Search Results for: characters

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/int-the-woods-night).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 181 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, it’s been a short week but a very busy week for both of us.

**Craig:** Yeah. I guess — I’ve been running around for sure. What have you been doing?

**John:** We’ve had just a lot of little things to take care of. And then I’m deep in writing this project. And so it’s sort of that crunch time where you’re trying to — you’re pushing through to the end. And so I’ve written the beginning, I’ve written the end, I’m writing towards the middle, which is how I love to write. But it’s just a lot of work.

**Craig:** It’s a lot of work. I was in the mode of writing, you know, I like the luxury of writing as I wish. Sometimes that doesn’t happen. Sometimes something emerges and suddenly you’re thrown into a cauldron and you’re given 2.5 weeks to do what you can on a different thing. And so that’s where I am right now.

There is a certain adrenaline to it, I guess.

**John:** There is. It’s also that thrill of knowing that you’re not just doing pie-in-the-sky what-ifs. It’s like this needs to happen. And so that urgency can force other people to make decisions and sometimes indecision is the death of quality.

**Craig:** It’s so true. And there is a certain thing that happens when you’re writing on something that’s actually happening while you’re writing it. You start talking to the line producer and suddenly the decisions you make have these ripples. So, there is this communication. It’s not quite as solitary as the typical writing process. I like that.

**John:** I like that, too. I was listening to another podcast, because there are other podcasts in the world besides our podcast.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** And on the most recent episode of StartUp they were talking about burnout. And the burnout they were talking about wasn’t that sort of long-term burnout. It was that you are sprinting as fast as you can and then you realize that you’re actually in the middle of a marathon. And sometimes writing can feel like that and that is a bad place when you hit that because, you know, what are you going to do?

And I feel like people who have meltdowns in television, that’s because they are sprinting and they realize like, oh my god, there is 22 episodes of this sprinting.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s hard for us to believe it because it doesn’t seem as objective as say getting a muscle cramp and just failing to continue to run. I mean, we all know what that feels like and it seems very mechanical and therefore acceptable to us.

Harder for us to understand that our brains have the same kind of thing going on, and we need to be aware of it, and we need to accept that we have certain limitations.

**John:** Yeah. So, on this episode we’re actually going to do a little of that clean up of stuff that could otherwise fall at the wayside. So, we have a lot of follow up and we have some questions that have been sitting in the inbox for awhile. So, I thought we would just plow through as much of this as we can. We’re going to knock out those — if this is a getting things done, you’d be knocking out those next actions and those sort of projects that have been unfulfilled for too long.

So, it’s going to be a smorgasbord of miscellaneous screenwriting topics this week.

**Craig:** Smorgasbord.

**John:** So, one of the things that’s been dangling for awhile on this podcast has been this dirty episode. So, we have long promised that if we hit a thousand paid subscribers on our premium feed at scriptnotes.net we would do a dirty episode which is just filthy and would be not-safe-for-work or for the kids or for in the car when the kids are in the car.

**Craig:** Yeah. Or for anyone really at any point.

**John:** It’s something that will melt your ears. And we’re so excited that next week we’re going to record that episode. So, hooray.

**Craig:** Yes. And are we allowed to say who are special guests will be?

**John:** I don’t think we should say who are special guests are just in case something goes horribly wrong.

**Craig:** Something goes horribly wrong. Well, once we record it, will there be some time between the recoding of it and the release so that we can tell people who is going to be on it and maybe then they might be motivated, you see, to become premium subscribers.

**John:** You are a clever man. Craig, you really do have a business acumen to this thing which you deny, but you do have a business acumen. I think what we should probably do is we’re going to have a normal episode in that week that we release the episode, but we’ll have little snippets from the big thing there.

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** So, we’ll have some safe-for-work snippets in that episode, but for the full dirty thing you’re going to have to tune in.

**Craig:** I mean, I know, look, I know who we’re going to have on the show.

**John:** I’m so excited. So, last week on the show we had Aline Brosh McKenna on and one of the things we talked about was what it means when you call somebody a friend in Hollywood. Like, we refer to someone as like, “Oh yeah, he’s a friend.” But is he really a friend?

And so we had some follow up form Junk Mail 8720. I may have gotten the numbers wrong. 8230, I apologize.

**Craig:** Yeah, don’t confuse him with Junk Mail 8720.

**John:** 8720 is just a jerk. “What you guys described on the most recent Scriptnotes is exactly what the term fond acquaintances was invented for.”

**Craig:** Is it?

**John:** I don’t know hear anyone saying fond acquaintances. But that’s really what we kind of mean. It’s a person I know and I really like, but I can’t necessarily call them a friend.

**Craig:** Yeah. Fond acquaintance, even that sounds too…

**John:** Yeah. It sounds like something Oscar Wilde would say.

**Craig:** Yeah. And he would be intimating something. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Well he’s a fond acquaintance.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes.

**John:** But part of the reason I included Junk Mail’s tweet is that he spells Scriptnotes capital S capital N. ScriptNotes, which was named by Craig Mazin. We never talked about the origin of the show, but you picked the name.

**Craig:** I did. It’s true.

**John:** And Scriptnotes is — it’s all one word. And it’s capitalized S. Nothing else is capitalized.

**Craig:** I get why people would want to make it that way. And, you know, I don’t get too upset about it. But I can see that you would definitely get upset about it. [laughs]

**John:** I get a little upset about it because I think proper capitalization is really, really important. And to do this sort of camel case thing which is what you call that when you’re coding, there’s a good argument for doing camel case when you’re joining two words together to make it clear what’s actually happening there. But like Scriptnotes as one word, it makes a lot of sense.

**Craig:** Listen, I back you, as you know, 100 percent. So, if this is something that you feel strongly about, then I feel strongly about it.

**John:** Thank you very much.

**Craig:** You’re welcome.

**John:** Now, the episode before that episode was the conflict episode. And that was the one where we talked all about conflict and we had our little staged scene that made people really uncomfortable, including one of our guests.

**Craig:** Yeah, a lot of people bought it. They actually bought our acting.

**John:** So, Steve in Los Angeles wrote, “So, in the conflict episode, one of you mentioned that in the first improv class you learn yes-and. But a screenwriter should think in terms of yes-but so the scene can build conflict. This is true, but in your 20th improv class you learn that the heart of yes-and is agreeing on what the actual conflict is and then running with it together so you can just as well say no while agreeing to say yes to the situation you’ve both agreed upon.

“If someone has a gun and they say they’re going to shoot you, you can say, ‘No, don’t shoot me. I promise I’ll stop sleeping with your wife.’ You have said no, but you have both agreed on what the situation is and what the conflict is: husband dude sleeping with wife. In essence, most really good improv is actually yes-but. Yes, you have a gun, but no, I don’t want you to shoot me. Or even, no-and.”

**Craig:** Yeah. Sure.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** I’m okay with that. I mean, yes-and, yes-but, no-but, no-and. All of that is fine to me, honestly. The only thing that I think is the death of conflict is okay. I mean, in other words agreeing is —

**John:** Yeah. A tacit agreement without any sort of further pushing on. And actually another listener wrote in with sort of a follow up to that. “Conflict is a prerequisite for comedy. In all comedy there is conflict between a grounded point of view, often the straight man or straight woman, and a comedic one which is say the one that is unexpected. The conflict can exist between two characters or between a character and the world around here.

“Yes-and applies to all screenwriting though in the sense that you cannot just blindly throw ideas at a scene and expect it to be coherent and successful. Just as in improvisation, you are striving for unity, not just crafting a vessel to hold all the funny lines and experiences.”

**Craig:** Why is Seth lecturing us? [laughs] I mean, I like what he’s saying, but, hey, Seth is taking a little bit of a tone here.

**John:** Well, perhaps he is. But I think he wanted to sort of clarify, because I cut out the earlier paragraphs which were basically the same as the previous one. Basically saying that, yes, improv does teach you yes-and, but implicit in that yes-and is the sense that there should be some conflict to sort of push you to the next thing.

And all comedy is really structured on the sense of like two people want different things or disagreeing about sort of the nature of the situation they’re in, while accepting the basic premise of a situation.

**Craig:** Which is what I just did to Seth.

**John:** You really did.

**Craig:** Yeah. I just started —

**John:** You created conflict.

**Craig:** Well, because it’s funner. It’s more fun. It’s funnerer.

**John:** Yeah, pot-stirring.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, on the blog this past week I did a post about reading scripts on the Kindle and which had actually been a follow up to a much earlier post which when I got the very first Kindle, I got the original Kindle, people had naturally asked me like, oh, is it good for reading scripts. And the answer is, no, it’s terrible for reading scripts because it doesn’t really want to be a script reader.

The blog post I will link to and you can see what I said about the follow up which is basically like a Kindle is still a terrible thing to read a script on. And so people wrote back with some suggestions, other topics, and ways to sort of do things. But, Craig, when I say Kindle, what do you think about?

**Craig:** I think about the Amazon device that is gray.

**John:** Yeah. So, there are really two kinds of Kindles and I only think about Kindle as being the e-ink reader, the one that’s sort of like the original Kindle, the modern version, the original one. But, of course, there is also the tablet, the Kindle Fire. So, if you have that Kindle Fire thing, it’s probably fine. It’s probably fine for reading scripts because you can get a PDF on there and it’s going to be okay. It’s going to be a small screen, but it’s going to be okay.

I was really talking about as an e-ink reader, which is sort of the best way to read a book, the Kindle still is not a very good way to read a script. There are ways to do it. You can turn it sideways and sort of read half a page, kind of.

**Craig:** Nah.

**John:** You can send things through Fade In, but it’s just not so good.

**Craig:** I mean, I read scripts on my iPad and on my computer, but I don’t — you know, actually sometimes if I get a script in PDF I will open it in iBooks, which is a perfectly fine PDF reader on the iPad. Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. And so starting today you can actually read it on Weekend Read on your iPad.

**Craig:** I know. I got to download that.

**John:** Because we have the beta version of Weekend Read.

**Craig:** Finally.

**John:** Now for your iPad. So, Weekend Read is the app that we make for the iPhone for reading scripts, and it’s really good for the iPhone, but it didn’t work on the iPad well. The new version, which is in beta right now, works on the iPad and has iCloud sync and stuff. So, there will be a link in the show notes if you want to sign up for the beta on that. We’re probably weeks or months away from putting it in the App Store, but it’s good.

And, Craig, you get a preview.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, this is what I’ve been waiting for. This is the thing for me.

**John:** Yeah. Hopefully you’ll love it.

**Craig:** I feel like you made it for me. [laughs]

**John:** We made it just for Craig. So, Craig Mazin, Weekend Read.

**Craig:** Aw, thanks.

**John:** But Aline uses it. Rian Johnson uses it. Kelly Marcel uses it. You’re basically the only screenwriter I know who doesn’t use Weekend Read.

**Craig:** Well, I don’t like reading scripts on my phone, but I do love reading scripts on my iPad. And, you know, I still feel that I’m somewhat representative of a community, a community of what we would call quasi-luddites.

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** Yeah. We’re technologically advanced. We just don’t like some technology.

**John:** Exactly. So, you drive your Tesla to poke fun at other people’s technology.

**Craig:** Yeah, man. Sounds like a great day.

**John:** Continuing follow up, James writes, “In episode 178, there was an excellent Three Page Challenge called Going Om.” I remember that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so that was the one that started with the guy whose wife died. He wakes up in the morning and the guy’s wife is dead.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so James goes on to write, “However, as a former EMT I must point out that ambulances do not transport the dead. If a person is found to be deceased, then the police and the coroner, etc, take responsibility for the body. The reason is so that we don’t divert our emergency personnel away from people who could potentially be saved.

“I know the body bag in the ambulance makes for a cool visual, but it just isn’t done. And don’t me started on the whole ‘he’s gone, flat-line, shock him thing.’ You never ever defibrillate flat line. That is called asystole.”

**Craig:** Asystole.

**John:** Asystole? Thank you, Dr. Craig Mazin.

**Craig:** You’re welcome.

**John:** “It means absence of cardiac electrical activity. You can shock disorganized rhythms, such as ventricular defibrillation, or ventricular tachycardia, because defibrillation is meant to reset the chaotic electrical activity in the heart in an organized rhythm, just generalizing a coordinated heartbeat to pump blood.

“If no electrical activity is present to begin with, then you can shock all you want, but nothing will happen.”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** So here is why I stumbled through all those words is that I think it actually matters. I think I’ve seen both of those things so often in film and television and apparently they are not actually accurate.

**Craig:** No, they’re not. And doctors and lawyers have long since given up caring. I mean, I love that James still cares. I think that’s terrific. However, if you continue to care about this, James, you’re going to lose your mind. Because movies and television are full of medical and legal dramas that consistently trample on what is real all the time.

You know, it’s one of those things where it’s drama. I mean, listen, it’s a bad scene to have an ambulance show up, walk into a room, find a dead body and go, “Right. Well we’re going now. But in about 25 minutes somebody from the coroner’s office will show up.” We don’t have time for that.

**John:** See, here is where I disagree. And part of why I disagree is I think there is something really potentially rewarding about looking at sort of what is the standard procedures in those situations. Because once you know what the real standard procedure is, you can find something dramatic.

In the thing you just described, that’s a cool moment I’ve never seen before. And so if you were one of the first movies that sort of shows that I’m like, oh, wow, that’s so weird. If you were that guy, that husband who lost his wife, and the people show up and are like, “Oh no, that’s not us. We got to go.” And then suddenly you’re just alone again with the body. That’s really cool.

**Craig:** If it fits the tone of the movie, I totally agree. If it fits the tone of the show, I totally agree. In fact, that would fit into the three pages of Going Om that we read. I think it would be really cool.

**John:** I think it would be really cool.

**Craig:** Yeah, but in a lot of things it’s like, eh…

**John:** So I’m just pushing towards, as a screenwriter, always investigate what the real situation is. You’re not bound to that real situation, but look for situations where there is something that is sort of often glossed over in other films and in other television things where you can actually really zoom in.

So, both of these things I’m talking about, sort of standard procedures and magnified, those are actually both cards in Writer Emergency Pack which we sent out 8,000 of those packs. And I think they’re actually really rewarding. Because when you get sort of stuck on something, sometimes it can be really good to just sort of just like focus in on some little detail that would otherwise go unnoticed.

**Craig:** And, frankly, if there is one service that James is doing to everyone out there, it’s to eliminate defibrillation from movies and television because I can’t think of anything more cliché. It may be the most cliché thing possible. Someone yelling clear, and then going ka-tunk.

**John:** Ka-tunk. You know, I have a thing in what I’m writing right now, like literally the scene that I’m working on right now where a person comes across someone who has recently died and has no sense of sort of what has actually happened. But his training is as a lifeguard, so he just kicks into sort of lifeguard mode and starts doing CPR. Is that realistic?

I think it’s realistic for that character to want to try to do something, and so it makes for a good scene. And thinking about it from his point of view, it seems to fit well with the story.

**Craig:** I mean, CPR is totally fine. I mean, hopefully your character doesn’t go, “Come on, breath dammit.”

**John:** Oh lord.

**Craig:** [laughs] And then someone else goes, “Let it go. She’s gone.”

**John:** So, one of the things I need to investigate this week is when do you, if you’re a police detective, when do you swab a person’s hands for bloodstains, DNA evidence? At what point do you say like, “Oh, you know what? This might be a murder,” and do you start swabbing the guy’s hands? And that’s a thing I’ll be researching this next week.

**Craig:** You know, it’s funny. I’ve been doing a little bit of research on that myself just because I’m writing a murder mystery.

**John:** Or you’re planning to kill somebody.

**Craig:** And also planning to kill a number of people. But I had the benefit of a — I mean, the fun of a very small town police officer who is mostly just giving out traffic tickets, now suddenly in charge of a murder investigation. So, he just gets things wrong, which is kind of fun.

**John:** Always the best.

**Craig:** I get the benefit of having him not actually follow protocol. He makes a number of mistakes. In fact, he finds a guy dead. He presumes it’s a heart attack. He talks to the person who actually discovered the body. He doesn’t ask them any questions. Then a reporter shows up and the reporter says, “Well, you should probably just take a look around. Like for instance there’s his trailer that he lives in.” So the police offer goes, “Eh, you know, you’re probably right. I should probably look in there.” And he is about to open the door and the reporter says, “Eh, fingerprints.”

“Well, yeah, okay.” He’s just terrible at this. So, I get to actually break the rules constantly.

**John:** That’s fun.

**Craig:** But the other part then that’s nice is that he starts to do a little research, because he starts to feel embarrassed, and he actually grows into the role of being, and he figures it out. He does.

**John:** Great. And this is your main character?

**Craig:** Well, my main character is a sheep. [laughs] But he’s —

**John:** It’s always more challenging that way.

**Craig:** But this is a human. The sheep is brilliant.

**John:** That’s good. Nice. On the topic of figuring out specifically how things are supposed to be done and how they would be done in the real world, we had a question from Tao who writes in, this is in reference to Craig’s earlier post about the Hollywood Science Exchange. “Over the last few years I’ve gotten very involved in the world of crypto currency, such as bitcoin. This has happened because I solve unusual problems for clients, often by recruiting highly specialized talent or implementing creative out-of-the-box solutions.

“My question is how would somebody like me go on to become a resource for a specialized field in the Hollywood creative community?”

So, he’s asking basically I’m a guy who knows how this thing works, how do I let people know that I know how this thing works?

**Craig:** I actually don’t know. I remember that the Writers Guild used to publish a list of available research resources to screenwriters on the back page of Written By magazine, which is the union publication. Admittedly, I don’t read Written By very carefully. So, I don’t know if they still do that or not. But if you wanted to become a go-to resource for the Hollywood creative community, you might start by calling the Writers Guild, and offering your name as a reference.

There is probably a place on the website where that would go. You have to be willing to do it for free.

**John:** Yeah. You should be.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s what I would do.

**John:** So, I think that’s a good suggestion. I would also say I don’t know the outer limits of what the Hollywood Science Exchange talks about, but what you’re doing is sort of science, so it might be applicable.

I would also say if I was looking for information about crypto bitcoin stuff, I would do a Google search. So, if you set up a website for yourself that says like this is me, this is what I do, I’m happy to consult on story issues for people who want to do that kind of stuff, that might show up in search engines and help you there.

I would also consider doing like a Reddit thread on that. I am a crypto currency expert. Ask me anything. All that kind of stuff would just get you some exposure. And it’s that kind of exposure online that will probably lead some screenwriters to your door.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** Cool. Craig, we now have to discuss the Peter Bart article.

**Craig:** Oh. My. God.

**John:** Okay, you’ve got to set it up.

**Craig:** Okay. So, in all honesty a lot of people, I saw this on my own. And then a lot of people sent it to me and I think people now look at me as some sort of bear that they can poke and make dance for them, a dance of rage.

Actually, I couldn’t even get angry at this because it’s too stupid to arouse anger. It is phenomenally dumb. So, Peter Bart, you know, is a Hollywood institution of a sort. I believe he used to run Paramount back in the day. Am I right about that?

**John:** That sounds right. But I mostly know him as running Variety. Back when I first started here, he was the editor of Variety I believe.

**Craig:** That’s right. So, he at some point transitioned to journalism and in the heyday of Variety when people actually paid hundreds of dollars a year for a subscription because there wasn’t the internet, so powerful guy.

He wrote this editorial called Are Screenwriters Becoming Obsolete in Hollywood? And if he had thought it through, the editorial would have been one word. No. And then he would have gone about his day. But he didn’t think it through. Instead, he engaged in the strangest argument. He started to talk about how screenwriters are rarely if ever mentioned by other people in acceptance speeches for awards. What in god’s name does that have to do with screenwriters being obsolete in Hollywood? I mean, who cares if they mentioned your name?

I mean, I know, look, it would be nice if everybody gave us the public credit we deserve, but that hardly indicates the obsolescence of the job. It was just — he opened with one of the dumbest arguments I can fathom.

**John:** Yeah. It was an incredibly frustrating article/editorial. And it’s sort of like paragraphs that were basically strung together at random, I think. There was like the little machine that just spits them out as it occurred to him.

So, it started with the headline. Obviously he doesn’t necessarily write the headlines, but Betteridge’s law of headlines applies, which is basically any headline that ends with a question mark can always be answered no.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that’s actually accurate. Like screenwriters are not obsolete, but he’s making this weird case and he basically ends up — I think he kind of wants to celebrate screenwriters and throw them under the bus at the same time. It’s just a bizarre thing.

I want to read just a little snippet from here because it’s just annoying and offensive.

So, he’s talking about how omission of names of screenwriters. “Such omissions have become increasingly apparent lately, since more and more films have either been written by the director or perhaps not written at all.”

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** “I’m convinced that no director named Anderson has ever hired a writer.” So, we’re going to pause here. So, director’s named Anderson, so he must be talking about Wes Anderson.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And Paul Thomas Anderson.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** But they’re both writers and their both really good writers.

**Craig:** Yeah. They don’t need to hire a writer. They are writers.

**John:** Plus, Wes Anderson writes with somebody else, so that’s just crazy talk.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly.

**John:** “Further, Birdman, with all its frenetic energy, plays like it was created scene-by-scene by its hyper-caffeinated cast.”

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** “The director…” Okay. Blah. Blah. I want to say blah. First off, there’s a bunch of screenwriters credited for Birdman, like more than you would normally get for a WGA credit. But, that thing was like choreographed within precise half breaths.

**Craig:** Was he drunk when he saw the movie? I mean, the whole thing about Birdman is that it’s designed to be as if it’s one long take. Obviously it’s not one long take, but the chunks that are knitted together are much longer in camera than we are accustomed to. There’s maybe, I don’t know, 20 edits in the film total. So, of course, the last thing in the world it could be is created scene-by-scene by its cast. That’s a mentally ill statement. I don’t know how he could have arrived at it.

And, frankly, what follows in the parenthetical is even weirder. He says, “(the director, Alejandro G. Inarritu, takes screenplay credit along with three other scribes, including two friends).” First of all, what does mean take screenplay credit like, oh, I’ll just have this. No, screenplay credit is granted. And what is it like, “along with three other scribes, including two friends.” Oh, they’re not really writes. La, la. This is the worst.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s the worst. You know, and then he takes swipes at Interstellar. “It would have been a far more satisfying film,” he says, “had a talented writer worked on its dialogue and plot,” because Chris Nolan and his brother I guess are not talented writers. Either way, what in god’s name does this have to do with the obsolescence or the putative obsolescence of screenwriters?

Now, he’s just complaining about scripts he doesn’t like.

**John:** Yeah. And so when you say like oh now he’s going to talk about back in the old days of the studio system…

**Craig:** Here we go.

**John:** Yeah, he goes and talks about the old days of the studio system.

**Craig:** There we go.

**John:** And then like the unproduced scripts written for mistresses, I’m just like, that was better?

**Craig:** Maddening. So, what he yearns for, the days of Nunnally Johnson and Dalton Trumbo “who labored in the old studio writers buildings.” Yes, where they were underpaid, and abused, and occasionally put on a black list. “I even read unproduced scripts written by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Yeah, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a lot of screenplays. He was drunk half the time. A bunch of those are terrible. He actually — the best work that he did about screenwriting are his Pat Hobby books, where F. Scott Fitzgerald invents a down on his luck screenwriter. That stuff is great.

He says, “It was clear why they were never made, but they deserved to be published.” What?

**John:** What are you talking about? What editorial are we in now?

**Craig:** Exactly. Now we’re in an editorial where we’re trying to fix the crimes of the ’40s? And then, of course, this editorial, this bizarre romp through disconnected and incorrect utterings burps forth a reference to his late friend Roddy McDowell.

**John:** Which is nice, too. The other recent thing he steps all over, which I think is shameful, is Guardians of the Galaxy, which was terrific. And so he’s claiming its plotlessness, it’s like, yeah, you know what, the plot was a little bit hard to follow. But you look at sort of what the characters do in that story, and it was terrific. And so it’s just grump old man not happy with things.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** Get off my lawn.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s such an old man yelling at clouds. I mean, he says, “It’s apparent in the trend toward what some critics call the ‘post-plot’ movie. Guardians of the Galaxy is a prime example of a movie that offered great shtick and a wisecracking raccoon.” Because, you know, there are lot of movies that offer that, but this one is a prime example of it. “But no true narrative.”

No, there’s clearly a narrative in Guardians of the Galaxy. The fact that Kenneth Turan couldn’t follow it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Because you know what? My son could follow it. All it means is that Kenneth Turan couldn’t follow it. And maybe Peter Bart can’t follow it. And that’s fine. But this is maddening. The thing about this editorial that’s so strange is not that it’s making an argument that screenwriters are becoming obsolete in Hollywood, because it doesn’t. it literally makes no arguments.

It’s embarrassing because it’s so poorly written. It’s an editorial about writing that in and of itself is in desperate need of a rewrite.

**John:** Yeah. I’d also point out that the WGA awards which are actually nomination by the screenwriters themselves include three of the films that he’s singling out as being exemplary of the end of screenwriters. So, Boyhood is a nominee. Grand Budapest Hotel is a nominee. And Guardians of the Galaxy is a nominee.

**Craig:** Right. He swipes at all of them. He says, “I admired Boyhood, but again, it plays as if the actors year after year inventing scenes as they slowly age.” You know, I have to say if the screenwriter and the director do their job really, really well, it should seem like the actors are actually just doing this for real. That’s what we do. That’s our job. If it seems like it’s written, then we haven’t done our job well, Peter.

**John:** Peter.

**Craig:** Peter.

**John:** Grumble. All right, let’s move on to new stuff.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, we got some questions in the mailbag and some of them were stacking up and some of them are new, but let’s get through as many as we can.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So, Evan in Philadelphia writes, “The script I’m working on focuses on a female team of characters.” Oh, no, he’s writing Ghostbusters. “Four of them on a team. What I’m getting hung up on is now that we’re in act two and the team has coalesced is I don’t know how to refer to them in action. Do I use the team? All of them? Do I name them individually every time? Bea, Betty, Rue, and Estelle charge down the stairs. Do I assume that they all move from one scene to the next if it’s continuous action? It’s an action-thriller, so I’m trying to make sure these characters are all responding and interesting in separate ways to the story, pressures on them, but also work as a unit.”

So, what he’s talking about is such a good thing, because it’s something that actually genuinely happens a lot which is you’ve moved from one scene to another scene and you have to kind of remind everybody who is in the scene. And what do you use as the collective noun for the heroes, the group, the gang?

Like the scene I’m writing this evening, I had to refer to the guys, it’s like, ah…

**Craig:** I know, it’s rough. Well, he’s got a little bit of a gift here because he’s writing an action-thriller, so yeah, they should have — you can give them a name. And it doesn’t have to be a name that’s actually announced in the movie itself. But if you want to call them, you know, when they come together, now you can say something like Bea, Betty, Rue and Estelle, The Squad. You know, you can say that The Squad charge down the stairs. At some point call out what you’re going to referring to them as.

Like the way in legal documents there will be a long name and then they’ll put the short name in parenthesis. And then you can call them The Squad from there on out and we’ll get it, you know, the reader will get it.

**John:** I find myself leaning on trio a lot. If there are three characters, I fall back to trio. Maybe every three paragraphs you’re allowed to say trio and then it becomes annoying. But if it’s clear that all three of them are doing the same thing and then other times maybe that’s a reason to look for individual actions that individual people can take. Because if they’re doing things as a group the whole time through, that can be annoying.

And then I would also just say let your pronouns do some of the work for you. So, if it’s clear who we’re talking about, they can be they. And them can be them. And let that be a useful shorthand for what we have to do.

But, I feel you. This is a real thing that’s kind of annoying.

**Craig:** It is. I have to say though that I think when Todd and I were writing The Hangover sequels, we didn’t ever refer to the guys as The Guys. It was always their names. And we would say Phil, Alan, and Stu cross the street. It helped actually that their names were short.

**John:** For sure.

**Craig:** But, you know, people didn’t really seem to get name fatigue. And when I would read through it I didn’t get name fatigue. And in a way it kept the faces in my head more than say something like The Team, or The Unit, or The Squad, which starts to feel a little impersonal as if there is no separation there, you know?

**John:** Yeah. And sometimes you can start a sentence with one of the characters who is doing the primary action and the other two are following behind. If you’re coming into a scene and somebody hands off something to somebody, there are ways you can sort of use their names that aren’t just a list. And that can be useful, too.

**Craig:** Yeah, like if Betty catches the signal and then Betty says, “Let’s go.” She starts moving towards the signal. The others follow.

**John:** Others is a good collective.

**Craig:** The others is very useful.

**John:** Yeah. All right. Tim in Liverpool, England has the simplest question we will ever answer on this show. Are you ready?

**Craig:** I’m so ready.

**John:** Okay. “In my screenplay, I am writing a scene which takes place in a woodland area. I originally thought this would be EXT. WOODS — NIGHT. But as the scene takes place in the woods, would this be INT. WOODS — NIGHT?”

**Craig:** One, two, three. No!

**John:** Absolutely not. It’s EXT.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** You’re outside. If you’re outside it’s exterior.

**Craig:** The reason that we write exterior and interior is not to help people imagine where we are, although we are, but it’s really for the people who are making/producing the movie to understand that we’re supposed to be outside or inside. There will be times when exteriors will actually be shot indoors. You will create a little set, like a park.

**John:** For example, Into the Woods.

**Craig:** Into the Woods. A lot of the woods were in fact interior stage, but they needed to be called exterior so people understood they were designed to look as if you were outside.

Yes, you are in the woods , but you are not interior of the woods.

**John:** So, there are some cases where you’ll be using INT/EXT. Like driving seems to happen a lot where you’re in the car, but what’s happening outside is also a factor. And so if things are happening inside and around the car, especially if the car is moving, INT/EXT can be your friend. Or if characters are just really sort of moving into and out of a house a lot, sometimes you’ll use that nomenclature.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, I’ve actually — I used to do INT/EXT when I had somebody in a car talking to somebody out of a car. I’ve actually stopped doing it and now I just write EXT. ROAD. Jim drives. Leans out the window. Because you’re outside.

**John:** You’re outside. At that point you’re outside.

**Craig:** You’re outside. Even if you’re shooting inside the car, you’re outside.

**John:** Yeah. Lisa writes, “I am 49 years old and it’s been my dream to move to Hollywood after my son graduates high school in 2016. I’ll be 50 then. I’m also deaf, which is the heart of my challenge to this point. Many agencies don’t want to train me as a personal assistant because of my deafness, which I find rather silly as I can type, speak — not perfectly, but I can get my point across, and I have office skills. I really want to be trained and have no idea who else to contact. Any suggestions? And please don’t refer to me GLAD, Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness, as I’ve already contacted them.

“It seems like that’s the default answer for a lot of the hearing people is to send me to deaf-related agencies. I wonder if they send black people to black people agencies? It’s just annoying. I just want advice on how to break into the entertainment industry without being an actor or a studio worker.”

**Craig:** I’m a big believer, and you know, I have hearing-impaired people in my family. And I’m a big believer that hearing-impaired people can do far more than hearing people think they can do. No question. But I do think that you’re going to have to be realistic about the jobs that are going to be right for you. Now, if you don’t want to go to the Greater LA Agency on Deafness, which I know nothing about frankly, then my suggestion would be maybe to interview at some of the big temp agencies here in town.

So, there are a few that specialize in entertainment placement. The Friedman Agency, for instance. And if you sit down with them and say, “Listen, here is the deal. I can do the following things, as well as anybody who hears. Obviously there are some things that I’m challenged with. What would be right for me?” And then see if they can’t find you something.

**John:** I think your advice to look for agencies, and sometimes even studio HR departments, just to try to do an informational interview to see if there is a way that they can figure out a place for you to be able to work there. Because it’s going to be challenging in certain circumstances. And you may not really know what the job is. And going in for that informational interview, you’ll find out what that job is. And so maybe together you can figure out what are some things you can do that could make it all work out.

Yeah, a lot of stuff does happen sort of on email and that kind of stuff and there’s probably some spot like that that could be great, but it may not be on a classic desk.

The other thing I would say is you’re going to be 50 years old. And 50 years old is older than most sort of new personal assistants are going to be. So, that’s going to be something also to be mindful of is that most of the people who are doing the kind of job you’re talking about, the kind of job we talk about being your first job in Hollywood, that’s kind of the like, hey, you just graduated from college. Here’s this job. And where you’re making no money and eating ramen out of the sink.

That’s not probably what your best first step is going to be. So, some sort of informational interview would probably be a good start.

**Craig:** Personally, I don’t think your age matters. And I also think that with some exceptions, being hearing impaired shouldn’t matter either. But I want you to know that I suspect I have a rare perspective on this. And that you are going to face very serious barriers whether they’re fair or not, and you need to go into that with your eyes open because they’re going to be there.

And I want you to approach this with I guess a clear of a picture of what you’re going to be facing as possible, because let me tell you, if you can hear, and you’re 23 years old, these jobs are hard to get. If you can’t and you’re 50, it’s going to be very hard to get. And that’s not always fair, that’s not always just, but it’s the world we’re in.

**John:** I agree with you. And I should say that I think Lisa found out about our show because we are one of the rare podcasts that has transcripts for all of our episodes, going back to the first episode. So, if you are a person who is catching up on the show and want to read the transcripts, that is a way you can partake in our show as well.

And it’s people who get the premium subscriptions, that’s what pays for the guy who does all the transcripts. So, thank you listeners for chipping in on that.

**Craig:** Always.

**John:** Amy writes, “In terms of dialogue, do you use dot-dot-dot when someone is pausing or dash-dash when someone is breaking off what they’re saying?” Craig, what is your style. Are you a dot-dot-dotter, or a dash-dasher?

**Craig:** When someone is pausing, I usually will do a dash-dash. If, for instance, I’m not going to break out the pause in a parenthetical like beat, you know. But if someone is going to say, “I just — I just don’t know.” I would say, “I just — I just don’t know.” I tend to use the ellipses for a trailing off as in, “I don’t know man…”

**John:** I think within a block of dialogue I am largely the same. I’m pretty sure if you look through my old scripts I’m completely inconsistent. But I think I do it this way where if somebody is trailing off, that’s ellipses for me. And if someone is stopping a sentence and then starting kind of a new thought, that’s a dash-dash for me, where they’re sort of talking over themselves.

Where I’m a little less consistent is when someone is being interrupted. I will sometimes do the dot-dot-dot, or sometimes I’ll do the dash-dash. If I’m carrying dialogue across a cut, that more likely is a dot-dot-dot for me. But I don’t know that I have a consistent answer for you.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, frankly it’s not that big of a deal. Whatever feels right to you. There’s never been a great script that was unproduced because of this.

**John:** I would completely agree. The only thing I will say is make sure you match. And so if something stops on a dash-dash, start it up on a dash-dash. Don’t go like dash-dash, then dot-dot-dot. That’s just weird.

**Craig:** That is weird, yes. Stick to one. By the way, John, when you have somebody — let’s say somebody is talking and then they notice something and then in the middle of it, so it’ll say, “John, excuse me, would you mind if — ”

And then action. “The person turns around. It’s his dad.” And then John, ” — Oh, never mind.” Do you do the dash-dash leading into that second line?

**John:** I do.

**Craig:** Yeah, me too.

**John:** I do, too. But that’s the case where like I can’t tell you 100 percent if I would always dash-dash or if I would dot-dot-dot it. And I think it’s just the way the mood strikes me when I’m writing it.

**Craig:** Nothing wrong with that. Oh my god, I got into such a — dude, I got into such an argument. I don’t know why. This is the one thing that I will argue about with anyone at any time anywhere. I did the ask me anything on Reddit screenwriting a long time ago. So, every now and then I’ll just pop over and take a look at what people are talking about. And generally speaking they’re talking about the same things they always talk about. This one guy is saying, “Hey, is it okay to put descriptions of camera angles or moves in your screenplay?” And this one guy just says, “Nope, it’s never okay. It’s absolutely not okay. If people see that in your script they will presume that you’re an amateur and you’re no good.”

And I just — I can’t take it. Where did this come from?

**John:** From one of the books. From one of the How to Write a Screenplay books, or some screenwriting teacher who drilled it in at some class at some Florida college.

**Craig:** [laughs] That’s a perfect detail. We have to find patient zero and kill that person.

**John:** Yes. And here’s what is so maddening about that kind of absolute rule is that someone will then tweet at us. I think someone just today tweeted at us saying like, “But I looked at Goodfellas’ script and it says we see all the time and there are camera motions, or like James Cameron uses camera movements, but can he get away with that and no one else can?”

It’s like, no, anyone can do it. It’s a question of is your script great? Is it really clear what’s happening? Is the camera motion or referring to we as the audience, is that useful in helping tell your story? Then do it. If it’s not, then you shouldn’t do it. And anything can be perfect, or anything can be annoying, it’s just how you’re doing it.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly. I mean, my big problem with this, so what people will say is directors will tell you they don’t like that because you’re telling them how to direct. Here’s the thing: if I say push in on, wide angle, close, am I telling them how to direct? No. I don’t think so. What I think I’m telling them is this is how I envision this movie.

But here is what else I will — what everybody puts in a screenplay that apparently is okay. Cast. Setting. Action. Motivation. Performance. Dialogue. Costume. Props. Every other aspect that the director controls on a movie set, we have put into the screenplay if we have done our jobs right.

They don’t need to do it the way we said it, but it is incumbent upon us to do all of that to help the reader see a movie. That’s also “directing on the page.” It’s infantile. This whole thing is infantile. I want to kill it as best as I can. And I’m enlisting all of you out there. You will go out like our heralds and spread this word. Spread this gospel to your film teachers and your friends.

**John:** Two points I want to follow up there. You were talking about we describe performance, we describe costumes, we describe settings, and yes we do that, and we do that only to the degree that we need to do that in order to make it clear what the movie is.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so that’s why you don’t choke your script full of camera directions because most of the time you don’t need to.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But if you need to, do it. If it helps to tell your story, you do it. Just like we never refer to every costume. We never refer to sort of every setting in intricate detail. We do as much as we need to do to get the idea across for what it is. And screenwriting is always about that balance of detail and economy. And that’s what you’re always trying to juggle.

**Craig:** Absolutely. It’s the job. And if anyone tells you — if anyone tells you that there is some sort of blanket rule against we see, or camera stuff, or any of that, you just look them in the eye and say, “No. No. No.”

**John:** [laughs] And I want to come back to something that we’ve often talked about in the Three Page Challenges which is that trying to keep action lines short. And Craig really likes to keep action lines to like no more than three lines in a row.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But that’s not an absolute rule. And there are many great screenplays you will read that are quite a bit longer and have dense paragraphs full of stuff, and that doesn’t mean that they’re wrong or they’re bad. And they can work really, really well. And in Whiplash, which we both really liked a lot, has huge blocks of action and it works great for Whiplash.

And so it may work great for your screenplay, too. But just know that if you’re doing that kind of density, you’re making some other tradeoffs and people may start skimming. And that’s a danger, but maybe that’s going to be fine for you. Or maybe you’re going to write things so well that people are not going to skim, and that’s going to be great, too.

So, there are no absolute rules other than just know that absolutely there are no rules.

**Craig:** Totally. Yeah, listen, you know, a great screenplay that has big long action blocks, people will read through the action blocks because they love your script. We all have our preferences. We all think, well you know, the way I do it is easy on the eyes, but that doesn’t mean anything.

I mean, listen, there are screenwriters out there that mix up capital letters and stuff. And all sorts of crazy stuff. Hey, guess what, we’re artists. Holy crap. And we don’t have to follow this weird — I don’t know, this orthodoxy as if we’re all working for the typist pool at Warner Bros in 1962.

**John:** And they’re still working there. It’s so maddening.

This last week, so I’m writing a scary movie, and I’ve had to break out the underlines more than I’ve ever had to in a script. And it’s because there are things that I recognize in horror movies that have to be made clear in ways that are just very different than in comedies or normal dramas. Where like you have to make it clear what it’s actually going to feel like. And sometimes the best way to do that is to underline it.

I’m generally a person who is very, very spare on the uppercase and the bolds and the underlines, but I find myself doing it more on this script than I’ve ever done before because there are both those shock scares, those little jump moments, but there is also that you have to see that this is something really unusual. That classic like we can’t see into that room but this thing is right there.

And it’s interesting to me, you know. working on my, god, 50th screenplay maybe, and to have to be doing some things differently just because of the nature of the story.

**Craig:** Isn’t that great? I mean, I just love that. It’s funny. Rather than being the exception to the rule, I don’t know any other professional screenwriters that don’t do this stuff. I can’t remember the last time I read a screenplay by a professional that didn’t have some occasional camera direction and some occasional we see and some occasional underlining and some occasional fiddling of things in interesting ways.

It’s part of what we do. I mean, god, grow up. It’s amazing out there.

**John:** Yeah. You’re trying to create the experience of seeing a movie with just the words on the page. And sometimes you need to goose those words in order to get the effect across.

**Craig:** Ah, I feel much better.

**John:** I feel much better, too. Craig, it’s time for One Cool Things.

**Craig:** I have one.

**John:** Start us off.

**Craig:** So, someone on Twitter recommended this to me because I’m a big fan of The Room and the Room 2 for iPad.

**John:** I love them both.

**Craig:** Wonderful, wonderful games. So, this is a new game. It’s not for iOS. In fact, it’s for Mac OS. I think Mac OS only. I’m not sure. But I’m Mac OS, so what the hell. So, you download it through the App Store and it’s called Lumino City as in luminosity. On one hand it’s a simple point and click puzzle adventure where you play this little girl who is looking for her grandfather in this funny little town. And you have to figure out where to go and how to solve some puzzles to make things move around and so forth. The game play in and of itself is not revolutionary.

What is revolutionary is the animation and what it looks like. I believe what the game creators did was actually build their environments. They built these environments out of paper and wood and material and then shot them photographically and now are using that as the environment, the 3D environment that you’re moving through.

It’s just stunning. I mean —

**John:** Ah, I’m looking forward to it.

**Craig:** It’s gorgeous. And the way they built the game is that you enter an environment, for instance, a house or a plaza with a couple of rooms that you can go in. And in that area there is a puzzle or a series of puzzles to be solved to exit that area and move on. When you do and you move onto the next area, there’s this moment where you arrive in the new place and every time I’ve done it I go, oh, because it’s just so well done. It’s so pretty. And I love it. I just love the way this game looks. It’s so beautiful. And it’s like, I don’t know, $12 or something.

**John:** It’s a bargain. We need to start paying for things.

**Craig:** I agree.

**John:** Good stuff. My One Cool Thing is a book and, god, it’s a long title but I will try to give the whole title to you. Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension: A Mathematician’s Journey Through Narcissistic Numbers, Optimal Dating Algorithms, at Least Two Kinds of Infinity, and More by Matt Parker.

And so I’m reading it right now, I’m about halfway through, I really like it a lot. And so it’s a mathematician who is sort of talking you through the kinds of thing mathematicians talk about. And so it’s not numbers and formulas, it’s about sort of like higher dimension stuff and weird four dimensional things that happen and sort of like how rules apply and sort of weird puzzle algorithms.

So, Craig, I think it’s a book that you and David Kwong would like because it’s very much about sort of the weird patterns that show up in nature when you start sort of applying rules to things.

**Craig:** It sounds great. Did you ever read, I mean, this probably isn’t quite like that, but I’m wondering if you ever read Flatland when you were a kid?

**John:** Oh, yes, it’s very, very much Flatland.

**Craig:** Oh, it is Flatland.

**John:** That sense of like what it would be like to be in, you know, Flatland is about a two-dimensional creature. This is like what it is like to be able to manipulate things through four dimensions.

**Craig:** I always remember, there was this little — so, Flatland, if you guys haven’t read it, is very short, terrific, little story that helps instruct on geometry. You’re a character that lives in a two-dimensional land. He describes what that’s like to see things only in two dimensional. You’re flat on a plain.

And then one day this character is visited by a sphere from the third dimension. And as this sphere moves through his world, he appears to be a line that goes wider and shorter, you see, because the sphere is moving up and down through this plain, like cross sections.

So, I read that, I’m like, oh, that’s cool, I can see how a three-dimensional person like me would absolutely freak out a two-dimensional person.

But what’s so cool about that is that the sphere describes how he was visited by a fourth-dimensional shape. And the fourth-dimensional shape, if I recall correctly, was like a chain link, but it could unlink itself without breaking. And then link, yeah, because something is happening in that fourth dimension that we can’t see. Oh, I love it. I thought that was so great.

**John:** Yeah, it’s nice stuff. So, it does some little simple projects you can figure out yourself. And like things that roll in ways that seem kind of impossible. And it’s like solids that aren’t spheres but can roll like spheres, which seems impossible, but are actually real. So, it’s neat, so I would recommend that book if you’re into math nerdery and sort of extra dimensional stuff.

**Craig:** Sounds good to me.

**John:** Cool. That is our show this week. So, our outro this week is by Rajesh Naroth. Thank you, Rajesh. He sent us some really good ones, so thank you again for another great melody here.

If you have a Scriptnotes outro you would like to have us play, you can send it into ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also where you can send listener questions like the ones we answered on the show today. If you have a question for Craig Mazin, you should tweet at him. He is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust.

If you are on iTunes for whatever reason, you should subscribe to the podcast. While you’re there, leave us a comment or a rating. People did that last time Craig told them to do it, so thank you very much for that.

**Craig:** Thanks.

**John:** We also have a premium feed which you can find at Scriptnotes.net. That is where you will listen to the dirty episode when it’s up, which is probably about a week away.

**Craig:** So dirty.

**John:** So dirty. It’s going to be fun. So, that’s where you can find that also all the back episodes, back to episode one.

Scriptnotes is edited by Matthew Chilelli. It is produced by Stuart Friedel. Hey Stuart. And that is our show for this week.

So, next week we will have a normal episode, but there will also be a dirty episode, so you’re going to get a twofer if you’re on the premium feed.

**Craig:** Sweet.

**John:** Cool. Thanks Craig. Have a great night.

**Craig:** Thanks John. Bye.

Links:

* StartUp, #12: [Burnout](http://gimletmedia.com/episode/12-burnout/)
* [Weekend Read 1.5 now in beta, adds iPad and iCloud support](http://johnaugust.com/2015/weekend-read-1-5-now-in-beta-adds-ipad-and-icloud-support)
* [Screenplays on the Kindle, 2015 edition](http://johnaugust.com/2015/screenplays-on-the-kindle-2015-edition)
* WGA’s [FYI Listings: Ask the Expert](http://www.wga.org/content/default.aspx?id=165)
* [The Science & Entertainment Exchange](http://www.scienceandentertainmentexchange.org/)
* [Are Screenwriters Becoming Obsolete in Hollywood?](http://variety.com/2015/voices/opinion/hollywood-doesnt-seem-to-value-screenwriters-anymore-1201405150/)
* [What is the difference between an em-dash/double-hypen and an ellipsis?](http://screenwriting.io/what-is-the-difference-between-an-em-dashdouble-hypen-and-an-ellipsis/) on screenwriting.io
* [Lumino City](http://www.luminocitygame.com/), and [how it’s made](http://youtu.be/JO6t6H19CUk)
* [Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension: A Mathematician’s Journey Through Narcissistic Numbers, Optimal Dating Algorithms, at Least Two Kinds of Infinity, and More](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JD1LBBY/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by Matt Parker
* [Flatland](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1623750318/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by Edwin A. Abbott
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Rajesh Naroth ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/bad-teachers-good-advice-and-the-default-male).

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

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

**John:** And this is episode 180 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Now, Craig, last week’s episode was full of conflict so I think it’s really good that we have someone here to help balance this out, try to make sure everything is smooth and calm today. We have none other than our own Aline Brosh McKenna. Yay, wild applause.

**Craig:** Yay.

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** AKA, The Ref.

**John:** You are the ref. You are the one who’s going to achieve sort of a calmness of flow to all these things. But we actually were thinking about you last week because several things came up and we thought, well, Aline is the perfect person to talk about this because our topics today are the default male problem, which is sort of why characters are male unless they’re otherwise described. And you’ve talked about this on previous shows.

**Aline:** Hm-mmm, I sure have.

**John:** And we’re also going to talk about — so our second conversation is about Whiplash and really that’s about sort of that difficult teacher/student relationship which reminds me a lot of Devil Wears Prada, which is your movie. You wrote that movie.

**Aline:** I did indeed.

**John:** So we’re going to do those two topics and you’re also going to help me with some ethical issues that I’m having. So I think it’s going to be a fun show.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So let’s get into this. So, Aline, we’re so happy to have you here because this is how this default male topic came up this week. And so there was an interview with Raphael Bob-Waksberg from BoJack Horseman. And I think it was actually like a sort of online Q&A. But they were asking about sort of how in comedy, it seems like characters are male unless they’re not otherwise male.

This is what he writes back. “The thinking comes from a place that the cleanest version of a joke has as few pieces as possible. For the dog joke, you have the thing where the tongue slobbers all over the business person. But if you also have a thing where both of them are ladies, it’s like this additional thing muddles up the joke. The audience thinks, why are those characters female? Is that part of the joke?

“The underlying assumption is that the default mode for any character is male. So to make the characters female, there’s an additional detail on top of that. In case I’m not being 100% clear, this thinking is stupid and wrong and self-perpetuating unless you actively work against it.”

That was the creator of BoJack Horseman talking about — in his case, it was like we have these two animated characters and the illustrator said, like, well, why aren’t they both women? And he’s, like, well, that feels weird. Aline, help us out here.

**Aline:** I don’t actually totally disagree with that in so far as I think that, you know, our job is to depict the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. That being said, we do a terrible job of depicting the world as it is, which is that women are more populous than men. I think that, you know, as he mentioned in a scene, you want to weed out extraneous elements. And, in fact, one of the signs of a rookie writer is having just too much stuff in there. They’re trying to set up too many things and say too many things.

If you have a female character in something which is anomalous, which is going to cause you and stop and think about it, it may bump your scene a little bit. But that would be in a case where it’s a female Sumo wrestler, something that we just don’t ever see women doing. I think there are a lot of instances where you can just have it be a female character and not have it interfere — create radio interference with a scene. I have been more of an advocate for taking stock characters that were male, and by making them female finding something more interesting or more dimensional in them because they’re not as expected.

But, you know, one thing I would say is that if you really want to populate your scripts with different kinds of people, you have to stipulate because if you don’t stipulate then people do make assumptions. For instance, in the pilot that Rachel and I did, there was a character who was Asian. We gave him an Asian last name and we stipulated that he was Asian and then that’s who the casting department — that’s what they have on the sheet of paper. And if you don’t stipulate, then the casting department doesn’t know who to look for.

I just think there are a lot of opportunities where, you know, if it’s a cop, if it’s a lawyer, if it’s a, you know, a passerby, you can just mention it unless it’s something that will actually do what he’s suggesting, which is detract from the logic or the flow of the scene. I think that’s actually less of a concern than people think. But I wouldn’t make a huge point of sticking in ladies where they’re wildly anomalous and you’re not doing it for any particular reason.

**John:** Craig, talk us through from the comedy perspective because this point of you’re looking for the cleanest possible joke, is that something you think about as you’re writing?

**Craig:** Well, sure. That’s where the expression a joke on a joke comes from. You don’t want a joke on a joke. So, you know, in Aline’s example, if you’re doing a bit where a Sumo wrestler is being — this is a terrible joke, but a Sumo wrestler is distracted from his opponent by a sandwich. If the Sumo wrestler is also a woman, which is anomalous, then you’re not sure where’s the absurdity in it, right? You only want one absurdity.

If there are multiple absurdities, then the world is absurd and the joke starts to fall apart. That said, I don’t really understand what he’s talking about here. I agree that we shouldn’t default to males but I don’t understand his point. Like, he seems to be saying that if a dog slobbered on a lady, we would be thinking, why is that character female. Is that part of the joke? No, we wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. I don’t get that.

I actually think — I mean, this is not humble-bragging. If this is a problem, I don’t have it. I’ve never defaulted to a male or a female for any particular character. And I don’t think that being a woman is an element of a joke unless, as Aline says, it’s anomalous. Similarly, I don’t think of men as an element in a joke unless it’s anomalous.

If I’m writing a scene in a kindergarten and the kindergarten teacher is a 70-year-old man, that’s anomalous. That’s an element, right? That’s a choice.

**Aline:** Let me interrupt for one second. So in, let’s just take Identity Thief because I’ve seen it a couple of times. Melissa is a woman. Amanda is a woman. One of the bad guys is a lady.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And then a lot of the default characters like cops and — are there other, like — the hotel clerk, was that a man or a woman? Can’t remember.

**John:** And there were other business people as they’re sort of going into the corporation. So —

**Aline:** Like if I looked at your character breakdown for that script, do you think it comes out — what percentage do you think it comes out?

**Craig:** I’m not sure what the percentage is but I know that, for instance, in the hotel there was a male clerk and a female clerk. So in two different scenes, there was a character in — when they break into an office building, there’s a character that’s male but that’s a specific choice because I wanted that to be the mirror image, like basically another Jason Bateman. I wanted him to meet himself in another place. The office was very male. I wanted it to feel really male because I wanted it to feel very old-school and kind of repressive.

But yeah, one of the bad guys is a woman. She’s, yeah, seems like the most dangerous one of them. I just remembered that I made a very specific choice for Jason Bateman and Amanda Peet to have two daughters. I don’t think I defaulted at all. You know, when I’m writing a screenplay, I don’t know, maybe this is different in TV. I think gender is something that you have to be specific and really intentional about every single time.

**Aline:** Once in a while, you’ll say the hotdog vendor, you know, you’ll say the hotdog vendor, the cab driver, the policeman, and if you don’t stipulate that it’s a woman, casting will come to you with men.

**John:** And I want to go back to something you said earlier. If you don’t stipulate that a person is a certain — is not white —

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** That person will be white. And that’s the thing I sort of found again and again as you sort of go through the casting. So I do that thing what you talk about where I will deliberately give a person, you know, a Chinese last name so that they will look at Chinese actors for that part, because if you don’t do that, the default just tends to become white. And that’s no slam on casting directors —

**Aline:** Well, we had a funny thing once where we put in — I put into the script any ethnicity and every person that they brought in was a person of color because —

**John:** Yeah. Maybe that’s good.

**Aline:** They assumed that any ethnicity meant I was looking for something that was — and I just wanted them to hire — I mean, you’d like to be in a circumstance where they’re just hiring whoever is the best person. But if it is important to you and it won’t distract from the scene, it’s not a bad idea to stipulate there’s two clerks at the hotel desk, one’s a man and one’s a woman. I mean, or just name them, just the act of naming, as you said. Just naming one of them Trish, just naming one of the cops Betty is — then people get it.

So you can do things which are — I think what he’s pointing to is you don’t want to — if you stipulate it strongly, then people wonder why you’re doing that.

**John:** Yeah. And so there’s always that fine line between do you give a character who’s only going to appear in one scene a name and if they’re only going to — if they’re going to have, like, one throw-away line, I often won’t give that person a name because then it signals to the reader this person’s really important and they’ll show up again. But a person who’s going to be, like, really helping to drive a scene, scripts are full of like Dr. Gutierrez because it makes that person a little bit more specific and, of course, the advantage to, you know, a name with some ethnic heritage to it is it can stick in your head a little bit longer so you can remember that person was — you remember that character. That character shows up 50 pages later, like, oh, yeah, there was a Gutierrez. That’s helpful.

Amine: Right. I mean, one of the reasons I thought of Identity Thief is because the bad guy — those two bad guys, and often, in a movie like that, it just would be two generic male thugs and there was this lady in there.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, there was a lady in there and she was Latina and there was also — for instance, the character that John Cho plays was not singled out to be Asian-American. So I didn’t single out race there. I do think that default race being white is a problem and that’s something that we do watch out for a lot. But what this guy’s talking about, a lot of, like, for instance, the issue of the hotdog vendor, the cop, the cab driver is an issue for writers to be careful about in television because oftentimes they’re the ones doing the casting.

In features, I don’t want to call out any specifics about the hotdog vendor or the cab driver because if I do, as John says, I’m putting story weight on it for the reader that I don’t want to put there. Sometimes you do want the most bland thing. You want the thing to say meter — you know, a parking enforcer. And then it is up to the producer and the director and the casting director to get out of this mindset of automatically white, automatically male.

You know, when Aline says any ethnicity, the truth is they see the word ethnicity and they go, well, white’s not ethnic. So what she means is anything that’s not white. All of this stuff, this kind of what you would call default thinking, I think is far more serious when it comes to race at least in features, at least for me. Like, I know. I’ll be honest. Like, I am affirmative in my mind about not defaulting to white, meaning I easily default to white.

And so I work to not default to white. But I don’t feel any gear-grinding to work to default to female. If anything these days, that’s kind of where I start with a lot of characters. I prefer it. But I definitely did not understand his example. I don’t understand how in his example the — maybe he just gave a bad example.

**John:** Well, I can understand his example especially coming from an animation point of view where you’re literally having to draw every person. So it’s not like you’re going through and casting. It’s, like, oh, let’s put out a wide net. How are you going to draw those two characters? I think in his specific example, it was that a strong wind was blowing the slobber from a dog onto a business person. And so I can see where in his example are we thinking that there’s a different context because it’s spit going onto a woman versus spit going onto a man?

There are always specifics to these situations. But I want us to go back down to the default male situation because there’s two anecdotes I heard this last week from other writers as this was being discussed. The first was from a writer who said that she literally — all she had changed for this one character was the character’s name from like a Bob to a Barbara. And the note she got back from the studio was like, oh, the character’s so much more complex now.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Like literally nothing had changed other than the character’s gender and name and suddenly every — all those same lines seemed so much different because we apply a complexity to that character in that role if it’s a woman.

**Aline:** And that’s what I was saying if you just go through and look at stuff, especially stuff that you’re feeling like is just functional and not interesting and you start thinking about other genders or races or just doing something that makes that character more interesting. But to be honest with you, I have trouble getting too exercised about this because we just need more female leads. We need more female big roles.

And, you know, with women and minorities, there’s a lot of cops and judges and DAs going on. And I wish that instead of — it’s a much bigger problem than the default thing, I wish that, you know, if you’re doing a buddy movie that you think of a woman and a man, you know, if you’re going to do Ride Along and you could do it with a woman just as easily, that’s the kind of thinking that’s, I think, ultimately going to be more impactful.

And that’s why somebody like Melissa McCarthy, she takes movies that could’ve been two men easily and you just put her right into it and you don’t miss a beat.

**John:** I think Tilda Swinton is the same situation.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton. And that’s a role that didn’t need to be a woman. There’s nothing — her gender doesn’t actually factor into any aspect of Michael Clayton. But her being a woman changes that role in sort of a strangely fundamental way in that you rarely see women making those kind of ethical, horrible moral judgments. And that’s what’s fascinating to watch.

**Aline:** Made it more interesting. I mean, once —

**John:** The same in Snowpiercer. I mean, she doesn’t have to be a woman in Snowpiercer and it’s great.

**Aline:** One just small thing. I sense a segue coming. But one small thing is that in Devil Wears Prada, the character that’s played by Stanley Tucci, it’s never said that he’s gay. We never make reference to it. It’s not in anything to do with the story. Stanley played the character a certain way. And it’s funny people assume that he is and it comes up frequently. And it wasn’t ever — it’s not in — it’s not written anywhere. And I don’t know that he is or isn’t.

**John:** Yeah. Yeah, that’s great. All right, I have questions for you guys because you both have strong opinions and —

**Aline:** [laughs] No!

**John:** And you’re willing to share your opinions and you’re also — you’re very confident in your opinions. And so I look to you for some confident opinions on a couple of ethical questions that have sort of come up for me.

Let me raise these. So as we’re recording this, this is the day the Oscar nominations came out. And one of my stipulations is that I will only vote in a category if I’ve seen all the nominees because that only seems fair. But is that really the right idea or am I sort of doing a disservice to all the nominees if I haven’t — if I don’t vote in a category I haven’t seen?

**Aline:** You voted to nominate having not seen every single movie in the category.

**John:** Absolutely true, because it’s impossible. It’s an infinite set essentially.

**Aline:** Okay.

**John:** But when it comes down to the actual Oscar voting or the WGA voting, I’m only going to vote in categories where I’ve seen all the possibilities. Craig Mazin, I come to you first. What is your feeling about that as an approach?

**Craig:** I mean, of course, you want to say, look, if you have to choose between five movies and you’re picking who the best director of those five movies are, you — naturally, it is ideal for you to have seen all five. But really, underlying all this is the silliness of the voting itself. You’re voting on five that other people have agreed you should vote on. All those people agreed that these are the five based on some movies they saw, not all.

Look, you know my whole feeling about the Oscars is that it should be more like AFI where it’s like it’s a celebration of the five best directed movies of the year. [laughs] I just don’t understand this pick one thing. But yeah, I mean, ideally, you would, sure. I mean, it seems weird to say well, I didn’t see — I saw one of them or two of them and I didn’t see the other three, but I like this one. I’m voting for that one. That’s a bummer to the people that did the other stuff, right?

**John:** It is. Aline, I want your opinion.

**Aline:** I mean, it’s definitely the ideal. You know, I usually have seen all the movies in my category basically. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s better to focus on ones where you feel like you’ve really surveyed the landscape. I think it’s an ideal — I think people do the best they can. And then I think, you know, sometimes people just feel really strongly about one movie and they feel like it’s the best movie they’ve seen among the movies they’ve seen and they’ll just vote for that one.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** So —

**John:** All right. That’s actually a more ambiguous answer. I was expecting a sort of a strong firm one. So now, I want you to tell me if I’m a hypocrite or not a hypocrite based on this exception I’m willing to make. The Transformers movies. I don’t like the Transformers movies. I can’t watch a Transformers movie. They’re too loud. They’re too noisy. They’re too chaotic. I don’t care to watch a Transformers movie. And yet they’re always up for sound mixing or sound editing. And so am I a hypocrite if I vote in that category not having seen those? If I make an exception for Transformers movies, is that a hypocrite?

**Craig:** I would say yes. I get the you don’t have to watch the whole movie. You can watch a sequence. You’ll know which one is the one that the sound guys would hope you’d be listening to and just watch that sequence with an ear on the sound and ignore the other stuff because that’s the point of that category. You and I both know the sound guys, they’re — it’s done. They get the pictures locked. Someone wrote the script. They shot it, da, da, da, da, da, da. They’re just doing sound. So you can’t punish them for the content of the movie. You can only reward them or not reward them based on what you hear.

**John:** All right.

**Aline:** I mean, I feel bad for these guys because their work is being watched not the way it’s meant to be viewed. A lot of it is not being viewed in theaters anymore. So it’s not really what they do in those categories.

**John:** All right, so a more specific question that’s aimed at us, at screenwriters. So we have the nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay both for the Writers Guild and for the Academy Awards. But are you reading all the actual screenplays? Are you basing that vote on what you assumed the screenplay was underneath this movie you saw? Aline?

**Aline:** I don’t read the screenplays.

**John:** Craig?

**Aline:** But I probably should.

**Craig:** I mean, I’m not in the Academy. They’re never going to let me in. [laughs]

**Aline:** [laughs] You’re in the Writers Guild.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s true. I don’t believe that you should be giving awards for documents. Our job is not to write a document. Our job is to write a movie. And so I watch the movie and I discern from that movie the narrative, the dialogue, the structure, the sequencing, all the characters’ characterizations, all the things that go in that we provide a movie. And I experience it through the movie. That’s our job.

**John:** All right. Next ethical question. There have been times when people, producers or studio executives have come to me with a project to work on or to adapt. And I’ve passed based on saying, like, I’m unavailable or, like, that just doesn’t really spark for me when the truth is I just know I will never work for that person. And so I’m unavailable. Is that an acceptable lie to tell in that situation? Aline Brosh McKenna?

**Aline:** Well, you know, Hollywood is really a triumph of Mandarin communication. You have to, like, get a dictionary when you start to figure out what people are actually saying to you. And my favorite story was I had written this script that the main character was in the IRS. And somebody passed on it and they said to me we already have an IRS movie in development. And I walked around repeating that as if that was really the reason they passed on it for like a good year until I was talking to someone else and they said oh, yeah, they were interested in my basketball script.

And then I realized — then they told me they had another basketball script in development. And it hit me like a bolt of lightning [laughs] that that was a lie.

**John:** That’s a thing you say.

**Aline:** Yeah. And so there are things that people in Hollywood say that are code for other things. And there’s a lot of screenwriting ones like “lot of good work here.” You know, there’s a lot of things that people say that are not exactly what they mean. And I think in terms of passing on things, you know, this is something that I have talked about with people which is I will often pass on things by saying I’m not going to be able to do a good job on this.

And that’s usually what I feel. You know, if I’m really excited about it, it’s palpable to me. And if it’s not, then I won’t do a good job on it. I don’t think you ever really need to tell people why you’re not taking on their project. It’s sort of like if you don’t want to go out with somebody, you don’t have to say I don’t like the way you look in pants. You can just decline.

**Craig:** I agree. I mean, this is just basic human stuff. We’re allowed to do it. You know, white lies have value. If you’re not going to be completely honest, then I think all bets are off. You’re never going to say to somebody, “Oh no, no, I wouldn’t do this because I don’t like you. I think that this is stupid. I think you’re stupid. It’s insulting that you would even think I’d want to do this.”

Well, that’s honest but you’re not going to say any of that so you might as well just, you know, go the extra mile and say, “Oh my god, I can’t. I’m so busy.” But, you know, like Aline, I’ll also say to people, particularly people that I have worked with before, people that I do like, then I will. If I don’t want to do something, I’ll just be super honest and say I just don’t get it. It’s probably me, you know.

And God knows that there’s a decent chance that three years from now I’ll be sitting at home kicking myself. And I really do feel that way. And I can’t do it because I just don’t feel it, you know. Everybody respects that.

**John:** So my last two questions are about friendship. This is a situation that happened to me and I suspect it’s happened to both of you as well. A friend is so excited because they just started working on a new project with this person, and a person who I know to be a terrible person or that I had a terrible back history with. Do I say what happened or do I just keep my mouth shut? And at what circumstances do you say something and what circumstances do you not say something?

Again, it feels like that relationship question. It’s like where, you know, if your friend is dating a monster, do you tell your friend that they’re dating a monster?

**Craig:** Well, the thing is, one man’s monster is another man’s savior. I have been in this situation on both sides. And I remember I was doing something with someone. And somebody that I like a lot and respect and whose opinion I value said that person is the worst. On a scale of one to ten, they’re an eleven of terribleness.

And I got along great with the person. Great. And it went fine which just goes to show you some puzzle pieces fit together and some don’t. So with that in mind, unless I know that somebody is criminal, they cheat, they steal, they are abusive, you know, stuff that’s really dangerous that I think they need to know, I’ll tell that. But if it’s just I really did not like them, I didn’t like their taste, I didn’t like their work process, I didn’t like their face, whatever it is, I just keep that to myself because they might love them.

**Aline:** I’ve had something which was strange, which was somebody really heartily recommending someone to me and saying this person is my muse and my angel and everything they say is a pearl of wisdom. And I just had a terrible time understanding what they were saying, getting anything on the boards. And so it’s so personal. Again, I hate to be the chick who keeps bringing up dating stuff but it’s also like that. Like you can have chemistry with someone.

And I think we all have people that we like that other people don’t as much or people that everyone else likes but us. It’s human nature. I mean, in terms of telling someone, I think you can always say, “I had this experience. You may not have this but I just…” It depends on how close they are to you. If it’s a super close friend, I would say, “Listen, just have your eyes open. This is where I think their defect is. And so if you see this red flag come up, there might be more of that where you think there might be more.”

**John:** In the real life cases where this has come up, I’ve tried to frame it — the conversation saying — in both cases, I think I did say, like, there was a problem. This is what the actual experience was. This is where I think I probably was at fault. Let me explain sort of what the whole scenario was and why this person was under pressure.

And I sometimes describe it as like this is a storm we all endure together. That said, I will never ever work with that person again. And it segues back to the earlier question of why are you passing on this because you’re unavailable. It’s, like, because I had just an absolutely horrible time with that person and I will not forget that.

All right. My final ethical question is at what point is it okay to say in a conversation to refer to somebody as your friend when you’re not sure that the other person would refer to you as a friend? And so there’ve been cases where I’ve heard myself saying, like, oh, yeah, he’s a friend. And then I’ve said that in a way to sort of try to be inclusive, to sort of explain like how I know this person, blah, blah, blah.

And then I realize, oh, wait, would that person actually refer to me as a friend? And it often comes with relative levels of fame. So if I refer to somebody who’s like much more famous than me as a friend, am I being a douchebag? It’s a weird situation. And we all know really famous people so it’s —

**Aline:** Well, that’s so interesting. You know, there are a lot of writers that I know so slightly. Like I was on half a panel with them or I, you know, met them in some really oblique way and I will refer to them as my friend. I had this with Chris Morgan who I’ve met once. And Chris Morgan — I’m always like, oh, we’re friends, we’re friends. He comes up and I’m like, we’re friends. [laughs]

And now it’s like a thing when I see him. I’m like, hey friend. And that’s so interesting because with actors, I think, I would probably have to have, like, had a solo social engagement with them before I would say that’s one of my friends. That’s kind of interesting. I think maybe I just consider writers default —

**John:** Yeah we’re all —

**Aline:** Friends.

**John:** In the same boat.

**Aline:** But same with moms, like moms at my school. I might say that I’m friends with her even though we just sort of like stood next to each other in the classroom for two seconds.

**John:** Craig, what do you think?

**Aline:** I think I’m rather whorish with this. I think I’m rather slutty and —

**John:** You’re a promiscuous friendster?

**Aline:** I am a promiscuous user of the word friend.

**John:** Craig, where are you at with this?

**Craig:** I’m the other way. I’m a little stingy you with the word. I’ll say if somebody asks me about somebody I’ll say, oh yes, I know them. You know, we’ve hung out. I might say I know them. But to me, when you say someone’s a friend, you are implying that you have a relationship with them. They’re a part of your life. You’re a part of theirs.

I mean, look, I spent months and months with Bradley Cooper in multiple countries. And I can email him and if I see him we will talk. He’s not my friend. I know that. I’m not his friend. I know that. So I would never say, oh yeah, Bradley’s a friend.

**Aline:** What about Chris Morgan?

**Craig:** Well, Chris Morgan is my friend [laughs] because I —

**John:** Chris Morgan’s a friend to the world.

**Aline:** Not a good test.

**Craig:** No. Yeah, because Chris Morgan lives in my town and I know him, his wife, his kids, and we hang out. But I feel like if I were to say, oh Bradley Cooper’s a friend, I am being a douchebag. I’m boasting. It’s boasty. Even when I am actually friends with somebody — like, I’m actually friends with Amanda Peet or Jason Bateman, I’ll say oh yes, you know, we’re actually — we’re close. Our families are close or something like that.

Because to me, if I’m really like friends with you, then you know my wife. You probably have met my kids. Anyway, it’s that kind of thing. So I do think it’s a little douchewaddy. If I’m familiar with somebody, if I know somebody, I’ll just say oh, yeah, I know them, you know, we’ve spent time together. I’ll say something like that.

**John:** It is interesting with actors because like Ryan Reynolds is genuinely a friend. I’ve been to both of his weddings. He was at my wedding. So that kind of stuff is really there. But there’ve been other actors who I’ve just helped out on a thing or they’ve been in a workshop and so I know them.

Like Hugh Jackman I know really well. I know his wife. But like I’ve never been to their apartment and we’ve never hung out. Same with Will Smith. Like you’ve hung out, you’ve dealt with Will Smith. And so I like him. I mean, he’s an acquaintance. I think he would probably recognize me but he has no idea about my life.

Maybe the test is that he would never — like, Will Smith is never going to text and say like, “hey, what’s up? How’s your day going?” And a friend maybe would more likely do that.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know, in a weird way, if you play Words with Friends with someone, they’re your friend. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs]

**Aline:** Well, it’s funny. I just saw somebody that I play this game, Wordbase, which I’m obsessed with. And I just saw this woman who’s a friend of mine and she said — we were catching up with some other people and she said, oh, I don’t need to talk to you, I see you all the time, which is not true. We just play Wordbase every day. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs]

**Aline:** So it seems like we see each other every day. So it’s slightly another one of those Hollywood Mandarin things about who you say is your friend. And actually, as you’re talking, I think that when actors come up that I know, I think I say something like we’re pals or something. I think I use another word. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs]

**Aline:** Just to — that captures like we’ve spent time together and they probably know me by sight and —

**John:** Yeah. I was in a conversation where there’s a director who I haven’t made a movie with him but we worked together on a project. And so he was on the list. And it’s, like, oh, yeah, I really like him. And I didn’t say friend because, like, that would be completely inaccurate. Like, I’m not sure — I have his correct email address now, but I know that if we were in the same room together, we’d get along great.

And so there is that weird middle ground with people you know but they’re not — I mean, they’re acquaintances but it’s a different thing.

**Craig:** Even somebody that I’m legitimately friends with, if I think it’s going to make me sound douchey — like I’m really friends with Melissa McCarthy and I feel douchey about it. If somebody says, oh, you know, what’s Melissa McCarthy like? Oh, well yeah, she — we’re friends. I’m sort of saying, look what she — she’s my — she likes me. I don’t, like — so what I’ll always say is I love her. I wish I put the arrow the other way, you know. I just like, I love her, she’s the greatest.

**Aline:** I’m going to use this opportunity to point out that you guys have both name-dropped a bunch of actors that you’re friends with.

**Craig:** Well, we have to, that’s the topic.

**John:** That is the topic. What actors are you friends with? Oh, Rachel Bloom.

**Aline:** Yeah, well, you know, I’m going to be discreet.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** I will tell you that I know that’s, you know, I love these guys. But Zach Galifianakis would never call me his friend. Ed Helms isn’t going to call me his friend. Now, Mr. Chow, yes. But, Bradley — it would be so cool if I could walk around be like, “Well, yeah, Bradley Cooper is my friend. We’re friends.” But we’re not. I love the dude, he’s awesome. But I know that he doesn’t think about me ever. [laughs]

**Aline:** But it’s partly the actor thing because it really — I’ve done roundtables with writers. And then, you know, after that, I consider them friends of mine.

**John:** Yeah, you aloud a script together and you pitch jokes. That’s really —

**Aline:** Yeah, and we have professional camaraderie. So I think I am very loose about it with definitely with writers because I consider them all sort of my friends.

**Craig:** You are looser than I am because —

**Aline:** Hooray.

**Craig:** For instance, I’ve spent time with Simon Kinberg. I love it when we bump into each other at something. But we’re not friends because, you know, he doesn’t call me, I don’t call him. I’ve never been to his house, he’s never been to mine. So it’s weird to say that you’re not friends with somebody because it sounds like you’re in a fight with them. I mean, I think the guy’s awesome.

It would be fun to be his friend. But I know I’m not, it’s not enough for me. I have to, like, actually have a relationship with somebody. What is the value? Why are we talking about this? [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Well, if you want to know more about Simon Kinberg, you can go back to the episode in the premium feed where I talked to Simon Kinberg for an hour about writing and X-Men: Days of Future Past.

**Aline:** This is just going to be a long podcast where we go through everyone we know and say friend/not friend, friend/not friend.

**John:** Weirdly, Simon Kinberg like runs the gamut for us because like sort of not friend to Craig Mazin. Not enemy but not friend. I’ve been to both of his houses, his house in LA and house in New York because our kids were in preschool together. But you are genuinely friends because you’ve like written movies with him.

**Aline:** Yeah, he’s one of my besties.

**John:** It’s the range of Simon Kinberg. Let us segue to our third topic for today which is — we started talking about Whiplash and sort of that dynamic of teachers and students which I think is so compelling.

I think maybe for writers, especially because, I think, I know I had writing teachers who were — they didn’t throw symbols at me but they were difficult and demanding and that became part of the process of doing stuff. And Aline Brosh McKenna wrote The Devil Wears Prada which has in some ways a similar dynamic of this person who’s such a perfectionist who’s driving the ship. And you’re trying to please her and there may not be any pleasing to her.
So, you saw Whiplash. Did you feel that connection to your movie in seeing in it?

**Aline:** I did feel some of that but only in so far as I think that Whiplash is basically a horror movie. And I think The Devil Wears Prada is also a horror movie. They’re monster movies. And so, you know, he’s playing a much more — that character is a much more overt monstrous character.

I think that also Prada is a Faust story. So in Prada, she gets pulled towards the monster and becomes a little bit the monster. And that’s not really the case in Whiplash. He doesn’t really start to compromise his values towards — he keeps trying to live up to this guy and then he repudiates him.

So, yeah.

**John:** But I would argue whether he does fully repudiate him. Because I think what’s actually fascinating about the movie of Whiplash is that he is like the Andy character in Devil Wears Prada is like attracted moth-like to this bright burning flame even though that he keeps getting burned by this bright burning flame.

But there’s a vindictiveness to the teacher character in Whiplash that does not exist in your story. I remember having a conversation with you about The Devil Wears Prada where you were so insistent on trying to find who is the human being underneath the Miranda character. And why was she doing what she was doing? What is the beauty underneath there? And I guess Whiplash does that to some degree as well. But it ultimately leaves the question ambiguous. It’s sort of like why is this person doing this.

**Aline:** Well, I think one of the fantasies that in mentor-protégé movies, one of the fantasies is that this person is ever going to notice you. And I think in Prada we made a big point of the fact that even after that, you know, through that whole movie, I don’t even think she is totally registering who this other person is completely. She doesn’t really remember her name.

And then, so that scene towards the end where she actually — you see, that she has thought about her. She has noticed that they have similarities. And at the very, very end when she smiles after seeing her, I think what’s enjoyable about that is thinking that this person who is so, so outranks you is noticing you at all.

And I think Whiplash has a great moment — spoiler alert — Whiplash has a great moment where you come to understand that he doesn’t really know — the Miles Teller character doesn’t really know whether J.K. Simmons has really registered his existence. And at the very end of the movie you’ve come to realize that he’s really been thinking about this kid.

And I think that’s what’s part of the perverse pleasure of it is being around this monster who so outranks you. They’re not paying you any attention. And then all of the sudden they focus their gaze on you. I think there’s something. And it has to do with the parents, I think. It has to do with this sort of allure and fear of a small child in front of its parents.

The movie that we really — I did not think about all weirdly when I was writing. But then of course realized very much afterwards was very similar to ours was Wall Street.

**John:** Oh yeah. Well, let’s talk about movies that sort of fall into this general category. And we could talk about movies that have good teachers and movies that have bad teachers or sort of bad mentors. And so some of the ones we’ve listed as we were making up this list before we started — good teachers: To Sir, with Love, Stand and Deliver, Dangerous Minds, Mr. Holland’s Opus, School of Rock, The Miracle Worker. In each of these cases, you have a teacher who recognizes there’s something special about this kid.

**Aline:** Dead Poets.

**John:** Dead Poets Society. Oh my god, a great one. There’s something special about this kid. I will single out this kid and make sure that the sun shines on this kid. And I may push the kid but I am pushing the kid to a place of safety. And oftentimes, the good teacher is sort of working in opposition to a bad parent. And essentially like things aren’t perfect at home but I’m the person who’s going to elevate you and be that father figure.

**Aline:** Right. And Whiplash has the opposite.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** I actually think that one of the hallmarks of the good teacher movies is that they don’t zero in on any single kid, but they actually zero in on a bunch of kids. The formula is I’ve got a bunch of kids, none of whom are reaching their potential, each for different reasons. And I’m going to figure out why and inspire all of them. School of Rock, Dead Poets Society, Mr. Holland’s Opus, Dangerous Minds, Stand and Deliver, they’re not elitist teachers. They’re actually egalitarian teachers. It’s the bad mentors, I think, that are very elitist and zero in on one person because they see something in them and then attempt to essentially make them blossom by trying to destroy them.

**John:** Another thing I noticed about the teacher movies, the good teacher movies we singled out here, good meaning like the teacher is good, not that the movies are good because these are all really great movies, is in most of these cases the teacher is the outsider who’s come in to a situation. So it’s an outside teacher who’s come in to a classroom and therefore transformed the classroom and brought to it.

But as we look at these bad mentors, these bad teachers, it’s usually the opposite. Let’s list some of these movies: Amadeus, Black Swan, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, Wall Street, The Devil’s Advocate, Whiplash, Devil Wears Prada. In these situations, the mentor was already in that world and we’re looking at a new person who’s come in to this situation and is — come in optimistic, hopefully, and with dreams and visions, and this teacher character is crushing those dreams.

**Aline:** God I love Amadeus because the agony of realizing that this guy, this flibbertigibbet is more talented that he is, that he’s witnessing this incredible talent. And that the child is not worthy — the kid is not worthy. It’s so great. It’s such a good one.

**John:** So you referenced Faust, so talk us through the Faust of it all. So what was the dynamic in there that you saw with Devil Wears Prada?

**Aline:** Yeah, I mean we don’t have her. She doesn’t ever instruct her for the point of instructing her. When she tells her, the speech about the blue sweater, she’s insulting her. She’s saying, you’re stupid. She’s not doing it to edify her. She just wants her to stop saying stupid things in her presence.

And then, you know, she’s putting up with a lot of stuff. Anne’s character is putting up with a lot of stuff. Until the end when she realizes that she’s becoming this person that she thinks is not a good person; that she did something to her friend which is similar to what Miranda does to her friend. And it’s the mirroring. It’s the scene where she says, I see myself in you that causes her to quit.

And it was interesting because in the book it was much more a repudiation. It was much more of like you’re terrible and I’m going away from the terrible thing. And what we wanted to do was more of a story about somebody who says I see the kernel of this callous disregard for others. I see it in myself and I don’t wish to nurture it. I want to turn my back on it. And that’s why she throws the phone in the fountain. So we we’re hoping for something a little bit more nuanced. Whereas in a monster movie, you just need to kill the monster.

**John:** The Beauty and the Beast is sort of the example of like you need to find the wonderful character underneath the monstrous feature. Or King Kong is sort of you’re coming to love the thing underneath the monstrous facade. But in the case of Whiplash, the case of I’d say Black Swan as well, like there’s not a good thing underneath there.

**Aline:** Right. I mean, one of the things about writing these movies is that they’re really a swampland of clichés. They’re really difficult. They’re very tried and true. And so I think we really appreciate movies that have a spin on them. And I thought Whiplash was sort of transfixing from the very beginning because the drive of the junior character was so powerful. And what he was up against with was so intense.

So I really have to hand it to him for making that really, you know, refreshing that. Because I think it is a tough genre. Sometimes when you — particularly the good teacher. Sometimes when you see the good teacher come in you feel like you can map out the beats of that, don’t you?

**John:** Hm-mmm, absolutely.

**Craig:** The thing about Whiplash that I think sets it apart is that it had — that Damien Chazelle clearly made a decision to not have the devil be the devil. It’s no coincidence that two of our bad mentor movies have the word Devil in the title. And in Platoon, you can see clearly that Tom Berenger is the devil. And in Wall Street, you feel that Michael Douglas is the devil. And in Black Swan, the devil seems like — the devil’s emerging, and so on and so forth.

In Whiplash, what he chose to do is say, look, I’m going to actually have you — I’m going to make you hate him and also agree with him. And then I’m going to force this question on you which is is it worth it? Is it worth this toxic relationship if you get better at a thing? And particularly better at an art. And then underneath that is is great art worth the suffering that goes into it, is the suffering necessary? Could this have happened without this relationship? Was this man doing this in order to inspire greatness or was he doing it simply because he’s a sadist who’s out of control and he happens to inspire greatness?

All these wonderful questions are there for you to decide for yourself. But I think what sets Whiplash apart at least in terms of its characterization is that it did not answer the question in any way.

**John:** And what’s also I think smart about I think both Whiplash and Devil Wears Prada is it puts those thematic ideas in the mouths of the characters who were best able to speak them. So in the case of Whiplash, you know, the Miles Teller character asking where is that line? Like, where do you go — you know, when do you push somebody so far that they actually run away from the thing that they’re great at? In the case of Devil Wears Prada, you were able to have Meryl Streep’s character really express what it was that she was trying to do and then really be able to speak those things.

And so often, you get very nervous about sort of putting thematic lines in a character’s mouth but you sort of have to. It’s that elegant way of sort of stating it without making it clear that you are really stating it. Or getting to that sort of emotional punch line so that you’re ready to hear it. It’s like, oh, yeah, I get that. And everything else frames around that question.

**Craig:** I think that that’s one of the great things about this genre is that you can have characters pose those thematic positions because they don’t necessarily resolve easily. It’s easy for the character Fletcher in Whiplash to say, listen, Jones throws the symbol at Parker’s head. Parker becomes The Bird, right? He becomes Bird. Sorry, not The Bird, Bird. The Bird was Mark Fidrych, pitcher for the Detroit Tigers as you both know.

So there’s this kind of thing that then is unspoken. It’s for the audience to then ask. Okay, he stated a theme that is an argument. But did he need the symbol thrown at him or would he have been great anyway? And also, hey, Charlie Parker died young of an addiction. He was tormented. And so the movie casually introduces in an interesting way and then kind of twists the details of it. Another suicide, right? The movie is reminding you of this.

So these characters make these statements. But we understand that the movie is saying don’t necessarily buy this. You know, question even what this character is saying because this character is not giving you the truth. They’re only giving you their truth.

**John:** Another thing I’ve noticed about these bad mentor movies is we think of them as being two-handers. I think in my recollection, I think of Devil Wears Prada as being Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep. But of course it’s really not just those two characters. You have to have ancillary characters out there who can provide other viewpoints. And so it’s not just the same fight over and over again.

So in the case of Devil Wears Prada, you have Emily Blunt’s character who’s a version of what Anne Hathaway could become. You have Stanley Tucci’s character who is sort of the fairy godmother, sort of showing you like, helping you make that transition.

In the case of Whiplash, you have Paul Reiser’s character who’s asking those questions like this isn’t worth it. I’m here to protect you, let me protect you. And it was interesting reading through the actual screenplay for Whiplash. There was a lot more there and a lot of that got cut out. I think they recognized in the edit that it’s, you know, ultimately they want it to be more than two-hander. So there was a lot more that Paul Reiser’s character was trying to be the voice of, you know —

**Aline:** Man, I love that scene where he goes home and — are those his cousins?

**John:** Yes.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** The scene with the cousins. And to be able to make your lead character really kind of a dick and not even kind of a dick, saying truly dickish things. But it really got you into his perspective on things.

**Aline:** But it’s smart because it also shows how the monster is kind of rubbing off on him and how this pursuit of greatness that is sort of a religion, how it’s distorting his interactions with everyone.

**John:** Yeah. And, you know, Amadeus has that aspect as well where the desire to prove yourself, to achieve something is what ultimately pushes Salieri to these points. It’s that weird case where Salieri is the protagonist/villain sort of your story. I love those things where you feel like there are just those two people but there’s actually a whole world around them.

And I think it’s also interesting that in each of these cases with these bad mentors, they’re very specific, unusual worlds. If you look at Amadeus, like we know nothing about classical music, but we’re being taught this whole world.

In Wall Street, we’re being taught the world of Wall Street. We’re being taught the world of fashion in The Devil Wears Prada. I don’t care at all about jazz or drumming, and yet I was introduced to this world and found it fascinating and believable within Whiplash.

**Craig:** Also, I would say that the movie would not have worked if nothing had changed other than the instrument. There is something about drumming that we understand to be physical and inscrutable. We don’t know why reaching a certain tempo is so important.

And by the way, I have to say, a lot of the technicals of the movie about jazz, for instance, like the bleeding hands and the tempo and the speed isn’t really true. I mean, it’s not true to life. If your hands are bleeding and you’re holding your sticks wrong, and speed is not the be-all-end-all.

But even the pieces they’re playing aren’t really what you would call like the kind of true crucible pieces for advanced jazz musicians. But if it’s a trumpet, we’re going to listen to it and go, “That sounds pretty good. Right?” Or, okay, I mean either it’s you can play the trumpet or can’t play the trumpet. We can kind of hear that.

But in drumming, there is this like weird spiritual magic to it. It’s the only instrument in the band where you can sweat and bleed on your kit. And it’s physical, and it moves at a speed that seems impossible. I’ve got to give Damon Chazelle an enormous amount of credit for shooting Miles Teller playing that kit and making me believe he was playing that kit. I mean, obviously he was playing it to some extent but not all of it.

**Aline:** I just also want to talk about two things which are not really on this topic. But one thing I — because I’ve been watching so many movies recently, there’s two things that I know we’ve talked a lot about on the show. I really noticed that your movie’s just got to be about something. It has just got to be about something. And one of the reasons Whiplash is so successful is because it’s just — it’s about that idea of what will you sacrifice to be successful. You know, how much will you bleed, what’s it worth, where you’re going with it. You know, what’s the ultimate for that. It’s just about one thing.

And then the other thing is the thing Lindsay Doran talks about a lot which is what is the relationship here? And it doesn’t mean that that relationship needs to be in every scene or all scenes but, what is the relationship outcome that I’m rooting for?

And I find that when movies don’t work for me, it’s one of those two things. It’s like who did I care about? What relationship did I care about? And also, why did I watch this? More than anything, I think I’m willing to forgive so much narrative shagginess, but if I don’t know what the movie’s about and if the filmmaker doesn’t know what the movie’s about —

**John:** You feel it.

**Aline:** And it devolves into what I call a “stuff happens.”

**John:** Hm-mmm.

**Aline:** We’re trying to keep it G, a “stuff happens movie”. And I think that the movies that have really been — we have an enormously good crop of movies this year, and I think if you go through them, you could pretty easily, even a non-pro, could tell you pretty easily what they were grappling with thematically.

I think Imitation Game is a really good example of that. It’s really about do we need outsiders, what’s the value of an outsider, how it’s difficult to be an outsider, who’s an outsider, and what their value is, and how we treat them. I think all the movies that have really worked are about something clean thematically, and I know we’ve talked about that so much on the show but, can’t be stressed enough. Know why you’re telling this story.

**John:** Great. All right, it is time for our One Cool Things.

**Craig:** You know what, John, I don’t have a One Cool Thing, as always. So, Aline, you’re taking my One Cool Thing.

**John:** So my One Cool Thing is a thing called Scannable by Evernote. And it’s so, so slick. And so Aline is here in person so I can actually show it to her on my phone. But what you do is if you have a document that you want to scan, so like it could be a receipt, it could be something you hand-wrote, it could be a letter. You just open the app, you aim the camera on your phone at it, and it scans it, it senses that it’s a page of paper, and it scans it and saves it to Evernote, or you can send it to somebody.

So, so often, I’ve had like just something I just don’t want to lose, and so it’s like written down on a piece of paper. I can just aim this app and record it and save it to my Evernote. It’s a really sick, smart system.

**Aline:** I don’t use Evernote.

**John:** You can also save it, send it in an email, you can send it —

**Aline:** So it turns it into type?

**John:** No. It turns it into a picture, essentially.

**Aline:** Oh, okay, okay. Because I have this thing that scans documents and turns them into what looks like pieces of paper.

**John:** Yeah. So this is just a slick version of that.

**Aline:** Okay.

**John:** I’m going to show this to you right now. So we’re actually just going to scan a page of Whiplash. So I’m holding this up here.

**Aline:** All right, okay.

**John:** And it’s going to see —

**Aline:** Oh, so it’s like a credit card thing, where it’s looking to see —

**John:** Yeah. It’s looking for a piece of paper.

**Aline:** Right. Oh, there we go. Wow! Whoa! That’s much better than the thing I have. That’s amazing.

**John:** So the tagline for this is, “That’s much better than the thing I have,” by Aline Brosh McKenna. So it’s really slick, and so because I hand-write first drafts, usually what I’m doing is if I’m away some place, I write on paper and I do a scribbled pass first which is unreadable by anybody but me, then I write a cleaner version which Stuart types up.

And so that clean version, I’ve been taking photos on my iPhone and then sharing them with Stuart just by sending him the email that — this is much slicker. It will go right into —

**Aline:** Will we eventually have something that will take that document and put it in a screenplay format?

**John:** Probably. Yeah. It definitely — if it was a typed document, it could easily scan that. That’s really simple. My handwriting will never be perfectly scannable.

**Aline:** Right. Some day.

**John:** Some day. What are your two One Cool Things?

**Aline:** I have two Cool Things. I’ll do them really quickly. Are you watching The Comeback? Did you watch Season 2 of The Comeback?

**John:** And so I have two episodes left of The Comeback. So I did not love the start of it, and then it got so good.

**Aline:** My mind was blown. I agree the season took a little while to get rolling. And then once it gets rolling, it blows my mind. And I’m actually in that situation where I’m jealous of you because you haven’t seen those last two. The last episode is one of the best episodes of anything I’ve ever seen.

And someone was just telling me yesterday that they had read something about how Valerie Cherish is one of the most nuanced characters of the last ten years and I love that season so much, the end of that season particularly, so much, I went back and watched Season 1.

**John:** Wow.

**Aline:** And it is so prescient. That show blows my mind. So if you still have not seen it, I would recommend starting with Season 1. But if you watched Season 1 and you don’t quite remember it, finish Season 2 and go back to Season 1. It is sublime.

**John:** Yeah. Honestly, I was stalling because I did not love the first couple of episodes of this new batch. They were setting stuff up, but I also feel like they could have maybe made some cuts. But then suddenly it got to this moment where she finally just like unleashes on this one producer and like just really speaks to this thing like, you are awful, terrible people and, you know, you can’t keep doing this to me.

And it was just such an amazing monologue that was great. Because so often that show is sort of making fun of her and she’s sort of half-aware of the joke and she’s sort of not half-aware of the joke. But when she finally just like opens out, it was just great.

**Aline:** Part of what makes her so nuanced to me is that line where you’re not quite sure how much she understands. But the other thing is, it’s kind of one of the very few things, if not the only thing I’ve ever seen about Hollywood that is dead-on accurate. It’s how it’s done.

And when I went back and watched Season 1, it’s like obviously Lisa and Dan worked inside that world and they have it dead to right. I mean, it is just everything from the table read to the — it really sent chills as how accurate it is.

**John:** I love the script supervisor in the show is Winnie Holzman, the writer of Wicked.

**Aline:** Is that right?

**John:** She’s the script supervisor. And it’s like that can’t be. That’s Winnie Holzman!

**Aline:** It’s beyond. And then the other thing, my friend, just an exciting day today because Jason Hall, who got nominated for Best Adapted for American Sniper today, is an old, old friend of mine and an old friend of John Gatins. Actually, much closer, very close friend of John Gatins. And we picketed together in 2007. He was on our picket team and he was just kind of, he had been an actor and his writing career was just starting to take off then. He was making his first movie.

He was just about to get married. Now he has a bunch of kids and he’s got this Oscar nomination and he’s really one of just the good guys of the Guild. He’s just a really smart, really cool, really funny, really interesting guy. And the story of how he got this movie made and what he went through in terms of getting to know Chris and getting to know Chris’s family is riveting.

And so, he has spoken about it in a couple of places. He wrote an article about it for Written By. But just so happy for Jason Hall. It’s one of those things where I feel like it’s a big win for us all in a funny way. And you know what? Great, great noms this year. I thought everyone was great. He’s just an old buddy of mine and I’m very happy for him.

**John:** That’s awesome. So we’ll have a link to some articles about Jason Hall’s story getting into American Sniper and links to all things we talked about on the show notes today. So you can find the show notes at johnaugust.com/scriptnotes.

If you have a question for Craig Mazin, you can tweet at him, he’s @clmazin. I am at @johnaugust. Longer questions, go to ask@johnaugust.com, that’s the place to send them. Aline is not on Twitter so you can find her on Instagram?

**Aline:** No.

**John:** No. Don’t even look for her on Instagram.

**Aline:** Nope. You can find me by going to Craig or John’s Twitter and asking them a question.

**John:** And we will hand-write it down and send it over on a passenger pigeon to Aline Brosh McKenna.

**Aline:** I’m thinking of going retweet only. Thoughts?

**John:** Oh, that would be fun. Yeah, that’s nice.

**Aline:** Do people do that?

**John:** Yeah. You can do that.

**Aline:** Are there people whose Twitter feed is just retweets?

**John:** Yeah. There are.

**Aline:** Is it irritating?

**John:** No. It’s actually just fine.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** You can do it. Where you’re just endorsing something —

**Aline:** Yeah. Or like, something that really strikes me as funny.

**John:** So you actually probably read Twitter but you don’t actually have an account. Is that correct?

**Aline:** Yeah. Exactly. I read Twitter but I don’t ever tweet but occasionally you find something on there that’s such a gem that you want to retweet it.

**John:** My friend Ryan Reynolds, I can just say his name 15 times this episode, he’s finally on Twitter. So there have been all these fake Ryan Reynolds accounts. So he finally got on Twitter because he was sort of forced to. At a certain point they just like come to your door and say, “You are now on Twitter.”

And so I was trying to give him advice about sort of how to do it and I basically said do the least possible because basically anytime you say anything as a celebrity on Twitter, it just gets blown up beyond all proportion. You just have to lock that down.

**Aline:** It’s sort of the same rule as email, and then some, which is if you’re thinking, “Uh, should I?”

**John:** The answer’s no. Yeah. It’s always no. If you are on iTunes and you’re listening to this in iTunes or you happen to stumble by iTunes, please look for us on iTunes — Scriptnotes — just search for us, and leave us a rating because that helps other people to find the show.

While you’re on iTunes, you can download the Scriptnotes app, which is a way to get to all the back episodes in the premium feed. It’s $1.99 a month if you want to get to all the back episodes and bonus episodes, including our friend, Simon Kinberg.

The show is produced by Stuart Friedel. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli, who often does our outros. I’m not sure who the outro is this week but it’s going to be great. If you have an outro that you would like to put at the end of our show, you can write in to ask@johnaugust and just give us the link to where we can find that outro.

Craig, Aline, thank you so much for being on the show.

**Craig:** Thanks.

**John:** And Craig, bye, good luck with all.

**Craig:** Thank you.

Links:

* [Aline Brosh McKenna](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0112459/) on episodes [60](http://johnaugust.com/2012/the-black-list-and-a-stack-of-scenes), [76](http://johnaugust.com/2013/how-screenwriters-find-their-voice), [100](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode), [101](http://johnaugust.com/2013/101-qa-from-the-live-show), [119](http://johnaugust.com/2013/positive-moviegoing), [123](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-holiday-spectacular), [124](http://johnaugust.com/2013/qa-from-the-holiday-spectacular) [152](http://johnaugust.com/2014/the-rocky-shoals-pages-70-90), [161](http://johnaugust.com/2014/a-cheap-cut-of-meat-soaked-in-butter), and [175](http://johnaugust.com/2014/twelve-days-of-scriptnotes)
* [Raphael Bob-Waksberg Breaks Down Comedy’s “Default Male” Problem](http://splitsider.com/2015/01/bojack-horseman-creator-raphael-bob-waksberg-breaks-down-comedys-default-male-problem/)
* [Writers on Writing: Simon Kinberg](http://scriptnotes.net/writers-on-writing-simon-kinberg)
* Read the Whiplash screenplay [on Weekend Read](http://johnaugust.com/2015/weekend-read-for-your-consideration)
* [Evernote Scannable](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/evernote-scannable/id883338188?mt=8)
* [The Comeback](http://www.hbo.com/the-comeback#/) on HBO
* [Jason Hall in WGAw’s Written By](http://www.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=239550#{“issue_id”:239550,”page”:12})
* [Ryan Reynolds](https://twitter.com/VancityReynolds) is now on Twitter
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Rajesh Naroth ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))