuff works for me. The first couple of projects you’re writing, you’re still learning what actually works for you.

Sure, try some different things, see what– Maybe you write first thing in the morning, maybe you write last thing at night. Maybe you are a person who can juggle a bunch of different stuff, and you enjoy that. The cross-pollination between the things is helpful for you or it’s not. If you recognize what works for you, then you can really pursue that.

Katie: Awesome, thank you guys.

John: Katie, thank you so much for the question.

Katie: As a Tallahassee native, love it being thrown out there. Thank you, Craig.

Craig: Felt good, felt good.

John: All right, last up, we have Kathleen, yes.

Craig: With a K.

John: It is with a K. It’s very rare to see a Kathleen with a C. It’s not impossible, but I’ve seen very few.

Craig: Yes, there’s not a lot of Cathies. Kathy, you’ll see.

John: Kathy, a lot, for sure.

Craig: Yes, but no, Kathleen, I agree.

John: Hello, Kathleen with a K.

Craig: Hi, Kathleen with a K.

Kathleen: Hello from the Jersey Shore.

Craig: Hey, what part, where?

Kathleen: I’m in Ocean City right now, but–

Craig: Nice.

Kathleen: Yes.

Craig: Freehold.

Kathleen: Thank you, guys. I’m a longtime fan of the show.

John: We really appreciate you being here. Thank you for joining us.

Kathleen: Thank you for having me, John. I appreciate it. This is a question I have about options. I’m a novelist. I’m not a bestseller. I’ve had a couple of projects optioned in the past. I never expect anything to get made. I’m just happy to have interest from Hollywood. My last project was optioned in 2022 for about two years.

Then, around the same time, Netflix was developing pretty much a very similar show over the same period of time. It came out last month. It was our number one show. It’s already renewed for a second season. Then I was told by people in the industry this happens all the time.

I know ideas are not copyrightable. I’ve heard that from you guys many times, and I’m totally in agreement with that. I guess I’m wondering, do studios option projects just to kill them if they’re very similar? Is there a line that’s crossed?

Craig: Not really.

Kathleen: Is it–? Not really.

Craig: Not really.

John: No. It’s not one of those sorts of like catch and kill situations with like sexual harassment lawsuits or anything like that. It’s not like, “Oh, that’s the thing out there. Let’s take that off the market.” I genuinely believe that does not happen at all.

In your situation, I think one of the things that is exciting is that you wrote a book that’s like, “Oh yes, that should be a series.” Everyone’s like, “Yes, that should be a series.” There’s now evidence that would be a great series. It may mean that what happened was too close to this other hit series that people aren’t going to want to adapt your book.

I got to feel like it helps put you on the radar. I don’t know whether your Goodreads reviewers and folks who are enjoying your book are pointing out that this book existed before this, and it was effing great. People should read this if they want a book in the same spirit. I would take it as a win if you can find a way to take that as a win.

Kathleen: Yes, I think I’m trying. I think it’s my family and friends who are watching it and saying, “This is so close, this is pretty much your book.” Then they’re saying, “If you litigate, that costs so much money. Do you reach out and just say, what’s the deal here?” It’s always my time to sit back and do nothing, but–

Craig: Of course, we have to guard against, a sense of passivity or doormatism. We don’t want to be a doormat. I don’t know the book, and I don’t know the series. We don’t know the details. All I can tell you is that, no, Hollywood generally does not option material to not make it, or because it’s too close to something else.

They’re not worried about something that’s too close when it’s fiction in particular. There’s already been something that’s been a series like that seven years ago, and there’s going to be another one eight years from now. The similarities will occur, particularly if you’re writing in a genre space.

Yes, family and friends who love you have a focus bias because they’ve read the book carefully, and now they’re looking for comparisons, and they will find them. When you read a lot of the lawsuits that get filed, it does consist of a lot of like. “This is almost the same. All they changed was this or this,” which you can do.

I’m not suggesting that it’s impossible. I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t seek legal advice. Since you’re asking what our instinct is, our instinct is almost always no, that people are not looking to steal your book at all. Was it the same producer that optioned the book and made the show?

Kathleen: It’s the same studio, so it was under.

Craig: In particular, if it’s Netflix, they make 14 million shows. There’s probably 12 other novelists who are like, “Hey, you know, that’s not–”

John: Kathleen, I want to focus on this win you have. I bet there’s a bunch of people who’ve written books who are like, “Wait, she’s had multiple things optioned? I’ve never had anything optioned. That seems pretty great.” What have been your conversations with those producers?

I have to feel like they must feel some validation of, not only was our instinct right that this was a good thing, I want to see what her next thing is. Second question is, they optioned it, but was there ever a script? Where did it get to? Were there other writers? What happened on that front?

Craig: Yes. Was there a script?

Kathleen: There was a script. I opted not to be involved in writing the script because I don’t like to get in the way of something being adapted. I was like, if it’s going to get made, then I’ll stay out of the way. There was a script. There was a team attached to it. There was a showrunner.

John: Oh, so, Lord, they did not kill it. They spent some serious money. I’m sure those people are all heartbroken, too, that the series didn’t move forward. No, they were intending to make that show.

Craig: Yes. If, for instance, they optioned a novel for a low amount of money. Let’s say they get away with like, hey, what, we’re making a show, but there’s this other novel out there, and you said it wasn’t a bestseller.

Right off the bat, if it were a bestseller, maybe they’re like, “Oh my God, we’ve got to go get that out of the way.” Then they would have to spend a lot of money on the rights alone. For something that’s a smaller amount, why would they spend a dollar more?

John: Here’s the scenario that I feel is plausible, is that we want to make a movie in this space. They’ve read your book, and they’ve read something else, or whatever the other project was. Let’s get some R&D, basically, and do this stuff.

They’re like, “Okay, we have two things we can do. Which of these two things are we going to do? Who do we like the elements of better? Which one has more momentum?” That’s the one they picked. It sucks when it’s not yours, but you’re talking to two folks on this podcast who’ve had 60 movies not made. We can tell you that it’s par for the course.

Craig: There was a WGA writer writing a script. The WGA also is careful about chain of title. For instance, if there were some sort of co-mingling or shenanigans, then the Writers Guild, the writer of that script, based on your novel, would be like, “Excuse me, you guys took my stuff, clearly.” Then the Writers Guild would say, “Yes, you guys have co-mingled two chains of title, and now you have to deal with credit issues.”

John: The producers who are different producers would also be fighting over that. It would be a bigger mess.

Craig: Everybody would be fighting.

John: Yes, it wouldn’t just be your fight.

Craig: Yes. I think you can tell your family and friends, “Thank you, I love you, I appreciate you guys looking out for me.” It sometimes feels worse when people are trying to convince you that you’ve been done dirty.

John: Yes.

Craig: You can start to feel like a doormat. You’re not. You’re a professional. You went through a professional process. The outcome that occurred is common. You keep moving forward. Your job is to write books.

John: Yes.

Craig: Not to dwell. You keep writing books.

John: Kathleen, it’s a great question. I’m really glad we sort of had this discussion on it. It was great. Congratulations. It’s–

Craig: For real.

John: I’m not just waving it away. For any novelist to get their feelings, not just optioned, but they went and hired people and got a script, and they got a show together, that’s really far down the process and the pike, and will set you up for the next time because I think you’re on more people’s radar because that book went that far.

Kathleen: Okay. That makes me feel better. Thank you.

Craig: Good. Good.

John: Thank you all. Thank you, Kathleen. Thank you, everybody who listened to the live stream. This was really fun.

Craig: -and watched.

John: and watched, and watched. Drew, thank you for putting this together. This was a lot of new, first-time things for you, so thank you for doing it.

Drew: Thank you, guys.

Craig: Nailed it.

John: Nailed it. This was really fun.

Drew: Thank you.

John: Last time we tried to do this in 2020, man, it was a scramble. This felt really good.

Craig: This was great. We’ll do it in episode 1400.

John: Yes. Perfect. Established. Whoever’s taking notes–

Craig: I’ll be so withered.

John: You’ll be at Harris with a cryptkeeper.

Craig: I could theoretically do it.

John: You could totally do it. Honestly, either one of us could do it. We just need to get the wig appliance.

Craig: Actually, you can do it. I think your hair–

John: I got that base.

Drew: It would work.

Craig: Your hair grows straight.

John: Yes, it does grow straight. It’s true.

Craig: I would just get some sort of curly. It would be very Hasidic.

John: Yes. All right, guys. Thank you both. Bye.

Craig: Bye.

Links:

• Watch episode 700 on YouTube!
• Stuart Friedel, Megan McDonell, and Megana Rao
• Weapons
• The Hunting Wives on Netflix
• Vince Gilligan YouTube video
• Our Back to School collection on Weekend Read
• Play along with People, Places and Things: Woman one, woman two, man one, kid duo, oceanside, house, and city.
• Scriptnotes Episode 399: Notes on Notes
• Spike tape
• Bridge Base Online
• Preorder 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
• Craig Mazin on Instagram
• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by Matthew Chilelli (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August and you’re listening to episode 699 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, before you begin pitching a project, you need to be able to pitch yourself. How do you do it without sounding like an egotistical jerk? We somehow spent nearly 700 episodes without really digging into this topic. Luckily, it was brought to us by one of our favorite returning guests, the wonderful Pamela Ribon. Welcome back, Pamela.

Pamela Ribon: Thanks. It’s always nice to be back.

John: Now for folks who don’t have their cheat sheets open, let’s remind them of the projects you’ve written on including Moana, Nimona, and your Academy-nominated short film and a wonderful thing many times, My Year of Dicks. Let’s also talk about underemployment because this is something a lot of our listeners are encountering now, especially our writer listeners. My friend Ryan suggested we discuss some of the pernicious effects that not working has on our choices but also the opportunities that are presented by the times that you’re not working. Especially if you know you’re not working for a certain period of time, that can actually be liberating. We’ll dig into that.

We have listener questions. Since I have you and our bonus segment for premium members, I want to talk a little meta conversation about podcasts because you are a podcaster yourself. I am looking at your podcast set up here on the Zoom and I’m so happy to see it. As we approach episode 700, we’re talking about making some changes around here and I would love your thoughts on that. We have Scriptnotes episode 700 coming up next week and we’re going to do a live show on YouTube. It’s happening tomorrow, Wednesday, August 13th at 10AM Pacific Standard. If you want to watch us live on YouTube, just subscribe to the Scriptnotes podcast and you’ll get a little alert when it’s happening.

Pamela: I love that I’m on the odometer rollover. The 699. We’re getting there.

John: It’s the eve of the 700. It’s setting us up for success. Drew, we have some follow-up.

Drew Marquardt: We do. Some listeners wrote in that a former How Would This Be A Movie article from way back in episode 348, the Rent-A-Family industry in Japan. It looks like it’s being made into a movie. It’s called Rental Family starring Brendan Fraser.

John: Great. We’ll put a link to the trailer in the show notes. I watched the trailer and I think that’s what we expected, although I wasn’t expecting it to be a white guy in Japan doing the thing. I thought that we would move the whole concept over to here instead it’s a large white guy serving as a token white guy in this movie. They’re addressing it in the trailer that he’s the one American who’s being placed into these family situations.

Pamela: Awesome. One of the co-writers here, Hikari, was my cohort when I did the film Independent Director’s Lab.

John: Oh my gosh.

Pamela: She’s awesome. She actually made the film that she went into the director’s lab with. It’s called 32 Seconds. I don’t remember how many seconds. It came out a couple of years ago. I also tried to get this project. I had a pitch. I was thrown in the mix. I was in the thing. It’s very scripted.

John: Can you tell us more about this because this is being released by Searchlight, but what was the process behind this?

Pamela: First you let people know like, “Hey, I found this article. I think it’s going to be a thing and I’d like to see if I can be involved in however it’s getting adapted.” Then they–Boy, this is so long ago so I’m trying to remember how it went this time. Sometimes you just hear like, “Oh no, Lucky Chap has it.” You’re like, “Okay. Bye. Thanks. Of course.” I think in this one, it was like, “Do you have someone that you could attach to with this? Is there a company already that would do this with you?” Because I’m nobody. I can’t remember because this one went very quickly. By the time I was interested in trying to gather a group, there were big people going out with this.

I think that eventually it was just I didn’t move the needle enough to be in the runner-ups for the next top screenwriter. Here it is.

John: It seems like it was probably a long journey to get there. It’s based on the same article but you don’t know everything that happened along the way behind the scenes. Maybe as it comes closer to getting released, we might get some more backstory. I’m just curious what the journey was and how it got to Hikari.

Pamela: I just remember thinking like, “This is such an interesting concept.” I’m sure mine was more in the vein of her or something like that where it was like, “You don’t really care for your life anymore so why don’t you just go be the person that other people need at these moments?” I remember pitching like, “Please, can you fire this person for me? I don’t want to do it.” That kind of stuff.

John: All right. Let’s get to our main topic, which is the topic you brought us. We actually have a question from a listener that sets this up perfectly true.

Drew: Charles writes, I’ve written a pilot and I’m fortunate enough to have gotten some general meetings from it. For all intents and purposes, I’m no one and they know nothing about me. What are the best practices or tips for starting a meeting? You sign on to Zoom and you’re suddenly met with a face and now you have to be interesting. When you’re no one, you can’t count on them knowing anything about you and it’s weird if too much about them. What are some general tips to ease into the general meeting?

John: Pamela Ribon, you’ve actually done workshops on this, like how to talk about yourself as a writer. I’d love to see this conversation to you if you want to direct us here.

Pamela: Sure.

John: What is your best advice for someone in Charles’s situation and really any writer who’s going into a situation where you have to talk about yourself.

Pamela: I like to talk about this topic whenever it’s film festival masterclasses or whatever because this is the thing that you have to do first. Sometimes before you’ve even written something, you have to talk to people about writing and if you want to write or that you have written and what are you going to write next? I find a lot of people start by apologizing for even feeling this way, for having a dream or for having accomplished a script and they’re like, “It’s just this thing. I don’t know. It’s whatever. I don’t know. It’s dumb.” Even in this question, it’s weird if you know too much about them.

You’re having a meeting. Knowing a lot about them shows that you did your homework. You’re excited to meet them. You’re equipped. I know we talk about like it’s a first date but it’s not. We’re not going to keep dating. There’s not like, am I attracted to this person or is that how they always dress? It’s more about how does this flow fit? When they ask me a question about myself, do I feel comfortable answering it? When they answer a question that I have, do I feel like they’re looking at me and talking to me? Do I feel like a real person in this room? These are basic questions that– In a general you can get yourself too hyped up to even bother to look for.

John: Somebody said there, I really want to pull apart is that you think back to a first date and if someone asks you about yourself on a first date, you’re going to come out with a set of answers that make you look good along a certain axis. You’re not going to get the same answers in a general meeting that you would on a first date. It’s a positioning thing you’re trying to do. You’re trying to explain to them who you are, what you’d like to write, why you wrote this thing, why you’re there. It’s good to practice this. If you’re giving a masterclass, you’re talking to people about this, what are your first bits of advice for the things they need to come into the room ready to say?

Pamela: What I usually do is we just have a general in front of the rest of the class. Someone brave enough to go first, I say, “You’re going to walk in here and I’ll already be seated, you’re going to come in like you’ve walked into my office.” Then you just do it because they figure it out. You walk in, you’re like, “Hey, how are you doing? Do you need anything? You want some water? Did anybody get you coffee?” You sit down and then you small talk. Was it hard getting here? Oh, it’s hot today. All the things we do at the top of a general, which at the top of a Zoom– Just so I’m also modern.

It’s the same way you make sure that you’re looking at the green light every once in a while so that you’re making the closest eye contact as you can make. You make sure that you’re comfortable, that you have water, that you have all the things you need. You start with whatever. Like we did when we first logged on of, here’s what traffic situation I was just in and here’s how things are going. Then, you gradually find yourself moving into the topic of why are we really here? Sometimes they start it where if they’ve read something of yours or someone recommended they meet you, that’s a kindness that they may do but you may start because a lot about it and you can start with, “I just saw this, I loved it.”

That’s enough to get things going. If they’re not giving you anything back, this isn’t a great room and you can learn very quickly. I don’t have to sweat here. We’re not going to work out. Like you said, you’re not going to give the same answer as on a first date but I know enough that when people go, “I don’t know anything about.” You can say, “Oh, I can do that.” I moved around a lot. I went to 13 schools and then I moved my way into the early internet and the older net. Then, that started me getting into rooms and I did comedy rooms and sitcoms for a while until I got the call from Disney. I just did so many years.

John: Some good at heavy lifting there. I liked as it showed a journey and it showed like, “Oh, if they’re curious about any bits of that, they can jump back to talk about that.” What were those early rooms like? What were you doing in those places?

Pamela: What shows or where did you end up? What was your last school? We can start by Austin. People in LA really like to talk about Austin.

John: They do.

Pamela: You can do that. Sometimes you’re talking about people you know in common. That thing of like someone said I should meet you or I saw that thing and it was great.

John: Or I see that you’re working with this director. I had a great experience with them or what this is. In some cases it’s the subtly coded like, “That director’s challenging for these reasons. I hope you’re having a great experience.” I love them. It’s also challenging on this thing.

Pamela: Finding your mutuals is a nice– When you have found your mutuals, you learn a lot about them too. Like, “Oh, I love her. She’s great. No, I haven’t met him.” Even just the things you’ve seen. They often ask, what are you reading right now? It’s not quite small talk, it’s medium talk because it’s small talk with cues of, do we think that one day when we’re arguing over a plot point, we’re going to get to a place together because we actually are on the same wavelength. Sometimes that just flies by and all of a sudden an hour has happened because you ended up talking about anything from Taylor Swift to some new app you’re playing with.

You never know where it’ll go. Being flexible with the time or just being free to explore wherever this conversation’s going to go and not get nervous about what you did or did not talk about. You don’t need to put that pressure on yourself. You can have an agenda of I really want to make sure I mention this one thing but you can’t script it.

John: Many episodes ago, Craig and I were talking through this article and we’ll try to find a link to the actual original article. The writer was talking about how good conversations have doorknobs and handles. Basically, there’s ways you can open and keep going. It’s about making sure that you’re providing them things like your bio of all the schools you went to, all the things. You’re giving them handholds that they can pull on and actually keep the thing going. In some of the early general meetings I had, I just didn’t get the flow of it quite right.

I would answer questions without lobbing it back so that they could do the next thing or really that I could ask questions about what it is that they’re looking for. Because if the meeting’s going well at a certain point it does transition into like, “Here’s what we’re working on and here are things that might be a good fit for you.” That’s the dream situation. Other cases it’s just like, “What are the general areas in which we might have some overlap there.” Things that they’re looking for, if it’s an actor’s production company, like what is that actor seeking? If it’s a director, what things never cross the line for that director? That place you’re hoping to get to in these conversations.

Pamela: I used to always have prepared screenplays I wish I had written.

John: For sure.

Pamela: Because that lets them know and let it be varied if it’s varied. Now I know myself well enough, please forgive me if I’ve already said this on this podcast, but I will say, I just am not into dragons, politics, or when people pay money out of a pouch.

John: Great.

Pamela: That’s it. I know it. It doesn’t matter. You can put other things in that pouch, jewels maybe or secret but not farthings.

John: Nimona had dragons and pouches for sure.

Pamela: I turned it down the first time it came around. 100% I was like, “It checks every box I don’t like.” Then they came around again and they were like, “The thing is you don’t have to come all the way out to Connecticut anymore because of Zoom. What if we come to you?” They were like, “They’re punk rock dragons. I don’t think we have to have any pouches.” I was like, “Okay, let’s try it.”

John: All right. My list for that, it’s not a thing I would often say in meetings, but I would definitely tell my reps is like, “ No gnomes, elves, dwarves or Christmas.” I just like no. People will still come to me with Christmas but it’s like, “No, I don’t care about Christmas as a concept.” Even there was a good documentary that was about Christmas trees in New York and the whole business of Christmas trees in New York City. It’s is actually fascinating but it’s also, “No, it’s Christmas. No, it’s just bah humbug.” I just don’t want to do those.

Pamela: Really does help them immediately go, “Oh, we’re going to put down a number of these things.” It may make them say, “What is it that you like?” I think with me in particular, they’re not always assuming what it is that I like because they’re– Now that you have produced credits, they’re like, “Oh.” There have been times when I’m like, “Do you think I’m a cartoon person? Is that what you’re doing?” They’re like, “Yes. Sorry, I don’t know why I’m doing that.” People have a way of learning about animation that is limiting.

You’re always having to show your other sides and the dynamics of you. Often, I’ll tell you what, we end up talking about roller derby.

We end up trying about what I do when I’m not writing and your hobbies, your family, whatever it is. In those generals, I’m always talking to this person until we find that thing that lights them up. Then I know we got it. Sometimes he’s like, “I collect trains.” I was like, “Tell me more.” Then, you watch them become the person they want to be in front of you because they’re talking about their passion.

John: Absolutely. You may not give a rat’s ass about trains but the fact that it is interesting to them, there’s going to be something there that’s fascinating. There’s something that’s driving them about that.

Pamela: They have stories because of that. That’s when you see the storyteller come to life.

John: Again, I’m forgetting exactly where I learned this but Rod Stewart apparently is a big model train builder and collector. I appreciate Rod Stewart so much more now just recognizing that he has an obsession, a hobby that has nothing to do with music or songwriting. That’s fun. That’s nice. Let’s talk about part of the general meeting is talking about what you’re working on right now, which could be a delicate subject because it could be in flux. It could be like, there’s a director on, director’s not on, there could be an NDA. How do you best do that? I think sometimes in animation where we’re under NDAs a little bit more than we are in live action but talk to us about that.

Pamela: For a while I would be like, I’m working on things I can’t tell you about for years and that would be enough. It depends on the room. Sometimes you can realize you’re at a Disney meeting or you can be like, “We’re all in the family here. I’m working on Moana.” If you’re in a position where you can’t really– Let’s say right now I’m working on Emily the Strange for Warner Bros Animation with Bad Robot. That’s all I can say about it.

John: It was announced in the trades. You’re safe there.

Pamela: I’m safe there. I’m talking about who I’m working with and I focus on the great things about it because we have hard days, and I try not to launch right into like where it hurts and just talk about where it’s working and what’s great and what we’re still excited about. Because really the NDA is often so that you don’t like talk about stuff that they wouldn’t want in a press release and you know that in your heart. There’s things that are set up that aren’t quite happening yet. I have a spec that went out this week. Here’s something, you guys. I’ve never sold a spec before, ever.

John: I’ve sold exactly one. It was Go. That was the only spec I’ve ever sold.

Pamela: Good for you. That’s amazing. Tell me what it’s like. I’m excited but I don’t know what’s going to happen and maybe nothing will happen. I have a little piece of news this week that I have a spec that’s going out, which if I were in a general, they’d be like, “Can you tell me about it? Can I get it? Can I get it on that list? Can I read it?” That’s the mystery. You can use an NDA to your benefit of a mystery. You’re working. I’ve got a project at FX. I’ve got something going on at Disney TV Animation or whatever. These things take forever and they all have their own timeline, you bounce around to being– I genuinely like to balance a bunch of projects at once.

I try to talk about the one that either is the closest to next that anybody could see but you also know that a lot of stuff you work on maybe no one will ever see. You try to talk within what is the you of it, not the all of it. I’m working on this project. It’s really fun. We’re putting some stuff together. You can sometimes say where you’re at in it but I just try not to get into what’s not my business.

John: If I can bring it back to my process, that’s also a useful thing too. I can say I’m writing this movie right now for this company and it’s under NDA but I can say– It was one of the rare cases where I needed to write the outline first and it’s just actually such a luxury to have a really big fat outline because as I go to my daily work on doing the scene, it’s like, “Oh, what happens in this? Oh, exactly. This is what happens.” It’s like so many of the fundamental questions have actually been tackled in the outline form. It gives me a chance to talk about myself as a writer, which is nice.

Pamela: Oh yes.

John: Another point of commonality I’m thinking is business affairs. We say like, “Oh, there’s this thing.” Business affairs is so slow. I don’t know when it’s going to happen. It’s like everyone will just nod because business affairs is crazy and it just takes forever to get contracts done. Something will be sold at a place and eight months later, you’re allowed to start writing because the contracts are finally done.

Pamela: Sometimes you are like that. The deals are taken. There’s a lot of heavy hitters in here. We’re waiting on some stuff. You can also say lawyers. These things take time but your excitement stays the same. You really get to talk about how you got– Even talking about how you got that job or how you met everybody, how you ended up with it. That’s a good one.

John: If you can sell the enthusiasm that you– If you’re excited to write this thing for them and they want to see writers who are excited to engage. I can imagine like Charlie Kaufman is a great writer, but I don’t imagine he’s great in a room in terms of being really enthusiastic about this thing he’s doing. It’s like, if you come in as a curmudgeon, maybe that’s true to your authentic personality but it’s not going to be like, “Oh my God, I can’t wait to work with him.”

Pamela: That being said, you do not have to fake, like some of us like going outside and meeting other people. Some of us do not. I think sometimes the pressure is on of do I have to be someone else in this general? Do I have to lie and be a fundamentally different person? Sometimes you have to fake a little bit the confidence to be yourself. Then, that’ll get easier. The more that you’re like, “Oh, I was myself and nothing bad happened.” You just do that again and do that again and get used too. Sometimes it takes them a minute to get used to me. Even as the extrovert that I am, I can tell that I’m like, “Hey, I’m very excited.”

I can say like a little bit too much coffee, a little bit haven’t been outside in a while. Give me a second to settle. I’m not so much nervous as I am jittery. I think all of those things of, “I am shy. I’m really happy to be here but you should know that I haven’t had that many generals. I’m a little shy.” Just be a person. Be a person and that makes everything easier on both sides.

John: 100%. I was on a pitch this week and usually there is the ramp, the warmup, getting into things. Everyone logs in and they’re like, “Great. Let’s go.” It’s like, “Sure.” I’m there and I’m pitching away. It went fine. It went great. You also have to be prepared. Sometimes there’s just not that on [unintelligible 00:20:22] and you’re just like, “Go. Okay. Great, I’m doing it.” Be ready for it. That’s why I think if you are actually pitching a project, really rehearsing that first minute or two, just so you feel really comfortable with how you get into it is going to be a huge help because it could just suddenly happen.

Pamela: I don’t record myself and watch it again but I do record myself sometimes for the pitch so that I don’t have to do that part.

John: You’ve talked about this on the show, I think, before, where you actually will send them a link to a pre-recorded pitch.

Pamela: People now are more able to be in the Zooms or you might be pitching knowing it’s being recorded for someone else who’s not in the Zooms, so you do have to be your game face on. If they do say go, like you just did, you’re like, “Oh yes, this is happening?” It’s totally fine to do that and be like, “Here we go, hold on. I’m going to pull up my draft and I’m ready.” I’ll do disclaimers at the top of you can totally stop me for questions. I hate pitching to mute buttons so whatever you want to do, we’re all people here and I’ll just get through this pitch together.

I find that they, in the Zoom room, when you’re pitching, they do sit back like here’s a little TV show. In a pitch where you’re with people, they are probably more likely to go, “Oh wait, did you or that’s funny.” Because you’re people.
John: You’re people rather than being little boxes with faces in them. Post-pandemic, how many pitches have you done in person, where you’ve gone in? How many general meetings have you been in, like a cross run person and then pitches in person?

Pamela: One?

John: One or two for me. This one studio has wanted me to come in in person twice. I’m looking at Drew to see if he can remember other times, but two or three times. Basically everything has been a Zoom since the pandemic. I’ve talked to some friends who was like, “I don’t know that I could pitch in person anymore because I’m so used to having my slideshow deck. I share a screen and I go through my slides and to do that in person, I wouldn’t know what to do.”

Pamela: One of my friends said, “This is terrible because I’ve learned a key component of liking me is the third dimension.” All credit to Don Todd. That one that I did in person, it was really early pandemic. It was literally the first time I had gone into a room with someone. I said to her when I sat down, she was a big, important person. I sat down, I was like, I can’t believe that we’re taking masks off. I’m like, “What is happening? Look what I’ll do for my career.” That’s still it. I’ve had a room where we all got together for a kickoff. I’ve done some of those kickoff in the room but not this type thing that we’re talking about. They’re all–

John: The kickoff stuff, I was in a room and meeting everybody in person but the initial things have basically all been Zoomy situations. This one that I did this week, I didn’t have a deck. There was no images. I just talked for 15 minutes and described it and it went great. I’m so used to having the fallback of like, “Here’s the next image, here’s the next image and [unintelligible 00:23:31] to not have that.” I’m sure we’ve said this on the podcast before but if you do have notes and you’re doing it on a Zoom, move your notes to the very top of the screen up by your camera so you’re not looking down, you’re looking closer to the lens. Just so you’re making more eye contact.

Pamela: I actually, I put the Zoom in the tiny little bar with the people I want to be pitching to under the green light. Then, my pitch notes are right below that. I have no choice to be looking into that little corner and I can read how they’re doing if they’re listening.

John: It’s good. Another hint is if you have somebody in a second for somebody who’s on your side, they can talk without the facts. You can see how are people actually responding? Because people’s faces are small, it’s a little harder to read the sense of the room afterwards.

Pamela: They can also do the flipping for you if you want so that you are only doing your talking part.

John: All good choices. All right. This is helpful. Any last wrap up on introducing yourself, how to talk about yourself, how to not to be a jerk?

Pamela: We have on here, how to not be a jerk but we have what is too personal and how do you feel confident about your work that you don’t sound apologetic for being in the room. I just want to say that my first general happened the day after my father passed away. I was like, “I’m not canceling this general. I’ve never had one before. I’m not going anywhere today.” My dad had entered hospice. He was like, “I’m going to go outside and I’m going to go do this career thing.” It was the very beginning of all of this. Trauma and time have made me not remember everything but I remember it was the Disney old animation building.

I sat down and she liked the script, which is about my different family members, but about generational trauma and such in a comedy. I don’t know. We just at some point started talking about families and I told her what had happened last night. She ended up talking about her dad. I do remember that we both at some point were just crying a little bit sharing stories with each other. Then that was it. I think that was a really good general. Even though that’s not– Most people are like, “No Pam, you take the day off. What is wrong with you?” I know that but I also know that’s what I wanted to do. That’s what he would have probably suggested I do, just go out there and talk.

Sometimes you bring the day in with you and that general is what I was trying to say about what’s too personal and what’s not. If there’s no getting around it, that your day is with you end up having some pretty profound general sometimes because you’re not doing this checklist of things and you’re just some people talking to each other. If they didn’t get around to the thing they wanted to talk to you about, they’ll call you again. You’ll have a follow-up or it becomes the beginning of something. The too personal, I think the line is you don’t owe anybody your story.

You don’t owe anybody the worst things that have ever happened to you in order to validate being able to talk about whatever you want to talk about. I think sometimes we get worried that we have to spread our hearts open and then give everything on that first try. You’re learning what they deserve to.

John: For sure. All right. Let’s move on to our second topic here. This comes from Ryan Knighton, who is a guest who’s been on the show several times. He’s a writer who lives in Canada who comes down to the US to write sometimes. He sent in this voicemail.

Ryan Knighton: In answer to your question, what would be advice I would give about being unemployed as a writer. I was thinking about it. One of the things that I’ve experienced at least is that unemployment can make you incurious as a writer. The anxiety of the unemployment can pull you towards the middle of things, towards the safe and what you might think is predictable way of doing your work or the subject matters you take or the approach you take. That’s on my experience is that I start to chase what I think people might want instead of following an investment in my own curiosity and hoping that it will connect somewhere in the road in some form.

I battle against the pull to the middle, to the pull to the safe and work I don’t think I would enjoy but I would enjoy if I took a risk, not riskier, that’s not the word. I think you get what I mean.

John: I do get what he means.

Pamela: I’ll never sound as beautiful or wise as Ryan.

John: He’s got a great voice.

Pamela: Oh man, yes.

John: You and I both know a lot of writer friends who are not working as much as they should be working and that’s always the case, but it feels increasingly so now just with the other fewer shows, staffing fewer writers and there’s a lot more scrambling. In that scrambling, it resonates what Ryan’s saying in terms of this pull towards safety, not taking risks. When you stop to think about it, the better instinct should be to take some risks now because it’s a chance to grow and do things that are breaking out of the box.

Pamela: It’s some form of a pandemic again right now with that kind of stuff. A lot of us during the pandemic became pioneers again and baked bread and learned the piano. I’ve taken up embroidery and all of those things that are important to keep your mind moving, learning a new language or whatever. We all have this confident delusion, hopefully that we will work again, this is temporary. If you’re not deciding am I retired or not? You’re waiting for that next opportunity then it has to feel like a hiatus. When you’re working in television, you have hiatus so it’s like–

Or you’re between gigs and you’re pretty sure you’re going to have another one but you don’t know when. Do everything that you’re going to miss when you’re busy, pack in family time or alone time or a stack of books or whatever. I know that doesn’t feel like you have that luxury when you’re feeling like I’m unemployed. That’s different that you’re running for safety. I understand that’s like taking care of your own and your future but your brain, I think that where Ryan’s worried, like am I ruining my risk-taking brain? Then there’s these other things that you can do. I’m making a documentary that’s crazy. I was like, this is some downtime. If I don’t fill it, I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself. I don’t know that I would have thought of it the way that Ryan’s describing of moving toward some– It’s almost like he’s saying I don’t want to be basic or something. He’s like, “Am I going to be less awesome the more this goes? Am I going to lose the me-ness of me?” Am I getting that right of what he means?

John: I absolutely do. I think you’re getting it right. That question of should I change my shape in order to fit this world, to make it easier to get through these doors and the limited number of jobs that are available to make myself more appealing to that? Should I write the thing that is more conventionally commercial? That is simpler to see like,” Oh, I get what this is.” I’ve gone through that at times in my career too. I remember just being frustrated that other movies were getting made that weren’t my movies. Maybe I can write that kind of movie too. Just like, I’ll write that movie. It was a waste of my time because it wasn’t the best thing for me to have been doing.

Pamela: I would imagine that no matter what you were doing, you were still making your version of that kind of a movie.

John: I was. Listen as you know every script you write is months of your time that you could have been doing something that is just truer to your own experience. When Ryan uses the verb chase, that is a thing you see yourself doing sometimes. You’re chasing a project and wait, is that a thing you’d actually even really want to write. Maybe not, but it’s something that’s out there. It’s a thing you could do so therefore you feel like you should do it. If you were to see that somebody else in the trades got this thing, it would be frustrating to you.

Pamela: I see that. That sometimes you only know that when you go a little on that journey. Then there’s just a moment where they want you to do another round of notes or another meeting where you’re like, “Oh, I don’t want to. This won’t feel good anymore. If I take that meeting, I hate myself.”

John: I try to pass quickly on a thing where it’s like, “No, that’s just not for me.” On the Christmas tree thing I was like, “No, that’s not for me.” There’s been other things which I feel over the years have engaged on more than I really should have because it’s a thing I could do but it’s a question, is it the thing I should do? I try to get back to the algorithm of just heck yes or no. Either absolutely 100% I’m going to do this or I shouldn’t do it. I think like, “Am I the person who should be writing this movie or is there five other people who are clearly better suited to be doing this movie?”

Pamela: You learned all that going through flirting. You learned all that the hard way, I’m guessing.

John: Yes.

Pamela: There’s a little bit of that here but I also think, in the little for me, little for them of how to do stuff, sometimes you’re like, “Man, I think I can get that one. I think I can get it quickly. I think I can do it quickly.” Then, that’s going to make me feel better about the rest of the year and next year and then I can go back to the thing I want. If you’re feeling that unsure about stuff and you can grab a fish maybe. You just know this is for this reason.

John: Being honest with yourself about that I think is important. You don’t have to be honest in the general meeting and say like, “I would do this for the money.”

Pamela: Can you imagine? It’s in the general feeling. You guys need anything back there. I’ve got like two weeks for you.

John: I used to do a lot more weekly rewrites. In that process it was just fully mercenary. I see what the problems are, I’ll becoming in and solve these problems. I’m going to deal with these difficult personalities and get through this thing. This is not my movie. It’s not my dream. It’s not my goal. I’m here to help out to maintain some relationships, but mostly you’re paying me cash. That’s fantastic.

Pamela: Maybe you think of it as money. It’s in the list but you still have to go to that job. You have to think like, “I can be helpful here. What can I do?”

John: Sometimes it’s really nice just to be able to use your craft to be able to do a thing and to just to recognize a problem, and solve a problem feels great because so much of what we’re doing as writers is so amorphous. I’m like, “Did that actually make it better? Is that even going to be a thing?” It’s also nice to write on something that actually gets made because so often the things we do just disappear. I’ve done so much work to contribute to a thing and then it just never happens.

Pamela: You should remind me what I do. I start mentoring. I volunteer for things. I try to mentor. Because when you’re talking to the people who are spending their whole day trying to figure out how to be where you’re sitting, it does remind you of where you’re at and how far you’ve gone and what you want next. It helps with goals and dreams and it helps reposition yourself into thinking like, “Oh, it’s not over.” I’ve been here before in some version. It just feels different now because I have a hundred more responsibilities or whatever your reasons are.

John: I was talking with Drew this week about– There’s a situation I’m finding myself approaching and I’m reminding myself that this always happens and it always feels this way and it’s going into it. I’m going to feel this way and we’ll get through it and it’ll be fine. There was this anxiety approaching. It’s like, “Oh yes, but I know what this is. It’s nothing new.” To get back to Ryan’s question here is that the anxiety that you feel when you’re unemployed is that, will I ever work again? That’s the thing that is so frustrating, which makes it so different than a writer on hiatus between two seasons of shows. Do all the things because you know you have a job to go back to.

Pamela: Usually. Sometimes.

John: Sometimes you don’t. Is there any advice we should give to writer listeners who are hearing this and thinking about so what should I write? Should I write this commercial thing that my manager wants me to do? Should I write this thing that has been a passion project that I’ve never allowed myself to do because I’ve always been busy writing stuff for other people? What guidance can we give to our writer listeners?

Pamela: I’m the kind of person who might try both at the same time and see which one is winning because maybe they’re right. Maybe you can crack some code and because you’re you and you’re thinking differently. I know when I’m on these pitches, the first thing I usually say is, “This is not going to be what you’re expecting but you called me so here we go.” In the end, they’re like, “You’ve given us something to think about.” It’s something I hear a lot. I also know that that’s just what is going to happen and if I wanted to be more of a sure shot, I would really be having to use different muscles of how I break things.

You can try that but probably what it’ll do is lead you back to the thing you were like, is this worth my time? I want to write this thing that’s in my head and feels more me.

John: Always a great time to remind people that as a writer, you have this amazing power that you can just go off and write. No one has to hire you to do anything. Unlike an actor or a director who has to be put onto a project, you can just do whatever you want to do at any moment. I think the worst thing for you to do during a period of unemployment is nothing. You’ve got to find something to write, whether it’s commercial, whether it’s something for yourself to keep those muscles going.

Pamela: It also doesn’t necessarily have to be a screenplay because you might find a play in you or a song or a book, all of a sudden you’re like, “Oh, I’m writing a novel that I will eventually adapt into a screenplay with success.” Not deciding, unless you’re like this is the break I need to get back to my painting, the clay, the garden, the something. Just something that allows your brain to keep processing all these thoughts instead of thinking, this is useless, I’m useless, I’m nothing, I’m yesterday because that’s just not true.

John: All right. Let’s get to some listener questions.

Drew: We’ll start with Marie in Brussels. I’m telling the story of a couple. My main narrative point of view is that of a man and we begin with him, finish with him, and above all the main question addressed by the film is driven by him but at many moments throughout, I write from the point of view of the woman. The story’s about motivations and I would like to fully understand her. I listened very carefully to your episode about point of view, episode 358, but could you explore in more depth how to alternate point of view? What do we need to pay attention to and how can you make the alternation fluid?

John: Great. Marie thinks she’s writing a single point of view story and it feels like it might be more of a two-hander. I think she’s asking the right questions. I’m excited to just see where she’s going with it. I’m not nervous on her behalf, but I understand her question because she wants to make sure that it really does feel like the movie is centered around this man even if he’s not in every scene.

Pamela: I have a script like this but I want to say it’s unproduced. Maybe part of it is the problem. I’m doing it because one is a realist and one isn’t, and so I also want the audience to be a little unsure. I want them to believe in both of them actually. That both of them have a valid point in their way through the world and they both could be true. I want to understand her without making guesses. I use his point of view to ground us. If it’s mostly about this man and she’s not the B story, when you move into her point of view, it has a different feel. My writing has a different feel a little when we are in her point of view. It allows for the magical realism of her life.

When we’re in his point of view, the things that he’s doing, the world that he’s in, the way that it’s written is more clipped. It’s his practical point of view. Your script can feel like your characters and maybe that helps with that fluidity you’re looking for.

John: The movie’s about Edward Bloom but the Will character, the son, does have a lot of storytelling power. He drives scenes by himself but it’s in an effort to understand his father better. It makes sense that you’re switching POVs between those two things. This also made me think about The Brutalist, which is all about Adrian Brody’s character, yet sometimes you’re switching to the wife’s point of view or other characters’ point of view. about the scenarios that’s happening here. There’s scenes that he’s not driving. It’s absolutely doable. I think just be mindful of when you’re shifting to a different character’s point of view and make it count. Make sure that the scenes where you’re shifting point of view there really is a good reason why you’re doing it.

Pamela: That it’s very clear from the beginning we’ve changed point of view. That we’re not just waiting for him to enter and be the scene.

John: Such a great point. As an audience, we don’t know what’s going to happen in a scene and so if we’re just standing around waiting for him to show up, we’re probably not paying attention to what you’re trying to get us to see in the scene. Our next question comes from Brandon.

Drew: I recently wrote a script that used the word sinister three times. Is that too many? Would you feel comfortable using the same adjective three times in a script?

Pamela: Is it a five minute piece?

John: I would throw the script across the room if I saw it. On the third time I saw it, sinister didn’t have it.

Pamela: Wait, is it called sinister? Is one of the characters named sinister? I guess why? If there’s a reason, if it’s like Act one, Act two, Act three and sinister means something different, is it thematic? Why? You already have flagged it. Is it too many depending on what you’re trying to do?

John: Brandon, if it feels weird to you, then you’re using too many. If you’re noticing it, then sinister is just not a was or a house or a common, it’s a rare enough word that for it to show up too often, it’s worth addressing and finding a good synonym there to avoid it.

Pamela: For me, it would need to be– I’m going to notice it too and so you want me to notice it. Every time it’s something different is happening here. That’s why we’re using the word sinister.

John: Agreed. English has so many words. It’s so many words. You have your choice. If you’re writing in Esperanto, I could see the problem here. It’s a much smaller vocabulary set but you got so many, tons. Let’s do one more here from Ryan.

Drew: Ryan writes, I’m currently outlining a period biopic feature with no shortage of fun and memorable scenes. The anecdotes play well in a room whenever I tell them aloud but in a film form, I’m finding the whole and then of it all is working to the detriment of my story. It doesn’t add up to something substantial like I’m hoping for. Any advice on how to confront this linear stringing out of events and bend them into a more consequential series of scenes and sequences?

John: We’re nodding here. Just to make sure everyone is hearing what he’s asking in this question is, there’s a moment, there’s a scene, and then there’s a moment, there’s a scene, and then it doesn’t feel like there’s a causality between things. It’s just a bunch of stuff happens without feeling like there is a purpose, a drive, a natural flow of cause and effect between them. That’s where I think, Ryan, you need to step back and think about– There’s the real version of stuff and then there’s the movie and you got to write the movie and the movie is going to have causality. Our main character has to be causing these things to happen in a pursuit of some goal of theirs.

Pamela: Just change and then to because and see what happens. At this point, you want to track the emotional journey of your story. All these cool moments that happen in real life not only because of this happened, because of this she went this way and because of this he got married. How do you want the whole thing to feel? You also don’t necessarily have to tell it in the order of the way you’ve been pitching these fun scenes. The one that gets everybody hooked that might be somehow even first and you end up doing a Stewart special. Whatever it is that you’re tracking, how’s the movie going to make you feel from the beginning to the end? Then, you know and it’s because I felt this, that I was able to feel this and then this happened and because that happened, this very terrible thing happened and then you have the flow of your movie.

John: You’re starting with an advantage because you have these moments to do play well in a room, and so you know that there’s something to those moments. It’s making sure those moments really feel earned in your story and that we’re getting into and out of those things in the right way. It’s why setups for jokes are so important. It’s making sure that it really feels like you’ve led us to this place where we get to have this experience and then we can use that energy to get to us to the next place. It’s the right stuff. I would say stop writing scenes for a moment and really look at an outline and really look at what the overall shape of this is best served us.

Pamela: Motivations. Now, where are they trying? How come these scenes feel like achievements? These moments that you can pitch, like what did they try to do that got here? Because they got here, they had to go try something else or had a setback or whatever.

John: Be careful of things that happen to your character rather than because of your character. All right. It’s time for our one cool things. My one cool thing is something that has actually been around for a long time but I just found out about it this week. Pam, you grew up in Texas. You are used to thunderstorms, I’m assuming. I grew up in Colorado. We had some thunderstorms. In California, we just never get them. If I did get thunderstorms here in Los Angeles, I would use the Real Time Lightning Map. This thing is really cool. On this website you see, basically all the lightning strikes happening in the world, especially in North America because of these sensors they have places.

What’s cool about it is, if you are someplace in the middle of a lightning storm, you can look and see where lightning strike was. It’s timed in a way that you’ll see the radius expand. You’ll hear the thunder at the same time that the radius expands to wherever you are. The timing is built that way. We live in an age of wonders.

Pamela: I’m afraid of lightning, so I don’t like this map. I used to just tell people, “Do you know lightning strikes the earth 100 times a second?” Now I can see it.

John: Now you can see this.

Pamela: It’s terrifying.

John: There’s some lake in South America that has a thunderstorm every night. Literally every night. Don’t go there. It’s my recommendation to you. Pam, no.

Pamela: Spent a lot of time in the deep South, there’s a lot of lightning.

John: Pam, what’s your recommendation? What’s your one cool thing?

Pamela: I started with what turned out to be a rerun. I’m glad I got to find the second one cool thing. You mentioned Texas, so this is a nice segue. Segue man to studentsengaged.org, SEAT it is. Man, it’s amazing. It’s one of those things where you’re like, “Why didn’t we do this?” Gen X thinks they’re so awesome but this current generation that is like, “We want a seat at the table.” This is a group of young people throughout Texas who are trying to have any school board has a student representative on board. They go to the Capitol and they introduce bills. They speak on legislation.

They stand up for their rights, and they also have a bill of rights to help other young people know when their rights are being violated. How to get involved at the Capitol building and how to get your community involved, how to make politics personal and get them empowered. I’m just so proud of these people. I hope this is everybody’s future because as we’re all learning, the entire country is Texas now but they are teaching each other how to be leaders not later, how to be leaders now, and how to bring people along.

Just the basic decency of tampons being free and available in every bathroom in school because you shouldn’t have to go to the nurse and you shouldn’t have to miss class and nobody should be embarrassed about basic private body functions. Why didn’t we think of this? We thought we were so cool. The Breakfast Club should have said, “I would like a seat at the table, please, to make my own rules about detention.” Anyway, studentsengage.org, you can get involved, you can donate to their work, you can just go see what they’re up to and what they’re doing. I hope it inspires a young person or you in your own life.

John: I want to celebrate what they’re doing and give us and Generation X a little grace because we were doing this at a time before internet, at least early internet, so it was hard to mobilize people. You had the people right around you, so within a high school you might be able to affect some changes. I remember I was a student leader so of course I was doing some things inside of my high school, but it was tough to mobilize and see the bigger picture around you. You couldn’t find all the other teens.

Pamela: Did you think that you could go to a school board meeting?

John: I went to school board meetings.

Pamela: You went to city council and talked to the big room?

John: I was in Boy Scouts so I had to for a merit badge.

Pamela: Oh. We just had student walkouts that would give you maybe detention.

John: We are in an age of horrors but it’s also nice to see that there’s some bright spots there and people who are pushing back against the horrors. It’s nice to see. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Nick Moore. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. We love our outros and our larder of outros is getting a little bit lean and so we would love some more outros from our listeners. Ask@tjohnaugust.com is also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today.

You’ll 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 and pre-orders on the Scriptnotes book. The book comes out December 2nd. If you pre-order your book, thank you, and you just send that receipt to ask@johnaugust.com. Drew is collecting all those, and we’re finding a very fun thing to send you via email before the book comes out. You’ll find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes. We have t-shirts and hoodies and drinkware. You’ll find 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. Your premium subscribers are the absolute best. You are going to be getting an email about our live show we’re recording tomorrow, the day after this comes out, the episode 700 live show, but everyone is welcome to join us on YouTube. That’ll be next week. You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net. We get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on the present and future of podcasts. Man, this was a very good present podcast. Pamela Ribon, thank you so much for joining us here today.

Pamela: Thanks, anytime.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right. Pamela Ribon, you have been in various kinds of media, online media. You were early on the recapping world. You were early in podcasting too. How long have you done podcasts?

Pamela: I loved being a professional guest. It took a long time before I had my own podcast. Legally, we all have to have one.

John: We’re required now.

Pamela: We’ve been doing Listen to Sassy. I don’t know. We don’t really count it like that. Are we in our fourth year? Maybe. Yes, it doesn’t feel that long. Before that, I would just guest anywhere.

John: You’d guest anywhere. You’ve followed podcasts but talk to me about what you perceive as being a podcast because if there’s two people talking on YouTube, is it a podcast?

Pamela: Now it is, I guess because people want to watch their podcasts. I asked Tara and Dave, I was like, “Are we not ever going to do one of these even as a bonus for our subscribers?” They were like, “Never. I don’t want anyone to see me doing this.” We would do watch parties where we’d put a movie on and then we all chatted while it was on. We said hello before and after. My friends, they don’t want to be public facing.

John: I hear that. We’ll put a link in the show notes to two articles, one from The Wrap and one from The New York Times, talking about how so much of the podcast market has moved on to YouTube. 30% of podcast listeners play the video in the background or minimize rather than just the audios. It’s like people are listening, watching podcasts on YouTube. Just my daughter who’s 20, she will say like, “Oh yes, I watched that podcast.” I’m like, “Wait, that’s the wrong verb. You’re listening to podcasts.”

Pamela: I think when the comedians all got involved– It’s just a stage. First we were like, however I get in your ears, I’ll put it in a podcast. Me and my buddies talking about being funny. Then you’re like, “This is the show of it all.” Let them see us. That’s now I have my own show. I get that. My kid also would prefer just watching YouTube to listening to things. We just like looking at people doing things. We like looking at windows where things are happening, like the zoo. Oh, the Panda Cam. It’s the original podcast.

John: The New York Times article interviews some people about it. They’re saying they want to be able to look at the screen, even if they’re not mostly looking at the screen. Just like us Gen X’s, sometimes they’ll start a podcast and they’ll do their dishes. They’ll do other stuff while the podcast is playing, but they’re not necessarily looking at it. Which raises the question of should Scriptnotes be recording video for our podcast? We’re on Zoom right now so we could use this video. I went on Mike Birbiglia’s podcast. For that, they do shoot three cameras of video for the whole thing. They edit that and they put that up on YouTube.

It seems like a lot of work for us to honestly be doing. Matthew’s busy enough cutting the audio and making it sound good. To have to think about the video too is an extra factor.

Pamela: Is his show like on Wondery or something? I always assume that’s what happens when you’re getting paid to do your podcast. They need to put it on TikTok and all these little clips that get people driving to more clicks. You have to be like, “I guess I’ll wear my good shirt.” Other than that–

John: Mike’s podcast does have ads but the YouTube version of it does not have ads. I guess they’re getting some monetization off of YouTube in general. I don’t believe he’s part of a bigger network behind it.

Pamela: He’s a comedian. I just think that’s it.

John: It’s driving people to come see his stand up. It’s probably part of it.

Pamela: Part of him is his physicality. You’re only getting some of it if you can hear him. Why not?

John: You got to go get a hold of Mike Birbiglia a package.

Pamela: There’s a reason that I’m asking Tara and Dave, can we turn the cameras on? I want to.

John: Absolutely.

Pamela: The third dimension. That’s how he’s used to communicating with his audience. I get that.

John: I think what we’ve been talking about is when it gets closer to award season, that’s when we start to have filmmakers and directors and writers coming on the show. We have to deal with publicists to get stuff going. We’ve had Christopher Nolan on. We’ve had Greta Gerwig. It’s lovely to have them there. I think we do a great job on the audio of those things. It would make sense honestly to record video for those situations. To record video in our setup, it’s a really tiny little space and pulling out the cameras to do all that stuff feels like a lot.
We’re considering for the episodes where we do go video, we’ll just rent an existing studio to do a situation. We’ll go to a place that just records podcasts and just rent it by the hour or whatever to do that. We have video for just those ones where we decide to do it.

Pamela: The events. That’s fancy because you could just record the Zoom.

John: We could just record the Zoom for the ones that are on Zoom. We actually have those people in person. Christopher Nolan actually showed up here.

Pamela: Oh, that was fancy.

John: That was fancy. We have like Julia Louis-Dreyfus came to our office and she’s sitting at this shitty little table and it would make more sense, I think, to do it in a professional place.

Pamela: It depends on however you get the actual vibe of your show. If moving to that studio makes you guys more formal and weird and it’s actually funny to watch you guys just be at a table with Julie. I want to see you with them, particularly when we find out, “Oh, you guys are friends.” We’re going to see that better in a less formal situation.

John: That’s true. Basically we need to create an artificial space that’s well lit that seems like it’s just hanging out at our place. That’s what we’ll do.

Pamela: That’s what the garage is for.

John: That’s what the garage is for. We have to have the lawnmower hanging there on the wall. It all feels fun and random.

Pamela: Honestly, it’s just getting to watch you interact. I don’t know that you need to worry about if the quality of the sound is good and we can see all three of you. If all three of you were in the same room with three different Zooms, it’s still going to get that feeling of you’re looking at each other and talking to each other like a general. I don’t know. You throw some money in and it gets fancy. Now you’re going viral on TikTok.

John: Absolutely.

Pamela: Here you go.

John: We’ll see what ends up happening. It’s weird to be 13 years into a podcast and seeing-

Pamela: The growth.

John: -the medium itself evolve and figure out like, “Oh, are we going to still be doing the same stuff we’ve been doing? Is the official version of an episode the audio?” To me, it always will be. The video may just be a little fun bonus.

Pamela: You’re evolving your podcast into the next version of it. A lot of times it’s just people looking like this sitting at their desks. It looks like when behind the scenes of a radio station. It looks like Frasier.

John: You in particular, you’re sad because of the louvered blinds behind you there. It feels like, “Oh yes, she’s at a radio station.” Some drive time traffic there.

Pamela: I’ve got all kinds of sound effects over here. I’m ready to hit. It’s just a peek at your humanness. I don’t know that you should worry about it looking like a big production because it’s just a hang. It’s a good hang.

John: It’s a good hang. We’re going to hang. You are a fantastic hang. Pam, thank you so much for bringing a great topic at just the right moment. Craig couldn’t be here today, but it’s so nice to see you and so cool to hang out with you.

Pamela: A lot of fun. Thank you so much.

John: Awesome. Thanks.

Links:

• Scriptnotes Episode 700 – LIVE
• Pamela Ribon
• My Year of Dicks
• Rental Family trailer
• Japan’s Rent-A-Family Industry by Elif Batuman for The New Yorker
• 37 Seconds
• Good conversations have lots of doorknobs by Adam Mastroianni
• Real Time Lightning Map
• Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT)
• Who Is Watching All These Podcasts? by Joseph Bernstein for NYT
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription
• Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
• Craig Mazin on Instagram
• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by Nick Moore (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.