The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2012/optioning-a-novel-and-the-golden-age-of-television).

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

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

**John:** And you are listening to Scriptnotes, Episode 25. This is a podcast about screenwriting, and things that are interesting to screenwriters. How are you, Craig?

**Craig:** I’m fine. I’m amazed. We’ve gotten to 25 of these things.

**John:** 25. That is a quarter of a century, or some sort of centennial celebration. A quarter of the way there.

**Craig:** It is, uh, some kind of anniversary. Gold, or diamond, or something, right?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** What you get me?

**John:** I got you nothing.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** I got you topics. I got you questions. I’ve got things we can discuss.

**Craig:** Oh, well that’s good.

**John:** We can put them off for a little while if you wanted to blather about something. I could find some other network promo that I could talk you through.

**Craig:** I don’t like your characterization of blather. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Let’s just get right to some questions, because I actually have some pretty good ones this week.

**Craig:** Let’s do it.

**John:** Cody writes in to ask, “How does one obtain the rights to a novel, etc? I know I need to contact their agent/lawyer, but I guess what I am asking is how do I go about it without coming off like a complete novice or tool? Or, knowing me, most likely both?”

So, a kind of very basic question that is sort of procedural: How do you get the rights to a book. But, also, some psychology, so thinking about how you are going to approach a writer, an author, a novelist, and convince them that you are going to be the person who can adapt their book.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Have you optioned any books yourself?

**Craig:** It’s funny that this question comes up because I did it for the first time just a few months ago.

**John:** So tell us about it.

**Craig:** It was a book that I loved as a kid called The Hero from Otherwhere. And it is a sort of fantasy/fiction novel about two boys who end up in this fantasy world. I just always loved it, and for years I would sort of check… — First of all, I couldn’t remember what the name of it was.

And then with the Internet now there are forums. I think there is a forum literally called What’s that Book? And where you just say, “Okay, I remember three things, and there is something from the cover,” and then 100 people say it was this. So, I figured out what it was, and then I had…

So the first thing you do is you check and see are the rights available. And that is something where ideally you have an attorney, and they go to some sort of… — There must be some central database somewhere that keeps track.

**John:** I don’t think there is a central. I think they are actually just contacting people.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** Yeah. So you just had your attorney do it?

**Craig:** Yeah. He figured out that the rights were not available, and so I just let it go for many years, but then it just kept popping up. And so finally, a few months ago, I asked him again, and he said, “Look at that? They are available.”

And he knew that the rights holder was the daughter of the author. He had died many years ago. And she was an older lady, and I said, “You know what? Have my agency, CAA, reach out to her, and see if she is interested in optioning the rights. And if she is, then I will call her.”

And it was actually a very interesting phone call, because I called — and I have never done this before — and a very nice lady answered the phone. And she knew that I was going to be calling. And I said, “Listen, it’s a book that meant a lot to me as a kid, and I would love to adapt it if at all possible.”

And she said, “Well, I have to tell you that two days ago my husband died.” [laughs]

**John:** Oh my god.

**Craig:** And I was like, “This is going so badly. What’s wrong with my timing?” So, my heart sank, of course, like, oh my god. And I was just like, “I am so sorry.” I mean, because now I feel like a real vulgarian talking about options and books. Her poor husband died. And she said, “No, no. I knew that you were calling, and I said to my husband when he was in the hospital that somebody was calling about this. And this book meant a lot to my father, and to me, and to my husband. And he said to me, ‘Maybe this will be the one.’ So, I feel like an angel brought you to me.”

And, as you know, of course, I am…

**John:** Craig Mazin is all about angels. I mean, angels guide most of your decisions.

**Craig:** [laughs] My existence is proof that there is no God. So this was even more of a burden upon me. And I felt…you know…

But at the same time, it was just a very nice moment. I mean, and maybe if there is a lesson in general to be applied here it is that when you talk to people who own the rights to things like novels, presuming it is not a very popular thing — maybe it is a little thing — it means a lot to them. It is not just commerce. It is emotional to them, especially if it is a relative and the author has passed away. It is part of their family, so you have to be very respectful about it, and go about it the right way.

And it worked out.

**John:** That’s great. So after this conversation, what was the follow up?

**Craig:** So then I spoke to my lawyer, and I said, “Write up what is a very standard, fair agreement to option this novel. Don’t lowball. We don’t have to highball either. Just come in with what the sort of industry standard is for a property like this.”

And he sent her an option agreement, and she signed it.

**John:** That’s great.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Wonderful. So this will be a project that you will adapt here in the near future and hopefully turn it into a great movie.

**Craig:** That’s my hope. I have been talking about it with a few people, and it has its challenges, but there is a great story there. So, we will see if I can get it done. I would like to think I could.

**John:** Great. Over the course of my career there have been three books that I have been directly involved with getting the rights for. The first was Big Fish. So, Big Fish I got set as a manuscript, so it is not really the same situation in that my agency was representing the rights; they sent over a book as a manuscript, which is basically just a box full of pages. And you just flip through the pages and I said, “I know how to make this into a movie.”

I went into Sony. I pitched it to Sony. Sony got the rights for me. And so my name was never on the option agreement for that book. But a large part of adapting that book was my relationship with Daniel Wallace, and getting to know him, and getting to know sort of all the secrets of the book and figuring out what that was.

And the reason I have been active with Big Fish throughout all of these years is I have a great relationship with Daniel Wallace. And he has seen the project grow from this very nascent idea to now several different kinds of iterations.

Books I tried to get myself, or did get myself… — I remember going after this great book that I actually just found on the shelf this morning called Summer of the Monkeys. And I will find the actual author’s name and put up a link to it. Summer of the Monkeys was this great book that I remembered again from childhood, same situation as you. But, of course, it was a much easier title to remember because it is about a bunch of monkeys.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Summer of the Monkeys is this great story about this circus train that crashes, all of these monkeys get lost in these woods in the south, and this boy and his dog have to basically catch all of the monkeys. And he is getting paid money for each monkey he can bring back to the circus.

And it was a really great, charming story. Same guy that wrote Where the Red Fern Grows.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** Rawls, I think, was his last name. I will find it.

So, I wanted to get the rights to this book, and at this point I don’t know if I even… — I guess I had an agent, but I was just doing this myself. And this was also pre-Internet age, so I had to flip to the front of the book, and you see who the publisher is. You call New York City information, because all of the publishing houses are in New York City.

This is actually, in the age of the Internet there is probably an online way to do this, but this was the old-fashioned way. You called New York information — (212) 555-1212. You ask for that publisher. You call that publisher. You ask for their sub-rights department. And this is what is called subsidiary rights. These are the people who represent the publishing rights on properties, or the non-publishing rights on properties. So, film rights, and everything else.

And they are the ones who will have the contact information for who owns the film rights on a book. So, I got this woman’s name, and this address, and I figured that this must be the wife of the author, the widow. So, I wrote a letter. I heard nothing for a couple weeks, wrote a follow up letter, and she finally wrote back and said that someone else had the rights, and she was really sorry.

And I eventually sort of forgot about it and got busy with other things. But they finally made a movie of that book, which I never saw.

**Craig:** Oh, somebody did make a movie of it?

**John:** Someone did. And it actually… — Dave Matthews is apparently in that movie.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** Isn’t that so odd?

**Craig:** Yeah, that is. You know, the thing about rights is that they have become increasingly difficult because everybody who writes a book is seemingly already on the lookout to sell the film rights. And so a lot of them get snapped up. And sometimes it is particularly difficult when you are dealing with international titles.

Lindsay Doran, one of our favorite producers who we discussed in another podcast, brought me and Scott Frank a book that we wanted to adapt, a really cool book called Three Bags Full. And it was a German novel, and basically — it was a great idea — a shepherd in Ireland, in a little village in Ireland, is murdered. It’s a murder mystery. And his sheep take it upon themselves to solve the crime. [laughs]

And sheep, as it turns out, are particularly advantaged in certain ways, and incredibly disadvantaged in other ways, like their propensity to panic, and the fact that they can’t remember anything. And it was really great, and we really wanted to do it, but the rights were…

**John:** In your head was this going to be a live action movie or animated?

**Craig:** Yeah, it was going to be a Babe kind of deal.

**John:** Oh, perfect.

**Craig:** But, god, the rights were just so entangled with the German companies, and became very difficult. And the other day Lindsay and I were talking about it and we just thought it is never… we will never untangle that knot. It’s a shame, but you have to try at the very least.

**John:** A more recent example for me was Steve Hely wrote a great book called How I Became a Famous Novelist. And I read this little short book review blurb and said, “Well that sounds great.” So I tracked down… — I figured out that this one person who was doing a blog written in the author’s voice, the book is about a guy who writes a book.

And I was able to Google and find the writer of the book within the book, and that there was a blog that was sort of his self-important point of view. And I realized that Steve Hely himself is probably doing this blog. And so I just emailed at that address and said, “Hey, I’m John August. I have done these things. I really want to see your book. Can I see your book?” And they sent me an early copy.

I loved it. And because I sort of had been that first person to reach out, I was able to sit down with him and convince him that I was the person to adapt his book and to make it into a movie.

That ended up not being the case. And I ended up getting busy with a lot of other stuff that made it impossible to sort of do that movie, but reaching out directly to the author, when you can find a way to do that, is a great way to approach it.

**Craig:** Yeah. And I should say that you have to, like in all things, you have to gauge your value. If you are a new screenwriter, or you have no track record, then don’t think you are going to be getting the rights to a popular title. It ain’t going to happen.

**John:** But there may be a smaller book that no one is actually approaching the rights on, and if you are a person who can do it, and you can convince that writer that you are the person who can do it, maybe you will get it.

**Craig:** Exactly. And so you probably won’t get things that are still in galleys, or unpublished, or on their way out. But these little things like the books you remember that are now out of print, or have just been languishing somewhere — those little uncovered gems — those are real opportunities for you.

And it also gives you quite a bit of leverage when you do write a screenplay, if you write a spec screenplay based on a title that you have rights, it does give you a bit of leverage when it is time to sell that script.

**John:** Yeah. Have you read How I Became a Famous Novelist?

**Craig:** I haven’t. No.

**John:** Oh, okay, well I am sending it to you like right now because it is great. I will also put a link to it in the show notes. It is still one of the funniest books I have ever read and someone else has the rights to it now. And they are going to make a movie, and it is going to be great.

**Craig:** Can you say who it is?

**John:** Oh, I don’t remember who it is. I don’t remember who got it. But Steve Hely himself ended up getting hired onto 30 Rock, and now he is working on The Office.

**Craig:** Oh great.

**John:** He is doing just fine, so there is really no sad part to this story, other than the fact that the movie didn’t get made.

**Craig:** By the way, it was me. I got the rights.

**John:** I thought so. It was some sort of clever pseudonym.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** So to summarize our guidance on getting the rights to a book, I would say — this is my advice — if you have a way to contact the writer directly, try to contact the writer directly. If you don’t, you go through sub-rights at the publisher to try to find who the contact person is. If you already have an agent or a lawyer, they can help you there.

Ultimately when it came time to option the rights to How I Became a Famous Novelist, that is the thing that my lawyer did. My lawyer talked to his lawyer, and it was all happy and good. And, try it. People might say yes.

**Craig:** And be nice. And just remember that they have something that you want, so be respectful and seductive.

**John:** Yeah. Good. Our next question: CeCe, this person named CeCe asks, “When can you say you wrote a script? Something like Big Fish or Go are obvious. Go was a spec, and you were the only writer. And on Big Fish, although it was adapted from source material, you were the only listed screenwriter. But for something like Charlie’s Angels, there are other writers who share that credit, same with other panelists listed. Can or do those writers also say they wrote it? I guess a more specific question is, is there some sort of unspoken rule in the industry among writers about who claims credit out in the world? Does the guy who did most of the work generally say he wrote it, but subsequent writers that did enough credit, but weren’t the first writer don’t? Does it even matter?”

That’s a really good question.

**Craig:** That is a really good question. I think the last question in the series of questions is probably the operative one. I mean, look, it is a little… — Most of the movies that I have my name on, I am a co-writer, not an “and” co-writer but an “&” co-writer. I wrote with, in conjunction with, other people like Todd Phillips and Scott Armstrong, or David Zucker, or whatever, Pat Proft.

It is a little unwieldy at times to say, you know, “When I co-wrote blankety blank,” or “When I was co-writing such-and-such;” it is just unwieldy. It is just simpler to say “writing,” because the truth is the credits are a matter of public record. It is not like you are pulling a fast one over on anybody.

If you, I suppose, if I… — I don’t have any credits that are just “Story by.” If I were just “Story by” on a movie, I probably wouldn’t say I wrote it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I would say I have a “Story by” credit on it. But, I guess the big question is does it really matter? Not really. To me at least. You know, if you worked on it, and your name is on it, your name is on it.

**John:** Yeah. I think I am with you in terms of I wouldn’t say I wrote a movie if… — I wouldn’t say I wrote or produced a movie if I only got “Story by” credit. And so on the upcoming Dark Shadows, I ended up just getting “Story by” credit. And I certainly worked on that movie; I can absolutely claim that. But I would draw a distinction between “worked on” and “wrote.” And I worked on Dark Shadows, and I worked on a lot of movies.

And Aline Brosh McKenna actually emailed me after I posted on my “About” section, or some other blog post, about the movies that I have worked on. And she was like, “Well, isn’t that sort of claiming credit for it?” And I said, “That’s an interesting discussion, whether I am claiming credit for things by acknowledging that I worked on these movies that don’t have my name on them.”

So, like I worked on Jurassic Park III. I worked on Minority Report. And I am not sort of claiming that those were mine, but the litmus test, the threshold I sort of had for which movies I worked on, is did my pen go all the way through that script? So, did I not just like drop in for one quick little moment and then drop back out? Was that entire script, and the responsibility for that whole movie, within my word processor for a period of time? And those are the movies I felt like I could honestly say I worked on.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, you could say you worked on those for sure, because that is accurate. For me, I’m a little different on it. I feel like the movies that I have done, that I have worked on but don’t have credit on, I don’t like talking about it because I feel like, hmm, how should I put it?

I just feel like it is probably a bummer for the people that do have credit. Because the truth is on a few of the them I don’t have a word in there. It was like you came in, and then suddenly the studio went, “Wait. Wait. We don’t want to do this kind of movie. We want to do this entirely different movie with different actors,” and all the rest of it. And I’m gone. My script doesn’t resemble what is up there. I don’t even ask for credit.

So, I just feel like it would be a bummer for them to go, “Oh, and then there is Craig Mazin out there saying that he worked on it.” Well, now, did he…

See, here is the thing that people have got to understand: Our writing credits’ rules state that you can, in certain circumstances like an original project, you can write nearly half of a movie and not get credit. So, if you say, “I worked on it,” that means you have done anywhere between zero and 50%. There is a certain vague…

So, my thing is I don’t talk about it. I just don’t. I don’t talk about it because I feel like, I don’t know. Because I don’t want people doing it to me. So don’t do that to me. You do it to everybody else. [laughs]

**John:** To me, I just feel that it is a little bit dishonest to talk about the career of screenwriting, and sort of like how I have actually made my living and not acknowledge the actual things I am working on. Because if you just look at the movies that I have made, that have my name on it, well that is great. But that is not really in some ways the bulk of what my career has been.

The bulk of my career has been a lot of things I sort of came in and carried along. I carried the football for a while on them.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so that is, I don’t know. To me, if you are being honest about what the actual day-to-day job of screenwriting and what the career of screenwriting is, sometimes it is that — being the person who carried this movie from this point to this point for awhile.

And in no way, whenever I talk about movies that I have worked on, and I don’t have my name on them, I try to make sure I am really clear about the fact that this isn’t my movie in any specific way. I don’t own this as my own, but this is the work I did on it, and this is why I did the work I did on it.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s fair. I mean, look, this used to be, I think, more of a controversy pre-Internet. If you get hired on something now, it is on the Internet because there are so many sites that rely on pumping out marginally interesting information about Hollywood.

So, you know, I get hired to do something and it is on some website. So it is part of the public record. But, it is a little…

Sometimes I think, you know, it is a bummer that the best work I have done probably — not the best work — some of the best work I have done will never be associated with my name. And some of the worst work I have done is associated with my name. And that, unfortunately, I don’t know; I chalk it up to part of the price of the job we do. So, we have two different answers to your question, CeCe.

**John:** Yeah. And in a general framework I should say we were talking about specific WGA screenwriting credit versus having worked on something. There is continually a discussion about should there be some kind of acknowledgement of participating writers in the end credits of movies, or something else. And the two sides of the debate are basically: no, there shouldn’t be, because it diminishes perceived value of the actual “Written by” credit; and then there is the other side of the argument that says, “Okay, what does this mean that you were acknowledging the catering truck driver, but you are not acknowledging the person who wrote a tremendous amount of this movie?”

**Craig:** Well one day we could fill an entire podcast I bet with that debate. Because that is a raging one. And I have, and I know this is going to surprise you, extraordinarily strong opinions about that. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] It is going to be an Evergreen topic. That is never going to be solved, and it is never going to be solved to satisfaction.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Let’s do our third and final question.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Ben asks, “What are your thoughts on what everyone else is calling the ‘Golden Age of TV.’ As a new writer trying to find a place, I am finding myself torn between the love of film, and also the lure of TV shows and networks such AMC, Showtime, HBO, and even new ventures on NetFlix. I was halfway through watching season one of Homeland and I started to get the bug to try to write a TV spec instead of a feature. Is it more realistic to become a working writer in TV nowadays than in film? What would you advise to a new writer? Pick TV or film?”

**Craig:** Hmm. Do you want to take a stab at that one first?

**John:** Yeah. You should write TV.

**Craig:** I think so. I mean, the only caveat is this: If you are a feature writer, you are a feature writer. Don’t force yourself into a square peg, sorry [laughs], into a square hole if you are a round peg. I don’t think my mind is structured in such way as to write television. I don’t think I would be very good at it. I tend to enjoy writing stories that are self-contained, that arc over 100 to 120 pages. That is just the way my mind works.

And, not surprisingly, I like going to movies more than I like watching TV. But in particular, if you like drama, specifically the kind of adult dramas that are flourishing right now on television, then television. Because they are not making those for movies anymore.

**John:** Not at all. I mean, there are whole genres that we have just conceded to TV, because TV is doing them better. And God bless it.

And if you look at, we talk about sort of auteur theory and filmmaker culture, and the way that people, these great movies of the 70s where you have these visionary people coming in and changing the way that cinema is. That is where we are at, I think, now with our TV. Our TV showrunners have come in with such a specific clear vision and a voice for what these shows are going to be. They are wielding these incredible writing staffs that are generating just amazing hours of television. And half hours of television, too. I think that is the unheralded thing now, too.

You look at the New Girl, which is a great half hour, that is specific and weird and amazing. I think the better writing is happening in TV. I think there are more jobs in TV.

**Craig:** No doubt.

**John:** Yeah. If you are a great writer who wants to work in TV, you should work in TV. And you will write some features, too, and it will all be happy and good. But that is where the excitement is. That is where the energy is. And it could swing back.

You know, I can see some of these TV showrunners are going to go back to film. And they may bring some of that awesomeness with them. J.J. Abrams is doing movies now. Joss Whedon is doing movies now. That is going to happen more and more. But, TV is still where the best stuff is happening.

**Craig:** Yeah. Again, for drama, for sure. It has as much to do, I think, with just the kind of audiences that these things address and the structure of the business. Adult audiences, I think, who are looking for drama are more likely to show up in business-satisfying ways for the companies for television than they are for film.

And so it makes sense that they would go ahead and then focus their firepower in television. Television is a little bit of a lower risk for them because, you know, you are not spending… — I mean a small studio movie, a small studio drama is $35 million. Big ones, you know, like for instance State of Play was a big bet. It was an adult drama. It was a big bet. I think it cost $100 million. TV shows don’t cost $100 million, at least not to start with.

So, it is a much lower risk bencher for them. There are more jobs. And there is a season to it. So there is a way; there is actually a protocol to follow to try and get hired. Movies, there is no protocol. It is kind of a crazy, like everybody is rushing into see The Who in Cincinnati, and hopefully you don’t get trampled.

There are much fewer movies being made, whereas television, reality kind of hit its peak and has pulled back a bit. And the other thing is television is unlimited by exhibition. You can keep making channels. The only thing that is stopping you from making more channels, I suppose, is the bandwidth of the delivery mechanism. But they keep squeezing that down in such a way that you can have 500, 600, 1,000 channels.

There are only so many movie theaters. There are only so many movie studios. So you are fighting over release dates. No one fights over a release date in television. There are so many reasons why television is a safer and more vibrant job market.

However, in addition to my caveat about if you are a movie guy write movies, if you are a comedy guy, I think movies are still a great place to be. Because television comedy is not yet back to where it was in its heyday, and I don’t know if it will ever get back there.

**John:** I think it will.

**Craig:** And if it does, that’s great. I mean, because a ton of guys really just suddenly found themselves outside in the cold going, “What happened?” And they are really funny people. I mean, it is funny — I was talking with, I won’t say who it was, but an excellent showrunner. Why not, I’m praising him? Steve Levitan. Great showrunner. Genius. And Modern Family is a terrific show. And he has been around forever.

And he was telling me how when they put their writing staff together for Modern Family it was like putting together an All Star team, because everybody was available. I mean, almost everybody, because sitcoms had been so decimated. So, hopefully those shows like New Girl and Modern Family help these networks see their way back to half hour sitcoms, because, man, I love sitcoms. I’ve always loved them.

**John:** Yeah. But I also think there is comedy that is happening at the edges, at sort of the edges of the dial. So the Portlandias, the weird little things that are right now off in sort of the cable universe where all of the great one-hour dramas sort of started. I think those half hours are starting off there.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Those shows are happening out in the cable universe. That sensibility will find its way back to the broadcast networks, and there will be more jobs. There will be more comedies like that.

**Craig:** I hope so. I mean, the good news is if you are a movie type of person and you writes comedy, there is still a strong desire on the part of studios to produce medium-budget comedies. And, frankly, all comedies are basically medium-budget. No one really spends a lot on them. You don’t need to.

But, yeah, the guy who wrote in and said that he is a Homeland fan, I think that tells us what kind of writer he is. And I would say, you don’t have to give up on movies, by the way, but yeah, television.

**John:** Television. You have two feature writers telling you to write in television.

**Craig:** Yeah, I know.

**John:** Maybe it is selfish. Maybe it is actually we just don’t want any competition, and that is why we are telling you to write television.

**Craig:** They are not competing with me. You are being selfish. I write silly movies. But, you know, look, they make dramas. I will say, if you want to be in the drama feature business, be a director-writer or writer-director. Guys like John Lee Hancock and James Mangold. These are guys who work in that area and they are able to generate material and direct. That is what the studios, I think, are looking for. Because if you are not writing action, like big action movies, it is tough.

**John:** It’s tough.

**Craig:** Yeah. Oh, we got depressing again, didn’t we?

**John:** So we are going to spin this back around. TV is great. It’s the Golden Age of TV. This is a great time to write TV. Hooray for TV!

**Craig:** Hooray for TV!

**John:** We are not going to go into that depressing mode again.

**Craig:** No. No.

**John:** It’s a happy podcast.

**Craig:** You know, I feel like an angel brought me to you.

**John:** Ah, thank you very much, Craig. This is terrific.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** It is. It is all a dream.

**Craig:** So beautiful.

**John:** We have one last piece of business. Because so many of our listeners are presumably WGA members, the WGA asked if we could mention on the podcast about the survey which they sent out. If you are WGA member, you should be getting a survey in your email inbox which is about working conditions. So, it is specifically about features, I think, talking about who you have worked for, what the situation was like. It is all anonymous. You should really fill it out because it is how we can get report cards to studios and producers, and it is a very good idea.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So if you are a WGA member, look for that in your mailbox. And if you don’t see it, you should email screensurvey@wga.org. And that is our piece of business there.

Craig, 25 podcasts!

**Craig:** 25 in the can, man. I mean, that is pretty great.

**John:** Yeah. It feels like quite an accomplishment. I remember when we were doing our first awkward podcast. It has gotten much, much easier.

**Craig:** I think so. And I wonder what we will be doing when it is like our 1,000th podcast, and we are both really old and irrelevant.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** And by the way, and we are like still doing a podcast when the rest of the world is like, “Podcast?!”

**John:** I know. It will just be beamed directly into people’s brains.

**Craig:** Right. “Why aren’t they doing a Braincast? It is so lame.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Well, enjoy the phone calls from now, John.

**John:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** All right, talk to you later.

**Craig:** All right, man. Bye-bye.

**John:** Bye.

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2012/the-brotherhood-of-screenwriters).

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

**Craig Mazin:** I’m Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes. This is episode 24, in fact. Scriptnotes is a podcast about screenwriting, and things that are interesting to screenwriters. And Craig, I’m in just the best possible mood, and I’m sure you can guess why.

**Craig:** Because, uh… Is it Glee-based?

**John:** Weirdly it is Glee-related, but it is not specifically Glee-based. What happened last Sunday, or as people are listening to this, two Sundays ago?

**Craig:** The Superbowl.

**John:** Well, yes, there was a sports game played, apparently. But, a very important thing happened on Sunday which I don’t think is getting enough cultural attention.

**Craig:** [laughs] A sports game?!?

**John:** Well, I don’t know. The judges picked who the best sports team was.

**Craig:** Judges. [laughs]

**John:** More importantly —

**Craig:** Yeah?

**John:** — a cultural event happened that as a listener to the show, I assume you listen to the show in addition to just talking on the show —

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** — you would know is incredibly dear to my heart. What do I love more than anything?

**Craig:** Madonna?

**John:** No. Well, yeah, Madonna, fine. But whatever. Something even more important happened before, I think it was before Madonna in the show.

**Craig:** Was it one of the ads?

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Um.

**John:** And even more than an ad. It was NBC’s promo for the whole network.

**Craig:** They did it. They actually did that thing.

**John:** They did that thing! That thing that I love more than anything on earth is a whole network promo where you see stars from various shows coming together.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** In this case singing a song together. So, it was pretty much just like a thousand Christmases for me.

**Craig:** And, the lens through which we both experience the Superbowl is so vastly different. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Now did you actually see it, or you just heard about it?

**Craig:** No, no. I saw it, but I didn’t care. I think I went to the bathroom. [laughs] But what was the song that they sang? What was their slogan?

**John:** Brotherhood of Man, which is from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** And I thought maybe we would spend just a minute or two replaying it so I can kind of talk you through it. I can give sort of the viewer’s commentary on it.

**Craig:** Please.

**John:** So, some scene setting. We start off in 30 Rock. We are in Jack Donaghy’s office. And we have Liz Lemon and the whole cast there. And they are gathered together to watch the Superbowl. And there is random chit chat. The office is somewhat over lit, because you can tell it is not the real crew doing all of this. And some people look a little bit strange; they are not acting quite right. She is holding a big plate of nachos.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** And then, Jack Donaghy starts singing. And it is not quite clear why he is singing. The only thing that is also weird you notice is this is early in the season for taping 30 Rock because Jack’s hair this season, for some reason, is much redder than it should be.

It’s like the hair dye just got a little bit off, and they decided, “Oh, to get rid of the gray, maybe we are going to go a little bit more — ” I don’t know, what’s that color? It’s like a dragon red.

**Craig:** [laughs] This is so funny to me. Keep going. This is great.

**John:** So now we move from 30 Rock. First we go to The Office, and so the three of them, the three sort of leads who are left on the show, sing their little bit. And it is a continuous one-shot. Then Parks and Rec. And then, come on, the Parks and Rec folks are great.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a good show. I like that show.

**John:** And Community. Community still exists as a show on NBC.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** Which is encouraging. Ken Jeong doing a little hip swivel.

**Craig:** That’s my boy.

**John:** It’s fantastic.

**Craig:** My boy, Ken.

**John:** So now we are back at 30 Rock, and Liz is carrying her nachos. She and Jack are talking. They are doing their little mentors thing. And they are going into the main set where they do the show, the show that is completely implausible within the show —

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** The thing called TGS. And Jane Krakowski gets to sing. Who, Jane Krakowski, by the way, is great. “Jane Krakowski from Go,” is what I always say, because she started off, you know —

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** — the first thing people know her from.

**Craig:** You should say, “Go’s Jane Krakowski.”

**John:** Go’s Jane Krakowski. Because the only other thing people would know about her before that would be Vacation. Because, you know, she is the girl in Vacation where, “Daddy says I’m the best kisser.” That’s her.

**Craig:** No way.

**John:** That is Jane Krakowski.

**Craig:** Really? I did not know that.

**John:** Okay. So now we have to cut away from here to Smash, which is of course a very natural cut here.

**Craig:** Yeah. Natural.

**John:** So Katherine McPhee and Megan Hilty are singing their belting their songs. And then the curtains open up, and then, like, the rest of the cast comes out really quickly and says, like, three lines. And you can’t even see it, it is such a wide shot. So if you are Debra Messing, you are probably not so happy.

But, then you go to Law & Order: SVU, and everyone from Law & Order: SVU is singing, except for the one guy, the hot guy who was in Oz, who was always naked on Oz. For some reason he is not here that day.

It’s a quick cutaway to Whitney and some other show that I don’t care about.

**Craig:** I have lost control, by the way. I just want people to know I am absolutely out of control right now.

**John:** Donald Trump shows up. And now the NBC news team is here.

**Craig:** Did they get naked?

**John:** They did not get naked. But now we are at the Saturday Night Live people who are all good singers. And so they are naturals for this. And it is weird how much Saturday Night Live has sort of taken over the comedy universe of NBC; so many of the people on all those shows are from SNL.

**Craig:** Yeah. They have cross-pollinated through the Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock.

**John:** And Alec Baldwin nearly falls over when he picks up the Rockette…

**Craig:** And was that it?

**John:** That was it. There is a little Jimmy Fallon tap dance number. And Jimmy is lovely, but the song is over. He is just sort of trying to mooch a little bit of energy.

**Craig:** So that, for you basically, they wrapped football pointlessly around that thing.

**John:** Yeah. It was basically an NBC promo/John August delivery vehicle.

**Craig:** Right. In a weird way the football was the promo for the show, which was the promo.

**John:** Exactly. It is like this was the hot dog, and they shoved the little medicine that the dog had to take inside the hot dog, and I ate it all up. So I ended up watching more football than I would usually watch.

**Craig:** The only thing that could have possibly made this gayer was the hot dog analogy. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] But, anyway, so I needed to share my satisfaction and my joy, because so often it is easy to talk about the bad things in life, and sort of like how the entertainment industry does things wrong. And so when they do something so amazingly right, I think we have to celebrate it.

**Craig:** You know what, listen man: passion. The key is to find something you love and be passionate about it. I’m from New Jersey. I love the Giants. It was a pretty good day for me.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** You love those things. It was a good day for you. [laughs] I think just all around it was a great Sunday.

**John:** It was a great Sunday.

**Craig:** And our friend, Grant Nieporte… I never know if it is Knee-Port-Eh or Knee-Port.

**John:** It is so weird. Those people who you only see their names, especially because of online stuff. You only see their names online, and you have no idea how to pronounce them.

**Craig:** I think it might be Knee-Port-Eh, because I think it is Portuguese or something. But anyway, he is a screenwriter, and he and a bunch of other guys were the people behind the Doritos Slingshot Baby ad. And they collectively won $1 million.

**John:** Well that’s great!

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Hurrah!

**Craig:** How about that. I mean, he was like, “Well, but then, you know, after we all divided up I get $28,000, and then I have to pay taxes on it.” So it sounded much better than it was. But it still, I mean, it’s pretty good.

**John:** It’s still great.

**Craig:** Yeah. They win. That is the important thing. They win.

**John:** Winning is nice.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So other small things happened this week. We announced a new screenplay format called Fountain.

**Craig:** Fountain. This, actually, is an exciting thing. Tell them what it is.

**John:** So, Fountain is basically a screenplay markup language that is just plain text. So every fountain file is just a text file. You can open it in any text editor. You can write it in any text editor. What is different about Fountain versus just a normal plain text file is just how you lay it on the screen. So, it is basically what you think: character names are in uppercase; a line following a character’s name is dialogue; parentheticals are in parentheses; transitions end in “TO:”

It is very simple. It is very much how you would write on paper, if you were writing out on paper. Out of the box you can use any text editor. And the main screenwriting apps like Final Draft or Movie Magic Screenwriter, they will take these files really happily, and do a pretty good job interpreting them. New stuff is coming down the pike that will actually do great jobs natively with Fountain files, and will be able to interpret things like bolding, and centering, and sectioning.

And from Beth Schacter, a friend of ours, we have built in a feature called Boneyard, which is if you have a scene that you just want to omit, but you just want to leave it in place and omit it, you can just bracket it out, and it will just not be in your file anymore. It won’t show up or print.

**Craig:** That’s great. You know what I like about this? Eventually, they are going to… What I would love to be able to do on a set is have a script on my iPad. And then, if I really quickly wanted to make a change, take a pen, which I know Steve Jobs hates stylists in editing, but take a pen, cross it out, hit a button to insert, and then write very quickly a couple of new lines of dialogue. Hit a button it reincorporates it in. And then it prints them out.

And it seems like the first thing —

**John:** We are very close to that.

**Craig:** Yeah. Because you can’t really do that until… Because handwriting recognition goes to text, not to Final Draft gobbledygook markup. So, it seems like this is a very good step forward.

**John:** Yeah. And, weirdly, handwriting recognition is relatively simple, and kind of a solved problem. Speech recognition is getting much better now, too. So, it may just be as simple to tap where you want to tap, and just tell Siri what you want to put in there. I find myself using Siri a lot for sending myself reminders, or a text message.

**Craig:** Yeah. Me too.

**John:** There’s good news down the road.

**Craig:** That is a good point, that you would be able to speak it in there. I like it. Good job. Nice work from the skunkworks.

**John:** Skunkworks, yeah. So, there is nothing to buy with Fountain. And that is one of the sort of hard things to communicate is people are used to, like there is a product announcement, “So where do I buy it, where do I get it?” And the point we try to communicate is that you already have it. It’s a way of using any text editor you have on your iPad, on your computer, on your phone you can do it in mail if you want to.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s a way of laying that out and just getting those files into screenplay format down the road.

**Craig:** And where can I buy this?

**John:** Yeah. Exactly. Thanks, Craig.

**Craig:** No problem. I’m interested in this product. How can I buy it, and how much does it cost?

**John:** Yeah. So I spent yesterday doing screen caps to sort of talk through different workflows on how to do things. And screen caps seem like a really easy thing to do, because it is just talking. It’s a lot like what we are doing right here. But you are trying to talk while you are also moving stuff around on the screen, and it gets to be really confusing, and really cognitively draining.

So, I sort of burned out yesterday. And Ryan and Stuart were downstairs doing their work, while I was up here trying to record this. And so they would hear me say, like, the same half of a sentence about twenty times. And I’m sure they wanted to kill themselves.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, they probably already showed up at work wanting to kill themselves, but then that pushed them over the edge.

**John:** There is a reason we all wear headsets in this office, so we don’t have to hear each other.

**Craig:** I love it. You guys are like the Borg Collective over there.

**John:** Yeah. We are. We are very Borg.

**Craig:** By the way, I met Rawson Thurber yesterday.

**John:** Oh, Rawson’s awesome.

**Craig:** Great guy. I met him at a roundtable, and he was terrific.

**John:** Context for people who don’t know every detail about my life: Rawson Thurber was one of my very first assistants. And he was my assistant on a terrible TV show called D.C., and stuck with me after I got fired off that show. And during the time that he worked for me, he directed the Terry Tate Office Linebacker commercial, and wrote what became Dodgeball.

**Craig:** Very funny guy. Smart guy. But, I’m starting to put a little something together, John August. So, you also have one of your other former assistants is Chad Creasey.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** I met Chad Creasey. And I don’t want to malign screenwriters, but we are not the handsomest looking bunch in the world. You know what I mean? You get a WGA gathering together, you look around, it’s like, “Boy, slim pickings!” Okay? I mean, Chad Creasey though, boy, this is a good-looking guy. And, I meet Rawson Thurber yesterday; I go, “Uh-huh. This is another pretty good-looking guy.”

I just want you to know I am on to you.

**John:** Well, Dana Fox is an attractive woman.

**Craig:** That was a mistake. It is accidentally attractive. You didn’t know. You don’t know. I know what is going on. I’m just saying, “I know what is going on.” And now everybody knows what is going on.

**John:** Well, clearly working for me does make people more attractive.

**Craig:** That was my point. That was my point.

**John:** Yeah. Hey, let’s do some questions. Let’s open the mailbag.

**Craig:** Awesome. Let’s do it.

**John:** All right. Sam in Brooklyn writes, “Hi there. I was wondering the proper format for a musical number in a teleplay. Here is the thing I plan on writing in the musical number.” That is actually not worthy of being spoken aloud. [laughs]

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Basically he is asking what is the proper format for —

**Craig:** Please keep that in there. That was great.

**John:** — What is the proper format for a musical number in a teleplay? And it is a completely valid question.

When you are doing a real Broadway show, there is a special format where the lyrics go off on the left hand margin, they are uppercase.

In movies and teleplays, it is not such a clear cut format, because there is not a way that we always do it. I have written a lot of songs in movies, and what I usually end up doing is putting the… It is like a dialogue block, but it is in italics. I will often move it from Courier to Verdana, or some sort of Sans-Serif face that can squeeze a little bit more onto a line. I will cheat the margins a little bit if I have to, to keep a line together.

And then rather than putting slashes in there, I will break it line by line. And so you sort of do the soft returns so that you can keep individual lines in dialogue in the songs.

**Craig:** That makes sense. I don’t think I have ever written a full musical number in the sense of a full song with verse/chorus/verse sort of thing. I have had, obviously, characters sing. And for that, usually, I just do it in dialogue, and I just italicize and do like “shift return” so that the lyrics get each line. But I guess your way makes sense. It is an interesting one.

**John:** If you want to look at sort of how I did it for Big Fish, I think that is the only thing I have in the library that shows it. I have a song Twice the Love in there, which is the song that the Siamese twins sing. And you can see the whole lyrics for that. And that is how we did it.

**Craig:** I believe that question has been answered.

**John:** Done. Checked.

**Craig:** Next.

**John:** I will go into OmniFocus, and I will put a little tick mark right by there.

Luke from Poland, the actual Poland, writes, “I have been seeing the term ‘overall deal’ on a lot of different sites. And I was wondering how they work for writers. For example, I read that a deal like that for some high level TV writer is worth seven figures for two years. Does that mean a writer-producer gets a salary regardless of what he does? Or is that figure contingent on how much work is actually done by the writer?”

**Craig:** Eh, both really. I mean it is a guarantee. In other words, they are saying, “We are going to make a deal with you. We are going to pay you, let’s say, $2 million over the course of two years. And in exchange for that $2 million, you owe us a pilot. You owe us a script.” And they spell out what you owe them.

If you write beyond that, I suppose it would be negotiated, an additional amount would be negotiated. But essentially they are saying this is the baseline of what we are going to pay you for sure.

**John:** Exactly. So, they give you an overall deal because they want to keep you working for that studio/network. They want your next thing. They don’t want you slipping away to another network for six years on another hit show; much more common in TV land than in feature land. There are very few feature writers now who have overall deals in place.

Seth Grahame-Smith and his writing partner just made some sort of deal at Warner Brothers for that. Joss Whedon for awhile had a deal like that at Fox.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But most of those cases are also folded into TV deals. So it is hard to pull them apart, one to the other. And then there are also sort of mega-producer people, like J.J .Abrams who is producing movies, directing movies, writing some movies, too. He has a deal at Fox, but that is really —

**Craig:** That’s a producing deal, yeah.

**John:** Yeah. That is a different class of thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. I had an overall feature deal at Miramax a number of years ago. And it was structured in such that there was a guaranteed amount of money over the course of — I think it was two years. And for that, the way we worked it out was they are guaranteeing me this, whether I write a word for them or not. Then we sort of preset with each kind of writing what it would be worth. So here is what a rewrite would be worth; here is what a first draft is worth; here is what a polish is worth.

And then as I did those things, they would apply that against the amount that they were guaranteeing me. And so if I went over, then I would get more. If they asked for less, I would still get the minimum guarantee.

**John:** Was that a good deal for both of your sides? Because in some ways it kind of rewards you for not working, doesn’t it? Because they are drawing down off of things they are going to pay you anyway.

**Craig:** It was probably… It was a fair deal, I think, given that it was understood that they were going to be… It was an interesting time, with an interesting company.

I mean, the truth is it was a better deal for me because what I was giving them in addition to the writing was a certain amount of comfort. Basically, “We like you, and we don’t want you to go anywhere else. And we want you to be here when we need you. So we are going to pay a premium to make sure you are not busy when we need you.”

So, maybe I do 70% of the amount that I would normally have to do to even make that amount of money, but when they want me to write I was available to write.

**John:** A lot of people assumed I had an overall deal at Sony because I was just working for them for such a long time. But mostly what happened is they bought the rights to Big Fish for me, and said, “Oh, great, you can adapt this book. But, hey, would you do this little bit of work on this script first? And then this script, and then this script.” And basically just kept putting things in front of Big Fish.

And so Big Fish was always something I owed them. I always had to do Big Fish, but there was always something that they would slip in front of it. And so Big Fish just kept getting pushed back further and further. It wasn’t a bad thing for me. I was able to sort of build up my quote, job after job after job at Sony, and get good stuff done. And I was delighted to work for them. But it wasn’t like an overall deal; I was free to go other places.

**Craig:** Yeah. I wouldn’t do it again. I think at the time that I did it, it made sense for me. But, frankly, I would much rather be available now to work for a good director, find a great piece of material, find a great actor. I am just more interested now in following the material as opposed to a home.

But listen, this is a difficult business, and it is a scary business. And when you are raising a family, you know, security has real value. And at the time it made sense.

**John:** There is also a value to working with people you like to work with. And if there is a studio or network that you get along with especially well, maybe there is a good reason to keep going back to that same place.

**Craig:** Yeah. There is a, um, and I think everybody kind of has maybe this never goes away but for a while in your career I think there is a gnawing hunger for appreciation. And when you find people that really get you, and like what you do, it is hard to then leave that and go work for people, frankly, who may not like what you do at all when you have done it.

And, that is something that you have to actually concentrate on weaning yourself off of, I think. Better to not chase that stuff, and chase just the material itself.

**John:** One last thought I had about the TV overall deals. Josh Friedman, I think, made an overall deal with Fox. And when he didn’t have a show running on Fox, they would ask him to go in as a consulting producer on an existing show. So, I think, this last year he worked as a consulting producer on Finder.

And that is kind of good for everybody because you have an experienced person who can go in there and help, and help write shows, and help break stories. So if they are not busy doing their own show, they can help out on an existing show. So that is another reason why TV, in particular wants to hold onto those experienced people.

**Craig:** Yeah. In TV it makes the most sense, for sure.

**John:** Next question. Mischa from Toronto. “Last year I wrote a screenplay called,” this is a long one, “The 8 Ways I Could Have Kissed the Tall Lanky Jew: Based on the Pathetically True Events, as well as Memories Too Exquisite for Existence, as told by a Highly Sensitive Person.”

That’s a long title.

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** “Last week, I was doing some research, just briefly Googling the phrase Tall Lanky Jew, just to see if there was some other movie or book that had a variation of my title.”

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** “There were no books or movies, but I came across a Jewish man’s blog entitled Tall Lanky Jew. In the event that I sold my screenplay to a studio, and had it in wide release in theaters, would I be legally obligated to pay this individual money? Does he already own the copyrights to the term Tall Lanky Jew?”

**Craig:** No. No. You can’t copyright a title. Titles are, actually movie titles exist outside of the realm of copyright, but they are managed by the MPAA, so, all of the member studios of the MPAA, the Motion Picture Association of America. And that covers, essentially, every big studio you know. They have to register the titles with the MPAA which is their trade organization. And then the MPAA acts as a referee to make sure that basically Sony can’t come out with a movie called The Hangover to try and trade confuse and market confuse.

But, that aside, no. You don’t have anything to worry about, other than your absurd title. [laughs]

**John:** So, let’s start with her title. Her title is — I don’t know how many words that is.

**Craig:** It’s a lot.

**John:** 40 word title. Sometimes on spec scripts that does happen, where you write just a crazy long title because it is just memorable for being so long. The movie that became American Pie had some famously long title, which I will look up on Google. But, Words, Words, Words, Words, Words that can be Shot for Under $10 million and Make $100 billion. It had like a very provocative title.

**Craig:** Yeah. It was like American Sex Comedy That Can Be Shot For Less Than —

Yeah, I mean, and that is a trend lately. I have noticed people are doing these kind of run-on titles, frankly just to separate themselves from the pack. And it does add a certain weird kind of honesty to the script. In the same way that in marketing departments the no-frills titles become incredibly attractive to them, like Horrible Bosses. What’s it about? It is about horrible bosses. They are not going for anything other than no-frills. But it is a trend.

And the trend will not save your bad script. Nor will bucking the trend hurt your great script.

**John:** I would agree. Tall Lanky Jew could be trademarked. Someone could probably trademark that. And then there would be an issue. Trademark is a whole separate thing, and if you are not seeing the TM there, no one has trademarked it.

**Craig:** Yeah. The trademark would be if they were selling products under the trademark of Tall Lanky Jew, and that your movie could somehow create marketplace confusion where people might think that they were somehow involved, but that is not the case. It is a blog. You don’t have anything to worry about.

**John:** Speaking to the MPAA title things, with The Nines we had to go through a fight for our title, The Nines, because there were competing projects. There was that animated movie 9. There was the Rob Marshall-directed musical Nine. And there was something else that had… There was a movie called Nine Lives that came out at the same time.

So, fortunately we were one of the first people to register, and so we were able to sort of win the first couple of rounds. And then we had to go through and actually give permission for the other movies to use that title.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And it is this whole kind of Kabuki, because you are not really going to be a jerk about it, and no one is going to get these things confused. But we had to do it.

**Craig:** Yeah. There is a producer who I will not mention who told me that he basically registers titles. Like he comes up with ideas for titles, and then just registers them. And, in fact, has made money essentially extorting studios who do development material under that title. Draw your own conclusions.

**John:** Our last question for the day is from Christopher. “I’m a novelist working on a text which is set immediately preceding the Russian Revolution, and am having trouble composing the dialogue. The issues are great in number. I am having trouble working through the fact that some characters are English, and others are Russian, and sometimes they speak either language. I am finding it hard to make Russian sound more Russian than the English dialogue. Basically, how do I do this?”

That can be a real problem. If you are having characters… Like what language characters are speaking in movies when they really should be speaking a different language.

**Craig:** But he is writing a novel, he said.

**John:** He said a novel, but let’s just, whatever. We are mostly about screenwriting, so let’s talk about screenwriting.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I mean, you have had that situation with characters speaking other languages.

**Craig:** Yeah, sure. I mean, basically if they are speaking other languages, your choice is —

Well, obviously, are they speaking another language, or are they speaking accented English?

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** If you go with them speaking the other language, you just have to make a point in the action. “They speak in Russian and we see subtitles.” And then you just write the dialogue in English.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But I have to say for a novel, I have no idea what his problem is. You just write.

**John:** Just write.

**Craig:** Yeah. Just write.

**John:** He is having trouble with voice, though. Let’s talk about him as a novelist, first. Writing dialogue in novels kind of blows anyway. It is, like the times I have had to do prose fiction, I always find dialogue especially challenging because just the weird deal we make with the reader. You are going to ignore all the “he says” and “she says,” but they are going to be there. And we have the weird thing with the double quotes, and where the comma goes it is just really strange how we do it in English.

Spanish and other languages are much more natural. They use dashes or just different ways to sort of mark off what people are saying.

I think what he is having trouble is in places where they are supposed to be speaking Russian, it is written in English, and it just feels like English, so you don’t have a sense that anything is different or special.

**Craig:** Yeah. But I think that he is concerned based on a false premise. I’m guessing that what his issue is is that he is thinking of these Russians the way that Russians speak when they are speaking English, which is a weird stilted thing. But when they speak Russian, they are as fluid as English people speaking English.

A good example is City of Thieves, which is a novel by our friend, David Benioff, who is also an excellent screenwriter and television writer. And that takes place entirely in St. Petersburg, with a brief prologue in America. And everybody is Russian, and everybody speaks English, of course, because he is an English author.

**John:** He is not trying to create a false accent in English.

**Craig:** No, of course not. That’s the point. Really, if you understood Russian fluently, your understanding of those words would be no different than English. I don’t see what the problem is. I deny this question.

**John:** Let’s try to apply this question though a bit to screenwriting. And you mentioned before that in a screenplay, if you have a character who is going to be speaking in subtitles, on the page you tend to, either the first time, or a couple times if it is going to be confusing, you do a parenthetical, say like “Subtitled” or “English Subtitled” or “Russian Subtitled.”

Sometimes it makes sense to put the words in italics just so people get a sense that it is different, so you can understand, “Okay, the other characters who are only speaking English won’t be able to understand what is happening here.” But there are times where you need to have — think of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The remake of it was shot entirely in English, but they did use some accent and some word choices just to give you a feel that this wasn’t happening in English. And that is a subtle thing. And that’s a real thing. You can’t deny me that.

**Craig:** No. I can’t. I wouldn’t. But I also would caution against building that into the script itself. To me, that is so much a function of how you cast the movie, and how you direct the movie. And if you start to build that into the screenwriting itself, I think you start running into a little bit of trouble.

I mean, here and there you can pepper it in a little bit. Look, you have to acknowledge your characters. The script I am writing right now, there are a couple of characters who are Israelis, and one of them speaks English, and one of them doesn’t. So, the one who speaks English converses in sort of a broken English with people, and then translates for her friend, and then they have little arguments. And then she turns back and delivers the verdict.

But I don’t really write out the Israeli stuff. Occasionally I will if there is a little punctuation, or something like that. And similarly, when she is talking to people, I try and not get too pidgin English, because my feeling is ultimately what is most important is the flavor of what we are trying to get across here. Somebody is going to have to actually deliver that. So much of that comes in the performance.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, look, the more you pen the actor in with the specificity of the language, the more you are going to get just your version of what that would be, as opposed to maybe what their version is, particularly when you are employing actors who, in fact, are not American.

I would much rather have a Swedish actor tell me how a Swedish person would say it.

**John:** That’s a good point. When we were doing one of our readings of Big Fish, I had to have on the first day the general discussion to the whole group saying, “This is a story that takes place in the American South. It takes place specifically in Montgomery, Alabama, but we cannot let specificity get in the way of understandability.”

And, so, I wanted to caution everybody against sort of the Accent Arms race, where one actor chooses to do a really crazy specific accent, and everyone else feels like they have to reach that level. And then day by day it would get worse and worse. You want this sprinkling of the American South.

And I was specific enough to say, like, “We are still rhotic; like the letter R still exists. Characters go off to War, they don’t go off to a Wah.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** “The letter G has taken a holiday. So we are always dancin’ and singin'”. But I didn’t want any more than that. And that is the kind of thing that on the page I try to give a sense of what the language feels like, but I am not going to take off every G off of every ING. It’s crazy.

**Craig:** Exactly. If how the actors deliver the lines is part and parcel with what your dramatic intention is as you write the screenplay, in a global way, not an individual line, but globally I don’t want this to sound like Gone with the Wind. It is okay to do a little prologue, a little advisory. There is no problem with that. But you just don’t want to get caught in, like, yeah —

It gets really annoying to read every single IN’ on every single gerund. It gets annoying. And also the script just seems stupid at that point. Like, come on, you know. Get out of here!

**John:** I once made a horrible mistake. [laughs] I was talking to a friend of mine, who is actually my agent, David Kramer, and I said something about… It may have been in relation to Big Fish, like when were down shooting. And I said something about like how I always tend to underestimate people with a southern accent, just because I have been conditioned by popular culture that people from the south aren’t as smart.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** And he was like, “You know I had a southern accent when I got here?”

**Craig:** Yeah. He is from Florida.

**John:** Yeah. He is from like the south part of Florida. He is from the part that actually has an accent.

**Craig:** I thought he was from Northern Florida?

**John:** That’s what I am saying. So he is —

**Craig:** Oh, I see. I thought you meant the south part of the state. Yes. He is from Northern Florida which is, in fact, deep south. That’s true.

**John:** And so it is interesting. And, so then of course the minute he told me that, I’m going back through all of the previous conversations where I mocked something about a southern accent.

**Craig:** [laughs] Well, you know, he can take a punch.

**John:** He can take a punch.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Craig, what a great podcast.

**Craig:** Yes. This was a fun one. It was a great one. I like all of these questions that people ask; it makes our lives super easy.

**John:** It does. Good fodder for discussion.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So thank you. Please keep sending those in. My standard disclaimers: if you have a question for us to answer, you can write to ask@johnaugust.com. For anything that we talked about here, including NBC’s Brotherhood of Man, we will provide links to that on the show notes. And the show notes are always on johnaugust.com.

If you are subscribing on iTunes, usually those links come through clickable, and great, and lovely. Also, if you are a person who sometimes enjoys podcasts, but sometimes enjoys reading with your eyes, we do have transcripts of all of our previous episodes online at JohnAugust.com, so you can check back; usually a couple days after the podcast is posted we will have the full transcript for you.

**Craig:** Remarkably efficient.

**John:** We try.

**Craig:** Excellent.

**John:** Thanks, Craig. Have a good week.

**Craig:** Thanks. You, too, John. Bye-bye.