Search Results for: book rights

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/101-qa-from-the-live-show).

**John August:** Now, if you have a question for me, or for Craig, or for Aline, or Rawson, there is a microphone on this corner of the stage. And you can line up and we will hear your questions as you ask them and we will be so excited.

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** John, I’m writing a script with an assistant character in it and I’ve named him Stuart and call dibs on that.

**John:** Done.

**Aline:** Done. I got it.

**Craig Mazin:** I’ll take Ryan.

**Aline:** I claimed it.

**John:** Hello and welcome! What’s your name?

**Eric:** Hi, my name is Eric.

**John:** Hi Eric.

**Eric:** First off, thanks for being awesome. I had a quick question for you guys. Before you’re about to send a script out, do you have particular checklists that you go through that it has to pass muster? And what are those particular things?

**Craig:** Awesome.

**John:** Yeah, that’s a very good question. What are the last looks? Rawson, do you have a last look list on a script before you — ?

**Rawson Thurber:** Yeah, well, I do something a little different, obviously, than just… — I don’t really send them out anymore, so if I’m hired to write a script or rewrite a script, typically if it’s the first draft, and I sort of, I don’t know if I stole this from you or if I adapted it from you.

But I’ll finish the first draft, and obviously plenty of spell check and typos and I have my lovely fiancé go through it, and she finds a lot more than I do.

But if it’s a first draft, I actually hand deliver it. I go into the production office or the studio. I bring however many copies I need, usually two or three. I have the PDF on my iPhone, so I just call them up I say, “Look, I’m going to need ten minutes of your time. I’m just going to pop in, maybe right before lunch, between meetings, whatever.” Pop in, hand them the script. It gives me a chance to do two things. One is it gives me a chance to prep their read or frame their read, or I can talk about things that I really am excited about in the script, things that went really well.

I also get a chance to sort of maybe head off some negative notes at the pass where I say, “I think the villain in the second — it gets a little muddy, I’m still working on it. Don’t freak out.” So, it helps frame the read.

And then the second part of it, which I think really helps, is that it also puts it at the top of their stack. If you’re going to walk in and hand it to them, it really imprints with them. So, it’s not just another one on their stack, which doesn’t exist anymore.

When I leave I email it to them so they have a PDF and they can read it on their iPad.

The only thing I would say is just do that once. Like don’t go for every rewrite, just the first time, so they know you’re taking it seriously. And then after that it can all be email. That’s what I do.

**John:** I never heard of that. That’s very cool.

**Aline:** I’ve never heard that either I thought —

**Craig:** It’s pretty old school. Old school.

**Aline:** If you do that, bring a vibrating pen for everybody.

**Rawson:** I think you’re also apologetic. And I know it’s quaint and it won’t take much time. And you don’t really call it a meeting.

**Aline:** I think Craig and I share this. I kind of obsess a little bit over page breaks.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s my big — that’s my flight check.

**Aline:** That’s what I will fiddle with. Because I don’t like the “CONT’D” and I like things to fall on —

**Craig:** Sometimes there’s a line that’s like that’s the conclusion of the thought and if it’s on the next page, even though — look, the truth is they all read it on their iPad. There are no page breaks anymore.

**Aline:** So I have this belief now that if it starts to fall right on the page it means the script is good.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Oh boy, that’s mentally ill.

**Rawson:** Ooh, that’s nice.

**Craig:** I’m with you, but, I mean, I have the same problem.

**John:** Thank you very much. Next up.

**Hani:** Hi, I’m Hani Vadi and thank you; this is really amazing. My question is to Craig but anybody can chip in. Regarding writing parody films and how much is too much, copyright laws, and how much you can push and not push.

**Craig:** Well, the basic thing that governs parody is fair use. The fair use doctrine accepts certain things for use by all of us that are copyright material, for instance if you were doing a review of the book you can publish a few quotes from the book without infringing on the author’s right to reproduce that book.

And parody is one of those things. It’s very well protected. Occasionally it gets challenged in court. The very famous case that’s part of the subject of The People vs. Larry Flynt where Hustler Magazine published a cartoon in which Jerry Falwell’s mother was something, something Hustler-y. And it was considered parody and it was protected.

When we were making parody movies the big rule of thumb was “never ask permission.” If you ask, people will say no, and then they’re on record as saying no, and you’re on record as asking, which is sort of like implying that you think it’s infringement.

In general, bigger minds than yours will be concerned with this. Law professors are hired to work this stuff out. Your job is to just be funny. So you be funny, and then whoever is going to produce the movie, they’ll figure it out.

**Hani:** Just make the cat drunk.

**Craig:** Pardon me?

**Hani:** Just make the cat drunk. Save the Cat!

**Rawson:** We haven’t read it.

**Craig:** Yes sir.

**John:** Hello!

**PiPS97:** How you doing. Person in plaid shirt number 97. I was just wondering, John, what podcasts were you listening to before you approached Craig here?

**John:** I was listening to John Gruber’s podcast which was The Talk Show with Dan Benjamin. I was listening to some of the Slate podcasts. Like One Cool Thing is sort of a rip-off of the Slate Political Gabfest has Cocktail Chatter as their last little thing. My husband, Mike, was the one who talked me into listening to Slate Political Gabfest, and it was great.

So those were the two. And then I think the fact that our show is about an hour, the fact that we do three topics is really modeled on those.

**PiPS97:** And have you been on any other podcasts other than Jay Mohr’s?

**John:** I have. I’ve been on John Gruber’s new podcast, I’ve gone on Brett Terpstra’s podcast and at least one or two more, Moisés Chiullan’s podcast. So, they’re fun. And I really enjoy guesting on other people’s podcasts because I can just be the Craig who shows up unprepared.

**Craig:** It’s the best.

**John:** Yeah. Thanks.

**PiPS97:** Thank you.

**Craig:** It’s the best.

**John:** Hello!

**Kevin:** Hello there. My name is Kevin and I just want to say I hope you guys are not hungry; you’ll never shop in Ralphs again. No, I’m just kidding. I was going to ask you, do you think — It seems to me like the structure of films now, because they write in three acts, I think it was better in the earlier days of Hollywood because they wrote in reels and sequences. And what you were saying about Slate and blaming Blake Snyder, a lot of people did that with Syd Field because they felt like he gave you a couple plot points and nobody knew what was happening in between.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, we still talk about reels. I mean, movies are shot digitally and they’re edited digitally and they’re projected digitally. And in the editing room we divide them up into reels. And we even spend time balancing the reels sort of pointlessly because we just don’t want too much in one reel or the other.

We still think in terms of sequences. Certainly in animation, they’re constantly talking about sequences. The truth is I really don’t think much about acts. I don’t think much about sequences. I think about my main character and theme, and their relationship with the theme, and their progression from one kind of philosophy of life to another.

We all have different ways of approaching it, but once you get into production, I actually feel like things probably haven’t changed much in terms of the way we conceive of it.

**Kevin:** Thank you. I don’t use a G2, but I prefer writing in reels. Thank you very much.

**John:** Thank you very much.

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** Hello.

**Jeremy** Hi, my name is Jeremy. This is for writing comedy films. Do you hammer — what is your process for getting funny onto the screen? Do you start out by hammering out the plot and characters, look to see where to insert the funny, or do you have funny concepts and ideas and go from there?

**John:** I’ll say the comedy stuff I’ve done is making sure that you have a character who is funny and interesting in the world, and you’re creating situations in which that character can show, can be funny, and let the world be funny around them.

Go is a situation of like the world itself is not particularly hilarious, but you create predicaments in which these characters and their specific wants become funny. And hopefully you are able to write funny stuff for them to say and do. And that’s the trick. You can structure a perfect comedy, but if you’re not funny it’s not funny. Aline?

**Craig:** Or Rawson was about to say something.

**Aline:** Rawson has to answer this because Rawson wrote one of my favorite comedies ever.

**Rawson:** Thank you. That’s very kind. So, I think there are two things, because one is writing funny for a script and then the second thing is how you end up with funny in the movie. And they’re different, because a lot of times what you write in the script gets changed either from the performance or from the editing as you put the movie up.

I know in the last movie I made, We’re the Millers —

**John:** August 7th.

**Rawson:** August 7th, yes, August 7th.

You know, I guess one thing I really learned on that was nobody, not only does nobody know anything, but nobody really knows what’s funny. The people who really know funny will confess that they’re not 100%. They’re like, “I think this is going to be funny, but you don’t know.” And you don’t really know until you put it up in front of real people and they either laugh or they don’t. And then the process of editing kind of brings — takes the stuff out that isn’t working and brings in things that are closer. But that’s a process of making a film.

In terms of, when I was writing Dodgeball and when I was rewriting We’re the Millers, it’s a lot of what John said is figuring out situations that are funny or awkward, or hard, or weird, and then hoping you have characters in there that will say funny stuff.

**Aline:** The other thing I would say is characters can’t be funny if the scene is broken.

**Rawson:** That’s true.

**Aline:** And I have found that often, like if there’s something wrong and no one is saying funny things in a script, in a scene, something is wrong with the scene.

**Rawson:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** And, lastly, there are scenes that are funny because the characters are odd. And the way they’re interacting with something that is mundane is specific and particular. So, you can go through — like a very famous example is if you look at Rain Man. It’s not a funny movie. I mean, there are a couple of jokes in it, but it’s a drama.

It’s the same movie as Midnight Run. It’s a guy and a weirdo on the road and the weirdo refuses to fly and they’ve got to get from here to here together. And along the way they kind of have this… — And that’s on purpose, because the men who made Midnight Run wanted to do Rain Man. [laughs] So, they’re like, “Well, I guess we can’t do Rain Man, so let’s just do this one.”

So, sometimes that’s all it is, is just a weird character and their weird take in a mundane situation, like a restaurant.

**Jeremy:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Thanks.

**Natural comedian:** This is kind of a strange problem. A couple years ago I had a lot of success with like a dark thriller sort of movie that got me repped and everything. The problem is I’m a comedy writer and of the first five scripts that I’ve ever written, four were comedies, and the other one was successful.

So, I go into these meetings and like I have to try not to tell jokes and I have to try to be like eye liner guy who is like, “This movie is about pain,” and it’s not really me because I’m always trying to make people laugh. So, how would you know what your genre is, and should you just shut up and try and take the money if you’re out of genre?

**John:** Awesome to get paid. But, you should write the movie that you want to see exist in the world. And if those movies are comedies then you should write the comedies.

**Natural comedian:** What if no one else seems to want to see them in the world?

**John:** Well, I think, you need to make them in some way. Because you have these things on the page and if for some reason people aren’t finding it —

**Craig:** Well, hold on. We don’t know how unfunny he is.

**John:** Well, maybe —

**Natural comedian:** I’m pretty funny to me.

**John:** Yeah. So I think you need to find some way to make that, either as, make something that’s either a short or something that can show people like, oh, this is actually funny, because they’re not getting it, or they just only have one preconceived notion of who you are.

Before I wrote Go I was only the guy who wrote kids movies. And so I was only getting sent things about gnomes, elves, dwarves, and Christmas. And it was driving me crazy. And so then with Go, I wrote Go as sort of like, “You know, I can write other things.” And it was so useful because if people wanted to see it as a comedy, it’s a comedy. You want to see it as thriller, it’s a thriller. It’s an action movie. It got me other things.

So, either make something that’s specifically a comedy that can be that comedy sample for you, or write something that’s broader that people can see like, “Oh, he can do these different things.”

**Natural comedian:** So, would you write a sample — I’m sorry, I know I’m taking more time than I deserve. Would you write a sample that, you know, just to be a sample, or does it have to be something that can sell? Because I have those ideas but they’re things that aren’t going to be made. And if they’re just going to be awesome, you know.

**Craig:** If you’re so sure that they’re not going to get made —

**Natural comedian:** I’m pretty sure.

**Craig:** Then why are you? I mean, they must stink.

**Natural comedian:** No, because they’re awesome.

**Rawson:** Can I just —

**Craig:** You don’t understand how this works, see.

**John:** Rawson has the answer.

**Craig:** Awesome things get made. Right?

**Rawson:** I couldn’t agree more. I’ve never heard anybody say, “I’m working really hard on my writing sample.” Like that doesn’t make any sense to me. Either write something you love or don’t. But don’t write something that you think no one will buy, or write something that you think someone will buy. Write what you love. Don’t work on a writing sample, work on a script, work on a movie.

**Craig:** You are prime candidate for Brian Koppelman’s best advice. Brian Koppelman who writes with Koppelman/Levien. They did Rounders and stuff like that. Very smart guy. Two word advice: calculate less. Just calculate less.

**Aline:** Biederman also says, “Write with no attachment to the outcome.”

**Craig:** Boom.

**Natural comedian:** Write better.

**Craig:** You got it.

**John:** Hello and welcome.

**Alex:** Hello. I’m the first woman in the line.

**John:** Have at it. There will be another woman in the line.

**Alex:** We’re outnumbered.

**John:** Hooray! What is your name?

**Alex:** I’m Alex Angelis.

**John:** Are you here from Los Angeles?

**Alex:** Yes, I live here.

**John:** We have some people who are from Canada.

**Aline:** She looked so scared from that question. Her eyes went wide. Did you see that?

**Craig:** You leave her alone!

**John:** Who here is from Canada? See!

**Craig:** Oh my god.

**Rawson:** That’s awesome.

**Alex:** Okay, I was just hoping to get some advice about a problem which I think is probably common, where you have a lot of scripts in your mind at one time. And when I sit down to try to write one I’m supposed to focus on, I just have all these other ideas for the other ones. And is there anything, like hypnosis. Like what do you do?

**John:** That never happens to any of us.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah.

**John:** We’re all perfect.

**Craig:** Yeah, we just focus. There’s nothing wrong with having multiple things going on in your mind.

**Alex:** No, of course.

**Craig:** I think it’s important to at least give yourself an opportunity to take one of those ideas and make a little outline of it. You know, I don’t know if you like index cards, or maybe you like to type up a little outline or something like that. Outline it. And what I find is sometimes by putting a little bit of flesh on this skeleton, now I think, “Oh, that could be a person and I’ll leave these other ones here for awhile. This one I have to commit to.”

Nothing is sexier than a new person, right? It’s the same thing with ideas, but you’ve got to marry one of them. You got to have the kid. You got to pay tuition. Wife leaves you. And then you move on.

No, my wife is lovely. She would never leave me. But you do have to commit at some point.

**John:** I would say if you’re picking between projects, my first simple bit of advice, pick the one with the best ending, which I know sounds really weird.

**Aline:** It’s great advice.

**Rawson:** Great advice.

**John:** Everything is going to have a great start because first acts are easy. But think of the one that you’re excited to write the ending for, because that’s the one you’ll actually finish.

**Aline:** That’s the answer to the question.

**Rawson:** Wow. We can all stop.

**Alex:** Nailed it.

**John:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Nailed it!

**John:** Hello sir. You have a fantastic orange shirt.

**Orange shirt:** I went with umbrage.

**Craig:** Great shirt. Umbrage orange! Also blue is umbrage.

**Orange shirt:** First of all I’m so glad to hear that some of you guys are obsessed with page breaks. That makes me feel so much better. I thought I might have been going crazy.

**Craig:** You are, but…

**Orange shirt:** My question is, Craig, you warned against not chasing trends. And I have to ask, because at least three of my most recent favorite films released failed miserably at the box office. Is there any value in not avoiding failures?

**Aline:** Name one.

**Orange shirt:** The Lone Ranger. Pacific Rim. Cloud Atlas. These things, like should I not write a giant monster movie? Should I not write a western movie if I’m writing one?

**Aline:** I thought you were going to say like a tiny movie —

**Craig:** No, I think you should write what you want to write, what you care the most about writing. The truth is you may run into something where you’re off trend. And they may say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, you’re a big huge robot monster movie. Dude, Pacific Rim, we’re not going to make this.” But if you’ve written something well and it’s impressive, they’re going to say, “But, what about this, what about this, are you interested in this? We bought this…”

And here’s another thing, just so you know about off trends, there really is no off trend, because what happens is you’ll hear that something is off trend. There are 50 producers out there desperate to get a movie made who own properties that are on trend. And trends just do this, right?

Nothing could have been more off trend than a pirate movie, until Pirates of the Caribbean. I mean, not just one, two spectacular pirate failures had happened. And then, look right? So, ignore all of that. You just do your thing.

**Orange shirt:** Will do. Thank you.

**Craig:** You got it.

**John:** Hello and welcome.

**Makers fan:** Hi, sorry, I’m short. Firstly, lady business. Makers is awesome. I cried like for three hours.

**Aline:** Amazing, right? I cried so hard at the beginning, with the lady, the runner.

**Makers fan:** Yes! Oh my god, sorry, okay. I just want to say your episode on why you should continue writing was like, whoa, I needed to hear that, so thank you.

**John:** Great. Thank you.

**Makers fan:** Also, so, you guys were going over the WGA report a couple weeks ago and you were talking about how screenwriting for film is like kind of doing this, and TV writing is doing this.

**John:** For people who are listening at home, one hand was going down and one hand was going up.

**Makers fan:** Down, up. Increasing, decreasing. So, do you think that there’s any merit in trying to bring back the miniseries or the made for TV movie?

**John:** Yes. And I think that the stuff that we’re talking about, like that off trend, that’s going to come back on trend. And so if you look at Under the Dome, that’s really kind of a miniseries. It’s like its own special thing. You look at Orange is the New Black, it’s kind of a miniseries because it’s all put together as one thing.

**Aline:** I loved those growing up, like the Shogun and what was —

**Craig:** Shogun was awesome!

**Aline:** What was the World War II one?

**John:** Winds of War?

**Aline:** Winds of War.

**John:** Oh my god.

**Craig:** Thorn Birds.

**Aline:** Yeah. I mean, those were great.

**Craig:** Richard Chamberlain, basically. Richard Chamberlain’s entire career.

**John:** So, yes, I think that’s the kind of thing that’s going to come back. Now, as an aspiring writer, is that the kind of thing you should do out of the gate? It’s sort of hard. It’s neither fish nor fowl, so it’s weird for you to do that. But for the TV execs who are listening, yeah, make some miniseries, because they’re kind of cool.

**Aline:** Yeah, but you know what? If somebody called you and said, “This woman wrote this thing. It’s weird. It’s three two-hour episodes of a story,” you’d be like, “That’s great, I want to read that, because I haven’t seen that.” I would think that would make it more interesting. If you could write a miniseries, I mean, that would be —

**Craig:** If you have something in that shape, why not?

**Aline:** Yeah, people would, yeah.

**Craig:** Look, when miniseries ruled the earth there were three networks, right? So, the world stopped and watched Roots. That was the deal, right? But now with Netflix and everything you’re starting to see there are just more avenues for television content because there are more delivery systems for it. Which means there are more delivery systems for shorter series. All a miniseries is is basically what they call a regular series in England, you know?

**Aline:** You know what would be cool would be to option a piece of material that was a miniseries and write the first part of it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And then be like, “Boom, I have the rest of it. I own the rights to the rest of it.”

**John:** Aline, do you want to do Winds of War for ABC?

**Aline:** I love Winds of War.

**John:** We could totally do that. We could totally —

**Aline:** Who was in it? Who was the woman who was in it, the blonde who was in it? Victoria something.

**John:** I don’t know.

**Craig:** Herman Wouk wrote the novel.

**Aline:** Ooh, it was so good.

**John:** So good. So, thank you for a great idea.

**Makers fan:** You’re welcome.

**John:** Cool. You’re awesome. We’ll name a character for you. It’s going to be great.

**Craig:** Good question.

**John:** Hello and welcome.

**Doppelgänger problems:** Hi guys. There are a bunch of us so I’ll try to be quick. I have a question, a very hands-on question. I’m writing a script with an alternate universe in it, so there are two versions of the main character. And there’s one scene where I want us to think that it’s the main character but it’s really the doppelgänger.

So, how do I write that? Because if I write it as the original, it’s kind of —

**John:** It’s rough. And so many people have faced exactly what you’re facing where what information should the person watching the film have versus what information should the person reading the script have, and it’s a bitch. And you’re going to have to make a choice between is the reader going to be ahead of where the viewer is at?

**Doppelgänger problems:** Right. That’s what I’m doing right now.

**John:** How are you going to pull that off? I think it’s one of those rare cases where bold is your friend. And so at a certain point when something has to be revealed, break out that bold text to really say, “Pay attention. This is a thing that happened.” Otherwise people are going to be confused. They’re going to be confused anyway.

**Craig:** By the way, that’s also a moment to step out of the script and just say, “That’s right. The person you thought was blank was really blank.” It’s okay to do that.

**Aline:** Just in case you missed it.

**Craig:** It’s okay to do that if it’s a big deal.

A**Doppelgänger problems:** Okay. And on the names and everything I use like —

**Craig:** Use the name that you want the audience to think is the person, otherwise it’s going to be super boring to be like, “Secretly blank but looks like blanks.” Right?

**Doppelgänger problems:** Right.

**Craig:** Then they’ll be like, “Okay?” Go ahead, fool the reader the reader you want to fool the audience.

**Doppelgänger problems:** Great. Thank you.

**John:** Thanks. We have people in line. The gentlemen in the red shirt is who, in my head, you, is the last question, but anyone else can grab us afterwards and we’ll answer your question. Hello sir at the microphone.

**Hunter:** Hi, Hunter, first time, long time. So, you guys were talking and I’ve seen on the blog and the podcast discussions of how to dress for meetings and what to do. But can you guys give us some tips or examples of what the most ridiculous, rubbish thing that you have ever done or heard of somebody doing in a meeting?

**Aline:** That’s good.

**Rawson:** I’ve got one.

**John:** You go first.

**Craig:** Let’s hear it.

**Rawson:** Well, this was recent. I met Jennifer Aniston for the first time. And I was a little nervous.

**John:** Did you drink her Vitamin Water?

**Rawson:** I did not. I did not. But I walk in and all I’m thinking is like, “Be cool. Be cool. Be cool.” And the door opens and she’s like, “Hi, I’m Jen,” and she’s like the nicest person, reaches out. And I go, “Hi, I’m Rawson,” and go like, bang, right into a glass coffee table and eat shit. And I’m like, “Hey! Hi! — ”

So, don’t bang into things. And if there’s a glass coffee table, just take a beat before you try to shake somebody’s hand. That would be my advice on the glass coffee table movie star thing.

**Craig:** Wow. That’s bad.

**Rawson:** It was awful. And it got better. It got better.

**Aline:** I have a good one that’s not rubbish but was funny. I made a movie with Rachel McAdams, who I just adored, and I was saying goodbye to her on the last day that I was on set. And I was wearing this pink scarf. And I was talking to her and I was saying she was so amazing and thank you so much and she’s been so great. And I become aware that she’s looking at a thing right here and she’s like, “Oh, honey, Aline, it’s so great. I had such a good time working with you.” And then she reaches down and picks out a piece of donut frosting that was wedged in the middle of my scarf.

So the entire time I was telling her about amazing, how much I love working with her, all she was thinking was like, “Really? Donut frosting?”

**Craig:** “Pig.”

**Aline:** “Pig.” On the scarf.

**John:** I can’t beat that, so next question.

**Jeff:** Hello.

**Craig:** Hello!

**John:** Hello and welcome.

**Jeff:** My name is Jeff and I always think of you, John, whenever I tell people hello now, so thank you. So, my question is actually about reading scripts and if you guys have any tips about giving feedback or like how you get through maybe a bad script or stop at a certain point.

**Craig:** There’s an art to it, isn’t there? Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, Rawson, you, as a director, you —

**Aline:** How often do people give you scripts to read and they really want an opinion?

**Rawson:** Well, what do you mean? When they want you to tell them, “This is great!” When they want that opinion?

**Aline:** Most of the time people really just want to hear, “This was awesome.”

**Rawson:** I have a screenwriting friend who will say, “Yeah, I’ll read your script.” And then all he says is, “I love it. I think it’s going to be the best movie that’s ever been made.” And that’s it. And they love that. He goes, “It’s incredible.” I don’t even know if he reads it. But no matter what his thought is, that’s his response ever time.

**Craig:** So, that’s awful, right? I will tell you that as I’ve gone on, and this is going to sound Pollyannaish, okay, I read scripts all the time and a lot of times I read them and I think, “This is not very good. Maybe this person is just not professional. They’re never going to be a professional. This is never going to be good.”

However, it’s worth it for me, an exercise for me, to talk about some things in the script from a craft perspective and say, “So, I want to talk to you about, let’s just look at this one scene and let’s talk about some of the things that I thought maybe could make it better.” And just in a craft way, it forces you to start thinking about things.

I find that looking at mistakes helps me crystallize how to avoid mistakes. There is a value to it.

**Aline:** The other thing is when you’re reading like a terrible script it takes like 11 hours and every page weighs like forty pounds.

**Rawson:** That’s the worst.

**Aline:** So, you’re like, “Ooh [feigns turning page].” I’m too dumb and lazy. Like I can’t even focus on what’s happening in the thing. I don’t know what’s… — Somebody once said at a meeting, an executive was talking about this script that needed to be rewritten. And she said, “This script is so bad that I can’t remember what happened on the page before.”

**Rawson:** Yeah, I think every time someone hands me a script to read, I mean, I think this is probably the same for all of you, is that you want it to be great because you read it so much faster.

**Aline:** So much faster.

**Craig:** And also you’re going to avoid that terrible moment.

**Rawson:** Of course. And the way I’ve tried to kind of avoid the terrible moment is like you get a bad script, sometimes it’s a friend, sometimes it’s not, and you’re going to talk to that person. A lot of times what I’ve found very helpful is two things. One is to start by asking some questions about what they want from this script that they’ve written. Like, what is your goal? Is your goal to get an agent?

**Aline:** Did you want this to be boring?

**Rawson:** But that’s exactly the point. I don’t talk about the script. I talk about the intent. So, what do you want from this? You want an agent? You want a spec script? You want to direct it? And that takes up the first ten minutes of the conversation?.

**Aline:** “You wanted to euthanize me?”

**Rawson:** And then the other part is like then I saw, “Okay, so tell me the story.” And invariably they’ll start telling the story and sometimes it’s better than the script and then you can focus on what they’re talking to you about. You can say, “That sounds great. I didn’t get that here. Maybe do that, what you’re saying, because here it didn’t come through.” And then you’re off the hook.

**Aline:** You’re so nice. Give your scripts to him.

**John:** Yeah, he’s nice.

**Rawson:** No, no.

**Aline:** First him, then him. I would say then me. And then him last.

**John:** If you’re reading a script for a friend, who is a genuine friend, and it’s not working, there’s probably something that is working — I would hope there’s something that’s working. I always start with like, “These are the moments I loved.” And talk about this and why it was working really well. And hopefully that is what they actually want the movie to be. And then you can start having a conversation about like how to make the rest of the movie that movie.

**Aline:** Okay, I have a good story about this.

**John:** All right, tell me.

**Aline:** I read Gatins’s script for Flight, you know, John Gatins who is a very good friend of mine. And I read that script a bunch. And I was like, “Dude, you need to take out the scene with the cancer patient in the stairwell. This just does not contribute to the forward momentum of the script at all. This has nothing to do with anything. This character does not…”

**Craig:** Violates Save the Cat!

**Aline:** The famous Save the Cat! clause. “There’s this character who does not reappear. He’s like a combination of exposition-man and the theme-god. Like this needs to go.” And it’s one of the reasons that Robert Zemeckis directed the movie, and it’s everyone’s favorite scene. And it’s a tour de force. And it’s brilliant. And it’s one of the things that makes that script so special.

So it’s…

**Craig:** Don’t listen to Aline.

**John:** Don’t’ let Aline read your script.

**Craig:** She’s an idiot.

**Jeff:** Thanks guys.

**John:** Great. Thanks. Hello, our final question tonight.

**Craig:** Hello!

**Final question:** Hello. So, quick question, probably rough answer. So, you finish your draft and you’re unhappy with how one of your characters turned out. How do you approach that on the redraft?

**Craig:** You mean how they turned out like, “Oh my god, this guy is a dick at the end?” Or just you don’t like the way they’re reading in general?

**Final question:** So, yeah, those.

**Craig:** Both.

**Rawson:** Is it a main character or are you talking about — ?

**Final question:** Main character.

**Rawson:** Main character. Yikes.

**Craig:** Oh boy. Now, normally, you want to know how they’re going to turn out before you start writing. So, did you do that thing where you’re like, “I’ll just start writing and we’ll see what happens?”

**Final question:** Well, it wound up more passive. So the character isn’t as active as you would hope.

**John:** My quick suggestion would be think of a new character, who has a new name, and run that character through your story and see if it works better. And see how do you make things as interesting and as terrible for that character as possible. Because a passive character is only passive because you’re allowing him to be passive.

**Aline:** Are you asking can you do a whole character pass without messing up without your script? Like can you change a lead character without changing your script? Is that what you’re asking?

**Final question:** Well, I’m just wondering if you’ve encountered that problem and your approach.

**Aline:** I had — not a lead, but I had, I’ve told this story before, but on Devil Wears Prada the character that Stanley Tucci played was very difficult and I really struggled with it, because he was very nice, he was sort of like that character that Héctor Elizondo always plays. He was like that very nice kind of helpful character. And it was not working for the story at all.

But draft after draft he was still there. And then there came a point where we needed to cast it. So, we started thinking of specific actors and I was like, “This guy just doesn’t have a point of view. He has nothing to say.” And then I talked to somebody in the fashion business who said, “The problem with this character is he’s too nice, and no one in the fashion business is nice to each other.”

And I said, “No one ever?” And he said, “No, there’s no reason to be. And no one is.”

And so I went back and I wrote that character like an insult comic. And I’m a huge Rickles fan. And I just went in and wrote him as sort of un-mentor-ish as I could. And that was a situation where like his story didn’t change, but I just went in, and there are situations where somehow, sometimes, your character just doesn’t move the levers in the way that you want to.

It’s easier with a supporting character. It’s going to be harder with a lead character because they’re already — it would be very hard to do.

**Craig:** It’s impossible.

**Aline:** But sometimes with supporting characters you can kind of lift that out and plunk somebody back in there.

**John:** Melissa McCarthy in Identity Thief.

**Craig:** Yes, so the original Identity Thief, the spec script was two guys. But, that required a complete rewrite. You know, what you’re describing is a function of an error that happened very early on in the beginning, in your conception. Because your story allowed for a passive character.

Maybe ask yourself in going back to the beginning, what is this movie about? What am I trying to impart upon people? What is the argument that I’m making at the end? Take a character, make him believe the opposite of that. And then get him there.

**Aline:** Have you ever talked about this thing that Ted Elliott talks about which is like, I think he calls is “Phase Space” or something like that, which is this thing — isn’t it something like that?

**John:** Of course.

**Craig:** At length.

**Aline:** Where there are these decisions, it’s like there’s a whole pie of a reality when you start a script. And you make a decision. And all of a sudden it goes from being a circle to this shape. And then this. And then this. And you’re narrowing your narrative possibilities with every choice you make. It’s like, “Oh, it’s going to take place in Detroit and the lead character is going to be a cop and his partner is going to be a woman.”

And you start narrowing, and narrowing, and narrowing, and every time I’ve ever worked on or experienced a script that had problems, it was because someone you ended up in this tiny sliver and the solutions were over there. And you had made some choices that were so big in the beginning that it was like even if you saw the pill across the room that would make the problem go away, you can’t get there. And that’s why those first … — You know, I’m working with a friend and we’ve been outlining and now she has to write. She’s very intimidated by the writing process.

And I said, “You’ve outlined this movie. You have a 15-page outline. You’ve done most of the writing.” Those decisions are — those big, first decisions, are critical, and the lead has to embody your theme, and your momentum, and your narrative. So, if it’s not doing that there’s probably some other things that are not working.

**Craig:** But don’t get sad. No, I’m serious, don’t get sad. That’s our lives. What’s happening now, that’s it. It’s the constant redoing and redoing. And sometimes you do fall into a terrible trap.

Go ahead, you can cry one night if you want. Have a couple of drinks, wake up the next day, begin again. You’ll be fine.

**John:** Thank you!

LINKS:

* [Scriptnotes, the 100th episode](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode)
* [Aline Brosh McKenna](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0112459/) on IMDb, and her [first](http://johnaugust.com/2012/the-black-list-and-a-stack-of-scenes) and [second](http://johnaugust.com/2013/how-screenwriters-find-their-voice) appearances on Scriptnotes
* [Rawson Thurber](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1098493/) on IMDb
* Go see [We’re the Millers](http://werethemillers.warnerbros.com/) on August 7th!
* [Fair use](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use) on Wikipedia
* The Slate [Political Gabfest](http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/gabfest.html)
* John on [Mohr Stories](http://mohrstories.libsyn.com/mohr-stories-53-john-august), [The Talk Show](http://www.muleradio.net/thetalkshow/7/) with John Gruber, Brett Terpstra’s [Systematic](http://5by5.tv/systematic/30), and Moisés Chiullan’s [Screen Time](http://5by5.tv/screentime/13)
* [The Winds of War](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winds_of_War_(miniseries)) on Wikipedia
* Outro by Scriptnotes listener [Seth Podowitz](http://www.musictomedia.com/)

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/is-15-the-new-30).

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

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

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes, Episode 97, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. How are you, Craig?

**Craig:** Good. I’m liking the sound of that 97.

**John:** It’s a lot of episodes.

**Craig:** It’s a ton.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** One of our best episodes was the one we just did last week, the live one.

**John:** Yeah, it was a lot of fun. So, we had a big crowd at the WGF and that was a good, fun time; got to see our people as we did our live Three Page Challenges. Once again, thank you to our brave volunteers for that.

**Craig:** Yeah. They were terrific. They took their medicine. And, you know, there was something to recommend about all of those. I have to give Stuart credit — I mean, I hate to do it…

**John:** Mm-hmm. Tough.

**Craig:** I know. I just don’t like over-praising. Or praising. [laughs] But, Stuart did a very good job of picking out three Three Page Challenges that were — none of which were bad. They were all good and just had interesting issues to address.

**John:** And it was only after Stuart sent us those samples that he realized, like oh my gosh, I picked only women. And so at first I emailed back saying pick one guy or male writing team so we have some diversity. But then you emailed back like, yeah, screw that.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, who cares. I love — you know me, I’m very consistent. I ignore all that stuff. So, if we happen to get three women, good. And it was good, yes.

**John:** Hooray. So, that was our previous live podcast episode. Coming up on July 25 we have our next live episode, which is our 100th episode, which is very exciting. Tickets went on sale for it this past week. And they sold out super, super quick.

**Craig:** How fast did they actually go?

**John:** Within three minutes after I tweeted that they were sold out.

**Craig:** Dude, we’re Bon Jovi.

**John:** We are Bon Jovi. So, while that’s exciting, it’s also frustrating for people who didn’t get a chance to come who wanted to come. And so I feel awful about that situation. We’re trying to find out a way to release some more tickets so we can get some more people coming to our show.

If not, we’re also looking at ways to maybe live stream it or do other things, so people who cannot physically be with us can be with us emotionally as we celebrate 100 episodes of this podcast.

**Craig:** [laughs] It’s a pretty remarkable thing, I have to say. I am grateful. I am legitimately grateful, as somebody who has a tiny, tiny Grinch-like dark, sooty marble for a heart. I am very grateful for people and their interest in our little podcast and what we talk about.

And a bit overwhelmed, frankly, by the interest in all of it. So, to everybody that jumped on that and bought tickets like we were, I don’t know, Nirvana in 1991, all I can say is thank you. And hopefully we’ll put on a good show for you.

**John:** Originally I was concerned that someone had like just bought 100 tickets all at once and has had a master plan to scalp them or something, but we got the word back today that the most any one person bought was six tickets. So, it’s not like there was some great cabal doing things.

So, it looks like highly motivated individuals bought those tickets, which is a great thing. We look forward to seeing a lot of people there and at future events. But today let’s talk about three topics that are of interest to screenwriters. Those would be the question of have first acts gotten shorter, and if so, why and what does that actually mean.

Second topic, the WGA released its annual report that shows that numbers are actually up significantly for writers, but only in TV.

And, finally, we’ll talk about the fight over the title The Butler. And what it means for a screenwriter who wants a certain title, but also what it means for the film industry and antitrust suits and famous lawyers.

**Craig:** And famous lawyers. So, quite a bit on our plate. I guess we should start with our first act.

**John:** Yes. So, this is actually motivated by my friend Rawson who sent an email asking, “Is it just me or is everybody asking for everything that used to happen in the first 30 pages to happen much faster?” Basically, the first act has to be much, much faster and shorter than it used to be. And he came up with a provocative title that very much feels like a Sex and the City question: Is 15 the new 30?

**Craig:** Yeah. I loved it when you forwarded me this from Rawson. I thought it was such a great observation, because it’s one of those things that I hadn’t really crystallized in my mind until I saw him write it out like that. I think it’s absolutely true that this is a pressure, a creative pressure, that’s been coming down increasingly lately to compress down first acts. I felt it in a huge way when I was writing Identity Thief. There was a lot of pressure on me to shorten that first act. I feel it all the time.

I went to go see World War Z…

**John:** I was going to bring up World War Z.

**Craig:** Yeah, and I really like that movie. That first act, I think, is a minute. [laughs] I think it’s a minute. There’s a scene where Brad Pitt wakes up with his family. They have a very kind of cereal-advertisement morning. They get in the car. And then zombies.

**John:** Yeah. So, we should define our terms, which is a good thing to do when we’re discussing whether something has changed is to talk about what it is we’re actually talking about. Let’s talk about what a first act is supposed to be, or what the function of a first act is in a screenplay.

And it’s one of those terms that’s kind of invented, but it’s a useful thing that we do talk about a lot in the Hollywood industry. So, classically in a play, an act is a very clear division, like the curtain comes down, or like this is where we’re stopping the show to move onto another thing. Obviously movies don’t do that. And so when we talk about a first act we’ve usually been talking about something that happens about 30 minutes in. And there are certain characteristics of what’s happened to this story at this point that indicates you’re at the end of the first act and you’re now moving into the second act.

And so sort of a laundry list to add to the kind of things I’m saying, generally you’ve reached a new place. Or, if you haven’t really gotten to a new place, you’ve reached a new direction. And your character is taking charge of the situation, or at least has a clearer idea of what his goals and motivations are. It’s to tell you what is specific about this story and what does this character need to achieve in order to get through to win this story.

What is your protagonist trying to accomplish? The game has changed in some significant way at this first act marker.

What else would you say is indicative of a first act?

**Craig:** Well, I guess a very simple way of thinking about it is that in the first act, not at the end of the first act, somewhere in the first act something happens to change the hero’s normal world/normal life, and at the end of the first act the hero has begun their journey to make things right again.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And for me, at least, I find that this first act is the most important act of a movie. It’s the most interesting act, for me. We’re creating a world. We’re building a world in the first act. We’re creating a person. We’re then introducing a problem. And then we’re pushing that person right to the edge of the nest and finally flicking them out.

And that first act has — it seems — has been squeezed and squeezed.

**John:** Let’s talk about some classic movies, movies that people are going to recognize what the first act is in that movie. Classic example is Wizard of Oz. Wizard of Oz, the line is “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** She’s literally moved from one place to another place. She is now in Oz and everything is different.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is when they reach the factory. That first act is getting them to the factory. The second act starts when they’re in the factory. So, everything you know about Charlie Bucket, and in my version of the movie, everything you know about Willy Wonka, there is setup that’s getting you there, so when you reach that second act you are, hopefully, ready to be on this journey.

**Craig:** Sure. Star Wars, I think probably when Luke realizes that his aunt and uncle have been burnt to death and there’s nothing left for him in this planet anymore and he decides to leave.

**John:** Yes. Little Miss Sunshine is when they hit the road to California.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** They’ve gotten in the bus.

**Craig:** Yeah. The easiest ones are road trip movies. When they hit the road, the second act has begun.

**John:** Back to the Future, he gets stuck in 1955.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s about the right place. Comedies can sometimes be tougher, especially when you’re not going to a new place. I was looking up some, like Mean Girls, and what people thought was the act break in Mean Girls. And some people will differ on where they think the act break would be.

Mean Girls was when she finally decides, you know what, I’m not, I’m going to — she turns on the mean girls. So, she’s not going to try to become one of the mean girls, she’s going to bring them down. And that starts a different arc, where up to that point she’s been trying to assimilate. And at a certain point she says like, “I’m not going to try to assimilate. I’m going to bring them down.”

**Craig:** Yeah. At some point the meat of the adventure begins, whether the adventure is a legitimate adventure, or a character exploration. And sometimes in a high concept it’s when the high concept kicks in. So, in Groundhog Day when he wakes up that first time and it’s the same day again, that’s the end of the first act.

**John:** That’s a very classic first act shift. It’s also kind of those moments where what would be in the trailer that establishes what the premise of the movie is, that’s often been the first act break.

**Craig:** Yes, yes.

**John:** Not always, but often.

**Craig:** The stuff that comes before James Brown goes, “Ow! I feel good.” [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. Now, let’s go back to World War Z, because World War Z was one of the first things that popped into my mind because I just saw this last week. And there are no spoilers for us to say that very, very early on in the movie there are zombies running through the streets.

**Craig:** That’s not the end of the first act, per se.

**John:** No. And my question is you could argue that it feels like the end of the first act because like the world has profoundly changed. You could also say that was sort of the inciting incident.

**Craig:** Precisely.

**John:** That is the moment where everything has started to happen. And then you could call the end of the first act when they get to the ship that they’re sort of landing on.

**Craig:** It’s funny — I actually think the end of the first act is when he leaves to go to Korea. So, he begins his adventure and leaves them behind. And there’s that moment where he says, “I’m leaving, you’re staying, and I am beginning an adventure,” the purpose of which is not only to save the world but to return and fix things.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Still, it happens in such a compressed manner. And for that movie, I have to say, no quarrels. There wasn’t, and we never really do movie reviews here — I really liked World War Z. Some people complained a little bit that the characters were thin and I think, yes, absolutely, they were very, very thin. It was like Hero and Hero’s wife. But, that’s not where I… — I did not lack from enjoyment simply because the characters were thin. It was a little bit like watching a bible story or something, you know.

**John:** Yeah. What I found so fascinating about sort of how it chose to do it is it didn’t do really any of the work that we expect to see in the setup of a movie, like the setup of who these characters are.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I mean, it was just the very broadest strokes on like, “This is a family. They seem to be doing pretty well.” And suddenly then we’re off to the races. And they tried to fill in some more stuff along the way, just sort of incidental conversations about what he used to do, what this was. But, in some ways it was surprising that it wasn’t filling in more of those details, because that’s what kind of kept you alive and alert for, because you kept listening for anything that would tell you who these people are or what is sort of unique or special.

**Craig:** Well, and one of the things about World War Z that is interesting is that the character ultimately doesn’t change. And because the character doesn’t change, we’re not dealing with a movie where there’s a traditional thematic arc. When you do have a traditional thematic arc and a character is going through some sort of internal combustion to end the movie in a philosophical place that is perfectly oppositional from where he or she began, you need that first act.

In comedy in particular I feel you need it, because comedy isn’t about a thousand zombies piling on top of each other like ants to get over a wall. Comedy is about the human condition. And so we need that first act desperately to meet somebody, establish who they are, establish what they believe. Kind of soak them in it for awhile.

**John:** Before the main plot engine really kicks in.

**Craig:** That’s right. And it’s okay for something to happen on page 10 that throws their world out of stasis. But it’s not okay for them to immediately then just jump into adventure. There needs to be a period of resistance and a period of contextualizing what happens and what this means for me. And then we begin the adventure.

**John:** So, a good example of that would be The Heat, which I don’t know if you’ve seen The Heat yet.

**Craig:** I haven’t seen it yet. I’m very excited to.

**John:** So, I thought it was fantastic. Melissa is fantastic and she’s obviously a friend of both of ours. But The Heat is very much — has a very classic first in act in that you meet the Sandra Bullock character, you meet the Melissa McCarthy character, separately. They cross paths probably about 15 pages into it.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Hate each other. Despise each other.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** At each other’s throats. And then probably around page 30 or so they have to partner together in order to get the plot of the movie to resolve. They both had their interests for why they’re going into it. And it’s very clear that we’re going to be watching this movie to see how their relationship develops over the course of this movie.

**Craig:** And you need the, if they meet each other… — So, okay, the way you just described it is sort of a perfect reason why you don’t want 15 to be the new 30. You need 15 pages to introduce two people and show them as they are separately, so that we understand what their strengths and limitations are, separately.

Then we need some time where they are together where we establish that they do not get along and why. And ideally it’s tied to their strengths and their weaknesses. Once we’ve done that groundwork, it’s perfectly fine at that point to kick the apple cart over and force them to head out into the field, whereby they will do the work of the plot as well as their own relationship. But we need those 30 pages.

And I’ve got to tell you, I mean, I don’t understand why there’s this big rush, rush, rush to shorten the first act. I think audiences love first acts.

**John:** So, my theory on why we feel this development pressure for shorter first acts is the people who’ve been reading the script have been reading the script for like six years.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, they know what the movie is and they know what’s going to happen. And they’re eager for what’s going to happen to happen. And so as they read the script or as they see early cuts of the movie they’re like, “Just get to it already. Just get to it.”

And that pressure is the pressure of someone who does not have fresh eyes, who is not seeing this for the first time. They’re seeing it as a person who knows every frame of the movie or every word that’s going to happen. And they’re eager to get to the thing much, much quicker.

**Craig:** I agree. And in comedy the pressure comes down often in this way: the big funny things that happen in comedies, the big set pieces, the sequences, typically are second act stuff. You’re first act doesn’t have a lot of big crazy sequences. And so naturally there’s this feeling of, “Uh, we need to get people laughing — faster, faster to the joke stuff. Go, go, go!”

And it’s a mistake because what we know on the other side of the thing, the making of the movie thing, is that it’s the setup that makes all that stuff work. And, look, nobody wants to sit there and watch an hour of setup. But there’s nothing wrong with 25 minutes of setup.

**John:** Now, devil’s advocate here. I think sometimes I’ve been reading scripts where I’m in this first act and it’s like, okay, I’ve got it. I got it. I got it. You’re just giving me the same thing again and again.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, in no way are we arguing for repetition, for boring scenes, or things that feel like they’re, you know, they’re lovely bits of set dressing that’s keeping us from getting to our real story. So, I think the challenge is still on the writer to make sure that at every moment you’re flipping the page because we’re deeply engaged and want to know what’s going to happen next.

And even if that what happens next is not the thing that kicks us into the second act, we want to be curious and fascinated about what’s going to happen next with this character. What this character is going to do so that as the story progresses we are deeply invested in them.

So, it’s in no way an opportunity for those three page scenes where characters talk about their lives and backstory, because that’s just awful.

**Craig:** Yeah. Frankly the opposite; I always think of the first ten pages in particular as very precious real estate where you have to pack in a lot. You want to make it vibrant, and informational, and interesting, and dramatic. Everything that you do in that first act has to have a purpose and that purpose must pay off. The bud must blossom at some point in the script, or it shouldn’t be there.

And, listen: it may be that your story doesn’t need a traditional 30 page first act. And that’s fine. But if you feel like it does, do it. I do it. I mean, the script I’m writing right now, the first act ends I think on page 31. And I’m okay with that. [laughs] We’ll see what the studio thinks.

**John:** Now, one of the common characteristics of the break between the first act and the second act is the characters reach a new place. But I would caution people from thinking that, “Oh, that means that in my thriller I can’t have them get to the cabin in the woods until page 30.” That’s not what that means.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** You may get to the cabin in the woods on page five. But, the nature of the relationship between the characters are what the characters are facing would make that big change at the end of the first act, which would be some time down the road. So, we get to know who the characters are, what they’re expecting, what the tensions are above them, what the normal life is for them before everything goes crazy.

**Craig:** Yeah. Normal life is so important. I’m a huge believer in the concept of normal life and establishing what that means for characters, even if they’re lives are circumstantially not very normal. Okay, so you have a character whose job is to be a stunt person. So, what’s their normal day? Hurling out of a fifth story window on fire and crashing into a thing full of glass. Well, that’s their normal life. Show it.

But then something is going to happen to make that even less normal later down the line. Still, you need to always show what’s normal before you show what changes.

**John:** So, what are some actionable things that a writer can do to push back against this 15 is the new 30 idea?

**Craig:** Well, I can only tell you what I do, and basically it’s to make the case. I just keep making the case. And I don’t always win. One thing that I know is that there were scenes that were put in, for instance in Identity Thief there were a couple of scenes that were requested of me in the first act that I didn’t think needed to be there. And there was one scene that was taken out that I definitely think needed to be there and it ended up hurting later.

And I can always now go back and say, “Well, let us remember the lessons of this.” But, the truth of the matter is there is no magic shield. There will be times as a professional screenwriter where you can’t keep people from making a mistake. Even if you fall on your sword, somebody else will come along and write that mistake for them.

So, but I try. I just try and make the case as patiently as I can. I find that this is where directors help, making an alliance with a director helps. Directors want to make sure that their audience gets what’s going on, gets the logic, doesn’t feel rushed through, because one side effect of rushing through a first act is that you simply care less.

What about you?

**John:** I will bring it up. I will try to argue for why those scenes need to be there, why that moment needs to be there, why we need to understand who this person is in that moment. That said, I tend to be a person who does move very quickly. And I get stuff started very quickly. And so Go is a movie that is essentially three first acts. The Nines is a movie that is essentially three first acts. That’s a way that I feel comfortable writing. But even if you look at those, both those movies are sort of like three short films sort of stacked next to each other.

They do have that kind of classic development where you understand what the normal life is, you understand this is the choice the character has made that has kicked us into this next section where everything is different, and this is the resolution of what’s going to happen because of the choices that they made. And so even though they move much more briskly, I’m doing the things that need to be done in those times.

And if I were to try to do that first setup that was so quick for just the little section one of Go, and make that carry us over through the whole rage of the movie, it wouldn’t work. The fact is, in Go I’m able to stop the movie, set up these three new people at a new time, and let them run in their own story.

So, I tend to want to have things go quickly. But I still get those notes sometimes. With Preacher I kept getting the notes, “We need to get to the Saint of Killers faster.” And it’s like, well, then we’re not going to know who any of these people are. And that’s going to be a very frustrating thing.

**Craig:** A question that I often ask when I hear somebody say, “We need to get to blah-blah-blah faster,” the question I will have in response is, “Why?” And sometimes simply asking why will put them on their heels a little bit, because the truth is they don’t know why. They’ve just been told somewhere in the factory that faster is better.

I’m okay with going faster if you can tell me why. It’s simple.

**John:** Yeah. Our next topic, the WGA, the Writers Guild of America, each year has to file its annual report which shows not only what its finances are but sort of what the status is of writers for film and television and a few other people who get lumped into the Writers Guild. How much they’ve made. Who got employment? What was going on in the Writers Guild this year.

And so I think we’ve talked about this; each time it has come up on the podcast, sort of where the numbers are and where the numbers are moving towards. This would have been a very smart time for me to actually have the report in front of me.

**Craig:** I have it in front of me.

**John:** So why don’t you, Craig, give us the overview of sort of what has changed from this year from the previous year?

**Craig:** Sure. Well, first off, a little preamble: the Guild seems to be in fine fiscal health. In fact, it ended the year with a surplus, a $4.5 million operating surplus, which of course in my mind means, hey, why don’t you reduce our dues a little bit. But, that’s never going to happen. [laughs]

So, let’s talk about what changed.

**John:** I did notice that the strike fund seemed to be quite healthy.

**Craig:** Yeah, the strike fund is just fine. [laughs] Everything is fine. Honestly, the whole thing about dues is a discussion for a later date.

But, okay, so the overall picture when we talk about writers who have been hired and how much money we’ve made, interesting from this year to last year, a little bit fewer. A little bit fewer writers were hired, down by 1%. But the amount that they earned was up by 4%, which is actually a decent jump relative to last year and the year before. But when you break it out into TV and film, two totally different pictures emerge.

**John:** Yeah. So, television has increased by a nice clip, which is great. There are more writers employed in television than at any point in the last six years.

**Craig:** Yes. Television writers, the amount that were employed is up 2.3%, and that’s on top of year, after year, after year of increases in the amount that have been employed. And, also, their earnings are up and they’re up a whopping 10%. That’s a big jump. And consider this: if you look at year, to year, to year, to year, percent change versus prior year, starting in 2008 because everything is sort of based off of 2007 here as a sort of five-year review, up 1.4%. This is earnings, up 1.4%. Up 13.8%, up 7.6%, up 7%, up 10%.

TV is crushing it. In 2007, TV writers earned $456 million. In 2012, they earned $667 million. Wow.

So, surely that kind of success has carried over to features, right? [laughs]. No. Wah. Everybody get your trombones out. Make the sad note. Here we go.

How many writers have reported earnings? We’re down 6.7% from last year in feature film. And earnings, the amount of earned, money actually that we’ve pulled in, down 6%.

Here’s the worst part of all of this: if you look compare us to 2007, where television, there are more writers compared to 2007, and we’re way up by like 50% in terms of how much TV writers have earned. Opposite situation in screen. In screen from 2007 to now, 25% fewer writers employed as screenwriters. And earnings down 35%.

So, in 2007 there were 2,041 writers who reported earnings in screen. Last year, 1,537. Incredible. In 2007, $527 million in total earnings in screen. Last year, $343 million. Yikes.

**John:** Yeah. It’s a bloodbath, but honestly it feels consistent with what I know from people who are actually working is that many of my… — Those TV writers didn’t just magically appear. A lot of those people are feature film writers who are now working in television. And that’s completely consistent with the people I know, is that so many people who were feature writers have now moved to television. Or they took a TV show on the side, but are still trying to do feature work, but they’re not doing the feature work, they’re just doing television.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And that’s the reality of the people who are making money right now is people who are writing on TV shows. And god bless that there are TV shows. You can’t imagine how awful this would be if those jobs didn’t exist in television, if we weren’t making more television than at any point in history.

**Craig:** It would be horrifying out there. When you look at in terms of residuals…

**John:** Yeah, we should stop and clarify for a second. So, earnings for this report, earnings means money that you’re actually making in that year for the work that you were doing in that year.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And because it is earnings in that year, the previous year’s numbers actually change a bit because things get reported after the fact. And so even the numbers that are coming in for this year, they’re not really final numbers. They’ll shift a bit based on people who report earnings that came in late in 2012.

**Craig:** That’s right. The residuals is the money that we earn on the reuse on that stuff that we write. And that is less of a snapshot of how the employment situation is and more of a snapshot of what the marketplace is like in terms of consumers, and what they’re buying, and what they’re consuming.

So, even though screenwriters have been decimated in terms of the numbers of us who are employed at all and how much we make when we are employed, residuals seems to be holding pretty steadily actually in screen. And they are up. In fact, they’re up in both. They’re up about 6% in television and 5.3% in screen. Television, you know, there’s more residuals there, which is not surprising, because there’s just so many more television shows.

What I thought was interesting as television generated $200 million in residuals. The Guild, and this is very Guildy of them — this is where sometimes they make me nuts because they get a little editorial in these things — the highlight of reuse of programs in new media, where the rental services such as Netflix and Hulu Plus drove significant growth from $4.21 million to $11.26 million in 2012. And that is impressive if you look at it just as, okay, $4.2 million to $11.26 million. Not so impressive when you look at it as $11.26 million out of $200 million.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And the reason that they’re banging that drum and making such a big deal about that is because they don’t want anyone to think for a second that we had that new media strike purposelessly.

**John:** Yeah. So, that number was up. My question for you is: when you’re buying something off of DirecTV, like you’re buying a show off DirecTV, or you’re buying something off of iTunes, that’s not included in this new media. That’s included in home video, correct?

**Craig:** No, I think that they’re calling “new media rental services,” I would imagine, would cover renting on iTunes, sure. Yeah.

**John:** Okay. But purchasing on iTunes might be…?

**Craig:** That’s different. Yeah, purchasing seems to be… — I mean, I guess, it’s hard to tell, frankly, because they may be lumping all new media into this, because where they say “where the rental services such as drove significant growth,” well that means, okay, so — but driving significant growth doesn’t mean you’re solely responsible for that growth. And certainly Netflix and Hulu are “such as” not “only.”

**John:** Yes. So, let’s talk sort of bigger picture here. If you are a feature film writer, you are likely making less money than you were before.

**Craig:** Yeah. Maybe.

**John:** A prototypical individual screenwriter was probably making less money than they were before, either by not being employed, or by making less per draft. And that seems to be consistent with at least the writers I’m talking with.

The fact that residuals are holding steady is good news if you’ve been employed for awhile because then you actually have some movies that have a life after theatrical.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, that may help tide you over. What is hard to gain any reassurance from looking at these reports is that there’s any end in sight for sort of what is going to happen to the feature film writer.

**Craig:** Well, there’s a little bit of an end in sight. I mean, first of all, let’s point out that your prototypical screenwriter probably doesn’t exist, that what’s happened is we’re looking at a mean average of two very different poles on a graph. It seems that the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer when it comes to screen. That’s at least a little bit of what our surveys and some of our anecdotes tell us.

So, the bell curve has become, you know, sort of a two-hump camel. But, there’s a little bit — a little bit — of hope. And where that little tiny bit of hope comes in is in home video, because home video is the area that collapsed under screen. That was the area, that was the marketplace, that was really propping screen up and thus propping up employment, and budgets, and the amount of movies that were made.

And when it collapsed it collapsed spectacularly. So, when you look at theatrical film videos from home video, in 2007 — sorry, let’s take 2008, because that was the high mark — in 2008, $47 million roughly in home video residuals.

**John:** So, that indicates a very healthy home video market because we’re talking a fraction of a percent equals…

**Craig:** That’s right. So, as the theory went, writers get a nickel for each DVD sold. So, all those nickels for DVDs added up to $47 million in 2008. In 2011, it was down to $30 million. That’s a huge drop in just three years. It’s just precipitous. That’s what has changed this business more than anything.

However, a little tiny bit of hope: in 2008, home video actually went up 1%. And you would think that going up 1% wouldn’t be cause for celebration, but after year-on-year declines of big, big jumps in percentage, you know, from $47 million all the way down to $30 million, holding steady is a big deal.

So, if you look at 2012 to 2007, home video on the whole dropped 30%. And remember what I said our earnings dropped? 35%. I mean, and 25% fewer writers. That’s the number, to me, that is the leading indicator here is home video. And if we can hold home video I think maybe we have a chance of just holding things where they are right now and maybe not having them get worse.

**John:** So, let me restate your thesis in a way, make sure we’re talking about the same thing. So, with the decline in home video, studios have been spending less money on writers for theatrical films because they’re feeling the pinch and they’re feeling we’re not going to be able to make our money out of things, therefore they’re spending less in development?

**Craig:** Yeah. I think basically they’re saying as home video declines the amount of films we make will also decline, and therefore the amount of screenwriters we employ will decline, and the budgets of many of those projects will also decline.

**John:** And those numbers are borne out by the actual numbers of theatrical films the major studios have made over these past few years has genuinely declined. And so with fewer films, there’s fewer writers. And subsequently there’s also fewer films in development because they’re expecting to make fewer down the road.

**Craig:** That’s right. And basically they’ve declined by about a third. So, the magic number for screenwriters is a third. Things are a third down. They’re roughly a third down in terms of how many of us are hired, roughly a third down on how much money they spend on us, roughly a third down on how many movies they make, and roughly a third down on what home video is generating.

**John:** Now, what we said before in terms of my experience is that a lot of feature writers have moved over to television and that it’s really they’re television writers now. I think those two numbers are also closely coupled because a lot of the reason why I think our theatrical home video is down is because television is up.

People have a certain number of hours in the day. I think the fact that we’re living in maybe a golden age of television and we have better television than we’ve ever had before is making someone choose to watch Homeland rather than rent that DVD, or watch that DVD, or buy that DVD at Target for that movie. And I think those are more closely related than you might at first glance notice.

**Craig:** That may be true. We know that it’s not a zero sum game, that new markets can be created. Before VHS, there simply wasn’t movie viewing at home. And then suddenly everyone was watching movies at home and it became a thing.

Also, let’s recall that the purchasing or renting of movies does not equate on a one-to-one with the watching of them. That’s how Blockbuster made its fortune. People buy movies they don’t watch. [laughs] They rent movies they don’t watch. And so the fact that they don’t have as many hours in the day doesn’t necessarily stop them from buying these things.

It is our hope that things have stabilized and maybe even if we can be greedy enough for a second to be hopeful, really hopeful, that they’ve not only stabilized but that the base of home video can now support growth in new media. And new media right now just simply doesn’t generate that much money for screenwriters. Last year it generated $5 million. Home video generated $30 million.

So, for people that sit there and insist that no one buys DVDs anymore, and that the world is all about iTunes, all I can say is, no, not yet, but hopefully soon. Hopefully soon.

**John:** So, with that, let’s go to our third topic of today which is The Butler. So, the backstory on this, there’s a lawsuit that’s occurring between Warner Bros. and the Weinstein Company. The Weinstein Company directed by Lee Daniels called, that they want to call The Butler, which is about a butler, I think it’s about a butler in Obama’s White House who has been a butler for a tremendously long time — an African American butler.

**Craig:** I think it’s based on a true story.

**John:** Based on a true story. And so this butler who has been serving the presidents for all of these years is now serving an African American president and sort of what that change is. And that’s Lee Daniels’ film.

So, the Weinstein Company wants the title, The Butler, and Warner is saying, no, because Warner controls copyright on a 1969, sorry, 1916…

**Craig:** Not copyright.

**John:** Well, actually they do own copyright, but copyright is not the issue here. They control the title, The Butler, because they have a 1916 silent film called The Butler.

**Craig:** The very popular 1916 film, The Butler.

**John:** Which apparently has not been shown theatrically in nearly a century. It’s not even like a big, giant movie.

**Craig:** No, nothing from 1916 is a big, giant movie. This is absolutely a sharp stick in Harvey’s eye. There’s no question about that. There’s no value in the silent film, The Butler. Here’s what’s going on… — I mean, look, I don’t know why the sharp stick is in the eye. Hollywood is a tough place.

**John:** Let’s back up because I had actually blogged about this years ago, because people would write in this question, like, “I have this title that I want to use, but there’s another movie from years ago with that title. Will I be able to use it?” And the answer is generally, “Probably.”

And people think you can copyright a title. You can’t copyright a title. Copyrights exist to protect literary works and other works, but like longer works. You can’t copyright a pure idea. And you can’t copyright a title.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, and if you have any questions, IMDb some common phrase and you will see there are hundred movies called Dead of Night, for example. That happens a lot.

You can trademark certain things, but not movie titles. So, you can trademark Transformers, because it was a toy line.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And so there are some things which are protected because they’re trademarks. But there are very few things that are protected because of their trademark.

Rather, the system that we have set up is run by the MPAA and all the major studios are partners in this. And they have what’s called the Title Bureau. And when you are going into production on a movie you can register your title with the Title Bureau so that no one else could take that title.

But then there are negotiations if your title is considered to be too close to someone else’s title. And every time you submit your title, the other studios can say, “Uh-uh,” and raise their hands and say, “No, we do not accept that because of X, Y, or Z.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I had to go through this on The Nines. When we registered our title we had complaints from this movie 9. We had a complaint from The Whole Nine Yards. A lot of people raised complaints and one-by-one they sort of gave up their complaints and everything was cool and we were able to keep the title, The Nines. It happens all the time.

**Craig:** All the time. Yeah.

**John:** That’s why it is so remarkable that this happened in this case where they would not yield.

**Craig:** Right. Yeah, my very first movie that I wrote with Greg Erb was called Space Cadet. And Lucas blocked it because he said he had a movie in development called Space Cadet, which he never made, obviously. So, we had to change it.

Here’s the deal with this title registration thing: everybody that’s involved in it does so voluntarily. If you’re a member of the MPAA, it’s a requirement of being a member of the MPAA, but there are actually very few studios that are true members of the MPAA, the big ones are. The little ones, like the Weinstein Company, for instance, they may not be official members of the MPAA, but they become members of the Title Registration Bureau. And by doing so they voluntarily agree to be bound by that bureau.

They say, “I am going to sign something that says that from now on I am subject to your arbitration if there’s a dispute over title.” Now, why would anyone do that? They do it because they want protection for their titles.

So, if I’m the Weinstein Company and I make, say, Pulp Fiction, I don’t want Warner Bros. to be able to put out a movie called Pulp Fiction five years later. And if you’re not part of the Title Registry Bureau, you can. So, it’s all about preservation and protecting yourself. In exchange for protection of your titles, you submit to the bureau so that other people’s titles can also be protected. In this case, it seems like the normal horse trading that goes on, the normal gentlemanly, senatorial back and forth has been pushed aside.

Typically, studios will horse trade with each other. If you file for a title, and Warner Bros. says, “Well, the thing is we have that 1916 silent movie called The Butler,” if it were Disney, Disney would call up and say, “Guys, come on. We could do that all day long to you, too. We’ve got a thousand movies in our library. Do you want us doing that next year to you? We’ll do it.”

“Nah, I don’t want you doing that to me. Let’s just agree to fight over real substantive ones.” That’s what the system is really there for.

In this case, Warner Bros., that’s why I said sharp stick in the eye, this is just vindictive. They’re just being vindictive. I don’t know why. Not my business. However, I think that Harvey is going to have a tough time here.

**John:** Yes. So, it is important to note that this was an arbitration, so it’s not a court case — it wasn’t a court case in this situation. But, now lawyers have been brought in. David Boies, who is a very famous attorney, was part of the team that filed the Prop 8, so I know David Boies, and he’s lovely, and great, and smart. So, he is filing these letters against Warner Bros. and against the arbitration people, the MPAA, saying, “Uh-uh, not cool. And, we’re going to keep pressing this.”

Basically, first off, by the time this podcast airs this may all be resolved, so we should talk in a more general sense, but he was arguing that the damages that Warner was claiming, so essentially Warner was going to make Weinstein Company pay a fee if they didn’t stop calling the movie The Butler, even in these promotional things up to this point.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Which is, again, I’m sure part of that contract that was signed.

**Craig:** No doubt.

**John:** Boies makes an interesting case, though, is that on some level does having a title really mean that you’re permanently protected in all cases forever because you have that tile. And to what degree could they claim that anything called The Butler, or having the title Butler in it is going to be protected by Warner Bros. It’s going to be like off limits for all the people for all time.

Should there be some distinction between a movie that’s actually in the public consciousness, you know, like Pulp Fiction, versus this obscure title from a long time ago. Because, otherwise people could essentially just title squat and never let a title go, become available.

**Craig:** And they do. I mean, look, where he is going to run into trouble are the following areas. One, the Weinstein Company voluntarily entered into an agreement to be part of this Title Registry Bureau. They did so, and accrued benefits from being a member of that bureau. So, their titles have been protected by the bureau. And in becoming members they’ve voluntarily agreed to follow the rules that say basically whatever this arbitration decides, that’s it. I mean, binding arbitration is a real thing. Thank god it’s a real thing or else the courts would be even more crowded than they are.

The notion that you don’t have to belong to the Title Registry Bureau, you do it so that your title is protected, too. So, I mean, theoretically somebody could call it The Butler if they wanted. They’d just have to now open up all their other titles to people grabbing them.

**John:** I have a question about sort of the — antitrust got brought up. And antitrust is not going to really kick in on this case because it’s of Weinstein’s and Warner’s and all that situation, but it does strike me as this is an agreement between all the studios to protect titles in a way that a court could look at and say, “This is not cool. This is a way of stifling individual speech, corporate speech, through this collusion of powerful entities.”

**Craig:** Yeah, they could. And if he makes that argument I would be surprised, because the last thing the Weinstein Company wants is to start dismantling the very valuable quasi trust protections that the business has created for itself.

Look, I’m not a lawyer. I’m certainly not an antitrust lawyer. I’m not sure that this is antitrust because it’s voluntary. You don’t have to belong to this to be able to release movies.

However, where they could run into trouble is I think you need to belong to it if you want an MPAA rating.

**John:** Which is a big deal…

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** …because without that you can’t get theatrical distribution in many markets.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And everything else becomes much more complicated. For a long time you couldn’t get on iTunes without an MPAA rating.

**Craig:** Right, exactly. Now, that I’m not sure is the case. So, I’ll have to do a little research there. But if that is the case, then I would see, well, yeah, now you’re sort of bundling a “optional service” with a not-so-optional service, because you really can’t put your movie in theaters or on iTunes if it’s not rated.

But then again, you could…

**John:** You could argue the antitrust thing about the whole MPAA.

**Craig:** Correct. That’s my point.

**John:** The entire entity. The ratings system is easily, has as many problems with…

**Craig:** More. More.

**John:** …with antitrust.

**Craig:** And I guess that’s my point, is that the ratings system has somehow survived this kind of thing. And I believe it has. There’s no chance that the title registry bureau won’t. So, anyway, I think this is — David Boies is collecting some money while Harvey gets really, really angry. [laughs] But I don’t know how they win this one.

It’s offensive…

**John:** On some level, have they won already just by getting the popular attention on the title fight?

**Craig:** I don’t think anybody cares.

**John:** I think maybe the fact that it’s getting some minor New York attention, it probably feels good for Harvey, about this movie that I would never have heard of if it weren’t for this. He will have to change the title. Everyone will know what the new title is, because they’ll lose the suit. Or, it will be Lee Daniels Presents The Butler. And there will be some way that they’ll phrase out of it.

**Craig:** No, they won’t be able to get that either. I mean, look, underneath all of this I suspect, frankly, it’s just a flat out extortion scheme that Harvey didn’t want to go along with. There have been a billion cases where basically people who are squatting on titles have gotten bought off.

I mean, I know one producer, I will not say his name, who kind of blew me away with his grossness and told me a story that he basically made lists of things that sounded like provocative titles and then went and registered them with the Title Registry Bureau.

And I think you have to sort of show that there is some minor effort towards development. And the idea was if somebody does actually develop a film with that title they have to come to him and pay him. And he said he wants to get paid like $500,000.

**John:** Wow.

**Craig:** It’s so gross.

**John:** That’s gross.

Charlie’s Angels, the second Charlie’s Angels movie was called Charlie’s Angels: Forever, but that didn’t test well when they just were testing titles. And so Sony I think either had a list of other titles of things they owned or controlled, or just things they thought were cool titles. And so Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle was the one that tested the best and that became the title of the movie.

**Craig:** Full Throttle.

**John:** Full Throttle.

**Craig:** Full.

**John:** There is a motorcycle sequence in it so it kind of matters, makes some sense, but it’s just…it was tenuous.

**Craig:** Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle is sort of the movie version of Extreme for Doritos. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it seems good. [laughs] It’s Charlie’s Angels: Max.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Forever actually made more sense in that there were tremendous things in the script that were actually about sort of legacy and things going on…

**Craig:** Oh, John, no, no, no.

**John:** But no one cares about the deep thematic resonance…

**Craig:** Yeah, your themes of eternity and immortality were pushed aside because the Throttle, you see, needed to be full.

**John:** There was a Cirque du Soleil sequence in Charlie’s Angels for awhile that was never shot, but which would have been amazing, because you kind of want the Angels to fly, and then they could have actually flown.

**Craig:** That would have been cool. Why’d they cut that?

**John:** Yeah. Pretty. Because…

**Craig:** Oh, wait, I know, Half Throttle?

**John:** Half Throttle. All the Vegas stuff went away. And so it was at a Vegas, it was a heaven-themed Vegas casino.

**Craig:** Perfect.

**John:** It was good. And they also used to slide down the outside of the pyramid…

**Craig:** The Luxor, I was going to say. That’s the only casino you can slide down. Well, you know, years later yours truly was there watching a man parachute out of a helicopter. Flyover. It was close enough.

**John:** Fantastic. So, I wasn’t sure that in Hangover III that any of that was actually real. So, there was some help — there was some parachuting that was…?

**Craig:** It was real. The guy jumped out of a helicopter and parachuted over the strip. And actually did for real parachute over the Bellagio fountains.

**John:** I’m certain the insurance on that was crazy.

**Craig:** I don’t know. [laughs]

**John:** Not your responsibility. I love the big like not my problems.

**Craig:** Not my problem! I will say that the guy, the coordinator who handled that unit was awesome. Like, I just want to make a movie about that guy. And he does all the movies, I guess, and he’s just an amazing helicopter stunt pilot/parachute dude. What a life?!

**John:** It’s a great life.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s a great life until something goes wrong and you’re done.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** But it’s a great life while you’re doing it.

**Craig:** While you’re doing it.

**John:** Yeah.

Craig, it’s time for our One Cool Things.

**Craig:** Oh god. Do yours. [laughs]

**John:** I’ll do mine first. Mine was, I think, also sent to me by Rawson Thurber who gets the MVP award for like helping support the podcast this week. He sent this thing called The Hero’s Journey by Glove and Boots. And it’s these puppets who are talking about Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth, the hero’s journey, and sort of like what it actually means in movies.

And so the movie that they’re actually sort of talking through is Happy Gilmore, which seems like a real stretch for it, but they have a plausible case. And I thought it was a really good introduction to sort of like what the Joseph Campbell Monomyth is and sort of what we talk about when we mean they call it the adventure and these are the kinds of characters who you see in this thing.

What I don’t think it does an especially good job at is the reality checking of not every great movie has the Joseph Campbell arch and Monomyth in it. And many movies that are terrible actually try to hit all those things and it doesn’t really work. So, it’s not a formula that guarantees that you will have a good movie, but it’s an interesting pattern you can see in many movies that you love, and it’s an interesting way of thinking about sort of what is a classic hero’s journey in film.

So, I would recommend that and it’s funny and goofy. And it reminded me of Wonder Showzen, which was a great show. For all I know it could be some of the same people doing it. But it was a good, fun thing. It was a little YouTube video worth your six minutes.

**Craig:** I’ll check that out. I do have a Cool Thing. I’ve been holding this one back for awhile, because again, I hate praising — myself or anyone. But I have a friend named Ken White. He’s a lawyer. He’s a defense attorney actually here in Southern California. I give him a lot of crap about defending criminals and all the rest, although somebody has to do it, right?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Ken is one of them, maybe the principal author, of a multi-author blog called Popehat. Popehat. Popehat.com.

And what I love about Ken is he’s — I mean, politically he and I are very similar. Just sort of strong libertarian streaks, no party allegiance, not afraid to point our fingers at anyone and go, pfft, like that. And he is an excellent writer. He’s an excellent writer and very good at explaining legal things. And there was one saga that he followed, I don’t if you were familiar with the Prenda Law case.

**John:** I don’t know what that is.

**Craig:** So, there’s this whole thing about these copyright trolls, where these companies will buy up copyrights that are essentially worthless and then go after people who are maybe pirating them or maybe not, and just extorting settlement fees out of them.

And there was this company, Prenda, that basically, they were a law firm. And what they did was they…

**John:** By the way, Prenda is such a made up name.

**Craig:** Isn’t it amazing, right? Prenda.

So, Prenda is a law firm. And this law firm decided, “Look at all the money we can make. What we’re going to do is we’re going to basically start a shell company, as lawyers we’re going to start a shell company that will represent,” this is already a no-no. “That shell company will buy up a bunch of useless copyright for porn. Old copyright porn, okay. And then we’re going to go and basically find some ding-a-ling somewhere that downloaded four minutes of that porn, or not, send them a threatening letter and say basically you need to settle with us.”

And it was an amazing scam, because who wants to actually go to court over their porn downloading? Except one guy did. And oh my god did Prenda Law get their asses handed to them. And Ken just covered it beautifully and wrote about it in such a great, clear, instructional way, with plenty of doses of anger. And all the things you could want from a wonderful internet nerd. He is a great guy. And so I recommend that you all check out Popehat.com.

**John:** Fantastic. So, links to Popehat.com and this Hero’s Journey clip on YouTube and all the things we were talking about on today’s podcast you can find at johnaugust.com/podcast.

If you have a question for us, if it’s longer you can write to ask@johnaugust.com. And Stuart sort of sorts through those and helps find the good questions out of those batches. But if you have a small thing you want to say to Craig or to me, Craig is @clmazin on Twitter. I am @johnaugust on Twitter.

We have a Facebook page that we never actually mention, but people sometimes come there and like us.

**Craig:** They do?

**John:** We do have a Facebook page.

**Craig:** Huh. I’m plugged in as always.

**John:** Yeah. If you are listening to this in iTunes and want to give us a rating, that would be fantastic. We’d love that. It helps other people find our show. If you are not listening to us on iTunes, it would be great if you subscribed, because that way we would sort of know how many people are out there listening to our show.

And I think that’s it.

**Craig:** I think we should get Bon Jovi to sing us out.

**John:** That would be fantastic.

**Craig:** We’re the Bon Jovi of screenwriting podcasts.

**John:** Yes. So, actually we have like two minutes here so I’m going to just launch into this right now. Because one of the things I want to be doing after this 100 episode madness has cleared is originally when I was doing the outros for these shows I would like find some goofy thing on YouTube that seemed to be about what we were talking about. And I would use that audio as the outro, which was fun, but I didn’t actually clear any of those clips.

And so in backups we’ve clipped that out because like, eh, I would hate for some weirdo, some Prenda Law person to come after for me using that.

**Craig:** Prenda.

**John:** So, what I’ve started doing is just took our [hums theme] theme and just built that into different little arrangements in GarageBand, which was fun and goofy for me to do. But, I would love some of our listeners to do the same kind of thing, and to give us an outro that uses [hums theme], and build something cool out of it.

So, if listeners would like to do that, the same address I gave to you before, ask@johnaugust.com, is the perfect place to do that. And just send us a link to something you’ve made.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** We’ll have more details up at some point with — it’s not a competition, it’s just an exhibition of…

**Craig:** It’s a competition. I’ll be judging. [laughs]

**John:** Craig will be silently judging what people are doing.

**Craig:** Silently judging.

**John:** But I really mean just if you have an interesting sound or a free couple hours on a Saturday and want to do something, I have a hunch that we have some very talented listeners who are not just writers, but who can also do musical kind of things.

**Craig:** Yeah, man.

**John:** So, if anyone would like to do a little outro, to be less than 30 seconds. It should be accessible to us in some way as a mp3 file so we can clip it onto the end of this. And if we do use your thing we will give you a link and a shout out in the show.

**Craig:** Nice! Man, this podcast is getting good. It took us 97 episodes. I feel like we’re just about there to good.

**John:** We’re in a pretty good place. I think in the Behind the Podcast we’re almost at a place where “and then drugs came into the picture.”

**Craig:** Oh, exactly, like, “Everything was going great, and then…” This is it, oh, listen to that. The drugs [sirens blare in background]…they’re coming for me. Drugs.

Well, listen, the drugs will be kicking in. That’s the title of this podcast. [laughs] And then the drugs kicked in.

**John:** All right, Craig, have yourself a great week.

**Craig:** You, too, man. Bye.

**John:** I’ll talk to you next time.

LINKS:

* The live [100th episode](http://www.oscars.org/events-exhibitions/events/2013/07/script-notes.html) is sold out!
* WGA’s [2013 Annual Financial Report](http://www.wga.org/uploadedFiles/who_we_are/annual_reports/annualreport13.pdf)
* [John’s 2011 blog post](http://johnaugust.com/2011/you-cant-copyright-titles) on copyrighting movie titles
* [You got served: Weinstein fighting for ‘The Butler’ title](http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/goldstandard/la-et-mn-butler-name-change-20130703,0,6660171.story) from the LA Times
* [The Hero’s Journey](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZxs_jGN7Pg&feature=player_embedded) by Glove and Boots
* [Popehat.com](http://www.popehat.com/) and their [posts on Prenda Law](http://www.popehat.com/tag/prenda-law/)

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/10-questions-10-answers).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 94 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Now, Craig, in full disclosure, this is our second attempt at doing episode 94, because we got four minutes into it and you realized that something was not right.

**Craig:** Yeah, I totally blew it. We use these external mics and I didn’t switch the input source to the external mic, so it was trying to record me though my closed laptop. So, I sounded like a ghost in a wind tunnel.

**John:** Yeah. That’s never good.

**Craig:** A boring ghost in a wind tunnel.

**John:** But, now we’re here and we can do the podcast that we really want to do which is that we have so many questions that have stacked up. And they just keep piling up and piling up. And if we don’t address them at some point they will just burst through and the email folder will come to tatters.

**Craig:** Yeah, there’s a real thing called Question Poisoning.

**John:** Yeah. It’s deadly.

**Craig:** Deadly.

**John:** And there’s not enough media attention on Question Poisoning. It just builds up and builds up. And, you know, everyone talks about the Explanation Point Poisoning, and sort of that’s the danger, but no, it’s the question marks that are really the dangerous part here.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** So, we’re going to try to churn through a lot of these questions that people have generously written in. If people have a question for us, I should start by saying you can always write at ask@johnaugust.com and we will attempt to answer your question. You can also, if it’s a short thing, just tweet Craig or I. I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

But, Heather from Dahlonega, Georgia…see, the good thing about re-recording this podcast is I was actually able to say her city right.

**Craig:** [laughs] That’s good. Well, because it’s called Roald Dahl’s name in it, so I figured you’d pick up on that.

**John:** Oh, yeah, Dahlonega. So, now I can’t not say it.

**Craig:** Dahlonega.

**John:** Heather writes with a really good question. “Why do so many TV shows now produce less than the average 22 episodes a season if they’re not midseason replacements? And how is this affecting the writers?”

That’s a good question, Heather.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, Heather brings up the point that most seasons of TV shows we think about as being 22 episodes, but that’s not actually really correct a lot of times. When shows are really successful, sometimes they’ll do a 23rd or a 24th episode. That happened to Chicago Fire this year. And I think Castle does it. And that’s a thing that happens because networks want more of the hit shows so they can keep their ratings up, which is understandable and great; exhausting for the writers, but great.

And TV shows used to be even longer. Series could be like 30 or 40 episodes in a season, which just seems madness now. And they were shorter schedules on things and it was all crazy. Now, we talk about 22 episodes as being a full season. And we talk about 13 episodes as being the initial order for a TV show. So, an American TV show, classically, if it’s going to be a fall pickup they will order 13 episodes, sometimes they’ll order less — eight episodes, or not quite to 13. But they’ll order 13 episodes and if the show is a hit then they’d hope to order the back nine episodes which bring you up to a full 22. And that has been sort of the classic model.

But that classic model is changing largely because of cable, because of other changes that happened in the TV industry. And, Craig, in the previously recorded podcast you’d actually talked about the TV season and why we have the TV season that we do.

**Craig:** Yeah. The notion of the fall, I mean, so summer was a break. It wasn’t a break because they felt like giving writers a break. It was a break because people didn’t watch TV, at least in the early days, in the summer very much. The viewership numbers went way, way down. And, remember, this is back in the day of three networks. So, they don’t have to wonder where people are going. When the ratings at ABC go down, and NBC and CBS, it means people have turned their TVs off. They’re outside; they’re picnicking; their swimming. This was back when people used to move around and not just eat in front of their TV.

So, the summer seemed like a good time to actually just put reruns on the air because the viewership numbers weren’t at a level where they could get great advertising numbers. But, then the question is well why does the season start in the fall as opposed to like, oh, I don’t know, late August, or when kids go back to school. And it’s the fall because that’s when the new car models were introduced to the public. And the new car models drove a huge amount of the advertising.

So, they very quickly landed on a fall to late spring season. But, you know, that’s kind of gone.

**John:** It’s gone to some degree. I think we still have a fall season because broadcast television, which means the big networks in the United States, so NBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, they have a fall season because they still have an upfront season. And upfronts is where the networks display all of their new shows for the new season to big advertisers and the advertisers have a chance to buy a bunch of advertising time upfront and commit at a discount rate for the stuff that they want to — the commercials that they’re going to want to air over the next year.

And so it’s useful to broadcast TV to have a fall season. That doesn’t mean that everything has to be in the fall season, and I think we’re seeing more and more shows being introduced midseason.

But Heather writes like why some shows that aren’t even midseason don’t seem to go their full distance. And a thing that happens quite a bit is a show gets its initial order of eight, or its initial order of 13, and it may not get that back nine. It may not go to a full 22 episode season. And yet the network says like, “Well, it still did well enough that we want to give it another shot. We want to put it back on the network the next year.” And so therefore it might have a ten episode season the first year, and then ten episodes the next year.

That’s not awful. That’s just a thing that happens. It can be challenging for a writer who wonders whether, “Should I take a job on another show? Am I still under contract to this show so I can’t jump onto another show?” There’s challenging things with those short orders. But, that is a thing that really happens.

Now, in cable, weirdly a different thing happens a lot which is that you will get an order for ten episodes or 12 episodes and your season will go and you’ll go off and do something else and then you’ll come back and they’ll say, “Oh, no, no. This is still the first season. We’re going to just keep continuing on this same season.” And they do that because contractually that way they don’t have to give people their season bumps.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s lame.

**John:** It’s lame, but that’s the way that the contracts have sort of shaken out. And so it’s something that we should probably be addressing at some point in the WGA that you have to…

**Craig:** It should be by time, not by whim.

**John:** Yes. There should be some reason for why things kick into their next season of a show. But, for actors, and for writers, and for producers and everyone else who would get a bump in the second season, sometimes they will also get a title bump. So, like the first season you might be a staff writer and they’ll say, “We move you up to co-producer in your second season.” That wouldn’t happen because you didn’t actually have a second season; it was just a 40-episode first season that was spread out over four years.

So, that’s madness, but that is something that is happening right now.

**Craig:** It sounds like madness to me.

**John:** So that’s why Craig doesn’t do TV.

**Craig:** One of the many reasons I don’t do TV. I do actually kind of like the notion of the shorter seasons. It’s a very European way of approaching it. And certainly in cable there are shorter seasons, it seems like giving writers a little bit more time and directors in particular.

You know, people hear us talking about the writer-director issues in features. You know, directors in TV are constantly behind the eight ball. It’s actually one of the things that the DGA worries about when they go into negotiations and they try and protect their TV directors because they get these scripts at the very last minute. There’s no chance to prepare or really plan. And suddenly they’re thrown into this incredibly aggressive schedule to shoot the show. And so giving writers and directors a little bit more breathing room to create the shows would, you think, would maybe help quality.

But, you know, the business people have their quality and quantity graph. And that’s the way they approach it.

**John:** I will say in a general sense, I see more and more writers approaching shows as arcs of 13 episodes or arcs of seven episodes because they don’t know necessarily where their break is going to come. And I think a lot of feature writers would be more likely to approach television if they weren’t committed to that 22 episodes that’s just going to kill you.

**Craig:** It’s really scary to me.

**John:** With Chosen, which Josh Friedman and I set up at Fox, my hope — sort of my stated hope — was that we could get like a midseason order so that we could do ten or 13 episodes and have them be awesome rather than 22 episodes and have them be, you know, okay.

**Craig:** Alright.

Well, we have our next question from Anthony. Anthony! “Should one try writing a script before pursuing a career in screenwriting, or start pursuing a career in screenwriting, for instance an internship and assistant jobs, and learn how to do that first and then try writing?” I should say that I’ve added a lot of words into that question to make it read properly. [laughs]

So, Anthony…

**John:** Should I learn proper grammar before I start writing or should I do it afterwards?

You should write a script. But here’s the wonderful luxury of the screenwriter is no one can stop you from writing a script.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And so you should write a script. And you should write your script now. And you should see whether you enjoy the actual process of putting scenes together and writing a screenplay before you commit to doing it. It’s like, should I become a football player? Well, you should probably play some football first.

**Craig:** Yeah. When you say should I try writing a script before I pursue a career, or should I first pursue a career…do both. Write one now. Write one while you’re doing something else. Write one after you do that thing. Nothing is stopping you as John said from doing it.

You will learn just from the process of doing it. You will learn something. There will be some value. And you can rewrite that one if you feel like you’ve learned and you want to.

**John:** So, in full disclosure, I did try writing a script before I moved out and went to film school. And I just didn’t get it. All the pieces didn’t sort of fit together right for me. But, I think I didn’t have as much exposure to what real scripts look like. And I feel like now with the internet, and with like a thousand scripts online, and the ability to sort of see what that is actually supposed to look like, I would have read a lot more scripts and probably would have tried writing a screenplay before I ever moved out to Los Angeles.

**Craig:** Makes total sense.

**John:** Roger asks, “The last few years I’ve worked as a location scout on several movies and TV shows. This year I’m going to make a big push in sending out my scripts in hopes of getting an agent or a manager. Do you think my credits on IMDb as a location scout hurts my chances at getting representation or work as a writer? I know in this town it’s very easy to get pigeonholed. Should I use a pen name, my initials, or am I over-thinking this?”

**Craig:** Well, I’m glad he included this last little bit so that I could say, ah, that one. You’re over-thinking this.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Don’t worry. If your script is good that will be the matrix within which all is contextualized. If you write a good script then they’ll say, “Check this out. This guy wrote this great script and believe it or not he’s a location scout.” If you write a bad script it will be like, “Oh my god, do you want to see what a screenplay by a location scout looks like?” [laughs] That’s the way it goes. Okay?

Everything will be led by the quality of the script. You don’t have to worry about hiding what you do.

**John:** I will say if you have just terrifically embarrassing credits that you want to get off IMDb, get them off IMDb and go through whatever weird process you have to go through IMDb to get those credits taken off. Sometimes I’ve found where people will give me a “special thanks” on IMDb. It’s like, why did you give me a special thanks? So, now you have your link to your movie on my page? That’s just crazy.

And so I’ve had to…

**Craig:** That’s weird.

**John:** I’ve had to throw some tantrums about that. Because, that’s just not cool. And generally they’ve mentioned it in a nice way like, “This guy was a real inspiration to me and so therefore I want to thank him.” But then it shows up as like I was involved in this project which I wasn’t.

**Craig:** Eh, that’s weird. Don’t do that.

**John:** But if there’s something that like, you know, Steve Callahan is a friend, he’s an actor. He is a genuine actor and shows up in a lot of indies, but one of his credits is for this move that’s like Man at Urinal. And that’s the credit that shows up in IMDb. And I’m like, that’s not good at all.

**Craig:** I love it. I’m totally into it. Now, I want to see that movie. I want to see Man at Urinal.

**John:** Man at Urinal.

**Craig:** Well, Urinetown is great.

**John:** Urinetown is fantastic.

**Craig:** If Urinetown can somehow avoid the jinx of urine-based titles?

**John:** Urinetown relies too much on the theatricality of it all and the staginess of it.

**Craig:** It’s a great musical.

**John:** I like Urinetown a lot though, too.

**Craig:** It’s a great show. It’s a privilege…

**John:** It’s a privilege to pee.

**Craig:** …to pee.

**John:** I got it out first!

**Craig:** You did. Ugh!

Laurence from New York, otherwise known as Urinetown, “Why are actors sooo,” and he did put three zeroes, I mean Os. We call them Os! [laughs] I called the Os zeroes! What’s wrong with me?

“Why are actors sooo grossly overpaid in comparison to writers, directors, and/or producers? Are they paid more than you guys?” Now, first of all, I love those two questions. So, the first question as a premise and then the second question questions the very premise of the first question. Yeah, of course, they’re paid more than us if they’re big movie stars.

“It seems that if an actor is making $20 million then a director and writer should be making at least $30 million.” Oh, what a great guy. “But obviously this is not the case.”

**John:** Again, he’s like stating a premise, and then denying the premise.

**Craig:** It’s pretty funny.

**John:** So, let’s tackle the premise altogether. Are actors overpaid? That’s sort of one premise. And then are actors overpaid relative to writers and directors?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, are actors overpaid? Definitely, I think, we’ve gone through cycles where actors have been just wildly overpaid and that’s annoying. And yet you look at sort of why you pay an actor a certain amount of money. You pay an actor a certain amount of money because you believe that having that actor in your movie will guarantee you a certain amount of box office. That’s the only reason why you pay somebody a lot of money.

And so the classic example that everyone will always bring up is like Jim Carrey in The Cable Guy, who got $20 million for The Cable Guy. Well, maybe he was worth $20 million for him in that movie. I don’t know that the facts bore that out, but they felt that that was the right amount to spend on him.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s all about the marketplace. So, people ask this question a lot about professional athletes as well. There are actors who do get people to go see them in movie theaters. The trick of it is very few of them, really none of them, do it perfectly consistently. What happens, therefore, is the marketplace is reactive.

You are an actor, you have a movie, it’s a big hit, and people perceive that it is a hit because of you, as an actor. The next movie you’re going to get paid a whole lot of money. Does that one not do as well? Okay, then that’s when you’ll be paid less. Everything is this sort of marketplace analysis of what your value is.

But considering that most movie studios won’t make big budget movies without actors, big name actors, yeah, they clearly have a real value.

I have to tell you, I don’t look at my value as connected to their value. So, in terms of this question of should they be paid more than writers — there’s no “should.” You get what you get. For me, I don’t care what you pay Melissa McCarthy. Pay her as much as she can get. I hope Melissa McCarthy gets a billion dollars a movie.

None of that impacts what I think I’m worth. Right? My worth is based on my market value. And my market value is based on what you think this movie will make for you if I write it. And what other studios seem to be willing to pay me if I don’t work for you. And I have had situations where studios have said, “Look, we would love to pay you this. The only problem is we’ve agreed to pay this actor this and our budget is really getting squeezed.” And my response is, “Not my problem. That’s your problem.”

If you paid this actor this much money and you knew you wanted to pay a writer, you wanted me to do it, but you don’t have enough money for me, that’s poor management on your part. Either pay me what I’m worth, and somebody else gets jammed, or expand the budget. But, the option of getting me for a discount because you decide to pay somebody else more than you ought to have, per your own budget? Nope.

And almost every time it works out.

**John:** Yeah. I mean, the writer has two choices. The writer can say, yes, I will take this amount of money which is less than my quote, or you could say no. And, I’ve had to say no sometimes. And that’s just the situation.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, back to this issue of actors getting paid. Classically Marvel, as they sort of set up this franchise for how their movies fit together, made very aggressive deals with the actors that they brought in so that they could have them for multiple movies, so that their salaries couldn’t go astronomically huge in success. And that has paid off very well for them.

So, they were able to make sequels to these movies with giant stars and actually be able to afford to make them. Now, I’m not clear sort of where Robert Downey Jr.’s deal is right now with Marvel, but if he doesn’t have any more movies under his contract he’s in a position where he could ask for a tremendous amount of money because he has driven some very, very big movies for them.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** All the same, Marvel can say, “You know what? We get that. That’s not our business model.” And they could with somebody else for Iron Man. And people would go, “Oh, no, you can’t do that!” But you know what? It would be fine.

**Craig:** Yeah. And look, this is why, forget fairness and just deal with reality, okay. I believe, of course, that writers are an extraordinarily important part of this process. The most important part. I’ll just go ahead and say it. I’m a chauvinist. Writers are the most important part of the process.

However, when a big band breaks up, let’s say U2 broke up today, and Bono went and did a tour and the other guys did a tour… — Well, here’s the deal. I can get a bassist, a drummer, and a guitarist to sound exactly like those other three guys, Clayton, Mullen, and The Edge. But I can’t get anyone to sound like Bono. Bono is Bono. It’s just one of those human things.

Human performance is incredibly specific. And, yes, they can ultimately go and get other people to write and direct Iron Man movies. They’ve done it. Right? They’ve proven they can do that. And you may like one better than the other, but if you put somebody else in the suit and it’s not Downey, I don’t know, it’s just not as cool, it’s not as interesting for that movie.

Michael Keaton? Turns out he was replaceable as Batman. Is Christian Bale, was he replaceable as Batman? No. [laughs] It’s just different. It’s just one of those things.

**John:** You’ll have to do a different version. And that’s actually something kind of exciting about doing the next version of something. That is fine and good.

Jay Z asks…

**Craig:** Oh, my god, Jay-Z?

**John:** Wouldn’t it be amazing if Jay-Z were listening to our show? You know who does listen to our show is Rebel Wilson.

**Craig:** I saw that tweet. It was very, it was like, “Ooh, look at us!”

**John:** Ah, Rebel Wilson, we adore you. You’re very, very funny.

**Craig:** Hey Rebel.

**John:** So, I hope you’re enjoying your hike, because apparently you listen to us while you hike.

Jay Z. asks, “If you are a screenwriter over 60,” oh, so it’s probably not the real Jay-Z.

**Craig:** Oh, it might be because Jay-Z is interested in senior issues.

**John:** [laughs] He’s very interested in senior issues. Interested in Cuba. He’s interested in Beyoncé Knowles.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And writers over 60.

**Craig:** Ageism.

**John:** “If you are a screenwriter over 60 still looking to break in, which of the following are true? Number one, stop, you don’t have a chance in hell at this point. Number two, you have to write the greatest screenplay of the 21st century to break in; anything less won’t get developed once they see how old you are. Three, if you walk into a meeting with a 25-year-old writing partner you might have a shot. Four, make your own low budget movie; it’s your only avenue at this point. Five, write a play or a book and hope it gets noticed.”

**Craig:** He seems to be missing six.

**John:** Which is?

**Craig:** Write a good screenplay! I mean, god, darn.

**John:** Well, number two was that essentially.

**Craig:** No, he wrote, “You have to write the greatest screenplay of the 21st century to break in; anything less won’t get developed once they see how old you are.” Here’s the thing — write a good screenplay. Write a good screenplay.

I’m sorry. I think that there is this belief that somehow you’re toxic because you’re 60 years old. You are not. I know a lot of screenwriters out there who if they’re not already 60 are getting really close, and they earn way more money than I do year after year.

If you write a good screenplay, note that screenplays do not come with a photograph of you and your birth certificate. Again, just like we mentioned to Roger the location scout — the screenplay will set the circumstances. The guy who wrote The King’s Speech, older gentleman.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** If they read the screenplay and they really like it they’re going to buy it. You know why? Because they’re going to make money off of it. Don’t beat yourself down right off the start with a list, with an iteration of things you cannot control.

**John:** Yeah, don’t nick yourself.

Where I think he has some reasonable questions which is when I go into the room to do all the stuff, when I do the water bottle tour of Los Angeles and do all those first meetings, will it be different with me going in as a 60-year-old than me going in as a 25-year-old? Yes. It will be.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Because you will be older than some of the people that you’re sitting there and talking with. That’s just a fact of life. And so your question about like if you had a 25-year-old writing partner, would that be helpful? Yeah, it might be helpful, just the way perception works. And that’s if someone sees you as someone who is perceived as a peer rather than as their father, that could be useful.

But they’re ultimately going to respond to can this person write or can this person not write. Do I trust this person can write the movie that I want them to write and deliver? Then, you’re happy and you’re golden.

Now, going to say writing a book or a play and hope it gets noticed, well, you could absolutely do that, but I don’t think those are the best ways to get started as a screenwriter. If your goal is to be a screenwriter you should be focused as a screenwriter. If that doesn’t work out and you like to write plays or books, those are things which I think tend to favor people who are not so young, and therefore you could be successful at that at any age.

But don’t stop — don’t kill your dreams of being a screenwriter simply because of your age.

**Craig:** Yeah. Let’s remember that if you want to look at a group that gets more rejections a year age wise, it’s going to be 20 year olds, because they’re writing the most screenplays, I think. And they’re getting their butts kicked out there. Okay? It’s no picnic for 20-year-old screenwriters, believe me.

One thing to think about if you do end up in rooms with people is that your attitude will carry you a long way. If there is a positivity about you and an acknowledgement that this is a bit odd, “I know, I’m 60. Maybe this isn’t what normally happens but, you know what, I’m having fun. I’m enjoying it. I have the kind of energy and spirit of somebody that isn’t 60, or 20, or 30, but just a writer who wants to make a great movie.” You will be appreciated.

If you walk in there with the burden, the silent burden, of all these presuppositions — that you’re being judged, that you’re going to be discarded, that you’re going to be somehow the victim of inherent discrimination — it’s going to radiate off of you and get kicked back at you. It will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I can’t tell you that ageism isn’t real, because it is. I can’t tell you that you won’t suffer from it, because you very well may, might, or almost certainly will at some point.

All I can tell you is worrying about it and factoring it into the way you behave isn’t going to change anything.

**John:** I would expand that to sort of all of the isms or “obias” that you’re going to generate for yourself. And so I’ve walked into these rooms. You know, I had a meeting with Tony Scott. I’m like the gay guy going in to pitch to Tony Scott. And he’s like smoking a cigar in the room. But, you know what? It was just fine. And like I could have been freaking out about sort of what that was going to be like. And it was absolutely just fine.

And, you know, if you’re a woman going into a room to pitch, like, you cold freak yourself out about how this is all going to work, or you could be the person who is like confident going in there and delivering the goods and you’re probably going to have a much better outcome there.

So, it’s not to say that none of these things are real and that there’s not a reason to talk about them or discuss them. I would say that there’s not a reason to let them stop you from trying to do what you’re trying to do.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes. Yes.

**John:** Next, Fiona. Do you want to ask her question? It’s a long one.

**Craig:** Boy, all right. “How does someone hire you?”

**John:** That’s Fiona’s entire question.

**Craig:** [laughs] It’s so great.

**John:** And here’s why I picked this question, because I could read it two ways.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** The one question is like how does someone hire a writer, which I think is an interesting thing we don’t kind of talk about.

**Craig:** But I really think Fiona wants to know how do you get work.

**John:** No, I read this as how does Fiona hire me. I thought she’s saying, “How do I hire John August to do…”

**Craig:** Okay, see, that never occurred to me.

**John:** I would say a few times a year just a random person will say like, “Hey, I have this idea for a movie. How much would it cost to hire you to write this movie?”

**Craig:** I get that.

**John:** And that’s a charming thought. And so I don’t want to sort of automatically dismiss that [crosstalk].

**Craig:** I always tell them $800, and that’s enough to back them off.

**John:** [laughs] So, let’s talk about how writers are hired overall. And so writers are generally hired by studios and by producers when there is an existing something to adapt or the writer has come in with a pitch for some project and then the studio or producer or production company will hire that writer to write that for them so then it becomes a work-for-hire, which is an important sort of copyright concept.

So, you, the writer was the original writer of something, but authorship and copyright rests with the people who paid you the money to write it.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** They will pay you a certain amount of money to deliver a draft. And if it’s a WGA sort of situation, they will pay you a certain fixed amount to start writing and a certain fixed amount when you deliver. And there will be hopefully some guarantees about reading periods, and that they can’t sort of drag it out forever.

There are hopefully some guarantees in that contract, even if it’s not WGA, about sort of how this relationship is going to work.

It can be very little money. So, for like the non-WGA things, maybe it’s $5,000 to write a script, which is not a lot. If it’s a big tent-pole project, there are some scripts where people are paid $2 million, $3 million to write something. There’s a huge range of how that happens.

When was the last time where someone wanted to hire you individually as a person? Has that happened to you in your career? Someone who wasn’t representing a company but just wanted you to do something for them?

**Craig:** No, it’s been forever. I mean, I initially started when I was first out here and I was working, I was working in advertising. And so I was a copy writer for entertainment advertising, you know, trailers and TV spots and stuff like that. And so I would freelance and get hired by individuals at various, you know, people think that studios make trailers. The studio doesn’t make the trailer. They hire a trailer company to make the trailer. And the trailer company doesn’t really make the trailer. They hire people like me to go write the copy for the trailer.

It’s a whole thing. But, yeah, but it’s been 15 years or more.

**John:** Yeah. Going back to Fiona’s question about how do you hire a writer, generally if there’s a project, like, I have this book that I now control the rights to and I want this writer to do it. You would approach that writer’s agent. You would figure out what agency they’re at. You can call the Writers Guild to find out who represents a certain writer. You would call the agent, talk to the agent, convince the agent that you are not a crazy person. And then that agent would report to the writer saying like, “This person wants you to read this thing and I’ve read it and you should maybe consider doing it.”

You usually go through the representative, so either the agent or the manager to get access to that writer and get them to pay attention to you and see whether they would work on this thing for you.

**Craig:** If you want to hire me, if anybody out there wants to hire me it’s very, very simple. A briefcase of kidneys. I would write anything for 20 kidneys — healthy — packed properly in ice. Or five hearts.

**John:** Now, there was some writer and I feel like it is John Milius, but I may just be completely making this up. It’s probably an apocryphal story anyway. But like the price to hire him was a certain amount of money and like a rifle and some deer to shoot. There was some bizarre thing where like he wanted…

**Craig:** Oh, that’s bizarre? Should I have not asked for that? [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] It’s a standard rider. So, you have like no green M&Ms in you bowl and some deer to kill.

**Craig:** I would accept lungs. I used to not. But, you know, things are getting tight. [laughs]

**John:** You know what’s good about money? Money is fungible and you can buy things with money. I get so frustrated when people want sort of those other things. And it’s just like, no, no, get money.

**Craig:** You think money is fungible? You should try human organs.

**John:** Ha-ha.

**Craig:** No taxes. Very portable.

**John:** For this project I’m working on I’ve had to learn a lot about gold. And gold is one of those things that seems like, oh, it’s fungible, and it’s safe, and it’s bankable. Gold is really a pain in the ass. And I don’t fundamentally get why people still want to use gold because it’s just difficult in so many ways.

Even though it’s exciting that you can actually sort of melt it down into different things, you have to test it and it’s just not good.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a big pain and it’s super heavy. I mean, but it’s shiny and it’s beautiful.

**John:** It is shiny and beautiful.

**Craig:** It’s beautiful.

**John:** And like if you’re a Looper then I could understand why they would want to give you some gold blocks to pay you off, because that would make a lot of sense.

**Craig:** Yeah, oh, for sure. But, you definitely can’t use hearts or lungs.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** Because just the time. Well, anyway. So, what’s our next question? [laughs] Oh, Ferdinand.

**John:** Ferdinand from East Prussia asks, “Say you’ve got a scene set on a sidewalk then partway through a character arrives via car. You want to show his approach from inside the car, but there isn’t necessarily any dialogue or more than one shot before the sidewalk scene continues. How do you handle short inter scenes. I’ve always assumed they get their own slug line, brief scene description. However, when breaking down a script for production it’s a little misleading to identify this shot as a scene, isn’t it?”

**Craig:** Uh-huh.

**John:** This is Ferdinand from East Prussia, or just a clever name. It’s probably not a real person from East Prussia, but wouldn’t that be awesome?

**Craig:** Well, East Prussia is either from the east of Prussia, or it’s East Prussia, Pennsylvania. I think there’s an East Prussia, Pennsylvania.

**John:** I thought that Ferdinand was like the deposed, like assassinated person of East Prussia?

**Craig:** Archduke Ferdinand was…

**John:** Wasn’t he Prussian?

**Craig:** No. I think he was a Serb.

**John:** Okay. Well, I’m going to type this in and see what…

**Craig:** Right now. Let’s do a live Google. Live Googling. Archduke Ferdinand I think was…Bosnian?

**John:** Ferdinand Krueger of East Prussia…maybe not?

**Craig:** Oh, he’s from East Prussia, Illinois?

**John:** Maybe.

**Craig:** I thought it was Pennsylvania. But the Archduke Ferdinand who was shot was definitely not from Illinois.

**John:** Yeah. I know almost nothing about actual history. [laughs] I’m sadly just awful at most of history. I now know that World War I came first.

**Craig:** Oh boy. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who I propose was Serbian, was in fact, well, he was Austro-Hungarian and Royal Prince of Hungary and Bohemia. And his actual nationality was, oh, I’m sorry, his assassination in Sarajevo precipitated Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war against Serbia.

**John:** Mm-hmm. If it didn’t happen on Game of Thrones I’m not going to really follow what happened.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That’s as much history as I can sort of take in.

**Craig:** WWI was the original Game of Thrones. It was Game of Thrones but with mustard gas.

**John:** Oh, yeah. But they have the equivalent of mustard gas. You get that…

**Craig:** Yeah, Wildfire.

**John:** The dragon wildfire; the dragon stuff that they shoot out there and that was cool. That was green.

**Craig:** In WWI every day was the Red Wedding. Every single day. So, when things like that happened everybody was like, “Eh, it’s just another day.”

**John:** Back to Ferdinand’s question. So, he’s asking about sort of what happens when a scene is going to continue but you have to show a new thing that’s going to interrupt that scene.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a good question.

**John:** I would probably do that as a slug line. How would you do that?

**Craig:** I generally don’t, because I find that it’s going to make the read too jangly, because I really don’t want… — I mean, I understand what he’s saying. We don’t really want to feel like we’re watching three scenes in one scene. It’s one smooth flowing scene; there just happens to be a shift of a POV into an interior of a thing.

The interior of a thing really doesn’t demand a slug line. So, what I would probably do in this case is just an all caps action line FROM INSIDE THE CAR or POV INSIDE THE CAR, describe the POV inside the car, and then BACK TO SCENE as the next action line.

I might bold POV INSIDE THE CAR. Here’s the thing — you as the screenwriter, you’re trying to, again, as we said before, paint the movie for the people reading it. And that will do that. When it gets time for production, the first AD is going to go through and what he may just simply do is assign a number to that shot, just so that they know they have to be inside the car for that shot.

**John:** Yeah. So, you and I are actually talking the same thing, but you say slug line for what I would call a scene header.

**Craig:** Oh, I see.

**John:** I would do that same thing where it’s an all caps line that’s on the left that is indicating that it’s a major thing to pay attention to, a shift, and therefore we’re doing that but it’s not actually a new scene.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And I agree with you that when the AD is going through and breaking down the script, if that was scene 32, she might call that scene A32, acknowledging that that little moment is a separate little blip that they’re going to have to pick up the day of shooting.

A general conversation about when you’re inside cars I’ll often go to the INT/EXT header for what that is, because if you’re inside the car and you’re outside the car, like you’re inside a car but you are in an outdoor environment. And so sometimes it’s really about the neighborhood that you’re in is as important as being inside that car.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, INT/EXT can be your friend when you’re inside the car, a scene that’s happening in the car but then it’s also getting outside of the car.

**Craig:** Yup. That’s true. Depends really on balance. You know, if you just have one moment that’s inside, then just call that out. But if you’re back and forth, if it’s somebody inside a car talking to somebody outside of the car and it’s back and forth, yeah, then just INT/EXT.

Next we have Jeff who wonders, “If you have an agent but you feel he or she isn’t doing enough to get your work out there, what are appropriate ways of being proactive?” Well…

**John:** Well, you’ve come to the right person because Craig is an expert at dealing with agent type situations.

**Craig:** Fire them! Well, I do love firing. In general, screenwriters are far too afraid to treat their employees as employees. Yes, an agent is an employee. Are they an employee who deserves a lot of respect and consideration? Yes. Should they be an employee/partner? Yes.

However, in the end they work for you. And if you are not satisfied with the way that they are doing their job, it’s a very, very simple thing. You call them up and say, “I want to sit down with you and I want to have lunch.” There is this thing in all agent brains that hears that and goes, “Oh no.” There isn’t one agent on the planet who doesn’t hear that and think, “Oh, great. I love lunch,” or, “Nah, I’m too busy for lunch.”

They all hear it and they go, “Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.” If they don’t hear “oh no” from that then they really are ridiculous and you should fire them. You sit down and you have lunch and you say, “Look, I’m not loving the way things are going.” And be as honest as possible. “I’m a little uncomfortable. I’m very disappointed. I’m mildly disappointed. I am infuriated.” Whatever it is, lay it out there. And just say, “I want this to work. And here’s how I think it should work. You tell me what I can do to help you, but here’s what I need you to do to help me.”

You have that lunch and you listen to everything they have to say and hopefully they listen to everything you have to say. That lunch is like a flare you just shot out there. If it doesn’t improve within a certain amount of reasonable time, call it three months…

**John:** I was going to say three months, too. Then you have to leave.

**Craig:** You have to leave. You have absolutely laid down the gauntlet and it’s time to go.

**John:** Now, Jeff is specifically saying you feel he or she isn’t doing enough to get your work out there. Now, the reality of the situation may be that no one thinks Jeff’s work is very good. And you’re going to have to listen carefully to the agent because the agent may be phrasing this in a way, saying it’s just not landing the way you would hope it would land; it’s not getting the response we really hoped for. And that may honestly be the case. Or, it may not be the case and you may have other ways of finding out sort of what’s really going on there.

A general thing is you can talk to other people about your agent. And so if you’re going out on some other meeting or you meet somebody at a party and you’re five minutes into the conversation, you can kind of talk about sort of like what agents are like, too. And maybe there really is a problem and maybe you’re just not at the right place.

So, it could be you. It could be them.

**Craig:** Right. And that conversation that you have with them sometimes could bring up… — I remember years and years ago I was grumpy because I was looking around and I saw some of my peers doing production rewrites, like little weeklies. And I thought, “Why aren’t I getting those offers? Where are those jobs for me? I feel like I could do a really good job on those sort of things.”

So, I sort of had a, “Hey, what’s the deal? Why don’t I get that?” And basically the response back was, “Because they don’t think you can do that and you’re going to have to prove that you can do that. And it’s a very small list of people that do that and you have to earn your way onto it. And if you want to earn your way onto it here’s what needs to happen.”

And I thought, oh, thank you for the honesty. And so it all happened. But I needed to know that it needed to happen. In other words, I needed to know that there was a process to go through in order to get there.

And, similarly, if you sit down with your agent and you lay all the stuff on the table and they say, “I’m having trouble because everybody hates what you wrote,” then you should say, “Well, thank you for that. That hurts, but thank you. It would have been better for me to know that from you sooner. And let’s see now if I can write something better.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But honesty, honesty, honesty.

**John:** Mark asks, “I was very lucky to get a spec of mine shot. I was involved in the process and on set, but obviously not making decisions after the script was handed in. The movie did not turn out well. I was hoping you can discuss the etiquette for what to do with that situation going forward. For example, when you’re in a meeting and people who read and liked your script asked how the finished product turned out, what do you say? I don’t want to say it’s great and then have them see it when it comes out and think I’m an idiot; but I also don’t want to complain or badmouth the people involved.

“My manager recommended to deflect the question by saying I’m too close to it to have perspective. Any other advice?”

**Craig:** That’s not a bad answer. I mean, the other answer — it sounds like what’s going on here is we’re in that gap between the movie being finished and the movie coming out. And it’s an important time for this screenwriter because when he says “I was very lucky to get a spec of mine shot,” it sounds like this is his first movie. So, he’s going out there now as a screenwriter that just has a movie coming out.

People like his script and now he’s a guy who’s been through the process of production. So, these meetings are about getting work. You don’t want to necessarily call an air strike in on your own position here. So, what you could say is, “I actually haven’t seen it. I’m hearing some good things, but honestly the director kind of ran with it and I haven’t really been a part of the process since. So, I’m looking forward to seeing the movie.”

Now, that may be a total flat-out lie. And if you’re not comfortable with that flat-out lie, you that you’re going to get caught in that flat-out lie, then I think something like, “You know, it’s different. It definitely reflects his vision. I’m still kind of wrapping my mind around it.” [laughs] That’s a good phrase.

By the way, everyone will know what you mean.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Sorry to tell you, unless you literally lie and say I haven’t seen it yet, anything less than “I love it,” everybody will go, “Oh, it’s shit.”

**John:** Yeah. So, I think your suggestion is good. I think the manager’s suggestion is good about sort of the deflecting. I would also maybe deflect it into, “Yeah, I just don’t know how it’s going to turn out. It’s such a weird process going through that.” And you could talk about what your intentions were going on and just go onto the next thing over.

You could talk about sort of how hard it is to get a movie made. Or, the classic thing that Laura Ziskin would always say is like, “I think we should just give an award for getting a movie made,” which was always a sign that like, oh, that movie did not turn out well.

But, that’s the reality. And people will pick up on that code and they’ll also know to stop asking questions.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, you can thank them for loving your script. It’s like, “Well thank you; that really means a lot to me that you read it.” It’s such a strange thing to have something that was so close to you that now is this movie that’s the same but different.

**Craig:** The other thing you can do is kind of an invitation for bonding is to say, “You know, it’s in process. I’ve seen a lot of it. It is so-and-so’s vision of what I did. I’m still not quite sure how I feel about it. I would love to hear from you. When you see the movie I’d love to hear from you as a third party who read the script and thankfully liked it, and thank you very much for that, what you thought of it. Because I’m kind of curious about that myself.”

**John:** Now, here’s another thing that we should tell Mark is that we don’t know where it is in the process. So, he says it didn’t turn out well, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s done. Because when I saw the first cut of Go, my first instinct was to kill myself. And my second instinct was like do something so this movie never comes out, because it was awful.

It was soul-crushingly awful. And it just did not work at all. And so I remember I was just sort of shaking. I was downstairs in the screening room at Sony. It was not at all what I wanted to do. And I was in this situation sort of like Mark where people loved my script and then fortunately only ten people saw this cut. I’m like, “I just don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to proceed.”

And how I ended up proceeding was we just went back and we just kept editing, and editing, and editing and sort of getting it back to what it needed to be and doing the reshoots and it turned out really well. But, if I had gone out and sort of like badmouthed it at that point, that would have been a mistake, too.

**Craig:** Never do that. Never, ever, ever do that.

**John:** So, what Craig says about like it’s early in the process. It’s fair to say that it was so tough to see it because it’s just not the same thing that you went through. And you can bond on that level, too.

So, maybe things will get better.

**Craig:** Yeah. Doom — oh, I guess things aren’t getting better — Doom writes, “I have one bone to pick. John’s use of the phase of The Avid,” which is not a phrase but rather a term, “drives me crazy.” Not as crazy as your misuse of the word phrase.

Sorry. I can’t help but editorialize as I read these questions. You’re much better at it then I am. I’ll start again.

“I have one bone to pick. John’s use of the phrase The Avid drives me crazy. The reason is because he is so fair in pointing out alternatives to ubiquitous programs like Final Draft. In every other category you make room for the possibility that someone else is not using your technology. But when it comes to film editing there is just The Avid.”

Well, it’s not actually a question; that’s a bone which is being picked.

**John:** Yeah. So, I chose the question because I think on some level Doom is right in that I’m using the Avid as a generic description for any non-linear editor, partly because I feel like we don’t have a good term for what that is, because “non-linear editor” is just too long of a word.

And I’m using the term the way that people who edit movies really do sort of use the term. Because even if they’re not cut on the Avid, in a general sense people will say “the Avid” because what they mean is literally that machine that is sitting in that room that the editor is staring at.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** So, that’s kind of what the term is that we use and I’m sorry that I’m Kleenexing it, but that’s really sort of what we use.

I think it’s lucky to live in a time where there are many choices in editing software. And so the Avid is certainly some of the most common stuff you see, but people use Final Cut. People use all of the other systems that are especially designed for commercials and things.

**Craig:** I just know really there’s the Avid and there’s Final Cut. And, frankly, it seems like Final Cut had its moment and then blew it. And we’re back to the Avid again. I don’t see anything else out there actually.

**John:** There actually is other stuff. And people who cut stuff for commercials and cut things for other systems, other systems are used in other things.

Most of the TV and film work that I’ve been encountering recently has been on the Avid. Final Cut Pro, the older version, was making some serious inroads. People sort of chafed at what Apple did with the revisions.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** They may be winning some of those people back but the Avid is just sort of the term that we use for these things. And it’s what people are sort of using as their workhorse in making features and TV shows.

**Craig:** I think that Doom, either you work for one of those companies, or you’re just a little fussbudgety. But, here’s the thing — is that really worth, I mean, as somebody that loves umbrage, you need to portion it out at the right moments I guess is my point.

**John:** It’s a good point because this took Doom easily ten minutes to write this email to me. And easily probably an hour to think about like, “Oh, that just drives me crazy!” He had to sort of sit with his anger long enough to decide to write the email about that.

So, it is sort of interesting that it actually crossed over a line to him for that. Because we got some two-page emails about the Bechdel Test and other things like that. And I can see where people were coming from, because they had a strong opinion about sort of how that stuff fit. Or, like, please don’t bring up Jesus again, because we had enough emails about that.

**Craig:** Oh, really?

**John:** Yeah. Oh, I’ll send you some of those. Nothing terrible. You shouldn’t be afraid for your life.

**Craig:** No. Should I be afraid for my eternal life? [laughs]

**John:** Basically saying your earlier Jesus analogy and your Moses analogies were pointing out reasons why they didn’t fit perfectly and really was kind of moot.

**Craig:** I’m sure that’s true, by the way.

**John:** Well, what’s interesting, going back to last week’s conversation about Nikki Finke and comments sections is that this is the kind of thing where it would be very easy to write in a comment section, but to actually — this person chose to email me his thought. I guess that’s why I’m responding to it because it took a lot more initiative to actually send the email to me and to have that personal relationship of like, “I am sending an email to you rather than just commenting on your blog.”

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, listen, I get it. It just seemed like a strange thing to be fussy about. Because, you know, if I were listening to a podcast between editors and they referred to Final Draft all the time. “Well, you know, when writers are on Final Draft,” I would think, yeah, I get it, because that’s what they know. I mean, that’s not…whoop-de-do. I’m not going to get that worked up about it.

Whereas they know about Lightworks and the little shark that comes along out of the door and eats your, or whatever that thing is.

Anyway, last question. Nick. Do you want to read this one?

**John:** No, you can do it.

**Craig:** “Is it a bad idea to copyright my screenplay? Some say that it’s a speed bump in the selling process because lawyers would have to get involved to get the copyright transferred to the production studio company. Thank you for any help.”

What do you think?

**John:** So, what Nick is referring to — obviously anything you write is copyright you. You don’t have to submit stuff. And he’s talking about the actual process where you’re submitting stuff to the copyright office and going through that process. And I’ve seen people come on both sides of that. And I’m honestly hoping that you’ll have a more definitive answer and I can just say I agree with Craig.

**Craig:** Well, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to copyright your screenplay at all. Yeah, it requires that somebody actually fill out the paperwork to transfer the copyright officially as opposed to just pretending from the start that you in fact wrote… — See, the fiction is this: You write a screenplay. It’s a spec screenplay. That’s you. Copyright you.

It’s not registered? Doesn’t matter. Your copyright. You then sell it to a studio. The studio wants to own that screenplay under a work-for-hire doctrine meaning I own this screenplay, all parts of it, I wrote it.

So, what they say is, “I’m going to buy this from you and part of the purchase agreement is that you agree that we commission this,” which they didn’t. And that is fiction. And the reason the Writers Guild allows this fiction is because it’s good, frankly, for the Writers Guild. Because what it means is that this is covered as employment and therefore the following things apply to it — minimums, and I believe health and pension apply to sale of literary material, I believe. I may be wrong about that. Credits, more importantly. And, of course, then the requirement that the person selling it get the first rewrite job on it, which is a big deal.

If you just go ahead and copyright it yourself, eh, so they transfer the copyright. And it may be, I’d have to check with the Guild to see if that would disrupt things like pension payments or health payments on the sale itself. But, you know what? I’ll follow up on that.

**John:** Okay. We’ll do follow up on that.

**Craig:** Yeah, I’ll follow up.

**John:** Because I remember being at a panel in which an entertainment lawyer was making a very strong case that you should absolutely register these copyrights and that it was a very important thing for writers to do. And I was surprised by it because I’ve honestly never done that on any of my specs.

**Craig:** I mean, the benefit of registering your screenplay with the copyright office is that in the case of infringement I believe registration with the copyright office does give you a certain avenue that you wouldn’t otherwise have. And I believe it’s to collect punitive damages as opposed to just damages of infringement.

But, let me check and see if there’s any downside over the Guild. And we’ll do a little follow up on that.

**John:** Cool. It’s time for One Cool Things. Do you have a One Cool Thing for this week?

**Craig:** Have I talked about the Fitbit before?

**John:** I think you may have. Is that the bracelet thing?

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, mine is like a little clip on in my pocket. If I have talked about it before then, oh well.

**John:** No, I don’t think you have on this podcast.

**Craig:** On this particular podcast I haven’t talked about it.

**John:** Yeah. I think maybe last week’s you did.

**Craig:** [laughs] So, I’ll just do it again. I’m like an old man now. “Have I told you about how I met your mother?” Yes!

**John:** Yes. [crosstalk]

**Craig:** It’s this little doohickey and you clip it to your pants pocket or your bra, if you’re so inclined, and it keeps track of all of your movement throughout the day. It keeps track of how many steps you take, how far you walked, distance. How many flights of stairs you go up and down.

And it’s super motivating because the theory is you should take 10,000 steps a day. You should walk five miles a day. This is just good, basic health. And because I’m wearing this thing and monitoring it with my iPhone and the computer, I’m just taking the stairs more and walking more. It’s so stupid, and yet it works.

I am a slave to a Fitbit now, and better off for it. And, oh, the other cool part of it is it monitors your sleeping. Again, this is something I got out of conversations with Bob Gordon of Galaxy Quest fame. So, you can wear it on a little wristband thing when you sleep — it’s very soft, so it doesn’t bother your sleeping — and it basically measures your restless moments and your awake moments and gives you just a general sense of how much did you actually sleep last night.

You know, yes, you lost consciousness at midnight and you regained consciousness permanently at 8am. But, did you sleep eight hours or did you sleep five hours and like three weird tossing, turning hours? So, it’s very cool. I like it. And it’s like $89 at Amazon.

**John:** Lovely. Cool.

my One Cool Thing is a website that is free and this is a suggest from a listener named Jason Ahlquist. So, Jason, thank you for sending me to this link.

It is called Mission Log. And the Mission Log Podcast has this archive of discovered documents from Star Trek, the original series, dating back to 1966. And there are a bunch of memos and photos and outlines from the original series from back in the day.

And so I’ve always loved seeing things like letters from Desilu Productions to Gene Roddenberry, and sort of talking about like, “I just read your script for The City on the Edge of Forever. Here are my notes.” And these are actually typed like on real typewriters. And they’re on letterhead. It’s just such a different way of how things used to be done.

And so it’s great to see notes about episodes of TV shows you’ve seen 30 times and sort of how they’ve changed over the time.

**Craig:** I’m going to check that out. that sounds awesome.

**John:** So, the Mission Log Podcast. And thank you, Jason Ahlquist, for sending that in.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** If our listeners have suggestions for things we should talk about on One Cool Things, or have questions about anything we’ve talked about on the show today, they should visit johnaugust.com/podcast. We’ll have those links.

We will also have information about the t-shirts. And I probably should have started the episode with this. The t-shirts, we have the amazing orange t-shirt and the amazing blue t-shirt.

**Craig:** So soft.

**John:** So soft. Stuart swears it’s the softest shirt he’s ever touched. This is the last week to order them. Actually, if you’re listening to this on Tuesday, Friday is the last day that you can order them. So, just stop whatever you’re doing, pull over the car, and just go to johnaugust.com/store and take a look at the t-shirts because they’re really good.

We’re only selling them in this window so that I just don’t have to deal with t-shirts for more than just this one little window. So, we are going to get the orders. We will make the t-shirts. We will put them in packaging and send them out to the world.

**Craig:** Are we profiting on these t-shirts?

**John:** We’re sort of barely on these t-shirts. We are covering out…

**Craig:** We do we make a shirt?

**John:** We’re going to cover our costs. So, we’ll cover our silk-screening cost.

**Craig:** No profit yet.

**John:** No profit yet.

**Craig:** I’m waiting for the profit part.

**John:** I think we make like five bucks on a shirt, maybe a little more.

**Craig:** Whoa! Woo!

**John:** So, that money will help pay for things like our transcripts, which I never talk about on the show, but it’s one of the rare things that a podcast does is we have transcripts for every single one of our — approaching — 100 episodes that are actually at johnaugust.com.

So, if you are listening to this podcast and wanted to go back and see what we actually said, if you go to the actual episode at johnaugust.com, at the bottom of every post when Stuart has the transcript he will put a link to it. And the transcripts are usually up three or four days after the episode. And you can go back and see exactly what we said.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So, that’s what we will cover. And it may help us buy some alcohol at our 100th Episode.

**Craig:** Woo!

**John:** So, in fact, we have two live events this summer. We have Saturday, June 29, which is part of the Writers Guild Foundation’s big benefit a whole full day craft seminar. Tickets are available for that right now. You can go to the Writers Guild Foundation. Just Google that and find tickets for that.

I think there are still tickets as we’re talking right now. And our 100th Anniversary Extravaganza…

**Craig:** The big show!

**John:** …which is Thursday, July 25. Tickets for that should go on sale July 1.

**Craig:** That’s going to be fun.

**John:** I’m really looking forward to that.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s going to be a great night. Are you going to wear something special?

**John:** No.

**Craig:** You’re just going to do regular…?

**John:** I’m dressing in normal clothes. Are you going to dress up?

**Craig:** Well, I’m either going to wear my regular clothes or I’m going to go like a full Liberace fur — I might do like a fur and sequins.

**John:** There’s nothing better on a nice summer night than fur and sequins. So, applaud that.

**Craig:** Furs. Rings.

**John:** And maybe you can just crank the AC so it’s all comfortable for you.

**Craig:** Rings. And those big boots that Gene Simmons would wear in Kiss. You know, just something for the ladies.

**John:** Yeah. Or, maybe you could bring Michael Douglas in to wear that for you and you could wear normal clothes.

**Craig:** Hmm. I’d have to get a hold of Michael Douglas somehow.

**John:** Oh, we’re going to have a bigger guest than Michael Douglas at our 100th Episode.

**Craig:** Oh? Well, now I’m showing up.

**John:** All right. Cool.

**Craig:** Awesome.

**John:** Craig, thank you for another fun podcast.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**John:** And we’ll talk to you again next week.

**Craig:** Bye.

LINKS:

* [Email us](http://johnaugust.com/ask-a-question) or tweet [John](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) or [Craig](https://twitter.com/clmazin) your questions for future episodes
* [Fitbit](http://www.fitbit.com/) helps you manage your health and wellness goals
* [Mission Log Podcast](http://www.missionlogpodcast.com/discovereddocuments/)’s archive of discovered Star Trek documents is fantastic
* [Order your Scriptnotes shirts](http://store.johnaugust.com/) before June 21st!
* The Writers Guild Foundation presents [The Screenwriter’s Craft: Finding Your Voice](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/the-screenwriters-craft-finding-your-voice/) featuring Scriptnotes Live
* John’s blog post on [this summer’s two live shows](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-live-in-la)

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/50-random-questions).

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

**Craig Mazin:** Mera naam hai Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 90 of Scriptnotes, a podcast this week not so much about screenwriting, but things that could be interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, how are you?

**Craig:** I’m fine. I have to tell you that I just spoke Hindi and you didn’t even — you didn’t care.

**John:** Yeah. I just accept that you’re going to do weird things every week, so I just…

**Craig:** I spoke Hindi, per a listener’s request.

**John:** That’s pretty great.

**Craig:** Yeah! I feel good about it.

**John:** You should feel good about it.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** I’m sorry. I should acknowledge when you jump out of your comfort zone.

**Craig:** [laughs] Because it doesn’t happen very frequently.

**John:** I should tell listeners that I offered to let you actually do the intro today, and you said, “No, no, no.” And now I know the reason why you didn’t want to do the whole intro is because you’d already practiced how you were going to do your Hindi for just your one thing. And that’s why you didn’t want to do the whole “Welcome to Scriptnotes.”

**Craig:** Allow me to embarrass myself. I didn’t even think that through.

**John:** Okay. [laughs]

**Craig:** [laughs] I really just think, you’re right, I mean, in retrospect that’s a good point. But more than anything I’m just becoming Rain Man-ish, and I don’t like change.

**John:** Yes. So, last night I hosted this thing at The Academy and it was tremendously fun. And we had like a thousand people there, which was great and nuts, and so I want to thank everyone for coming.

**Craig:** Awesome.

**John:** People came up afterwards. But, it struck me — I knew I would need to start off the evening, and I just wanted to get through the first three sentences without messing up. And so I was going to start like, “Hello and good evening on behalf — my name is John August — on behalf of The Academy it is my pleasure to welcome you.”

But because I always start the podcast as, “Hello and welcome,” it was so hard to break myself of that. And so before I was going up on stage I was just in a loop going, “Hello and good evening. Hello and good evening. Hello and good evening.” But I got through it!

**Craig:** You got through it, buddy. I’m super proud of you.

**John:** Oh, thank you so much. And it made me think about our live episodes of Scriptnotes coming up this summer and how excited I am about those.

The one for the Writers Guild Foundation is a lock. And that is definitely going to happen. The second one in July, dates could be shifting a little bit, but there’s going to be something in July to celebrate our hundredth anniversary. So, I look forward to seeing more of our people in person then.

**Craig:** Yes, our people.

**John:** Our people.

**Craig:** Come to us, our people.

**John:** Craig, you had two items for the agenda before we get to all of these great questions that listeners have submitted. So, let’s talk through the agenda items first.

**Craig:** Yeah, real quick, because we have so much to talk about today. So many questions to answer. Two topics. One, Zach Braff redux. And, two, what’s going on with E! and the Fashion Police strike.

So, real quick on Zach Braff. There was kind of a weird thing that happened over the last couple of days where The Hollywood Reporter basically said, “Hey look, this other film financier came in and gave him a whole big bunch of money, like another $8 million or whatever.” So, he is, according to that article, he is funding his movie with traditional funding and all of you people that gave him $2 million, why? Why would you have done that?

Turns out that’s not exactly the case. Really what’s going on is that it’s gap financing. And Zach Braff had always said in his Kickstarter, “Look, I’m going to fund this movie through Kickstarter and foreign presales.” And foreign presales kind of work in such a way that you sell the movie to people before you make it based on who’s in it. And they say, “Okay, we’ll buy it for this.”

But you need to make the movie now. That’s money is not showing up for awhile. So, these gap financiers come in and say, “We’ll loan you that money, because we have the collateral of all these people who have agreed to pay you the money.” And so that’s kind of how that works.

However, I should just add, I don’t think people really understood how foreign financing presales work and, frankly, the truth is even though he told you this from the start, he was really saying, “Look, I’m going to finance this movie half traditionally for people that get something for what they give, and half not traditionally — you get nothing for what you give.” So, I’m not surprised that people are confused. This is going to come up and up again.

**John:** I didn’t follow it all that closely, but it seemed like there was backlash. And there was backlash-backlash, and it just becomes this big cycle of whatever. It’s very common — what you’re talking about with gap financing — is actually very, very common. It’s how a lot of indies get made. And so there’s nothing wrong with that. It just gets swirled into all of this crowd sourced excitement and enthusiasm and it just becomes weird.

So, I can understand everyone’s perspective on why they’re frustrated.

**Craig:** Right. Normally this isn’t an issue because films are financed by financiers who are in it for profit and not for joy and pro-social activity. Now, we’ve kind of — it’s a strange thing to fund an enterprise with both charity and traditional profit investment.

**John:** Now, while I know almost nothing about the Zach Braff situation, I know even less about this E! Fashion Police thing, so catch me up to speed on that.

**Craig:** So, Fashion Police, I don’t know if you ever watch it.

**John:** No. I don’t. I never actually turn on E! — like for years I haven’t seen E!. So, tell me about it. It’s a Joan Rivers show?

**Craig:** It’s a Joan Rivers show. So, it’s a panel show, Joan Rivers, and Kelly Osbourne, and a very thin woman, and a very funny fashion guy, they critique red carpet fashion. And it’s just a super gay catty show and it’s really, really funny. My wife watches it religiously, so I kind of absorb it. You know, she has her thing of Fashion Police and then The Soup. And it’s actually really, really funny. I mean, Joan Rivers is still super, duper funny.

But, the problem is that the writers of that show just haven’t been paid very well. And they essentially want to be unionized. They want it to be a WGA show. A lot of them are WGA writers, which kind of drives me crazy a little bit, because if you’re a WGA writer you’re not allowed to write on shows that are not WGA shows if there is a contract that exists to cover that show, or that could cover it. You know what I mean?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s one of our rules. And it kind of makes me nuts, but I guess it’s so widespread you can’t do anything about it. Long story short, they walked off and basically said, “Look, we want a union deal.”

And E! said, “Um, yeah, listen, um, all you have to is vote. If you just have an official union election governed by the NLRB then we’ll let you be WGA.”

And I just wanted to tell people following along at home, if you’ve read that, that’s basically baloney. The deal is the writers have already expressed that they want t be union. The great majority of them want to be union. E! has the ability to just say, “Oh, okay, you all want to be union, or a great majority of you want to be union. Poof. Let’s just start negotiating a union deal.”

The reason they’re insisting on an official NLRB election process is because that drags it out, it gives them a lot more control over the process. They have the potential to try and fire some people, even though that’s illegal they do it all the time. They also have the ability to put a lot of pressure on the writers to not vote. They get a chance to make their case very strongly. It’s essentially a union-busty kind of thing.

But the fact is all they have to do, when they’re like, “Just vote.” They don’t need to vote. Everybody that understands how unions work knows what they’re doing, so anyway, what I’m really saying is, hey, E!, come on. They want to be Writers Guild. It’s the right thing to do. It’s a funny show. I’m sure you guys make a lot of money on it. Please, just come on.

**John:** Yeah. In previous situations we’ve talked about reality shows and it’s a question of like is that really writing, what are they really doing, and there was a whole controversy when the WGA was trying to cover these shows. There was a real question of is that the kind of thing that should really be covered.

But here, this is writing…

**Craig:** Oh, clearly.

**John:** You’re writing material that’s being performed on the show.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s a comedy variety show. So, come on, E!. Enough with the, “Oh, we need an election.” Gee, golly, if only they would just vote.” Yeah, come on, please. Too smart for you.

Okay. So, those were my follow ups.

**John:** Hooray. My only bit of news that I will launch before we go into our big questions is Highland Version 1.0.2 is in the Mac App Store right now, so if people are using Highland they can download the new version. The new version has a really cool way of making things uppercase. You can hit shift-return and it makes that line uppercase, which is incredibly useful in Fountain.

And it has lyrics, because I needed people to sing. So, this is completely scratching my own itch. I needed lyrics, and now there are lyrics.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Hooray.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** But our podcast today, I’m so excited, is all about things other than screenwriting. That will be the last screenwriting thing we’ll mention today, because for now on it’s just John and Craig talking about stuff we are probably not really qualified to talk about, but we’re going to talk about anyway. We’re going to answer these questions.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** So, people wrote in. We had 90 questions or something. We had a tremendous amount of questions. We culled the list down a little bit. People wrote in at ask@johnaugust.com. They sent us Twitter questions. They went on our Facebook page and asked questions. So, let’s hit it.

**Craig:** Let’s do it.

**John:** Maybe we’ll alternate, so I’ll start with the first question which is from a guy named Jason. “If I someday have the opportunity to be uploaded into a robot body, should I do it?”

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** I say yes also. And, obviously, the topic of mortality and sort of what it means to be alive are valid questions. They’re good philosophical questions. They’re good questions for a movie. But, if I had the opportunity to like not die, and be a robot, I’m okay with that.

**Craig:** Yeah. You definitely want to do this, because you are just your brain. I’m assuming when you say “uploaded into” you mean your brain as exists uploaded in.

I’ve often wondered what happens if — I guess it doesn’t matter — you upload your brain, you make a copy of your brain into a robot. Now, you and your robot friend are kind of in that moment the same, but now it’s just that your robot friend who is you just diverges from that point because of their different experiences.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But, it would be fun to know that person.

**John:** It’s like the software has forked and it’s gone in different directions. It comes down to the question of software and hardware. And is the person the hardware, is the person the software? I am a software person. I think the person is the code that’s running. And if that code can run without your physical body, I’m cool with that.

**Craig:** Totally. Now, the key for me is if you upload me into robot body, I kind of actually want you to kill my other self. [laughs] Because there can only be one.

Next question. Do we say who wrote in, or no?

**John:** Yes, we’ll say the person, but not the last name. But you can say Vancouver.

**Craig:** Yeah, Sarah in Vancouver. “This year I decided to stop coloring my hair and let my natural dusky silver grow in. Seeing as you’re both the same vintage as me, and the kind of men I’d be attracted to…”

**John:** Mmm.

**Craig:** Oh, hmmm…”I’m wondering what your thoughts are on the attractiveness and sex appeal of women with gray hair. I seem to be the only one excited about being natural again. People either find it amusing or disturbing. Am I alone out here? What should I do?”

**John:** Yeah. She didn’t include a photo, so we don’t know whether she’s a woman who looks amazing with gray or silver hair.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Look, I think natural can be awesome. And I think if you like being natural the way your hair is, that’s great. The most important thing about being attractive is being confident. And if being natural gives you confidence there, that’s terrific.

**Craig:** Yeah. I basically agree. I mean, definitely what happens is your physical appearance is the thing that kind of starts the ball rolling with men, but those of us who are into women, a lot of it then is what happens after. So much of it is what happens after. What happens when you open your mouth and you start talking? Are you interesting? Are you fascinating? Are you funny? Are you cool?

It’s a fact that biologically men are programmed to be attracted to youth. It just comes down to the whole spread your genetic material around pregnancy, animal behavior theory of sex and sexual attraction. So, it will probably stop a few guys in their tracks. It may make it a little more difficult for some guys.

But, you know, whatever. Who cares? If you’re cool and you’re awesome, I don’t really think it’s going to stop anyone.

**John:** I would agree. Next question comes from Ben in San Angelo, Texas. “If you had to start from scratch, let’s say your current mind got zapped to your teenage body, would you do it all over again?”

**Craig:** Interesting theme that keeps emerging. Well, yeah, I would do it all over again because I love my life, and I love all of it, even the parts that are terrible.

**John:** Yeah. I thought about this a lot. And if I could go back and sort of do junior high and high school, all that stuff over again, I would because there was stuff I definitely enjoyed, but there is stuff I know I would enjoy differently knowing what I know now.

**Craig:** Oh, wait, you know what you know now?

**John:** Yeah. That’s the trick of the question — do you get to take your current experience with you back to the past?

**Craig:** Oh, no, I don’t want to do that. I just want to basically do everything that’s happened already again. I want to rewatch the episode.

**John:** Yeah, I don’t know that I want to do everything that’s happened again. I mean, I’ve had…

**Craig:** So, you don’t want to meet Mike? You’re going to meet some other guy. You might not have a kid. You get run over, [laughs], by a cart.

**John:** Yeah. There’s a Sliding Doors quality of like if you got to live your life again would stuff necessarily turn out better for having the information. Maybe not.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** All right. Cool.

**Craig:** So, finally a difference there. Justin from Arlington, Virginia with a great question. “Croissant, English muffin, or biscuit?”

**John:** I think they’re all excellent choices. I can enjoy any one of those things. I find that a great biscuit at the right moment with a little butter, a little honey, there’s maybe nothing better.

**Craig:** I find biscuits to be big handfuls of glue and croissants are too greasy for me. I’m an English muffin guy.

**John:** English muffin for a hamburger, by the way, a fantastic choice.

**Craig:** Yeah, I do it all the time. Whole wheat English muffin. Hard to beat.

**John:** Ed writes, this is a question for you, “What E-cigarette brand do you recommend? Any cons to e-cigging?”

**Craig:** Interesting that this question comes up because I quit smoking those things.

**John:** I’m so glad, Craig.

**Craig:** You know, you don’t have to be that glad. It’s not that big of a deal, although I have to say it’s — ugh, quitting nicotine is the worst. What it does to your brain? Ugh, anyway. It’s been a weird week. You can imagine.

So, look, what I recommend is just not starting, but if you’re smoking regular cigarettes, definitely. And you don’t want to deal with cold turkey. Definitely switching over to e-cigarettes is good. I recommend just generically using the Boge Cartomizer. That’s B-O-G-E.

And you can get standard — there are these standard batteries. I can’t remember the model number, but they’re sort of skinny black batteries with either blue or red tips at the end. If you go to — there’s a cool website called Cignot. Cignot.com. They sell all that stuff.

And then in terms of the liquid, I recommend Johnson Creek because they are made here and it is actually looked over by people that seem to care as opposed to, I don’t know, a Chinese factory somewhere just dumping spare melamine and liquid lead into a vat. [laughs]

Yeah, the cons of e-cigging: incredibly addictive and when you quit those it will suck.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Did I tell you that we were at Disneyland, and so we were on the Silly Symphony which is those swings that spin around? There’s never a line because it’s never actually all that fun.

**Craig:** I know those, yeah.

**John:** But my kid likes it. So, there’s this woman in front of me and she had something glowing in her hand. I’m like, oh my god, she has an eCig and she’s like using her eCig while she’s on that swing.

**Craig:** Cool lady. I mean, she just doesn’t care. [crosstalk] Yeah, I like it.

Here’s a question for you, [laughs], from…

**John:** I think it’s really a question for you.

**Craig:** I know, it’s really a question for both of us, I think. It’s from our friend TS and he wants to know, “Should I seduce a married man?”

I’m pretty sure we have the same answer.

**John:** I would say probably not.

**Craig:** No. No.

**John:** Yeah, here’s the question — are you wrong to go into, not knowing what somebody’s marital situation is. You know, somebody could be married but they could be separated, or they could have an open relationship. There could be reasons why you’re not a terrible person for going into that situation. You’re not a morally terrible person.

Are you going to be emotionally hurt trying to seduce a married man? Yeah, very likely. So, I think you’re better off sticking with people who are actually available.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s the word “seduce” that’s the problem.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, “sleep with,” if the guy is living a closeted life and he’s into you, whatever. But “seduce” is sort of, that’s a tougher one.

**John:** Yeah. Should you seduce anyone? Well, yeah, I guess you can seduce a single person.

**Craig:** Yeah, no of course. Yeah, sure. But seducing married people is kind of — don’t do that.

**John:** Yeah. It’s kind of crappy.

**Craig:** That’s not nice.

**John:** Clint asks, “I’m considering replacing my lawn with Buffalo grass. If memory serves, John August made the change a while back. How is that working out? Is it worth the expense and effort? Anything you’d do differently?”

So, yes, and I’m actually looking at the Buffalo grass that is growing in our backyard right at this moment. And it was pretty good.

So, the deal with Buffalo grass is unlike normal grass where you can put out a seed or you can roll out the big long strips of it, Buffalo grass actually has much, much deeper roots, and so you have to plant little plugs. It’s sort of like you are getting a hair transplant and they’re putting those little plugs into the dirt.

And that’s a hassle and it just took a tremendous amount of work. And the crows came after the plugs and pulled them out, so we had to scare away the crows and redo it. But, once it grew in it’s been really, really solid. And you kind of don’t have to water it much at all. And it looks pretty good. So, I would do it again.

We used UC Verde Buffalo Grass. It was the type that they figured it… It was the UC System that studied all the kinds of Buffalo grass and this is the one that actually works well on lawns.

It’s been really solid. And if you have dogs or cats or whatever, they won’t burn holes in the lawn they way they can with normal grass. So, that’s a good thing.

**Craig:** Nice. That would be — maybe I should think about that.

So, Patrick here in Los Angeles writes, “What’s your favorite weeknight meal to cook for your families?”

**John:** Do you cook, Craig?

**Craig:** I do. I love cooking. But when I cook it’s either like a big, adventuresome cooking thing, or I tend to do little smaller things like on-the-spot breakfasts or lunches. So, I don’t have a routine weeknight meal that I cook. But my daughter does love my famous grilled cheese sandwich. I like making a nice grilled cheese with a little tomato soup. But when I cook I go crazy and I just go nuts.

I like making desserts.

**John:** Yeah. So, I am by nature more of a baker rather than a cook. So, for a long time I would make like a lot of desserts. And I’d bake cakes, and cookies, and all that kind of stuff. And now I don’t do that very much anymore because we don’t eat that kind of stuff anymore.

My husband does most of the daily cooking, but when I do do cooking, turkey meatloaf is sort of a good staple for us. We have a really good turkey meatloaf that we like. Mini turkey meatloaf — that’s the crucial thing. When you make that giant meatloaf, only the little outside of it gets browned. But if you make little small meatloafs, then it all gets good and brown.

**Craig:** Like in little ramekins?

**John:** No, you actually do it on a baking sheet, flat on a baking sheet.

**Craig:** Oh, okay. You just make like little mounds on it.

**John:** Little mounds. And the key I have learned is to sort of mound them up like a shark fin, because they will sort of soften down a bit as it bakes, but it will end up with a nice shape if it’s sort of pointy at the start. And every little bit gets a little more ketchup. So, that plus roasted cauliflower and maybe some spinach or something else, that’s a really good weeknight meal.

**Craig:** That’s good. I’m still kind of into making desserts. I like making pies from scratch, crusts from scratch.

**John:** I like pie crust, too.

**Craig:** Chocolate mousse. I like chocolate mousse. I like making complicated things. I feel like I like the chemistry a little.

**John:** And people are always intimidated by like a Thanksgiving turkey dinner. Turkey is one of the easiest things you could possibly ever make.

**Craig:** Brine.

**John:** Well, yes, we’ve talked about the brine. But essentially, you know what you do? You clean the bird and you stick it in a hot oven. People make too much of a deal of it.

**Craig:** Brine it, stick it, don’t put stuffing in it like a dope.

All right, so what do we have next?

**John:** Billie Jean asks, “What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve done in front of an idol, or a celebrity, or a mentor?”

**Craig:** [laughs] Well, I can remember mine. It’s so stupid. So, it was — I’m going to say it was 1993. And I was sitting with a friend. We were by Johnny Rockets at the Beverly Connection. And we look over, it’s like around 10pm actually. And we look over and there’s Jerry Seinfeld talking with a friend.

Oh my god. Jerry Seinfeld. You know, it’s 1993; Jerry Seinfeld is the king of the world. And I’m like, “I got to go, I got to go say hi to Jerry Seinfeld. I’ve got to shake his hand or do something.” And he’s like, well, do it.

So, as we’re leaving, I start walking, I’m parallel to Jerry Seinfeld. I’m too scared. I’m now a step past him and I’m like, no, no, no, I can’t not do it. So then I just whirl around and I go, “Mr. Seinfeld, it’s really nice to meet you.”

And he was like, “What?” Because he really thought that I was going to stab him. Because that’s the motion I made. It was the motion of a guy walking past somebody and then suddenly flinging themselves into their personal space and then saying, “It’s really nice to meet you.” But he hasn’t met me. There’s just a man suddenly in his face. It was terrible.

**John:** That’s pretty bad.

**Craig:** It was so stupid.

**John:** Mine is not embarrassing as much as just like really, really awkward, and especially awkward because there’s a photo of it that my husband insists on keeping because it’s just so awkward.

So, this is at the opening of the USC Film School. They had this big gala event where they had celebrities and famous people there. And so I was downstairs touring the post-production area and Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise are there. And so I know Katie Holmes but I hadn’t seen her in years. And so, they’re like, oh, say hi to Tom and Katie. Like, oh great.

So, we’re in this really narrow space, and so I’m shaking hands with Katie. And it’s like, “Hey, how are you?” Trying to talk about her kid, because we have a kid about the same age. And I meet Tom Cruise. And Tom Cruise, anyone who has met Tom Cruise, he sort of like locks eyes on you. And it’s just this weird sort of like tractor beam thing that Tom Cruise does.

And so there’s this photo of us having this really awkward meeting in this narrow hallway from this angle, and I look bizarre in it. I look like I’m some sort of Martian who is talking to people from Venus. And it was incredibly awkward because of just…and then of course the whole Tom and Katie of it all, because this is right when, you know, their sort of sudden relationship and what all that was.

**Craig:** Yeah. That does sound weird.

**John:** That’s an odd thing.

**Craig:** That is odd.

**John:** One thing I should say about meeting a celebrity is it’s also that always awkward thing of like, you know, “Hi, I’m this person,” and they’ll say their name back. It’s like, well, of course you’re that person because you’re Tom Cruise.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** So, when they say like, “Hi, I’m Tom,” it’s like, yeah, I know you’re Tom Cruise.

**Craig:** Isn’t that funny? There’s like a weird contract that you have with famous people that they’re going to tell you their name and you’re going to go, “Hi, I’m Craig,” like, I did not know that. This is a normal meeting. You’re not famous.

**John:** What I found, like even last night at The Academy thing, when someone is coming up, and there was a little bit of a receiving line kind of quality that happens, the next person that comes up, I’ll just say, “Hi, I’m John,” because it just starts the conversation. So, it’s natural that we do it.

**Craig:** Maybe that’s why these people do these things. I find it easier to deal with celebrities and famous people now because I think once you hit 40 you start to realize you’re older than a lot of them.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** You know? I’m older than Bradley Cooper. It’s kind of weird.

**John:** It is weird.

**Craig:** But I am, because I don’t know, he seems like a man. He is a man.

Here’s a question from JD. “You’re both in love and in some states both married.” I think you’re just married. “Do you think it’s important to have more common interests than not with a significant other? Or, are opposite interests okay as long your personalities and respect for one another’s wants and needs remain constant?”

**John:** I would say that shared interests are very, very useful so that you have something to talk about. And I think it’s going to be hard to get very far in a relationship if you don’t have some good overlap in things that you are interested in other than sort of like kind of generally digging the person. But you don’t need to have that 100 percent match. And there should be things that one person loves and obsesses over and the other person couldn’t care less about, as long as they don’t openly mock. That’s good and fine.

But you want to be able to go places and do things and have some reason to be able to go out to certain events at nighttime. If one person hates the theater, that’s fine. You’ll always find other people to go to the theater with. But, if that person hates theater, and movies, and concerts, and everything else, and you like those things, then it’s not going to work out well.

**Craig:** I tend to shade a little bit more to saying opposite interests are actually a great thing. And what keeps us together as bonded pairs is our intangible love and assistance for each other. And the things that are going around outside of us are so much less important. And, frankly, it’s nice to be able to get away from my wife and do things I like doing that she doesn’t care about and vice versa.

It’s so hard to find someone, I mean, of course, if really there is no common interests it is unlikely that the two people will fall in love anyway. But, I think that sometimes people make too much of “we both like doing the same thing.” Uh, yeah. It’s that we do something for each other that we like.

**John:** Absolutely. I mean, the ideal spouse is somebody who is always on your side, is like always on your team. And that’s a really crucial thing. It doesn’t mean you have to have 100 percent alignment on everything.

I’m always amazed though by the mixed marriages where people have radically different beliefs and somehow they make it work. And that I just don’t know how they do it.

**Craig:** I get it. Because, the truth is for those people they’re getting something from the other person that’s so much more valuable than agreement on a topic. You know, there are things that go to our survival, our sense of safety and security and feeling loved.

You know what? Look at children and their parents. So many children have different political views than their parents. The still love their parents. The parents still love the kids, you know?

**John:** Well, that’s a central theme of Big Fish, though, is that throughout your entire life you get to pick your relationships, you get to pick the people who are going to be your friends, you get to pick the people you are going to marry, but parents are just sort of assigned to you. It’s just like a big lottery and you end up with these people. And you’re supposed to have this amazing relationship with these people.

But, you didn’t pick them. They didn’t pick you. And somehow you’re supposed to get along on everything. I think sometimes we put unrealistic expectations on what that relationship is supposed to be, “Because he’s your father, how could you not love him?”

“Well, I didn’t pick him.”

**Craig:** Yeah, you don’t have to get me started on that topic.

**John:** Ah-ha.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, I totally agree with you on that one.

**John:** Kristen in Seattle writes, “I would like to know if you guys like cats. And if you know why of all the animals in the animal kingdom cats purr?”

**Craig:** Well, a two part question. No, I don’t like cats. I find them annoying. I love dogs. Actually, I once talked to a veterinarian about this whole purring thing, and the truth is they don’t really know. I mean, there’s like some cockamamie theory that purring helps healing because there’s like some vibration thing that happens. I don’t believe that.

I think it’s probably just something they do.

**John:** Yeah. Because I think big cats purr, too. So, it’s not something that we kind of bred into cats. I think it’s a natural thing that cats do. But, it’s like there’s lot of other animals that do weird things, just they’re not around us all the time so we don’t notice it.

I like cats. And I did not grow up with cats. And I’ve always been very allergic to cats. But I learned to love cats because my friend, Elizabeth, had cats. And so I would talk to her on the phone, this is sort of pre-internet, so we would just talk to each other on the phone for like an hour a night. And so I would hear all about her cats. And so I knew all these details about her cats.

And then in our house here we don’t have cats because I’m allergic to cats, but in Los Angeles people should understand that there are cats everywhere. Los Angeles is just full of cats. And so there are some feral cats, but also some house cats that sort of just wander through our yard. And they’re really cool. And like one of them is actually Patricia Arquette’s cat wanders through our yard.

**Craig:** Is her name Patricia Arcat?

**John:** Wouldn’t that be amazing? I never even thought of that. That’s why you’re the comedy writer.

**Craig:** Yeah, that was a really good joke, man. [laughs]

**John:** That’s a great joke. You could get fifty bucks for that on Fashion Police.

**Craig:** At least.

**John:** [laughs] Rollie is just the best cat in the world. So, we eat lunch outside — Stuart, Ryan, and I eat lunch outside — and Rollie will just come over and hang out. Just the best cat in the world. But I like cats that are sort of like dogs, and that’s why I like Rollie so much.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, cats don’t do it for me.

**John:** Cats are great.

Next up is Victor from Pittsburgh.

**Craig:** Victor, yeah. Are you reading this one? I’m reading this one?

**John:** Go.

**Craig:** Okay, this guy is moving, and Victor is “moving into an apartment that for the first time is all [his] own, a real home to call [his] own.” I guess he’s been living in dorms and things like that. “It’s a blank slate coming with no furniture. As the hip artsy fellows that you are, I’m sure your lovely LA homes are decked out with only the finest in furniture and decor. What do you suggest for a first time home renter? Goodwill, IKEA, or anything else? Standing desk? Specific recommendations? First time apartment stories worth sharing?”

**John:** I think IKEA gets a bad rap. I think some stuff from IKEA is absolutely fine. And, I mean, that’s the motto for IKEA: For now it’s fine. That should just be their tag line. I give it to them for free.

Because there’s decent stuff you can get that will work okay in your apartment for a while. So, IKEA or CB2 or sort of the lower rent brands for sort of the big furniture companies, they’re absolutely fine. I would say you’re not going to have a lot of stuff, so sort of embrace a nice minimalism that looks good.

The best thing you can do for your apartment to look nice is to clean it and to not let it be a mess.

**Craig:** Yeah. I totally agree. Don’t get cluttery with it. Apartments are small. In general, small spaces look best when they are minimally appointed, because they can’t handle a lot of clutter, they can’t handle a lot of different heights, and shapes, and things. Low, sleek, simple, small. I totally agree on IKEA as far as, you know, look, your job at this point is to succeed and move on save your money. Don’t spend money on furniture now, that’s crazy.

So, yeah, sure, go to IKEA. Get disposable Swedish furniture. Enjoy putting it together yourself. There are some nice tasteful things that they have there. And just do it.

There are people that really get into, “Ooh, look at my cool vintage sofa that I found at Goodwill, that’s full of bed bugs or smells.” Eh, you know, you’re going to have to move it, you know? You’re not living in this apartment the rest of your life. Think about that, too.

**John:** One of my favorite pieces of apartment furniture was something I found in the dumpster of the apartment building. It was this big green dresser. And it had these really handles on it, so I took them off and I put like cool handles on it. And that was my dresser for six years.

And that stuff is fine and good, too. Yeah, don’t worry about it too much.

**Craig:** Do not.

**John:** Steve asks, “How much can you guys bench press?”

**Craig:** Hmm, good question. Well, I haven’t been to the gym lately, and you know, my maximum bench press, I was never that strong. I think like one time, like one up and down, I think maybe like — I don’t know — probably I could do 200 pounds or something like that.

**John:** I did 205 for eight.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** Yeah, so I was checking with my trainer today, because I asked him. And he said, “Oh, that’s what you can do.” So, that’s great. I actually probably couldn’t do that right now because I’ve been in Chicago and I haven’t had a trainer for awhile, but that’s what I could theoretically do.

**Craig:** Yeah, I was more, I like dumbbells. So, I like to do multiples with like two-50s. You know, not 250s, but two individual 50-pounds dumbbells and do like twelve reps or something like that.

**John:** Yeah, I do find that dumbbells, I don’t have that fear of dying, because there’s not going to be that bar that’s going to crush me.

**Craig:** Right!

**John:** That’s the thing about bench pressing is that fear of like you’re actually going to be trapped underneath this forever. At least I could also like drop free weights.

**Craig:** And dumbbells are harder because you have to individually steer and balance, you know, whereas the bar of a bench press bar helps kind of stabilize.

Kyle from Salt Lake City says, “If you could have any super power, what would it be and why?”

**John:** I would choose flight, the two-handed arms pointed out at the sky flight.

**Craig:** I would go with invisibility. Super useful.

**John:** Yeah, that one is really useful.

**Craig:** Super useful. Flying, though, would be great though.

**John:** Yeah. Lawrence from New York City asks, for me, I guess, “Are you spoken to in a different manor because you are gay/straight??? Do they expect more or less of you because of your sexuality??? Do they believe you should be better at melodrama and weepy stuff, and sports films or action??? How does sexuality affect your career??? Does it???” All of these questions end with three question marks, which…stop doing that.

Lawrence, stop asking questions with three question marks.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** So, Lawrence’s basic question is has being gay impacted my career at all in Hollywood. I don’t think it’s had a huge impact. I think, yes, I don’t get considered for sports movies as much. That’s not a huge tragedy in my life. But John Logan who’s gay, he wrote Any Given Sunday.

**Craig:** Yeah, I don’t think that’s because you’re gay.

**John:** No. I think it’s because I don’t give a rat’s ass about sports.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But I write action movies and people call me in for that. I don’t think that it ever comes up that much. I will say that when I was writing the first TV show I did, D.C., it was the only situation in my whole Hollywood time where I walked into a room and I felt like “faggot” had just been said, because it was this weird energy that had happened.

And I’m not sure who it was, or what was going on, but it was really, really uncomfortable. But that’s kind of been it.

And so a lot of times I will, they’ll ask me like, “Hey, do you want to become a bigger part of the Writers Guild Gay Writers Group?” I’m just like I don’t know that I need it. I don’t know that we need it. I don’t know that it’s actually a hue problem. It hasn’t been a huge problem for me, so I don’t relate to it.

**Craig:** Now there are so many gay producers, so many gay executives. It’s just, I don’t know. Yeah.

**John:** I think it would be much harder to be homophobic in this town than to be gay.

**Craig:** Openly homophobic? Oh, yeah, good luck. [laughs] I don’t think that can work. No.

**John:** It’s not going to go well.

**Craig:** I don’t think that would work. And, frankly, you’re just in the wrong business. I mean, if you don’t enjoy gay people and you don’t enjoy the expression of gay culture and gay humor and gay aesthetic, you’re just in the wrong business.

Earling writes, “Can either of you actually sing? Which musical production do you wish you could have had the chance to experience in person? And which musical to film do you think has resulted in the greatest or poorest film adaptation?”

**John:** Great. So, we’ve established that Craig can sing, because Craig sang on an earlier podcast.

**Craig:** Yeah, come on Earling.

**John:** Yeah, go back and do your research.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I can sing well enough to get the point of a song across. And so I’ve gotten to be a better singer through Big Fish. So, I can sing a little bit. I can’t sing the way that the actors can sing in Big Fish, but I can sing well enough that I’m not scared to sing.

Which musical production do you wish you could have seen in person? I don’t know.

**Craig:** Good question.

**John:** I mean, I’ve never actually seen any production of Funny Girl, but Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl was probably awesome.

**Craig:** It probably was awesome. Yeah. I’d probably go with Fiddler on the Roof. The original Fiddler on the Roof. I just love that show. And I just think that would have been amazing to see that. Every song is just so great.

And what do you think about this musical to film, up and down?

**John:** I loved Chicago. And I love Chicago as a stage play, but I love it as a movie, too. And I think it was just a really, really smart version that captured the stuff I loved about the stage version and made it a movie.

**Craig:** It did. That’s a very good choice. I would probably go with West Side Story only because it may be the best musical ever and it also happens to be a great, great film, too. So, that’s a very high risk/high reward kind of thing to go from something that’s truly brilliant, take it to film, and not blow it.

Poorest, you know, I hate doing this, but The Producers, because The Producers was a great movie, and then they surprised everybody by doing a terrific musical of it. But the movie of the musical of the movie just didn’t work.

**John:** I have not seen it.

**Craig:** It just didn’t work. And I love everybody in it. And, yeah, it didn’t work. Plus, they cut out the best song, King of All Broadway.

Anyway, those are our answers.

**John:** Cool.

CC from Calabasas asks, “I love to hear about your solar panels and your electric cars. What are some other fun high end toys or home improvements that you recommend?”

**Craig:** Well, there’s one thing that I’ve signed up for, you know, when they make a big splashy thing, “Look, we have this new product coming but it’s not ready yet,” so you put your email on it and they tell you when it’s ready. And it’s called Kevo and it’s basically a lockset for your door that fits right in the regular deadbolt that locks that thing, but it’s controlled by your phone.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** And I think it’s as simple as like a Bluetooth thing. So, you walk up to your door and it unlocks.

**John:** That would be great.

I like our Nest Thermostats. They’ve been really useful for us.

**Craig:** Love those.

**John:** I love that I can on my iPhone app see like, is the air conditioner running? I will turn it on. Or, I can turn it on like when I’m at the restaurant saying like let’s get it cooled down before I get home. That’s been awesome and great.

My husband has also been really good about sort of switching out all of our light bulbs to LEDs and energy efficient lights. So, throughout the whole house we’re all that way, and that’s part of the reason why we’re able to generate so much power and sell so much power back to the City of Los Angeles. We actually use very little power now which has been terrific.

**Craig:** Excellent.

**John:** Next question, John Ligget asks, “Hey, I think you should talk about food on your podcast and your favorite restaurants.”

Favorite restaurants in Los Angeles. I love Mozza. I love — both Osteria Mozza and the Pizzeria Mozza are fantastic. What are your favorite restaurants in Los Angeles?

**Craig:** You know, I’m not like a favorite restaurant guy. I guess if I had to say one, I really love Sasabune.

**John:** Okay. I don’t know what that is.

**Craig:** Sushi place on the west side. And Sushi Nozawa and Sugarfish. I like really, really good sushi. But I’ll go to any restaurant. I’m pretty easygoing about restaurants. I’m not really a foodie. I love interesting food. I love the food that foodies eat, I just don’t love obsessing about food, and the trucks, and, oh, this new spot, and this guy used to own this place, and opens that place. And when people start having that discussion my eyes roll back in my head and I lose consciousness.

**John:** Yeah. I like to go to dinner with friends, but I’d much rather go to a mediocre restaurant with good friends than a great restaurant with people I don’t like.

**Craig:** 100 percent.

**John:** Next up.

**Craig:** All right, next up we’ve got Hanu Carl. [laughs] Hanu Carl — so cute, in the Valley, question mark, exclamation point, exclamation point. “Kwanzaa or Diwali? Which of the non-Christmas holidays is cooler? Feel free to address history, music, fashion, and food.” My answer is none of them. The only cool holiday around Christmastime is Christmas. Sorry.

**John:** I’m 100 percent Diwali. I love Diwali. I love kind of everything Indian and I love Indian food. Come on, Diwali for me.

**Craig:** I love Indian food, too. I love everything Indian. I’m a big fan of the culture. I don’t need to celebrate Diwali though, or Kwanzaa. Frankly, I don’t even celebrate Christmas. Here’s the truth: I’m the Grinch and I don’t like celebrations. But I do love Indian food.

**John:** You’ll love the hundredth episode of Scriptnotes celebration, though. That’s a celebration you’ll endorse?

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s not a holiday, you know?

**John:** I heard they’re actually going to shut down the town, though. I mean, everyone is going to take the day off and it’s going to be big deal.

**Craig:** Fantastic!

**John:** Carmen in Missouri asks, “What are your thoughts on bacon? What are your thoughts on bacon in desserts?”

**Craig:** Yeah. Bacon is very good, it’s very tasty. I don’t care for the ridiculous internet obsession with bacon. You know, this is the worst of the internet. Take something that’s perfectly good but a little downscale and then turn it into like a meta, quasi-ironic worship thing. Yeah, it’s bacon, whatever. Isn’t there other stuff to talk about?

I do think that bacon in desserts is perfectly fine in the sense that savory plus sweet can be a nice thing. But, the whole bacon thing, it drives me nuts.

**John:** I’m glad to hear you say, because it drives me nuts, too.

**Craig:** What is that, John?

**John:** I don’t know. It’s the obsession over things that you don’t need to worry about being obsessed with. So, I don’t eat normal bacon, because I don’t eat beef, or pork, or mammals. So, I eat turkey bacon. And so I obviously like suspect because I eat turkey bacon which is not really a thing and I should be shunned for eating turkey bacon.

But I like turkey bacon just fine.

**Craig:** Turkey bacon is good. I like turkey bacon.

**John:** It’s delicious. And so whatever you want to do with bacon, great, go for it. But don’t push it at me.

**Craig:** Yeah. And like stop inventing fake obsessions, the point of which is that obsessions are silly but yet cool. All right, hipsters, go ahead with your bacon.

Ooh, Fabrizio from Italy. “If your podcasts weren’t about screenwriting or anything related to filmmaking, what would it be about?” Huh? What?

**John:** Mine would be yet another tech podcast, another sort of Mac Geekery podcast. And so I guest on some of those podcasts at times and I enjoy talking about that stuff, but really we don’t need another one, so I shouldn’t do it.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t think I would talk about anything else. I’m just simply not qualified. I’m barely qualified to talk about this. Let’s put it that way.

**John:** Chris Han in East LA writes, “What lessons do you have for nerds for a successful marriage?”

**Craig:** Uh, I don’t know. Because they’re nerds?

**John:** Or for anybody.

**Craig:** You know, okay, here’s my big lessons — these are not shocking. Be faithful to your spouse. Don’t be afraid to spend a little bit of time on your own. Don’t be afraid if they spend a little bit of time on their own. Don’t be contemptuous of your spouse. And, you know, avoid things like violence. I mean, it’s not really — I’ll tell you the number one, the number one thing. Honestly, everybody’s going to give you a bunch of platitudes. Number one thing: Be faithful. Be faithful. There you go.

**John:** I think all your points are very good. The other thing I would say is to always understand that your spouse is his or her own person and to always keep in mind what do they want or what do they need to do. And to figure out how you can be supportive to what they want or what they need to do, because their needs and wants may not immediately line up with what your needs and wants are. But you need to be aware of what they are so you can together both get to places you want to get to.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, part of that is respect, but that’s also understanding that it’s not just about the two of you. It’s also about you as individuals.

**Craig:** Correct.

Oh, look at this, Robert…

**John:** Robert James Cross asks…

**Craig:** Robert is, yeah, he’s going for this question we’ve kind of trotted all over, kind of gone over this a little bit. “Where’s the best place for sushi or pizza in Los Angeles?”

**John:** Yeah, so when I was in Chicago we had the conversation about Chicago pizza and New York pizza. Honestly, the pizza I love the most is Los Angeles pizza. It is at Pizzeria Mozza. I think it’s just the best pizza you’re going to find.

**Craig:** That pizza is not what I call pizza, but that’s sort of what I call Italian fancy pizza. And that is excellent Italian fancy pizza. No question.

For traditional pizza, the kind of pizza that comes from New York, there are a couple places in and around there. There’s a Joe’s, I think, in Santa Monica now which is a transplant from New York. And there’s actually a little booth in The Americana on Brand in Glendale that sells pretty good pizza.

Sushi wise, like I said, Sasabune. Big fan of that. Nozawa. Sugarfish.

**John:** So, I go to Nobu and I like Nobu quite a lot. I’ve been to Nobus in many different countries, but the Nobu in Los Angeles is lovely, as is Matsuhisa.

But my favorite sushi, actually Sushi Azami which closed, but the owner Niki has opened up another restaurant on the west side which is amazing, but it’s always omakase, and it’s like a three-hour thing to eat dinner there. It’s completely worth it, it’s just that you have to plan for three-hours to do it. So, I’ll have a link to her restaurant.

**Craig:** That’s interesting that it’s three hours long, because Sasabune is the same thing, it’s omakase, but it doesn’t take that long.

**John:** Yeah. I was with Josh Friedman and we drank a lot of wine, so maybe that’s why it took three hours.

**Craig:** Maybe you thought it was three hours, it was 20 minutes.

**John:** Ha. We actually had to walk around the block just a few time just to, you know, settle your stomach and feel like you could actually move in a car again.

**Craig:** I like it.

**John:** “You’re on the first passenger flight to the moon,” oh, this is a question from Jessup, I love Jessup, from Vacaville. “You’re on the first passenger flight to the moon. Because of carryon restrictions you only get to bring one book, one snack, one beverage. What are they?”

**Craig:** I don’t care.

**John:** I have answers for all of this. My book would be Pride & Prejudice, because I just love Pride & Prejudice. I could just read it again and again. One snack would be almond butter. And it would specifically be Whole Foods Almond Butter, the one that you can actually get from the grinder. Like fresh ground almond butter is one of the best substances on earth. And one beverage, I suppose if I’m going to go…well, it’s a question, do you go for the alcohol? You’re flying to the moon…

**Craig:** You’re going to the moon. This is what I don’t understand about this question. You’re going to the moon and you’re reading? My eyes are glued. I’m like, I want to just watch the trip entirely. I don’t care what my snack is. I’m going to the moon!

**John:** Yeah, the moon.

**Craig:** You know what I’ll have, moon snack. Whatever moon plane gives me. I feel so simple.

**John:** I will say one of the things I miss most about Chicago is a chain called Protein Bar. And Protein Bar is this sort of healthy fast food that is all over Chicago, and I haven’t seen here, and I really which were here. But they have these amazing smoothies. And they have like a peanut butter/chocolate chip smoothie that’s actually kind of healthy that’s really great. So that would be my beverage.

**Craig:** That sounds good.

Josh from San Luis Obispo. “If you had the option to either own a real life light saber, or an actual working hover board from Back to the Future, which would you choose and why?”

**John:** I’m full on light saber. I would love to have a light saber.

**Craig:** Yeah, of course. That’s not even a good question.

**John:** It’s not a good question at all.

**Craig:** No, it’s not a fair question.

**John:** It’s a light saber. How can you not pick light saber?

**Craig:** Yeah, working hover board? Who cares?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** “Oh, look at me, I’m on my hover board. Whoop-de-do.” All right. Or, you can just go get a Segway and also look like a dork.

Or, you can have a light saber. Come on, Josh. [laughs] I’m getting angry.

**John:** Mark Thorson writes, “Now that even Rush Limbaugh has admitted the gay marriage issue is lost, what’s the next milestone for gay rights? The only thing I can think of is the first gay president. Is anything more important that happens earlier?”

Uh, yeah, I think marriage is happening really quickly, and I’m delighted that it’s happening so quickly, and delighted that just last week we picked up another giant state. And whatever the Supreme Court decision is, it will be incredibly useful. And I’m excited to be able to get off of planes and be married in more states. That’s a wonderful thing.

I talk to the people who run these organizations and one of the things I say when I talk to these people is it’s fantastic that gay and lesbian couples can have the rights they need, I think the next frontier is going to be to make sure that people who don’t fit into nice categories, transgendered people, get the same rights that everyone else does. And I think that’s one of the things where, you know, we talk about gay people as minorities. Those people are super minorities. And making sure that they have full and inclusive rights to things that every American should have.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, ultimately the most meaningful milestone beyond this one is that there’s no longer a topic because it’s just nobody cares and everything is equal and fine and it’s just not an issue.

I think that employment rights are probably where I would look if I were running one of these organizations, because there are going to be states soon, I think, if the Supreme Court rules in favor of federal gay marriage — there are going to be states where it is legally possible for two men to get married but also legally possible for both of them to be fired from their jobs because they’re gay. That’s bizarre.

**John:** Yeah. That is bizarre.

**Craig:** So, I mean, it’s bizarre right now, obviously. So, that’s where I would probably — that’s where I would load up my ammo.

Let’s see, we have Brian from Tampa, “Morally speaking, what’s the worst thing you’ve done to get out of some type of obligation?”

**John:** I will say personally I feel good that I’ve never used my kid as an excuse. I’ve never pretended that it was like my kid that was why I couldn’t do something. But I have, I feel like I’m coming down with something, I have done that. And I feel terrible when I do it. And sometimes I get sort of the symptomatic cold that I imagined from doing that. But, I’ve feigned some illness to get out of a meeting or to reschedule something.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m sure I’ve done that, too. I mean, it’s hard to quarrel with somebody who’s telling you that they just threw up. Even if you think they’re lying, even if you think there’s a 90 percent chance they’re lying, that means there’s a 10 percent chance that you’re forcing somebody to show up in your office and they might throw up.

**John:** Yeah. You don’t want to do that.

**Craig:** Near you. Yeah.

**John:** Malibu Jack asks, “If the universe is infinite, how can it be expanding? And if space is mostly empty, how can it be warped by gravity?”

**Craig:** I can’t answer the first question, because I don’t know. The second question I think misunderstands gravity and space time. But, I’m not smart enough to explain why. I just know that in my head I’m looking at that diagram in A Brief History of Time and Thinking. No, that’s not a good question.

**John:** I think it’s a reasonable question, but it’s not a good question in the sense that we are not — as human beings we’re not well set up to deal with things at a giant, giant, giant scale, or at a really tiny scale. We’re used to being able to deal with things at a scale that we can see.

Our whole mind is set up for like there’s that bison over there. I will throw this rock and hit this bison. And so our minds work really well for that scale of thing. And so scale of things we can see and scale of things we can do.

And so we have this tendency to try to use our understanding of that kind of world and apply it to much bigger things, and it actually just doesn’t hold up very well. And so we say the universe is expanding, but it’s infinite. Well, that makes sense at the giant levels that we’re talking about. And, you know, say, “Well what is this expanding into?” It’s like, well, that’s actually not meaningful in a way that you sort of want it to make sense. This is because we think in very physical, relatable terms that aren’t actually accurate to how the big universe works or how the tiny universe works.

**Craig:** Yeah. Or, spice.

**John:** The spice. The spice explains it all.

**Craig:** The worm. The spice. What is the connection?

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** That’s my favorite line from a movie ever. “The connection is that the worm is the spice.”

**John:** The worm is the spice.

**Craig:** And then he just kept asking the question. “It’s got to have something…the worm and the spice. What is it?” [laughs] “They’re the same. They’re the same thing.”

**John:** Let’s skip this next question because another one down the list asks the same thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. Agreed.

**John:** Ferdinand from Constantinople asks, “If Craig and John did a life swap, who would be better at being the other?”

**Craig:** I think I’m good at impressions, so I think I could actually convince some people that I was you.

**John:** Yeah. I think you’d actually do a pretty good job with my life. And my life is not that difficult. I think I would have a harder time being you because I don’t care anything about baseball and I would not be able to coach your son’s baseball team.

**Craig:** Yeah. But there are lot of dads that also can’t coach their kid’s baseball teams. And, you know, you would just watch.

**John:** But I could love your woman. There’s no question.

**Craig:** [laughs] I’d like to see you try!

**John:** [laughs] Gary from Orlando, Florida asks, “Craig, how’s the Tesla been so far?”

**Craig:** Awesome! Greatest car in the world. And it was terrific to see that Consumer Reports, which is very fussy, super nerdy guys — one thing I like about Consumer Reports, when they review cars they don’t get a car from the factory. They have somebody go and buy a car anonymously. So, it’s actually just a random car and they put it through ridiculous paces. And it got a 99 out of 100. Only one other car in history has every gotten that. It was a Lexus from 10 years ago.

And they said essentially, “This may be the best car we’ve ever tested.”

**John:** Oh, fantastic.

**Craig:** It’s an awesome car. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

**John:** Hooray. And for the record, I still love my Leaf. It’s been a great car, too.

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** Doug Jay asks, “What are your thoughts on automobile safety ratings? Would a bad safety rating be a deal breaker for you?”

**Craig:** It would for me. Absolutely.

**John:** It would for me, too.

**Craig:** Yeah, this guy mentions that the Camry rated poor in the IHS Small Offset Crash Test. Well, it turns out that most crashes are offset. I mean, very few people just slam into each other headlight to headlight. And if a car structurally is doing very poorly in a test like that, well, yeah, of course it’s a deal breaker. What, like a Camry is so awesome that I need to overlook the fact that it could possibly be a death trap? It’s a Camry.

**John:** I honestly feel the same way about motorcycles. Because, you know what, no motorcycle survives a crash well.

**Craig:** That’s right. No, motorcycles are just dumb. And, listen, if you ride a motorcycle, I get it, and that’s cool. I understand. My wife has this whole theory — you deserve to die. It’s the whole “you deserve to die theory.” That she just can’t muster sympathy for people who die doing things that are kind of safe but just generally not safe. Like it’s kind of safe to go skydiving. But not really. So, if you die skydiving, screw you. [laughs] That’s basically her theory. So, I don’t do a lot of — I used to go diving in the ocean. Don’t do that as much anymore. No.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** Bryce from LA wonders, “What were both of your drinking habits before you made it and while you were rising the echelons of the industry? Perhaps to a lesser degree, what are they now? And would you mind speaking to Hollywood’s atmosphere of rejection in conjunction with the drunken writer stereotype?”

**John:** Yeah, so I think, you know, we have this stereotype that like writers are drunks who, you know, are functioning alcoholics and that kind of thing. And there are some. I don’t think there’s very many. And you won’t meet a lot of drunks and you won’t meet a lot of drug addicts who are actually working in the industry. That’s been my experience.

**Craig:** Yeah, people go through their phases, like everybody else. Personally, I’ve never had a problem with alcohol, at all. I’ve had a problem with nicotine, food, wanking. I don’t have any problems with drinking. I am that guy who can have one or two glasses and then just drop, in fact, prefers to stop.

You know, it’s funny — I often think, sometimes my wife will buy like a cake. And the cake will sit there for four days in the fridge. And I’ll think, “How is she buying the cake and not eating it?” Like if I buy a cake it’s to eat it. Do you know what I mean? So, she’ll just buy a cake and just leave it there. And then I think, but wait a second, that’s the way I am with alcohol. Like I’ll buy a bottle of wine or a fancy bottle of scotch or something. I won’t open it for a year. I don’t care. So, there you go.

**John:** Yeah. I feel like I’ve been pretty lucky, too. So, I will have a glass of wine or two, and that’s been fine, and great, and good. And I was never much of a drinker-drinker. So, you go through your periods of your 20s, and those are going to be those times when you’re out drinking with friends and you’re going out to much and drinking too much with people. But you sort of grow out of it, and I just grew out of it. And I was happy and lucky.

So, there is some sort of going out with the gang to do stuff, or that sort of social drinking, that happens. But it’s not awful. I would also say that my husband when he went to get his MBA, that crew would drink so much. And they would drink all the time that it was really surprising and kind of crazy to me that they were able to sustain a graduate school program.

**Craig:** You know, I live in La Cañada, this little town, and it’s not a Hollywood town. It’s very kind of finance and law and accounting and so forth. Good god people drink in my town. I mean, I go to these parties, [laughs], and people get wasted. And they’re adults. I don’t get it.

**John:** I want to fall back on a piece of advice I gave on the blog a long time ago, but I would say if you’re out drinking, my basic rule is alternate with water. So, if you don’t want to get drunk, you don’t want to be problematically drinking, you have a drink, great. Have a full equal glass of water before you get your next drink, and that will slow you down. It doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t be — it doesn’t mean you’re safe to drive, but it means that you’re not going to make a horrible decision if you were to stick to that plan.

**Craig:** Good idea.

**John:** Josh asks a series of questions that we’re going to get to really quickly. “How much weight, if any, do you give to conspiracy theories about the new world order, water fluoridation, 9/11, JFK assassination, etc?”

**Craig:** I give negative weight to those.

**John:** I give negative weight. And anyone who believes them, I have a hard time taking seriously.

**Craig:** Yeah. I just don’t like you. I think you’re an idiot.

**John:** “Do you believe in reincarnation?”

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No. I think you die, you die.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** “How have your feelings about money changed throughout your life?”

**Craig:** They haven’t.

**John:** I would say they really haven’t. I’ve always been like hold on to as much money as it makes sense to hold onto.

**Craig:** Save.

**John:** Save.

**Craig:** Save. Yeah. Don’t spend a lot. Don’t need to.

**John:** “Do you believe we are alone in the universe?”

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No, there have to be other civilizations. Here’s the thing — I don’t think the Earth is actually all that special. I think we’re going to find that there’s actually a lot of earth-like planets and it’s going — other planets will have life that has existed or will exist. Will we be able to talk to those other civilizations? I don’t know.

**Craig:** Not any time soon. [laughs] No, that’s narcissism to believe that we happen to live in the time…

**John:** The best of all possible worlds.

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly. No, no, they’re out there, but they’re way out there.

**John:** Yeah. “What’s the secret to a close and comfortable shave?”

**Craig:** Get yourself in the shower, get a nice hot shower going. Get your face nice and steamed out. And then shave with the grain, not against the grain. And then after you’re done shaving with the grain, which changes depending on what part of your face your shaving, then go against the grain.

**John:** Yeah. Shave in the shower. That’s where you should do it.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** David in Wellington, New Zealand asks, “I’m ready to propose for marriage next month.” I love that he says “propose for marriage.” That’s not how we would say it in the US.

**Craig:** Yeah. Propose for…

**John:** “Can you give some creative ideas on how to ask the big question. Cheers. Please no Hobbit jokes.”

**Craig:** Well, Gimli, oh no, he was a dwarf, sorry. No, no Hobbit jokes whatsoever. I like people from New Zealand. They’re very cool people. They’re good people.

I can only tell you how I did it. I had kind of a cool idea. And that was I like cold places. So, I surprised my then girlfriend by flying us to Alaska. And, by the way, I wasn’t rich. I had no money, but it just seemed funny. I saved my money and then I flew us to Alaska. And I went all the way out to the middle of Alaska in Fairbanks, and it was around the beginning of April. And I had sort of timed it because I knew that the Northern Lights were super, duper active around that time.

And so we went outside at night under the Northern Lights and I proposed to her.

**John:** That’s beautiful.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Nice. But she kind of had the idea that you were going to propose if you were…

**Craig:** Oh, for sure.

**John:** So, I didn’t have the proper proposal because essentially we always talked like, oh, whenever marriage becomes possible let’s get married. He’s like, so of course. And so suddenly the California Supreme Court decision came down saying that yes they have to have marriage. And so suddenly it just could happen.

So, I was in Arrowhead writing on something. And so Mike called. He’s like, “Oh, it went through. Great. So, let’s get married.” And like we literally picked a date. But neither one of us asked the other person. It just happened.

**Craig:** Right. You guys actually kind of got saved. I mean, the truth is that men don’t really care about any of this stuff. We just want to jump to the conclusion. Women care.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So, even if this hadn’t been shortchanged by legal maneuvering, my guess is that you probably would have been like, “Marriage? Yeah, cool.”

**John:** Yeah.

Bin Le asks, “When can we hear Stuart’s voice on the podcast?”

**Craig:** I don’t know. I mean, we could just keep him like Maris, Niles’s wife on Frasier. [laughs] Just sort of a presence.

**John:** Yeah. So people last night, Stuart was there, and people would ask, “Is Stuart…?” And I was like, yeah, I pointed, “That’s Stuart. He’s a real person. He’s not Snuffleupagus. He’s a real live little boy.”

**Craig:** And you pointed to an empty space in the room.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** And everyone slowly backed away from you.

**John:** Indeed. It’s like in Fight Club the whole time through. I’ve actually been Stuart the whole time through.

**Craig:** Hercules Rockefeller the Third, certainly his real name, asks, “How can someone stop falling for the wrong woman and/or man?” Answer, you can’t.

**John:** You can’t. The heart wants what it wants.

**Craig:** That’s why they call it falling. If you can stop falling, that would be great. But, eh, I don’t think so.

**John:** But, going back to an earlier topic, you know, maybe don’t fall for married people.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That’s a good choice. And so look for what your type is and find your type in a type that is actually available. Because maybe your type is unavailable people because you don’t actually want that commitment of a relationship. And then you need to have some therapy and deal with your issues.

**Craig:** Yeah. Deal with your issues, Hercules.

Who’s next, Hector?

**John:** Hector from Canada writes, “Serious question here, perhaps life’s most serious question. How do you cope with mortality? Does the inevitable prospect of death borrow you? If not, why not? If so, how do you cope, or do you?”

**Craig:** It bother me now, but I know that when I am — assuming that I don’t die an untimely death — I’ve talked to enough elderly people to know that you, your mind starts to prepare you for death as you get older. And you get to a point, frankly, where you’re not afraid of it at all. It’s just a natural thing. It’s almost like, well, this is what all my friends are doing. Might as well do it, too. It’s cool. It’s okay.

You don’t get scared anymore. I asked my grandmother. She was 94. And she said, “No, somewhere around like 82 or 83 you totally stop caring.”

**John:** Maybe so. I’m afraid of death, but not in a weird way. Not so much the fear of like well I will stop existing, because I don’t believe in an afterlife necessarily, but just having a family and a young kid, that’s what I think about, sort of most afraid of sort of mortality wise. And you want your kid to be able to get to a place in life where they are stable and they don’t need you as much.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** But, the truth is, they always kind of need you. And as I face sort of my own parent’s mortality, that’s, you know, it’s tough.

**Craig:** It is, but the truth is, let’s say you’re 85. You’re daughter will be 40-something I assume, or something like that, right? She’s an adult. She’s your age now.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** She’ll be fine. She’ll have her own kids, you know.

**John:** Yeah.

Clint Williams asks…

**Craig:** Good question. Yeah, Clint Williams.

**John:** “Adoption of the designated hitter by the National League? Idle chatter? Good for the game? Umbrage?”

**Craig:** I think it’s idle chatter. I don’t think it’s good for the game. I don’t have any umbrage about it. I’m a Yankee fan, so I grew up in the American League. So, the designate hitter isn’t a matter of religious objection to me. But, you know, we’ve changed so much about baseball in the last ten years. You know the wild card, and the expansion of playoffs, and teams bouncing around from national, to interleague play. All this stuff. Yeah, leave it. Leave it the way it is. No DH in the National League. No DH.

**John:** I barely understood a word you said.

**Craig:** Fantastic. You’ll understand this. John from Albany, New York, says, “Should I buy my 16-year-old son condoms now that he has a steady girlfriend? And at what age did you lose your virginity? Full disclosure: I was 16. So, that’s why I ask question number one above.”

**John:** So, number one question, yes, you should buy your 16-year-old son condoms. And you should have those frank conversations. People freak out way too much about having the conversations about sex and they shouldn’t. Just have the conversations. It’s awkward at the start, but then it’s fine.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s better that you have the conversations. And don’t be intrusive but just make sure they know that it’s an option there and it’s there and you want them to be around.

**Craig:** Yeah, he could also buy his own condoms. That’s what I did. [laughs] I mean, he doesn’t have to have daddy go buy him condoms. There’s no condom law, is there?

**John:** Yeah, there’s no condom law. But, I think it’s a good first gesture to buy condoms for your son.

**Craig:** I totally agree. And at what age, and certainly you should not just let him go condom-less. At what age did you lose your virginity, John?

**John:** If we were going to define virginity in a sense of the activity that I was engaged in if I was engaging with a woman could have led to a baby…so, like, it’s a question of virginity. Like, what’s fooling around and what’s more than fooling around?

**Craig:** I would say penetrative sex is virginity.

**John:** Penetrative sex — 23.

**Craig:** I was 16. I was a man-whore, obviously. [laughs]

Kevin Williamson, for real.

**John:** The real Kevin Williamson?

**Craig:** The real Kevin Williamson, creator of Scream and so many other wonderful television shows, Dawson’s Creek and so forth, his simple question, “Zoloft or Lexapro?”

**John:** I’m on neither anti-depressant, but I think they’re both good choices for people who need an anti-depressant.

**Craig:** Neither am I. I’m not on anti-depressants. And I suspect that they don’t work as well as people think. But, you know what does work? Kevin Williamson.

**John:** Yeah. He works hard.

**Craig:** Best guy ever.

**John:** Nima, the actual Nima, wrote in to ask, “I want Bride & Prejudice,” which is apparently a movie. “iTunes has it in SD to buy and HD to rent. Should I buy SD or wait for HD?”

So, I would say you should never wait. I think waiting for almost anything that’s going to cost $3 or $4 or $5 is never a good idea, because the world could end tomorrow. So, if you want to watch this movie, do whatever it takes to watch this movie now and don’t wait another second.

**Craig:** Yeah. Totally. Just rent it. Yeah, of course. I mean, how many times really are you going to watch this thing? Also, I should say that we do better on residuals when you rent things.

**John:** Yeah. Rent it.

**Craig:** Matthew Kingshot wants to know, “Where does the podcast’s opening musical riff come from?”

**John:** So, that actually is something I wrote and it is from The Remnants, which was a web pilot that I did during the strike, so 2008. And I needed some opening little jingle, so I wrote that opening little jingle. And I liked it and I needed something for the podcast, and so I put it there.

So, if you go back to really early episodes of the podcast, I would use sort of super hero or cartoon music for the thing, and I just got really tired of looking for new stuff every week.

**Craig:** Finding new ones, yeah.

**John:** Yeah, so I went to [hums opening]. And that’s what it is.

**Craig:** [hums opening] What’s next? We’ve got David Wells. David Wells, great picture.

**John:** Yes. He writes, “What surprised you about being a father?”

**Craig:** I think the — when I had my son and I became a parent I was surprised by the amount of innate violence that had been in my bloodstream and I didn’t realize it was there. I’m not a violent person. I’ve never been in a fistfight. I don’t believe in hitting. I don’t hit my kids. I don’t spank them or do any of that stuff. I’m not a violent person.

But, I remember somebody accidentally waking my baby up and I wanted to kill them. Not like, ha-ha, I want to kill them; I mean, I actually wanted to kill them. It’s powerful stuff.

**John:** I would say that I was not prepared for sort of how, I would say sort of like your violence — how primal it feels when you have a newborn kid who you are protecting. And how you are — it’s like this beautiful jailor who has like locked you to care of them. And how day becomes night, night becomes day, and you’re just in this weird dreamed fugue state of taking care of the newborn.

And eventually you sort of pass through that thing. But, because of that intensity you feel this tremendous connection to this kid. So, like any scratch on the kid becomes an affront to you.

**Craig:** Yeah. It is intense. Indeed intense.

**John:** Jeff Orrig writes, “How would Craig redesign Kickstarter?”

**Craig:** You know, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t redesign Kickstarter. I would just simply say to the people who are participating on Kickstarter to Kickstarter Emptor, you know. Oh, I’m sorry, Caveat Kickstarter. I got it totally backwards.

Just really think critically before you toss your money out there. Kickstarter can be a good thing. Kickstarter appeals to your most pro-social noble instincts. That doesn’t mean that the people appealing to you are pro-social or noble themselves. So, just be skeptical, be cautious, and if somebody is asking you for money that you think ought to just be asking a traditional investment community for money, don’t give them money. There’s other things you can do with your cash. That’s all.

**John:** Sounds fair.

**Craig:** Yeah. Let’s see, we got Mike Bowman in LA saying, “We often hear about the crazy things athletes and actors do with their money or fame once they have it, what was the craziest thing you did once you became a working screenwriter simply because you had the money or recognition to do it?”

**John:** So, this wasn’t right when I first became successful, but I really liked the movie Lost in Translation a lot. And so we got the idea, my husband and some friends and I, like let’s just go to Tokyo for 48 hours. And so we did. And it was kind of amazing. So, we flew to Tokyo. We stayed at the Park Hyatt, the same hotel they used in there. I swam in that same pool they shot. And we had like a Lost in Translation weekend. And it was kind of amazing.

And we sang at karaoke bars. And we went to the Imperial Palace, which happened to be open that day. And it was kind of great. So, it was a lot of money to blow, but it was also a really great time and a great experience.

**Craig:** I haven’t done really crazy things with money. I mean…

**John:** Tesla.

**Craig:** Well, is that really crazy? I mean, it’s a car and people have cars and people have expensive cars. I don’t know if that’s that crazy. You know, it’s okay. Does that count? Okay, Tesla.

**John:** I think it counts.

**Craig:** Okay. That’s it. Cool.

**John:** Hawke from Berlin, Germany writes…

**Craig:** [How-ka].

**John:** [Ho-ka], sorry, I should have put the E in there. “I always feel guilty for the Holocaust. I am 30-years-old and I had nothing to do with the war, or the Holocaust, or anything. Even my father was born in 1947 when the war was already over, but I want to apologize as soon as I meet a Jewish person. Do you think that a person should carry the weight of the most horrible crime ever, or let it die after my grandfather left this world?”

**Craig:** Hawke, you are adorable. No, Hawke, you should stop. That’s ridiculous. You don’t — first of all, don’t apologize as soon as you meet a Jewish person. As a Jewish person, that would probably be the only thing you could do to me that would make me feel kind of awkward and weird.

You didn’t do anything! And your dad didn’t do anything. And, frankly, people who were alive during the war, a lot of them didn’t do anything. A lot of them did, but a lot of them didn’t. And a lot of them were just kids, you know.

And the truth is that it was a terrible thing that happened but I don’t believe collective guilt. I don’t believe in sins of the fathers. And, no, you should just stop. You should just stop and breathe easy and be a good person. And you’ll be fine.

**John:** Yeah. Sins of the father just drives me crazy in that sense of like things carry over past a generation. You didn’t choose to be born to that person, so why should you inherit any of their guilt for things? That’s nuts.

And so we have the equivalent in America, it would be slavery. And so slavery was a terrible thing that we can look at, learn from. We can recognize, are there aspects of what happened there that are still happening in society now. But we can focus on what is the present tense and not focus on that thing that happened back then, or of feeling culpable as a modern day human being for what that was then.

We can acknowledge what happened and try to avoid that sort of situation happening again. But, we shouldn’t feel guilt about it.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s not about you, basically. You know what I mean? It’s not. You don’t have to feel this personal connection to that because you’re not personally connected to it. And that’s just a fact.

Let’s see, Tim says, “Describes your home entertainment setup and talk your tech in general perfected platform/gamers. Outside of movies, what’s the first thing you read or seek information about each day?”

**John:** That was too much. Let’s just talk about home entertainment center.

**Craig:** Home entertainment center. Done. What do you got?

**John:** Our main TV, our DVR is just the standard Time Warner, no, I’m sorry, it’s the DirecTV box, which is actually just fine. It’s the DirecTV DVR.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s what I have.

**John:** It’s just fine. And I was for a long time holding onto my TiVo but then I got this thing. And you know what? It’s just fine. So, we use that and then we use a Mac Mini that we use as both our DVD player and to watch things off Hulu or Netflix or anything else with that. So, we just switch between the two. It’s fine, it’s painless, it’s easy.

Our old house had a projector and all that stuff, and we never used it because it was a giant hassle. Some people love the projector stuff, but I honestly believe in a TV that you can turn on, you can watch, and it sounds good.

**Craig:** Yeah, we have TVs and we have the DVRs for DirecTV. And then we have a couple of nice setups with surround sound, which I like. Surround sound things are — one particular super cool surround soundy thing which I like a lot. But, yeah, you know, nothing crazy.

**John:** I think people will spend way too much time and money tweaking and adapting their situations which they shouldn’t.

**Craig:** Well, and that entire industry is based on a fastidiousness that simply doesn’t apply. It just doesn’t apply. It’s ridiculous.

**John:** Treat asks, “So, how do you and Craig feel about marijuana? Have you ever smoked before writing? Do you know other screenwriters who do this, or on an occasional or regular basis?”

**Craig:** I mean, I don’t care about marijuana. I had my get high a lot in senior year of high school phase, and then I smoked a little bit in college but not that much. The truth is I don’t smoke marijuana. I don’t get high ever really anymore just because I kind of don’t want to. Again, it’s sort of the alcohol thing, frankly.

And the other issue with marijuana is the dosage concept, because I know exactly how much alcohol is in a glass of wine, or in three fingers of scotch. I just don’t know if I’m smoking marijuana, what is it, how much — how intense is it? There are so many different kinds.

No, I wouldn’t smoke before writing. I just think that that’s crazy. I don’t drink before writing, either. I just think that would be dumb.

**John:** Yeah. I don’t smoke pot. I smoked pot in college some, and a little bit since then. But, the problem with pot for me is I’m really stupid the next day. It just lingers with me for a while in a way that’s not helpful or useful. So, I think it should be legalized. I think we should tax and regulate it and treat it much the same way we treat alcohol, but it’s not a useful thing to me.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m with you on that one.

**John:** Next question.

**Craig:** Oh, Hugo von Giggle-Bottom.

**John:** Ha. Hugo von Giggle-Bottom writes, “I’m interested in your opinions on baldness, John more than Craig, because you are winning the race to hairlessness. Do you care? Does it affect your confidence?” And related questions.

So, here’s my hair situation. I started to lose my hair in my early 20s. And at a certain point, my friend Tom Hoffman says, “You know, if you ever want to just shave all your hair off, I’ll totally do that.”

And I was like, “You know, we should do that, and we should do it as a public event.”

So, I was at my friend Jen’s house and it was sort of like a white trash party and we were watching Miss America. And it was like, yeah, shave my head. And so we shaved it. And I don’t regret it at all. I never looked back.

The weirdest thing about shaving your head though for the first time is I would catch my reflection in a mirror or even just like walking by a window it was like, “Ah, who is that?” I did not recognize myself for a while. But, then, god, my life is just so much easier not having to think about hair.

**Craig:** Yeah. I would totally shave my head, I guess, but my wife doesn’t want me to. She just likes a very close-cropped balding look. The one thing I won’t do is anything to delay the balding. I don’t put any medicine in there. I don’t put any of that stuff. I don’t take the pills.

I know guys that are injecting stuff directly into their scalp. I don’t do anything. I don’t care. This Dr. von Giggle-Bottom, who is German nobility, apparently, says he’s been struggling with hair loss for years and “I just can’t seem to get comfortable with being a bald guy.”

Dude, you’re not a bald guy. You’re a guy. No one cares.

**John:** No one cares.

**Craig:** No one cares. Honestly. It’s just hair. It’s hair.

Let’s see, Jessie asks, “Did Craig ever get to read the rest of the script for that three-page challenge he likes so much? Did he like it?”

I did. And I did. It turned out that it was actually a short. It was about 10 pages, so I got super lucky. Because, you know, you ask to read something, you’re like, oh boy.

It was a very fun read. And when I read it I thought it felt very — it felt like a script for something animated which didn’t come through necessarily when we read it as just three pages. And it was a little reminiscent of Paper Man, the Oscar award-winning animated short. So, I’m actually hooking up the writer with somebody at Pixar who is going to read the script as a writing sample.

**John:** Great. That’s a perfect choice for that.

**Craig:** Yeah. I would think so.

**John:** Matthew from California writes, “I have a hard time waking up in the mornings, no matter what I do, no matter how much sleep I’ve gotten, I cannot seem to rise when my alarm says it’s time to start the day. Part of me thinks it’s a habit ingrained to me after a long period of depression, but regardless of its origins it’s really messing with my ability to get stuff done. Any advice?”

I would say that you are not a morning person and you should somehow rearrange your life so that you don’t have to be a morning person. I think it’s honestly kind of maybe okay that you’re not a morning person. Just take night shifts or something.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s possible. There are a couple things that you generally ask in a situation like this. What is your caffeine intake? Try stopping all caffeine after noon. Don’t smoke. Exercise a little bit more. And then just try for three or four days to wake up when your alarm says wake up, let’s say 8 o’clock. So, don’t get crazy and say, “I’m waking up at 6:30.” 8 o’clock. Give that a shot. Do that for three or four days in a row and see if you don’t start to get super tired around midnight.

And then you may be able to adjust, if it’s important to you.

**John:** I will say the 11 weeks I was gone in New York and Chicago, that whole time I did not have to set my alarm once, and I could just wake up when I woke up, and I was so much happier for it.

**Craig:** Yeah, for sure.

**John:** Jonathan writes, “Two questions because I’m a greedy bastard. What was the clichéd love at first sight when dating? Or was there a clichéd love at first sight meeting? And since you guys are fairly popular, what would you say is the proper etiquette for people to come up and say hi?”

**Craig:** You walk past them two steps and then turn around, thrust yourself at them.

**John:** And say, “So good to meet you Jerry Seinfeld.”

**Craig:** “So good to meet you.” And then walk away.

**John:** So, let’s handle the second question first. It’s fine to say hi if we’re not clearly engaged in some other conversation or place. It’s situational, but I was at a restaurant and the server recognized who I was and could say, “Oh, I’m a big fan of your podcast.” That’s lovely. That’s great. If I’m in the middle of doing something, or if I’m sort of like doing stuff with my kid, that’s the only time it gets kind of weird, because I’m busy doing other stuff here and there isn’t a great time for me to talk with you.

But, our fans are super cool, so I’m never scared about that.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s a good rule of thumb to not approach any famous people or people that you don’t know when they’re with their children for the aforementioned reason that parents get — they’re like bears with cubs. They just get weird about that. I mean, the people that have said things to me that I’ve met about the podcast have been very nice.

And, look, the truth is there’s not a great reward. There’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow of meeting me. I just go, “Oh, that’s nice, good to hear.” And then I just move on. But, yeah, just don’t trust yourself into my personal space, because that’s the sort of thing an idiot does to Jerry Seinfeld.

**John:** Yeah. Don’t be an idiot like Craig Mazin.

**Craig:** Don’t be an idiot like Craig Mazin.

For me and my wife it was not love at first sight. It wasn’t not love at first sight. It was interest at first sight. I don’t know if there is a love at first sight. I’m suspicious of that sort of thing.

**John:** Yeah. I think there’s lust at first sight. And so we weren’t love at first sight, either. We were like, this is good. This is great. And then three dates became four dates, became ten dates, became, you know, everything else. So, I think sometimes we’re guilty in movies of creating this situation of love at first sight and it becomes the expectation about how love is supposed to work. And that’s not how love usually works.

**Craig:** That is exactly right. It is not.

**John:** Cool.

**Craig:** So many books just are lies. The world is a huge blanket woven from threads of lies. We just cover ourselves in it.

**John:** Craig, that was actually our last question.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** That’s so anticlimactic, but that was love at first sight, so that’s a good way to end a podcast.

**Craig:** Why not?

**John:** Why not? So, I have no One Cool Thing, because I thought that was about 90 Cool Things.

**Craig:** Oh my god, yeah, no, we can’t keep talking. That would be ridiculous.

**John:** But thank you everyone who sent in these questions. I’m looking at the list now. There were 106 questions. We answered maybe like 50 of them. That was a lot of questions.

**Craig:** We answered a lot of questions. I think we answered them well. We didn’t fight.

**John:** No, we didn’t really fight. We didn’t even disagree. I would say our answers lined up much more than I would have guessed they would.

**Craig:** Well, because, here’s the truth — the two of us are right.

**John:** That’s the thing.

**Craig:** We’re right. And I wish people would just stop fighting it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Just let us be right.

**John:** Cool.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** Craig, thank you for another fun podcast.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Standard boiler plate language here: If you like the show, find us on iTunes, give us a rating, tell people that you like the show. And if you have questions about screenwriting, which is mostly what we talk about here, you can send them to ask@johnaugust.com. And you can follow me on Twitter. I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. And thank you very much and we will talk to you guys next week.

**Craig:** [hums opening] See you later.

**John:** Thanks, bye.

LINKS:

* The Writers Guild Foundation presents [The Screenwriter’s Craft: Finding Your Voice](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/the-screenwriters-craft-finding-your-voice/) featuring Scriptnotes Live
* [Zach Braff’s response](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1869987317/wish-i-was-here-1/posts/482298) to [The Hollywood Reporter’s article](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cannes-zach-braffs-kickstarter-film-523352) on his film’s gap financer
* The Hollywood Reporter on [E!’s Fashion Police writers strike](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/fashion-police-writers-strike-begins-441421)
* [Highland v 1.0.2](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland/) brings shift + return caps, lyrics and various minor bug fixes
* Try [Cignot.com](http://www.cignot.com/Default.asp) for all your eCig needs
* Thumbs up for [UC Verde Buffalo Grass](http://ucverdebuffalograss.com/)
* [Kevo](http://www.kwikset.com/Kevo/default.aspx) is on its way
* The [Nest Thermostat](http://nest.com/) is fantastic
* For LA pizza, check out [Pizzeria Mozza](http://www.pizzeriamozza.com/), [Joe’s Pizza](http://www.joespizza.com/Tel_310_395-9222.html) in Santa Monica or the pizza kiosk at [The Americana](http://www.americanaatbrand.com/)
* And for LA sushi, we like [Nobu](http://www.noburestaurants.com/) and [Matsuhisa](http://www.nobumatsuhisa.com/), [Sugarfish](http://sugarfishsushi.com/) and the former [Nozawa](http://sushinozawa.com/), [Sasabune](http://www.trustmesushi.com) and [Chef Niki Nakayama](http://www.n-naka.com/about/chef/)’s n/naka
* If you’re in Chicago (or Washington D.C.), try [Protein Bar](http://www.theproteinbar.com/)
* Craig still loves his [Tesla](http://www.teslamotors.com/) and John still loves his [Leaf](http://www.nissanusa.com/electric-cars/leaf/)
* [Alternate with water](http://johnaugust.com/2009/alternate-with-water) when you’re drinking
* OUTRO: George Michael’s [Father Figure](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_EGdiS2PEE) covered by Cantaloop