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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/egoless-screenwriting).

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

**Craig Mazin:** [Yawns] My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 125 of Scriptnotes, the Ego episode of a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

On today’s episode we’re going to talk about Beyoncé’s surprise album and what it might portend for filmmakers and the future of home video.

We’re going to talk about a post that Craig found on egoless programming and how that could benefit screenwriters.

Finally, we’re going to talk about a lawsuit filed about The Expendables and what that could mean for the future of WGA credit arbitrations.

But, first and most importantly, Craig, how was Austria?

**Craig:** It was great. I had a great time. It’s why I’m a little sleepy because I’m still jetlagged. Jetlag is one of those things that everybody just goes, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, jetlag. It’s annoying like airplane food is annoying. And security is annoying.” But it’s so much worse than that. [laughs] Nobody really wants to admit that it’s actually a traumatic illness that your body goes through, not once, but twice.

**John:** See, I think it affects different people different ways. I actually really enjoy the coming-back-from-Europe jetlag because it just means I go to bed really early and it’s really nice.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s true. And that has been the case. But I can still tell that my body is a bit screwed up and I tend to wake up at 3am for 45 minutes and then I go back to bed. It’s just not — I’m not quite there yet. But no question, much easier that way than actually showing up. You’re so messed up when you get there.

But Austria was wonderful. I had a great time. Vienna is a remarkable city. It’s a beautiful city. I learned a lot.

**John:** Good.

**Craig:** You know, it’s nice going to a place where you leave knowing more than you — I mean, this is how ignorant I was. Did you know that Marie Antoinette was Austrian? She was Viennese.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** You did?

**John:** Because I saw the Sophia Coppola movie.

**Craig:** Oh, there you go. That’s how you knew.

**John:** Yeah. So, I saw it in the tent where they stripped her down and then she put on her new clothes to leave Austria behind.

**Craig:** Exactly. And then I was reading more about Marie Antoinette. She got a really raw deal. But, regardless, I learned a lot and I saw a ton of stuff. And I had a wonderful lunch with some of our podcast listeners and it was great.

**John:** So we have Austrian podcast listeners?

**Craig:** We do. Yeah. We have, let’s see, one, two, three, four, five, six, I believe six.

**John:** Wow. That’s kind of great.

**Craig:** Well, six that agreed to show up at lunch. But we had a great time. And it’s a beautiful city. My kids had a great time. My wife had a great time. We all — it was a lovely vacation. I plan on not leaving — even the Pasadena area at this point seems like too far to travel for me, so I’m not going anywhere for awhile.

**John:** Very good. Well, it’s good to have you back. And actually a lot happened while we were gone, or at least while we were not recording our shows, because our last two episodes have been the live shows. We did our live show and then we did the questions from our live show, so it’s been awhile since we’ve done this thing where just you and I are talking about the issues of the day.

**Craig:** It’s nice, isn’t it?

**John:** It’s kind of nice. It’s nice, and relaxing, and quiet. We’ve got the lawn mowers dealt with before this, so I think we’re good.

**Craig:** Excellent.

**John:** So, one of the things that happened was right before the holidays, actually December 12, so right before we going to go record, Beyoncé released this album. And we’re not a show that talks about music very much, but in general anything that happens in the music industry is something that’s going to happen in the film and television industry just a couple of years ahead of time.

**Craig:** Mm.

**John:** That’s what we’ve largely learned is that all the changes that sort of shook through the music industry with piracy and artists and all that stuff eventually happened in film and television land. So, I watched the Beyoncé surprise album and wondered what could that mean for us.

And two things I want to talk about. First off, Beyoncé was able to surprise the world with this album because she sort of made it in secret and she shot these videos in secret and she could just, surprise, here’s this album. It came out on like a midnight.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I want to ask whether you think a filmmaker, certain kinds of filmmakers could do that, where they would just surprise the world with a movie that they don’t even pre-announce. There’s no advanced publicity for it. And what that could look like.

**Craig:** It’s possible. It would have to be a very small movie.

**John:** Maybe. Maybe. Or it would be have to be a very reclusive filmmaker.

**Craig:** Look, let’s say you’re making a normal size movie. You have to pull permits just to shoot outside. You know what I mean? I mean, there’s a specific kind of movie I think you might be able to get away with, but it would be very hard to show up somewhere with famous people and start shooting if it were a normal movie.

**John:** Yeah. Although I genuinely think there are ways to do that. You look at J.J. Abrams with Cloverfield. Everyone thought they were making a different movie than they were actually making. And so they called — they had some sort of code name for the movie. It was like Cheese Party or something.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And everyone thought they were making some goofy little comedy for Paramount and it turned out they were making Cloverfield. So, I wonder if there is, I’m not even going to wonder. I’m wondering when the first filmmaker will just suddenly drop a movie on iTunes with no advanced notice. Or just literally drop it in theaters, basically taking the slot of another movie that was supposed to be there and suddenly this movie exists out there in the world.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t think this is going to happen.

**John:** No one thought that Beyoncé could suddenly release an album.

**Craig:** No, you know what? That to me is — the only impediment to doing what Beyoncé did, or I suppose the only two impediments are, one, a level of fame that is so extraordinary that anything you do is news.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And, two, balls.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Just absolute balls. And she has both, obviously the second one figuratively. But you can sit in a… — And I think also the music industry has been plagued by pre-release leaks and pre-release piracy that is connected to the promotion and hype surrounding an upcoming album. So, it was smart that she was able to do it this way.

The videos are things that you can shoot inside soundstages. And the music obviously can be done inside of a small studio. It doesn’t require large movements. And most importantly the publicity campaign for an album is designed to get people on the day the album is released to press a button and get the album.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You can’t press a button and get a theatrical movie experience.

**John:** Well you can if you’re willing to give up theatrical. If you’re willing to give up theatrical, or if you’re able to slot yourself into someone else’s place. That’s sort of hard to believe that someone is going to actually like be able to take 2,000 screens and then give them up for you so you can —

**Craig:** You can’t. You can’t because the theaters are different. They’re owned by different companies. It’s so complicated. And I’m not even sure what the upside is, frankly, because the upside of what Beyoncé did was to say, “Surprise everybody. Here’s an album. And on any day of any week if I put an album out you’re going to want it. Isn’t this cool that I just did this without even telling you I was going to do it?”

And that’s great, but that’s not the case for any movie. I mean, the only movie that I think you could get away with something like this would be if suddenly J.J. went, “Surprise, Star Wars is in theaters today!” But why? [laughs] What’s the point?

**John:** Well, let’s talk about the J.J.s or the David Finchers or somebody, because if you don’t need to have a big screen theatrical experience, if you’re willing to say, like, well this movie is now suddenly on iTunes and you didn’t know it existed and right now you can download it and watch it right now, there are certain filmmakers for which that would be an incredibly compelling way to do it if they could charge $15 for the download of that. There is good money to be made there.

So, if David Fincher — Or really you can think about it with television at this point, too. If David Fincher came out with a four-hour series on something that was kind of great and he just made it and released it out there, that’s possible.

Or, your concern seems to be about that you need to be outdoors and people are going to notice that you’re doing this thing. Well, yeah, but people are outdoors filming a lot. Or sometimes they don’t even make movies outdoors. Gravity is shot entirely inside.

**Craig:** Yeah. For sure.

**John:** So, it’s possible.

**Craig:** Yeah, that is possible. I’m just not sure why you’d want to do it that way. I mean, to say, “Surprise! I made a movie,” is great but I can’t think — the only movies I can think of that would be so immediately compelling as to get people to want them right on that surprise day would be movies that don’t need this trick.

**John:** Well, a surprise prequel. A surprise sequel by a filmmaker who is really interesting. So, essentially the David Bowie of filmmaking who doesn’t make things very often would be interesting. And I think the advantage, you said what is the advantage. The advantage is that promotion is incredibly expensive. As we’ve talked about on the show, you can spend $25 million, $40 million promoting an upcoming release. If you don’t have to spend any of that money and just the surprise of it all takes care of a lot of that, that’s pretty compelling.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, but you know that’s —

**John:** It’s a gamble.

**Craig:** It’s a gamble. The only time you’re not gambling is when say you’re releasing an album that didn’t cost $50 million to make but cost maybe, I don’t know, $5 million to make. And the album is from the biggest pop star in the world.

**John:** Yeah. So, I’m not going to convince you that someone is going to do that, but I think some filmmaker will do it and it will be really interesting. It will be sort of the bigger version of Shane Carruth what he did with Upstream Color which was basically, “Surprise, I finally made a movie,” and released it sort of almost day and date with the theatrical debut at Sundance.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But here’s I think the more interesting thing about Beyoncé and the thing that we should think about in terms of the industry is what happens when you release this thing through iTunes and then suddenly your physical retailers, your Targets and your Amazons, say, “Well screw you. We don’t want to ship your CD anymore.” And that’s going to be a really interesting case with movies.

If we are debuting more of our features on iTunes, at a certain point these retailers are going to say, “Well, no, we’re not going to sell your movie in our store.” And that’s going to be an interesting development. I think it’s going to happen.

**Craig:** Well, for theatrical movies I believe that the moviegoing experience, the theater-going experience is going to continue.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** And so I don’t think that that’s relevant in any significant way for feature films. For television shows —

**John:** Well, Craig, let’s talk about it. There’s always been this sense that theatrical movies are releases in the theaters and then they’re released on home video.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that home video has traditionally been the same time that the physical DVD comes out there is a download through iTunes. And every time we try to change that day and date people get really, really angry.

**Craig:** Well the theaters get angry.

**John:** No, no. Theaters get angry. But I think, let’s take the theaters out of it for a second. Let’s say you have The Avengers and it goes spectacularly well in the theaters and everyone is delighted. So, let’s say that Marvel decides, you know what, we are going to put it on iTunes a week before we ship the physical disc.

**Craig:** Well, look, the physical discs are going to die. That’s inevitable. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows. That’s going to happen. So, you mean, right now the studios are still making money off of the plastic. They will continue to protect the people who push the plastic for as long as they can. But they realize they’re groping along a curve and they’re not quite sure where they are in the curve. But they are as convinced as anybody that the plastic is going to go away inevitably.

**John:** So, my question though is does the plastic go away partially because some studio says, “Okay, we’re going to do the digital version first,” and the retailers say, “Well screw you. If you do that we won’t carry your physical disc at all,” which is exactly what they did with Beyoncé.

**Craig:** I think that when that day comes it will not be what causes the death of plastic. It will be the death rattle of plastic. In other words the studios aren’t going to — they’re not going to do anything to hurt their revenue base until they are quite sure that there is more money to be made doing it the other way.

So, that will be — that’s like one of those jungle fights that happened in a South Pacific island in 1946 because soldiers there didn’t realize the war had ended.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** How’s that for an analogy?

**John:** That’s a good analogy. We should get Aline Brosh McKenna here. She would mix some squirrels in with it, but I think she would appreciate that analogy.

**Craig:** No question.

**John:** So, to summarize your positions, you believe that we will not see a filmmaker surprise us with a feature film on iTunes with no publicity within the next year.

**Craig:** Not a major one, no. I mean, I think that, look, there are movies that are small that frankly anyone could say, “Surprise!” because they don’t really have much of a budget to promote it anyway. And I don’t think there’s any need for Shane Carruth to promote his movies. He has a very small avid fan base. His own website, I think, would suffice. However, if you have a company that is investing tens of millions of dollars into a feature film, no, I don’t think — no one is going to be going, “Surprise.”

**John:** I predict that there will be one. And it will be — if it’s not J.J. Abrams it will be someone like J.J. Abrams. And I also strongly suspect that within the week after Beyoncé did her album there was a conversation happening at Bad Robot about how do we do something like this.

**Craig:** Why? I don’t know. Why do you think that J.J. is so obsessed with this?

**John:** Because J.J. and I think a lot of other filmmakers are obsessed with secrecy, obsessed with surprise, obsessed with the ability to go directly to their fans and not have to do all of the in between steps. I think it’s possible and compelling.

I also think George Lucas could easily, you know, before they sort of shipped off the Star Wars empire, George Lucas could have easily done this, too.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Just like a surprise prequel thing.

**Craig:** That I agree with. In other words that’s such a compelling movie for so many people all over the world that the publicity that surrounds a new Star Trek movie is pointless, really. Everyone is going to see the next Star Wars movie. So, I agree with you on that point, but while I understand the love that filmmakers — all filmmakers I think have a love of surprise. And all filmmakers hate the exchange that occurs in marketing the movie where you need to show what you need to show to get them to show up, but you don’t want to show them things you don’t want them to see because you want them to enjoy the movie.

That tension is there for everybody, but the difficulty, I mean, look, the day that J.J. I think can do this is the day that he’s financing his own film. I guess that’s how I would put it. That would be a prerequisite for this, I think.

**John:** Yeah. And that’s why the Lucas model of it all makes sense. And so if it’s not him, then he has to have access to such a huge quantity of money, a Megan Ellison or somebody who can just do that to make that possible.

**Craig:** Well, somebody who could do that and then also not really care — have no problem just throwing —

**John:** Rolling the dice.

**Craig:** Crazy roll of the dice. Because the truth is it’s not like, look, what Beyoncé did in no small part was just for funsies because promotion wouldn’t have hurt the sales of her albums, the album, one little bit. It was just more like — it was swagger. It was great swagger.

**John:** It was swagger.

**Craig:** But it wasn’t businesswise I don’t think she made more money. I mean, you could argue that people tweeting each other “Oh my god, did you see what Beyoncé did?” created a huge amount of expectation for free and that’s true. And it was a roll of the dice. But in the end I can’t — I mean, look, the album is doing really well. Her last album did really, really well. The next one will do really, really well. So, from a business point of view I’m not sure that there’s a huge upside.

**John:** All right So, segueing from that topic of ego and swagger, let’s go to this article that you tweeted or emailed to me this week which I thought was really good. So, it’s this article from 2006 that you found.

**Craig:** Yeah. Actually I didn’t find it. Kevin Bisch, screenwriter Kevin Bisch sent it to me. And it is, yeah, it’s officially old. It’s now seven plus years old, I guess, or seven-ish years old. And it’s not about screenwriting at all. It’s about coding. It’s from a blog called codinghorror.com. And this piece was written by a guy named Jeff Atwood. And what he’s citing is actually the Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming as originally established in Jerry Weinberg’s book The Psychology of Computer Programming.

So, why are we talking about this on our screenwriting podcast? Well, Kevin when he sent it to me he said replace coding with screenwriting and all this stuff applies to us. So, I’m going to quickly read through these and stop me if you have comments.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** Number one, understand and accept that you will make mistakes. The point is to find them early, before they make it into production.

**John:** I would agree with that. I think you have to agree with that. And I think any kind of writing which you’re going into not anticipating it being perfect from the start you will never finish it. You will never actually begin.

**Craig:** That’s right. And in the context of egolessness, the idea being you’re not perfect so you need to sort of negotiate between your pride and your belief in what you’ve done with your sense of humility and your understanding of your own imperfection.

**John:** Yeah. A second corollary thing that goes into this idea is to fail fast, fail often. Is that sense of like to go, write at to it and so you can actually — to get to a far enough place that you can actually see what the mistakes are and sort of not go so slowly that those mistakes are extra costly because of all the time you have put into it.

**Craig:** Do you do this thing, I do this thing where after a movie is done I look back to the first draft and I try and see if any line of dialogue survived intact. [laughs] You know, not changed in any way.

**John:** I haven’t done that. That would be fascinating to do.

**Craig:** There’s not many. There’s not many. It’s wild. The process is thorough.

Okay, number two, you are not your code, or in our case you are not your screenplay. Remember that the entire point of a review is to find problems, and problems will be found. Don’t take it personally when one is uncovered.

**John:** We’ve talked about this before on our “how to take notes” episode which is to listen and hear what they’re saying about the script and to not take it personally that you are a terrible writer for this perceived problem in a story, but to listen — to be the person who is there to help make this script better, not the person whose entire self-esteem is wrapped up into this one bit of writing.

**Craig:** And it’s hard for us, I think perhaps harder for us than it is for coders because it is us. I mean, the truth is we’re being artists here. And we’re pouring ourselves into something. No matter what genre it is, we’re pouring ourselves and it is an expression of many voices inside of us. So, it is us. When we’re writing we have to essentially say we are our script.

And then when we email it off we have to shut that off and say, “No, now we’re not our script.” And then we’ll come back to it and we’ll be it again and we’ll have to keep going back and forth in a strange way.

**John:** What is actually harder I think about our job than a coder’s job is that a coder to some degree can say that problem is solved. Clearly like it does what it needs to do and it does it in a way that lets the entire program run.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** When we solve a problem in a script, yes, it might get us past a little thing but it may not serve the greater purpose the way it needs to serve. Because there’s no one scene you can write and you can say is the perfect scene. Whereas programs, or at least the sub routines in programs, can be optimized to a degree where you can say like there’s nothing more to do there.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly. There’s an objective success there and it’s much harder for us to find that.

You know, I’m looking at reviews for some of the movies I’ve seen recently that I loved and naturally there are — some nut hates it, you know. There’s no objective victory available.

Okay, number three, no matter how much “karate” you know, someone else will always know more. Such an individual can teach you some new moves if you ask. Seek and accept input from others, especially when you think it’s not needed.

I like that last part in particular.

**John:** Yeah. That last bit of advice is very hard for me to take because I tend to not seek other people’s input and opinion unless I really feel stuck.

**Craig:** I’m with you. I think we’re all with you. That is completely natural. I’m trying lately, sort of independent of this, I’m trying now to be a little, I could say brave, or I could say masochistic, [laughs], I’m not sure which one. I’m trying to be a little bit more of one of those. And handing over work that I am actually very happy about, because I feel that my emotional opinion isn’t necessarily related to the reality of whether or not it could be better.

And what if I hand something over that I just think is gorgeous and wonderful and someone says it is gorgeous and wonderful, but what about this or this? And you think, oh, that would make it gorgeouser and wonderfuler. So, I’m trying to… — But, obviously, when you’re not feeling good about it, which is a lot of the time, seeking out the wisdom of people with better karate is a positive thing.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** Okay, next, don’t — this is an interesting one and it will feed into our Millennium discussion — don’t rewrite code without consultation. There’s a fine line between “fixing code” and “rewriting code.” Know the difference, and pursue stylistic changes within the framework of a code review, not as a lone enforcer.

This is a bit messier for us, isn’t it?

**John:** It is. Because obviously as the writer of a film, the writer of a screenplay, you are ultimately responsible for everything that’s there. And what Jeff Atwood is talking about here is that your writing of code has to fit into the broader framework of the whole thing that’s trying to be done. And so basically saying like don’t fiddle with this little work because it could potentially break everything else.

And usually, as a feature screenwriter at least, we are dealing with the script either entirely by ourselves or it’s so clear that we’re working on this bit while this thing is being filmed. So, it’s tougher. And consultation with whom? Ultimately there won’t be other writers on a film, usually.

**Craig:** That’s right. The one thing that you and I both do is we give a call to, if we’re being brought on we call the prior writer or I guess the most significant prior writer. I think the translation for this for what we do is know what you’re being asked to do. And don’t cross the line unnecessarily.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** There was a movie I worked on this year that I did some work on, uncredited work on, and there is a movie that will be coming out this year that I also did some uncredited work on. And I know the people who had written the movie and I knew that they were — it was their movie. I didn’t ask for credit or anything like that, and I also understood the parameters of my job which was not to rewrite but was to fix a few things here and there as best I could.

And I didn’t let that fixing spill over into other stuff. Believe me, if somebody had said, I think any screenwriter, if any screenwriter was asked, well, given free rein and your fee what would you do here, almost every screenwriter would change gobs and gobs of stuff, because it’s their individual expression. But knowing how to work within the lines of somebody else’s work respectfully when that’s the job, I think it’s a great thing to keep in mind.

**John:** You’re describing basically recognizing the scope of your involvement in the project. And there have been things where I’ve been brought in to do a very specific little thing and because I know that my natural voice wouldn’t fit this script I will deliberately write in the voice, or at least the style of the existing script, the previous writer.

And so there will be cases where I will do slug lines the way they do slug lines, or basically do action the way they would do action just so it will read consistently, so it won’t feel like the gears are not kind of clicking together.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** But there are other cases where I really am being brought in on a page one and then I really will sort of go through the whole script and make it all feel like my voice because its ultimately going to be my version of the script.

**Craig:** No question. When you’re asked to come in and do a page one, or if sometimes I’m asked to come in, sometimes they will think that what’s required is a fix. And all you have to offer is to start over again. And I’m not demanding about it. I just say if what you want is to fix this within this I’m not the guy.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I would, however, this is a separate coherent story I think I could do from scratch if you’re interested. And sometimes they are. And when that happens then I just start from scratch. But I’m with you. If I’m working within the framework of somebody else’s screenplay, I don’t, yeah, I don’t sit and the first thing go, “Okay, I like bolding slug lines, so I’m going to start bolding all these slug lines.” I don’t do that. And don’t change the names. You know.

**John:** All that stuff.

**Craig:** All that stuff.

**John:** There’s a project that both the Wibberleys and I worked on that neither of us were the original writers. But they were the writers who came right before me. And so I looked at sort of how they did these sequences and there was stuff that I thought I could do better. I thought I could do better for what this movie wanted to be in its current incarnation. And so as I went through them I was — I used their style. And sometimes it’s as small as like do you end a hanging line on a dot-dot-dot, or a dash-dash?

And if I recall correctly they’re dash-dash people. And so I was like, you know what, I will dash-dash it. And it felt right for this one project.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly. There’s never really a debate on set between the director and the cast about, you know —

**John:** “But it says dash-dash.”

**Craig:** I mean, for me dash-dash is an abrupt thing and dot-dot-dot is a trailing. But, okay, next one.

Treat people who know less than you with respect, deference, and patience. Nontechnical people who deal with developers/screenwriters on a regular basis almost universally hold the opinion that we are prima donnas at best and crybabies at worst. Don’t reinforce this stereotype with anger and impatience.

**John:** Again, this is something that we talked about on previous shows, just expressed a little bit differently, which is how do you take a note and very gracefully understand it and reply to it in a way that is respectful, that makes sure the person is being heard and also can continue the conversation and doesn’t sort of abruptly say, “No, that’s a stupid idea. That won’t work.”

**Craig:** Yeah. One thing that I sometimes think about is that I am in the meeting for myself and the screenplay. I’m also in the meeting for the next screenwriter that walks in and the next one. And every screenwriter this person hires or talks to. That there is a way to get what you want, defend your work, fight for what’s right, and not be an ass.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** And I like this, the “don’t reinforce this stereotype with anger and impatience.” I think that’s great advice for us a collective.

Next, the only constant in the world is change. Be open to it and accept it with a smile. Look at each change to your requirements, platform, or tool as a new challenge, not as some serious inconvenience to be fought.

And we are dealing with change in our business all the time, it seems.

**John:** And I think change on a given project will happen a lot. You’ll have suddenly an actor will be replaced. And that role which was a female role is now a male role. Or we were supposed to be shooting this in Topeka, but now we’re in Atlanta. That happens all the time to real movies that are really going to happen. And you have to accept that and sort of roll with it. Because if you try to fight it and say like, no, that’s impossible, well you’re not going to actually be able to proceed with the project.

**Craig:** Correct. They will find another writer who will be correct in saying, no, that’s very possible. The other thing that we deal with is change on a macro level across genres. Genres change. The kinds of movies that we write change. Trends change. And people’s taste change. And you have to be aware of it. You have to see it and keep your eyes open. I know writers who wrote a kind of movie that was in style and they’re still writing that kind of movie and that’s not the style anymore.

**John:** It’s true.

**Craig:** And it’s not about chasing things as much as just keeping up with the times. I mean, nobody walks around saying “radical,” [laughs], you know, so why should we write as if it were 1992?

Next, the only true authority stems from knowledge, not from position. Knowledge engenders authority, and authority engenders respect — so if you want respect in an egoless environment, cultivate knowledge.

And this for me is really one for our employers and maybe less for us.

**John:** I would agree. This is the one I had the hardest time applying to screenwriting. You can say, in a general sense you can say a good idea is a good idea no matter where it comes from. That partly that idea. But really that’s not knowledge, though. That’s just an idea. So, I guess I would say that you could take this to mean recognize that — oh god, I can’t even phrase this better.

I’m stumped on this one.

**Craig:** Yeah, to me it doesn’t really apply to us because the truth is if we write a screenplay that is the expression of the knowledge available. And I do believe most of the time that the screenwriter is the person in the room with the best understanding of the story. And that should impart authority. It often doesn’t. And there are times when we are talking to people who by position but not knowledge have a very arrogant way of essentially saying, no, no, I’m thinking of one person in particular that I’ve done some things with the best, who has a brother. And, you know, he would say things like, “No, that’s not funny.”

Well, but you’re not funny. You just own a company. That doesn’t make you funny. It just makes you a guy that is in charge. Being in charge doesn’t mean that you know what you’re talking about.

**John:** Agreed. And I think that you’ve hit on what you can actually take from this lesson is that just because that person has the power or is the person who has the authority to sort of make decisions doesn’t mean they actually are correct.

The egoless aspect of this though is to understand that that person is not necessarily correct and yet at the same time always be thinking of how do you move forward and to make this project the best it can possibly be given that this person with authority is making incorrect decisions.

**Craig:** That’s right. Essentially once you become aware that somebody saying confidently and with corporate given authority promotes an opinion, once you’re aware that that doesn’t necessarily connect to it being correct, now it’s about conniving to get what you want.

**John:** Well, conniving and also conspiring in general. Usually the only way you’re going to be able to get past an impossible gatekeeper is to rally enough support from other folks who actually need to help make the project.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so if you have an impossible studio head then you need to enlist the reasonable studio head, or the producer, or director, or as many people as you can to get this thing to happen or find another way to make it happen, make them not realize that it happened.

**Craig:** Yeah. One thing that has occurred to me many times in my career is that if somebody is being a palpable jerk in a room, you’re not the only person who notices, nor are you the only person who is suffering. So, you have allies that are being created simply by the fact that this guy is a jerk. It may be your turn in the barrel, but jerks are jerks.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So, everybody else has gotten it at some point or another and perhaps you could make a friend.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** All right, let’s see, we’ve got three more.

Fight for what you believe, but gracefully accept defeat. Understand that sometimes your ideas will be overruled. Even if you do turn out to be right, don’t take revenge or say, “I told you so” — told ya — more than a few times at most, and don’t make your dearly departed idea a martyr or rallying cry.

What do you think about that?

**John:** Absolutely true. And so often, yes, I think it’s a screenwriter’s job to stick up for what he or she believes is the best possible solution, but you also have to recognize that there may be a range of solutions that are all quite good and that you will not always win on those. And so if the solution that is picked is not your preferred solution, if you can live with the other solution write the best version of that you can and don’t try to, you know, don’t try to tank it so that you can sort of say, look, I told you it wouldn’t work.

No, you need to make that work. You need to make that work and make it work really well. That is your responsibility. That is what you’re brought in to do is to write really good words.

**Craig:** You know, there are times when we know we’re right. And it is beyond frustrating. It is sickening to be in a situation where everyone is talking about how to build a building and you’re saying that there needs to be a poured concrete foundation with reinforced steel in it and everybody else is saying, “No, no, no, I think just…”

**John:** Some bricks.

**Craig:** “Just some bricks. Some bricks that are loosely mortared.” And you can feel your body starting to tense. And the frustration of people around you denying what is patently, obviously correct can make you insane.

The one thing that you can’t do in a sense is just put the bricks, and the mortar, and the foundation. You have to find a way by hook or by crook to make the foundation right or go. But what you can’t do is you can’t throw yourself into doing something — there’s no way to write something that you know is absolutely totally wrong.

I will say that there is — people will eventually, I think, they eventually come and they see when it’s that obvious. Other people will start saying it. And eventually you’ll get your proper foundation. The advice here that I love is to not take revenge or say, “I told you so,” and don’t make your dearly departed idea a martyr or rallying cry, because what is more satisfying, to throw a tantrum and then get your way, or to get your way without throwing a tantrum and then have the people that were the problem come to you quietly later and say you were right?

**John:** They will never come to you and say you were right. I’ve never in my life had somebody come back to me and say like, “Oh, you know what? You were totally right.”

**Craig:** I’ve had it.

**John:** You’ve had it?

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, it’s never like — they’re not crying about it or anything. I mean, look, we’ve all been there. Haven’t you ever gone to somebody and said, “You know what? You were right.”

**John:** Oh, I totally have. In terms of my screenwriting life and where things would go to the rail, rarely has that happened. To some degree on the second Charlie’s Angels. I think I’ve talk about this on the podcast before is at the very start of the process for making the second Charlie’s Angels I made a list of like, “Hey, let’s not do these things list,” which is basically like all the stupid things sequels do. And so it was like a 20 point list of like let’s not do these things. Let’s not have Cameron dancing in every scene. Let’s not sort of overdo stuff.

And it was a detailed list. I made everyone on the project sign it. [laughs] And it became the checklist of all the things we did.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** And the movie suffered for doing all those things. It was trying to deny fate. But I want to step back for a second because you started talking about like bricks and foundations and things and I wanted to differentiate between those fundamentally bad choices which you described as sort of this feeling in your gut like, oh, this is going to end poorly.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And there are much smaller things which happen all the time which is I think these things should be in this order rather than that order. And sometimes you’re right and sometimes you’re wrong, but I guess the question is sometimes you’re wrong and it doesn’t really matter that much. And so when it doesn’t matter that much you have to let it go.

**Craig:** Yes. I agree with you there. Some hills not worth dying on. No question. The one hill that is always worth dying on is the beating heart of what matters to you in the movie. Defending at its core what the movie is, what you want it to be, and defending what makes you passionate about writing the material. No question.

Look, the silliest thing a screenwriter can do, I think, is get into a fight before or during production over scene ordering, because once you get into the editing room there is no scene ordering anymore.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, there are things that you just don’t argue about. Certainly locations and things like that, if the director is absolutely in love with the location make it work. Make it work. Because that’s going to be the location. That’s reality now. You know?

**John:** And when you’re in post you will actually be able to see the scenes two different ways to two orders of things and see what makes more sense. You may still be overruled, but hopefully it won’t matter that much.

**Craig:** Right. And, frankly, the directors I’ve worked with, and maybe I’m just lucky in this regard, have always been — they’ve always been reasonable. I mean, they’ve made enough movies to know that they’re not always right, so they’ll say, “Look, this is my feeling. I believe in this way. I get that you think it’s that way. Let’s try this one for the first test screening. We’re going to have another test screening. We’ll try it your way.”

Well, everything will get its shot, so everybody relax. That’s like a good example of why fight. No need to fight. Let’s just see it play.

**John:** Agreed.

**Craig:** Next, don’t be “the guy in the room.” Don’t be the guy coding in the dark office emerging only to buy cola. The guy in the room is out of touch, out of sight, and out of control and has no place in an open, collaborative environment.

Well, I don’t know, there are some wonderful guys in the room in our business, aren’t there?

**John:** There really are. I think what’s useful for screenwriters, and we’ve talked about this before, is that so much of a screenwriter’s job is solitary and it is literally being like that one guy sitting at the desk, one woman sitting at a desk, writing a script and pouring everything you have into this one imaginary world that you’ve created on the page.

The challenge is you also have to be the person who can talk to other people and interact with them so that this thing you’ve created on paper can be an actual movie that is shot. And that’s a tough thing to learn is that balance between being sociable and being public and being agreeable and friends of folks, and being that recluse who is really good at getting things written.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that there are writers who can very successfully be the guys in the room, or the women in the room who never emerge. They are very solitary. They are not particularly social. They’re not really fit for, I don’t know, being on set and dealing with the hundreds of people moving in and out.

Those writers can write beautiful scripts and they may very well write beautiful movies. Their work will always be in danger because they aren’t equipped to care-take it through a very social process.

**John:** Agreed. Ultimately an incredibly collaborative process.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, it’s a challenge.

**Craig:** Finally, critique code instead of people — be kind to the coder, not to the code. As much as possible, make all of your comments positive and oriented to improving the code. Relate comments to local standards, program specs, I don’t know what that means. But the point here is, and we see this all the time in the wasteland of internet “film criticism” that things get personal instead of about the subject matter itself.

And I’ve seen it happen many, many times in meetings. I never do it, but I’ve watched producers and studio executives suddenly get very personal with each other when it has nothing to do with the work.

**John:** I agree. General advice, never slam the writer. If you’re reading someone else’s screenplay, whether that person is in front of you or a thousand miles away, don’t slam the writer. If there is something that’s not working in the script, talk about what’s not working in the script. But don’t throw it all at the writer’s feet there.

**Craig:** I agree. And you hear it sometimes from people. They’ll say things like, “Well, I just think that this person stinks.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know, somebody may stink until they write something great. There are people, I mean, Charlie Kaufman used to write episodes of Alf, I think. And, you know, I thought Alf stank. A lot of people liked Alf. I thought it stank. Charlie Kaufman was writing Alf.

Did Charlie Kaufman stink? No. No he didn’t. There are lots of examples of this. And every good screenwriter has written something that somebody thinks stinks. I can’t think of a writer that has written nothing that I think stinks.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know? I mean, at some point, because it’s me — you can’t make me happy all the time.

**John:** We’ve learn that through 125 episodes of the show.

**Craig:** [laughs] But you can make me happy a lot of the time.

**John:** Ooh, I try.

**Craig:** Yeah. And so anyway those were — I just thought it was fascinating how a completely different business shared so many of the same interesting problems that we have and some good tips here from Jerry Weinberg via Jeff Atwood via Kevin Bisch via us. Hat tip all of us.

**John:** Absolutely. Good advice is good advice.

And I think we’ll also have some good advice for the people involved in the lawsuit about The Expendables, which is our next topic.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, this happened just before Christmas. It was December 24 is when the story came out that Nu Image and Millennium, which I guess are sort of a joint venture, are suing the Writers Guild of America West and screenwriter David Callaham, arguing that the 2009 guild arbitration gave Callaham undeserved credit on The Expendables and its sequels.

And so in the links to the show notes you’ll see there’s the PDF of the lawsuit you can read, there is other supporting material about it. It was really fascinating and I think we should probably before we dig into it too deeply just give us the refresher course on what credit decisions mean so we know what happened back in 2009 and so why this is happening now and sort of what it means now.

**Craig:** Well, the way credits work very fundamentally is that the Writers Guild and the companies have all agreed via our collective bargaining agreement, the writers’ union collective bargaining agreement, that the companies will propose screenplay credit that conforms vaguely to the rules that the guild has put forward. They can’t put forward proposed credits that don’t fit, for instance.

And then if any of the participating writers in the project disagree, or if any of the participating writers had another job like producer or director, then the guild has an arbitration. The guild arbitration is unilateral. By agreement between the company and the union the guild appoints three people. They read the material. They render a decision. That decision is essentially final. The review process is also internal to the guild and typically doesn’t yield any changes.

And those become the final credits, period, the end, that’s it.

**John:** And when we’re talking about the credits on a feature film we are talking about Story by, Screenplay by, and if a writer is credited with both of those things those are often conflated down to Written by.

**Craig:** Right. And there’s also Screen Story by, which is the adaptation version of Story by. And a very, very rarely used credit known as Adaptation by. That is the unicorn of credits. You never see it.

**John:** So, the Writers Guild determines credits for feature films. And pretty much all the feature films you’re going to see in theaters are going to have a Writers Guild credit determination because those were released by the majors, and the majors have all agreed by contract in order to be able to hire Writers Guild writers they have to agree to Writers Guild credit determinations.

**Craig:** That is correct.

**John:** All Writers Guild members have agreed that this is how credits will be determined. We’ve talked about on the show before it’s not a perfect system by far. You’ve been involved personally, Craig, on talks of reforms or changes to it and maybe some of those will happen. But what’s so fascinating about this lawsuit is when you hear people with problems about their credits its usually the credit writer or the person who believes they deserve credit and didn’t get credit. They’re the ones who kicking up a lot of dirt and dust about the credit process. This is interesting because it’s a company doing it which was the first I remember this having happened.

**Craig:** I’d never heard of such a thing. And I have bad news for Millennium, [laughs], there have been a number of court cases where Writers Guild members or former Writers Guild members have sued the union because they felt that they were unfairly deprived of credit. And no one has ever one. No one has ever beaten city hall on this one because the rules are pretty clear.

And the rules are not that you get credit that you can agree with. The rules are this is the credit. And as long as we follow the rules that’s that and you are powerless to change it. And it can be extraordinarily frustrating and traumatic and emotionally distressing for writers and there have been really bad decisions. And you can imagine how that feels to be disappeared off of a movie that you’ve written half of. And it’s happened. Or more than half of.

And still no victories.

**John:** Still no victories.

So, let’s talk about this case at least as well as we understand it. So, this all stems from Stallone is trying to write this movie called The Expendables. He reads a script that Callaham has written called The Barrows or something and if I get any of this stuff wrong read the real court case, because I could be misrepresenting some of these details. Callaham has written this script called The Barrows. Stallone reads it. Ultimately Stallone decides that he’s going to be basing some of it on the script The Barrows. The script is purchased and at a certain time as it goes in for credit arbitrations, because Stallone is that production executive of features, he’s a director or producer on the project, it has to go to WG arbitration.

In that WG arbitration Callaham is rewarded sole story credit and shared screenplay credit.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** That should basically be it. That’s usually the last you ever hear about this, except there have been two sequels to that movie. And it’s because of those two sequels that this is continuing to come up. And because of some emails that surfaced from Callaham to it’s not clear whom in which Callaham basically says this movie is terrible and he’ll be surprised if he gets certain kinds of credit.

**Craig:** Screenplay credit. Yeah, so look, here’s what this is really about. We’ve talked about separated rights before and there are certain rights that go along with getting story credit. Screenplay credit gets you a bigger share of the portion of residuals, but story credit is what confers separating rights. And that includes certain things that go along with sequels to original screenplays.

For example, the contractual credit Based on characters created by. So, for instance, in The Hangover Part II and III in the credits it says Based on characters created by Lucas and Moore because they had sole story credit, importantly, on the first Hangover.

And there are also payments that go along with this sort of thing. And that’s, I think, there may be some payments per his contract if he gets story credit. I think that’s what they’re annoyed about. They may just be doing this because they’re frustrated with this guy and they hate having to put his name on there and Stallone wants sole credit on this and he can’t believe that he’s still putting the name of a guy on who didn’t even like the movie and had nothing to really do with it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But what’s interesting is that they’re suing over the screenplay, that’s what they’re complaining about, the screenplay credit.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And all this stuff is attached to story credit anyway, which I think would be contractually required for him because it’s an original screenplay and he was writer A essentially.

Look, this lawsuit is never going to work.

**John:** No, this lawsuit is declared nuts in a lot of different ways.

**Craig:** It’s nuts in a lot of ways.

**John:** Let’s talk about the decision process here because I think I question some of the decisions behind this lawsuit existing. First off, it’s one thing to sue a screenwriter because that screenwriter, he is not going to have your legal resources. At a certain point he’s going to say, “Whatever. I’ll do whatever. We’ll settle it. Fine. It’s gone.” An individual screenwriter is not going to have the legal fire power that Nu Image and Millennium will.

If you’re going to sue the Writers Guild of America, they’re going to fight back. It’s completely within their interest to defend their credit process. They will defend it to the death. So, now you’ve angered the Writers Guild. That’s not a good choice.

**Craig:** Well, you’re going to lose. You’re not just going to lose. You’re going to lose early. And that’s why when I looked at the details here all I could think was that this is a stunt, not a publicity stunt, but a stunt to make someone happy. I mean, someone is — and maybe it’s Stallone, I don’t know — is so infuriated by this credit that they think is unfair that they are being placated by a corporation. [laughs] They’re basically saying you sue these people or I’m not going to work on this movie or I’m not going to deal with it. Somehow someone has thrown a huge tantrum because I think any self-respecting corporate attorney has to be holding his nose while he’s filing this lawsuit. He knows this thing is a loser. I mean, never going to work. Never going to work.

**John:** So, it seems like they want to get Callaham’s name off of the sequels, for example, but as we discussed because it’s story credit and they’re not even arguing that Callaham shouldn’t have had story credit on the first movie, his name is going to part of those sequels regardless.

**Craig:** Seems to me that’s the way it is.

**John:** That feels like separated rights to me.

**Craig:** Yeah. Based on —

**John:** Based on characters created by.

**Craig:** Yeah. And given the details we have, and again, we’re not lawyers and we don’t know all the details, but just going by what we see here that does seem in fact to be the case. And more importantly it is completely relevant what this writer thinks.

I don’t care if this writer puts up posters or does a Shia LaBeouf skywriting exercise to explain to the world that he also thinks he doesn’t deserve that credit. It doesn’t matter. It’s not his credit to give or take away.

**John:** That’s the crucial thing that people are not acknowledging.

**Craig:** They don’t get it. Right. The credit is not something that the writer possesses. The credit is a form of compensation essentially that is proposed by the companies and then finalized by the union. That’s it. It belongs to the union, not to the writer.

**John:** So, in the lawsuit they are accusing Callaham of fraud. And wrongful and fraudulent conduct is actually the quote. And what they’re saying essentially that in his statements arguing for sole credit, or sole screenplay credit, which is what he apparently filed for, but I don’t know that we actually know that publicly.

**Craig:** I don’t know how we could.

**John:** Actually we couldn’t because that’s supposed to be a private matter.

**Craig:** Confidential.

**John:** But they’re saying that because in his statements seeking credit on the movie he believed he got sole screenplay credit and in these emails that have come out which are around the same time he feels like he shouldn’t have credit. And so they’re saying that it’s fraud.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, but I don’t even understand how they could see his statements. I mean, those statements that we write to the arbitration committee are highly protected by the Guild. They are considered confidential documents. Forget the public seeing them, the other writers involved in the arbitration aren’t allowed to see them.

That is an expression entirely between you, the arbiters, and the staff. And it’s also anonymous.

**John:** Yes. And let’s talk about what an arbitration statement actually consists of, because you and I have both written plenty of them and we’ve both read plenty of them as we’ve served as arbiters. And what you’re talking about is really ultimately not about how much — the amount of time you worked on something. You’re not talking about whether you like the project. You’re talking about do you believe that there is enough stuff in this thing that is your work, that shows that the final product reflects your work.

That’s ultimately what it’s about. It’s about the drafts. It’s not about what you think about it or how you feel about it. It’s about is there a percentage basis of what is reflected in the final script that is my work. And that’s ultimately all it is.

So, whether he loves the movie or hates the movie is ultimately irrelevant. And whether he emailed somebody saying that he hated it, partially maybe to protect his own reputation is irrelevant as well.

**Craig:** It’s all irrelevant. Frankly, even if he believed everything that he believed on one day and believed the opposite the next day because he’s schizophrenic or fickle, who knows. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. And I’m so puzzled by this. Why would, I mean, this is the easiest thing I suppose for the guild to argue — why is it that they think this writer was lying to the guild? Why don’t they think that maybe he was just lying to them when he sent them an email saying he didn’t think he deserved credit. Who cares what he thought on that day. It doesn’t matter. It’s not his decision to make.

I might as well write a letter to my doctor saying whether or not I feel I deserve to get tonsillitis.

**John:** Yeah. It ultimately does not affect —

**Craig:** It has nothing to do with that. I’m not in charge of that. Yeah.

**John:** [sighs]

**Craig:** Exactly, man!

**John:** Yeah. It’s a big sigh.

**Craig:** This is how I feel all the time. [laughs] You realize that? This is my life.

**John:** So, my frustration with the lawsuit, actually, there are some lessons to learn from this. I guess probably general good legal advice is don’t email people things that could come back to haunt you later on. In general I’m mindful of the things I will write in an email, that should anyone ask for those emails I don’t have to present those emails. I will have phone conversations with people about things rather than emailing people things. I will generally try to say nice things about people.

Those are good advice for any screenwriter in any situation. It might have made this situation a little bit better. But this is mostly on Millennium. I think it’s just a silly lawsuit that has the bad effect of casting doubt on credit and writers and sort of the merits of the system.

**Craig:** Kind of. I mean, it’s Millennium. And, listen, I’m sure there are good people that work over there, but these are the same guys that got in trouble for having an audition where writers had to actually write spec material in order to get employment which is a clear violation of the MBA. It’s not like we’re talking about Warner Bros. turning around and suing the guild over something like this.

You know, the big boys don’t mess around in this stuff. This is bush league. This lawsuit is bush league. I don’t believe it. I don’t even think they believe it.

**John:** Do you think the lawsuit is just going to go away.

**Craig:** I think what will happen is it’ll just get settled out and by settled out means they’ll lose and withdraw it. I just think they’re going to drop it.

**John:** Yeah. I’d be surprised if it goes to trial. They want a trial. They claim to want a trial.

**Craig:** Oh, it’ll never, I mean, I hope it does go to trial.

**John:** Be fascinating.

**Craig:** It would be great. It would be great to watch them get their butts kicked out. I don’t see a world in which —

**John:** It would be fascinating if it went to trial and because of the trial ended up delaying the release of Expendables 3.

**Craig:** Stranger things have happened.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, I can’t see a world where they win this. I just don’t know how they do.

**John:** I don’t see how they do it either.

Craig, we have not done One Cool Things for two weeks in a row, so I really hope we can get back into this with a roar.

**Craig:** Let’s do it. Let’s roar into it. Who do you want to go first?

**John:** I’ll go first. So, this Christmas Santa brought my daughter the Lego Mindstorms kit —

**Craig:** Ooh, yeah.

**John:** Which is really great. So, it’s a robotics kit that’s based on Lego. Mindstorms is actually pretty expensive and so you have to kind of really commit to like we’re going to build some robots here. But I do really love it, so that’s fantastic and there will be a link for that.

But we also got her this little thing at the school book fair which was called the Crazy Action Contraptions Lego kit, which is a little flip book which comes with just the Legos you need to build the projects in this kit.

And it’s actually terrific. And it’s smaller, and it’s cheaper, and it’s like ten bucks. And it was really impressive in the sense of like one of the projects is this little car that has like a windup rubber band thing. And it actually zooms really quick. And it was an impressive use of like gears. Because it’s so basic elementary gears and physics I think it’s much more exciting for a kid, especially a kid with an eight-year-old attention span.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Something that she can put together in 20 minutes rather than a three-hour project like most of the robots kits.

**Craig:** Man, I wish I were a kid.

**John:** So, two different Lego robots.

**Craig:** You know, I assume you played with Legos like I did when you were a kid?

**John:** Absolutely. But Legos when I — it was just basically you had the 2 by 4 blocks essentially what a Lego was.

**Craig:** You had 2 by 4s, you had 2 by 2s. They were all yellow. [laughs] It’s just the worst. I would make bricks, like larger bricks out of smaller bricks. I mean, I wasn’t particularly graphically inclined.

**John:** The only thing I will say I did learn from those very fundamental bricks was that I would build houses and you recognize you can’t just stack up the 2 by 4s and like make the walls out of that, because those walls will fall in.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** You have to actually brook lay the proper way for structural strength. So, I do credit that to Legos.

**Craig:** Yeah. My Lego houses were built with all of the care of, I don’t know, like a Turkish shopping mall. And the slightest tremor and thousands perish. Everything is cooler now. Everything is cooler now and that’s just a fact.

**John:** Yeah. They fundamentally understood something about axles and how — basically once they figured out how to cut holes through Lego pieces so you could put axles through them it changed everything. And that didn’t really exist in the original Lego kits I had.

In order to attach wheels in those original Lego kits there were special bricks that had like little holes where the wheels snapped in, but it wasn’t really effective. You couldn’t build anything special or meaningful out of these. These are incredibly impressive.

**Craig:** Do you know even though I’m not — I’m a dork, but I don’t do a lot of stereotypical dorky things. One dorky thing I do do occasionally is build some enormous Lego thing. And a few years ago I built the big huge Millennium Falcon Lego thing. It’s like 6,000 pieces or something like that.

**John:** Those are great. I’ve seen those.

**Craig:** It took weeks and I’m so proud of it. [laughs] Sometimes I just look at it. Yeah, I built it.

**John:** You built that yourself. Did you glue it together or is it just held together with friction?

**Craig:** No, no, it’s held together with Lego magic. But, I wish that there were something I could spray on it and maybe somebody could point us to something where I could fix it, because I can’t transport it anywhere and it’s actually quite heavy as you might imagine. So, but it would have taken a year to glue everything together. And, of course, sooner or later you’re going to make a mistake.

**John:** Doom.

**Craig:** At least twice I made not just a mistake but a deep mistake and I had to go back and undo a bunch of stuff, you know. Because sometimes it’s like, ooh, that was a black piece, not a dark gray piece. I’m screwed. You know? So there’s that stuff. So, if somebody knows of something you can sort of spray over a Lego project to fix it together, I’d love to hear about it.

**John:** Yeah. I feel like someone should develop some sort of heater thing that like heat it to just enough that the pieces fuse but don’t actually melt the whole thing down.

[sirens blare in background]

Hold for siren.

**Craig:** Why even bother at this point? Let’s just let them go. I miss that. You know, I mean, in Austria it’s just [makes European siren noise]. I wonder why we have [makes USA siren noise]. We have this kind of flowing up and down the scale thing and they have this [makes European siren noise]. What is that? Why?

**John:** I think it’s just a different historical basis.

**Craig:** One must be —

**John:** One could argue that, well, one must be stronger or more powerful for certain cities.

**Craig:** I think one must be more effective for the human attention. I’m kind of curious who’s doing it right.

**John:** Right.

**Craig:** Well, another thing that somebody can write about.

**John:** Well, in general I would say that perhaps the European siren played here would be especially effective because you would be like, “What is that?”

**Craig:** Yeah. Is it a European having a heart attack?

**John:** It could possibly be. I’ve also noticed, and you may have noticed this in Austria, I definitely notice in Paris whenever I go there is a color of green that exists for emergency vests and emergency vehicles that does not exist in America whatsoever.

**Craig:** I know what you mean.

**John:** And so the people who are sweeping the streets are wearing this sort of, it’s both bright and dark green that you can’t, I don’t know what it is, but it’s fascinating. Every place where we would use orange they use a green. And it’s arguably better. It’s just different and it’s really striking.

**Craig:** It’s Euro. That’s for sure.

**John:** It’s certainly Euro.

**Craig:** It’s very Euro.

My One Cool Thing, this is a first for me, because it seems so easy but it’s important to me, it’s a movie. We have all of our screeners from the Writers Guild and the Directors Guild and the Academy and blah, blah, blah.

**John:** And the Academy.

**Craig:** And so on and so forth. I don’t get those. You get those. I assume that those hand delivered by butlers.

**John:** Oh, no, it’s pigeons now. Specially trained pigeons.

**Craig:** Trained Oscar pigeons.

And so I’m watching these movies and enjoying them. And so far I’ve actually enjoyed, it’s weird, I haven’t seen a movie yet of my screeners that I don’t like.

**John:** Because of positive moviegoing, Craig.

**Craig:** Maybe that’s it. I’m just really trying to be a positive moviegoing guy. But I’ve actually — none of them have lost me. I will say, okay, so Wolf of Wall Street I really liked. American Hustle I really liked. I liked Walter Mitty a lot. I really appreciated Inside Llewyn Davis. I can’t say I love it, because I kind of don’t understand what happened, but I kind of do, but I kind of don’t. And it’s not quite the puzzle box that Barton Fink is for me that I truly love, because Barton Fink is about writing anyway. I don’t know.

Anyway, so I can’t say I didn’t like it, and I was a very positive moviegoer about it. But yesterday I saw, or a couple days ago I saw Her.

**John:** Yeah. I saw it last night.

**Craig:** I think this movie, honestly, aside from being my favorite movie of the year, that doesn’t even matter. Who cares? That’s a calendar demarcation. I think it’s a classic. I think this is an important movie. I think this movie is going to live on and it’s going to be talked about for a long time. I think it’s amazing.

I thought that Spike Jonze and his cast and his crew did a profoundly brilliant job with this movie. I loved it. And I want everyone to see it.

**John:** I strongly endorse your endorsement. I’m very careful to never say like best movies of the year or anything like that because, I don’t know, it just feels gross to do that.

**Craig:** Yeah, I agree. It’s stupid anyway. Who cares, the best movie?

**John:** Who cares?

**Craig:** Yeah, whatever.

**John:** But I think it’s superlative for the reasons you describe, in that it not only is the storytelling terrific, the production design is unbelievably good. Because it’s set in a near-future Los Angeles and just the details they chose are so incredibly smart.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** You look at it and it’s like, well, of course that’s what it’s going to look like in ten years or however much in the future it’s supposed to be. And to a degree that I feel like it probably will look like that just because it will look like that because everyone saw the movie Her, because it’s just so right.

**Craig:** It’s so right. And what I also loved, I mean, look, I could talk about this movie for an hour. One of the things that I thought was so brilliant just about the vision of the near future is how many things they were restrained on. People still open their mailboxes with metal keys because that’s how we’re going to open our mailboxes for a long time. So, they were so smart about that. They just didn’t get stupid with fake sci-fi stuff.

Everything just felt really natural and, frankly, inevitable like you’re saying. It never caught your eye. It never seemed outrageous. But every choice, just when I started to ask myself a question like, well, if he has this operating system and it’s not like a beta or anything, it’s available to everybody, so it’s not like Google Glass. And he’s falling in love with his operating system, surely other people are falling in love with their operating systems. So, why aren’t we hearing about them?

And just as you start to feel that it just comes up and then people are. That’s, in fact, exactly what’s happening. And then when he tells somebody, “Oh, you should bring your girlfriend.”

“Okay, I will. She’s an OS.”

“Oh cool, yeah, bring her anyway.”

No one seems to care. [laughs] Everyone is cool with it. It’s brilliant. Brilliant.

**John:** Yeah. What you describe is the awareness of what the audience is experimenting right at every moment. It’s such an incredibly important thing to do and it’s such an incredibly hard thing to do as a screenwriter is to recognize what is the next question that people are going to ask and how do I answer it for them in a way that is especially rewarding. How do I reward them for asking the questions?

**Craig:** It’s so true.

**John:** It’s so well done.

**Craig:** I mean, think about this. To do a movie like this, to be Spike Jonze, a guy I’ve never met, so this isn’t my friend. I don’t know him. All I can say is he must be an extraordinary person. He is an extraordinary person. He’s special and different. He’s special and different and he wrote and directed this movie. And yet while he is special, and different, and extraordinary he understands what not special, not extraordinary people will be feeling as they watch his special thing.

And he takes care of you in doing it and surprises you and delights you. And everything makes sense. It’s beautiful. Scarlett Johansson is just, I mean, what an incredible, incredible job she did.

**John:** She’s great.

**Craig:** Again, I don’t know her. I’ve never met her or worked with her. The day I meet her I’m just going to thank her for that. That was just amazing. The writing is outstanding. And it has to be, of course. A character not on screen. [laughs] How important does the writing become? I just loved it. I just think it’s wonderful and an important movie and a terrific movie. And so, of course, John, you know what I did.

**John:** What did you do?

**Craig:** I went and read a bad review of it.

**John:** Oh, good, just to take the edge off?

**Craig:** To gloat.

**John:** Oh, to gloat.

**Craig:** To gloat over how stupid the film “critic” at the Village Voice is. Enjoy your shame for the rest of your career, for blowing it that badly. That is the equivalent of running the wrong way around the bases, okay? That is like driving east on the westbound side of the highway, you dummy.

**John:** Craig, that is actually a very smart technique, because you can’t do that with anything you’ve been involved with because you have a personal stake in it. But when you know something is brilliant and you see that terrible review, you’re reminded like, “Ooh, you know what? People are idiots.”

**Craig:** I get more angry because when they do it to me I get sad and also they’re kind of, you know, there’s —

**John:** Yeah, we know, Craig.

**Craig:** I know. And there’s also, you know, inside of me there’s a person that hates me more than they ever could hate me. So, that guy is like, “See, I told you.”

But in this case, this is like — I feel like this movie is my friend, you know? And they’re hurting my friend. And how dare you, you dummy. Where’d you get your film criticism degree, stupid?

**John:** It’s terrible.

**Craig:** Ooh, and so anyway, beautiful movie. Boy, I hope it was the Village Voice. [laughs] I better go fact check that.

**John:** Whatever publication that was.

**Craig:** Yeah, I better go fact check that.

**John:** While you’re doing your fact checking I’ll go through our normal end of show boilerplate.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So, if you are listening to this device, what, I can’t even speak properly. If you are listening to this podcast —

**Craig:** You always say that. You always say, “I can’t ever speak properly.” You say that every podcast, so I feel like — just accept it. You can’t speak. Don’t even point it out. We know.

**John:** It’s true. Everyone knows I can’t speak properly.

**Craig:** We know. We know! We still love you.

**John:** In fact, in iTunes you can read reviews of this podcast and one of the few negative reviews will be “John August can’t speak clearly.” And it’s kind of true. I do the best I can.

**Craig:** Is that real? I mean, somebody took the time to complain about you?

**John:** Craig, it was my mom.

**Craig:** Oh, well, listen, she’s — all the money she spent on speech therapy and you still can’t get it right.

**John:** I can’t do it right.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** So, if you are somebody other than my mom who would like to read us a review on iTunes, [laughs], go ahead. And we would love that because it helps other people find the show.

If you are using an iPhone or Android device you can also get to our podcast through the Scriptnotes app which is available on the App Store for iPhone and for the Google Play Store. And probably also the Amazon Store, but I don’t really know how Android devices work. But you could also find us there. And that’s useful. That’s also where you can find all the back episodes of our show, so that’s a possibility for you, too.

If you have a question for me or for Craig that’s short, Twitter is your friend. So, you can write to me, @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. Longer questions can go to ask@johnaugust.com.

And johnaugust.com is also where you’ll find all of the back episodes. You’ll find links to things we talked about on this show and other shows. Just look for the episode name.

And, Craig, did you find Village Voice?

**Craig:** Oh my god, was I supposed to be doing that right now?

**John:** Well, that was the goal that you would actually be doing this while I was talking.

**Craig:** I was listening to you. I was just falling in love with your voice again. Hold on, we’re doing it live. I’m looking it up right now.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** Village Voice review. It’s hard because Her is a tough word to look up, so I’m going to go Spike Jonze.

**John:** Agreed.

**Craig:** Okay. Oh, god. Her review, Spike Jonze…Village Voice…I can’t find it now. [laughs]

**John:** Well, just go to Rotten Tomatoes.

**Craig:** Oh, yeah, of course. See, I forgot about that website. I love Rotten Tomatoes. They’re great.

**John:** They’re fantastic.

**Craig:** Oh, they’re just so great.

**John:** How they like your movies.

**Craig:** They love ’em! Okay, so here we go. Her. And then I can just go to Rotten. Oh, here are nine people who thought it was rotten. You’re all dummies. Yup, Stephanie Zacharek, perhaps pronounced Zacharek is a top critic according to Rotten Tomatoes. And she does write for the Village Voice. And unfortunately she, like James Verniere of the Boston Herald, and Mick LaSalle, the San Francisco Chronicle. And Cole Smithey of the hard to work for, very, very selective colesmithey.com are all big dummies.

Sorry. You’re just wrong. This was a terrific movie. Is an important, great movie. And you’re just all dummies. Yeah.

**John:** And on that note, I think we should wrap up our show.

**Craig:** All right. Sounds good. This is going to be a great year.

**John:** I think this is going to be a great year. By the way, I think it will be a great year. And I think it will be an incredibly, incredibly, incredibly busy year for reasons I’ll talk to you about off the show.

**Craig:** Ooh, terrific. Okay. Can’t wait.

**John:** All right. Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [BEYONCÉ by Beyoncé](https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/beyonce/id780330041) on iTunes
* [The Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/05/the-ten-commandments-of-egoless-programming.html)
* The Hollywood Reporter on [The Expendables lawsuit](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/expendables-writers-guild-tribunal-evolves-667599)
* Lego [Mindstorms](http://www.lego.com/en-us/mindstorms/?domainredir=mindstorms.lego.com) and [Crazy Action Contraptions](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1591747694/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* [European green](http://carsihaveseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/IMG_0175.jpg)
* [her](http://www.herthemovie.com/#/home) is in theaters now
* A bad her review in [The Village Voice](http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-12-18/film/her-movie-review/) and the [very few other bad reviews](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/her/reviews/?sort=rotten) on Rotten Tomatoes
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Matthew Chilelli

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

**John August:** And now here is the part of the show where we actually do the Q&A which will be cut into a separate little part of an episode. So, if you have a question for me, or for Craig, or any of our panelists you can line up at that microphone and we will happily answer your questions.

Now, standard things we talk about when we do Q&As is that ideally the question and the answer if it fit into a 60 second segment would be awesome. So, the shorter your question, the more time we’ll have to answer your question.

**Craig Mazin:** Yes. And as always make sure your question is a question.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Please don’t pitch anything during your question.

**John:** Yes. A statement that ends with a question mark or an up voice isn’t really a question.

**Craig:** No, it should technically be an interrogative.

**John:** Yeah. It should be. It shouldn’t be like a, “Blah, blah, blah, don’t you agree?” But I see someone standing there who I think is our first person asking a question. So, please come up and ask.

**Openings:** Hi. I want to say first off thanks for being awesome.

**John:** Oh, thank you for saying so.

**Openings:** And I had two questions. One I wanted to ask Craig at this point after 123 episodes are you regretting introducing yourself a different way every time?

**Craig:** Uh, yes. [laughs]

**Openings:** Cool.

I have found with the last couple scripts that I write I’m really happy with the product but I just find that that opening — that opening three pages, it just tends to be it’s not the sort of thing that jumps out and grabs people. Do you guys have anything that you do specifically where like this is the checklist that I need for the first three pages in order to just grab somebody by the lapels and just really knock their socks off?

**Craig:** Well, I think that knowing that you’re supposed to do that is probably the first thing, you know. I mean, the first ten pages, I would think of the first ten pages as the most important pages in the script. It’s like you’re making a seed and everything that grows out of the script comes out from that little seed. It’s all packed in there. Who the hero is. Potentially who the villain is. What their problem is. What the world is like. What their voice is like. And also you education of the audience so that they understand what the movie is going to be like is all in those ten pages.

I will spend a month sometimes on the first ten or 20 pages because everything is there. So, take your time and be cinematic. Frankly, watching movies will kind of give you some clues.

**John:** Well, I would say the first — I agree about the first ten pages. The first three pages, we may not really know your hero, but we’ll know what your movie feels like. We know like why we’re signing onto this movie and what the overall shape and feel of this kind of movie is. And that’s crucial. And so that’s why it’s so important that you’re really doing that detailed work there.

Now, I’ve been on a lot of movies where you end up cutting those first ten pages or first three pages. Like those first things you write may not be ultimately in the movie, but that’s what told you as a writer what your movie felt like, so they were critically crucial things to write. Go was an example of that. Big Fish was an example of that for me, those first ten pages, were almost literally like ripping the pages out of the typewriter and doing it over again. I just had to keep figuring out like how I was going to tell the story. But once you break those it’s crucial.

So, no, not a checklist, but just making sure that they feel like the best movie that they could be, like they could stand on their own if they had to.

**Craig:** Yeah. Don’t be afraid to take your time on those.

**Openings:** Great. Thank you.

**John:** Thanks so much.

**Craig:** Sure. Nice shirt!

**John:** Great shirt.

**Scriptnotes Shirt:** I know. I’m rocking the shirt.

**Craig:** Nice.

**Scriptnotes Shirt:** I’d like to hear from you guys and any of the panelists that would like to answer, what movie that you didn’t write do you wish you had written and why?

**John:** Oh, that’s a…

**Craig:** Tommy Wiseau’s The Room.

**John:** Oh, absolutely.

**Craig:** Just because honestly if you could write that on purpose, you’re on a level beyond anyone. I don’t know.

**John:** Of recent movies, Aline already said it, but I thought Frozen was terrific. And what I thought was so smart about Frozen was that it both honored and subverted the expectations of like what a Disney princess movie was supposed to be. It did all the Disney princess stuff really well, and then it sort of turned what the expectation of what that is.

We talked about the Bechdel test on the podcast. It almost passes the reverse Bechdel test in that there’s no two men who say lines to each other that aren’t about the woman, which is actually sort of fascinating. Except at the very end. But, now Richard Kelly who is going to tell us —

**Richard Kelly:** I’m going to sit on the floor for this one.

**Craig:** This isn’t getting weird at all.

**Richard:** I would say Inside Llewyn Davis is one of the — it’s hard to say what your favorite Coen Bros film is, it’s so difficult because they’re so great, but this screenplay structurally is so innovative and layered and it appears to be something that’s a very simple journey over the course of three days of a flailing folk singer. But, after having seen the film three times there are so many layers to this script and the sort of structural innovation of it becomes more apparent upon multiple viewings.

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** Did you like Frozen?

**Richard:** I did love Frozen. I did love Frozen. I thought Frozen was terrific. And I went back and I looked up the Hans Christian Andersen story.

**Aline:** Oh, and?

**Richard:** I really did!

**Aline:** And?

**Richard:** I haven’t read it yet, but I plan to.

**Craig:** So, Inside Llewyn Davis is your —

**Richard:** Is my pick. I mean, that film is extraordinary.

**Craig:** Even though Script Shadow didn’t like it?

**Richard:** You know, um…

**Craig:** You’re still okay with it?

**Richard:** I’m going to see it five more times just because they didn’t like it.

**Craig:** Okay, yeah. Because that’s going to —

**Aline:** Wow. I’m so sad that nobody on the podcast will see that Craig is kneeling.

**John:** Yeah. I hope so — document this please. Thank you.

**Craig:** What, did you not know that my knees worked? What do you think?

**Aline:** It just is a weird thing to do.

**Craig:** I don’t know what else to do. I’m doing it. It’s the David Kwong stance.

**John:** Aline has the microphone that’s going to be passed down, though. You don’t have to do this anymore, Craig. Aline has the microphone with the cord.

**Craig:** Oh she does?

**Aline:** The Kwong kneel! You’re doing the Kwong kneel!

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Oh, she has the microphone.

**John:** Aline Brosh McKenna, save us please. What would you have wished you would —

**Aline:** You know what? People ask that question. I don’t really even understand that question, because I feel like —

**John:** So, pass it to Franklin who I know understands the question.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly. Give it to somebody that understands the question.

**Franklin Leonard:** This is why I was kneeling. I actually, as someone who is not a writer, I feel sort of unqualified to answer that question.

But I can say that this year there was one film where I am profoundly and overwhelmingly jealous of everyone involved in any capacity and that’s 12 Years a Slave. That is a film that obviously as an African American it held a special place in my heart, but just as a film itself, the story it told, the choices it made, the simple fact of its existence, I am deeply, deeply and profoundly jealous of everyone who was involved in it.

**John:** Rawson Thurber?

**Craig:** Rawson?

**Rawson Thurber:** Oh, I guess Mud, Jeff Nichols. Mud.

**Aline:** Yeah, that’s good.

**Craig:** Nice.

**Rawson:** I thought it was fantastic. I hope it wins. That’s all I have to say.

**John:** Hey, how short that was. That was terrific. Lindsay Doran?

**Lindsay Doran:** Again, I’m not a writer, and I just saw the movie, so I know that it’s really influencing me, but American Hustle, where I was just dazzled by the writing all the way through. Nothing even happens in that movie for like an hour. It was just phenomenal relationships and phenomenal dialogue and just sort of full-on filmmaking and I’m just kind of — I’m just kind of reeling from it, still.

**John:** Kelly Marcel?

**Kelly Marcel:** I loved Toy Story 3. I thought that was beautiful. And I would have liked to have written Identity Thief.

**Craig:** Ha!

**John:** Oh, nice.

**Craig:** It’s not hard. [laughs]

**Kelly:** That’s why I would have liked to have written it.

**Craig:** It’s just like you could do it in like a week.

**John:** Next up please.

**TV Assistant:** Are you guys willing to answer a TV career question?

**John:** Sure.

**TV Assistant:** Okay, sweet. So, brief setup. I’ve sort of written it down so it will be shorter. I’ve been a writer’s assistant on a network television show for four years. This is the first legitimate show I’ve worked on, so I have no other professional writing contacts, no agent, no manager. Last March I wrote one freelance episode for the show and the experience for me and them seemed acceptable if not good.

But this will most likely be the show’s final season, so I will be out of a job in April. Several of the EPs have sold pilots that have already or will most likely receive pickups for next season. So, here’s the three-part question.

**Craig:** Oh good!

**John:** All right.

**TV Assistant:** I know. I know. Sorry.

**Craig:** Because I thought this was going so quickly.

**TV Assistant:** Yeah. Sorry.

At what point in them producing their pilot should I ask for a job on their show? When I’m asking them how should I handle doing that?

**Craig:** Right. Not like this. Go ahead. [laughs]

**TV Assistant:** This is why I’m asking.

And when or if they say no is it totally unacceptable to turn around and say I’ll still be your writer’s assistant. Is that job available?

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** Right. Okay.

**John:** So, I have more TV experience so I’m going to answer this question for you.

**Craig:** Please do.

**John:** I think it’s actually a really good question.

So, the short version of this question is at what point as a guy who has written on a show in a very low capacity are you allowed to say to someone who is leaving the show, “Hey, could I get a job on that show?” And that’s a very natural thing to do.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Like, hey, can I have a job? I would pick the people and your relationships with those people and prioritize them based on who is writing the show that you might actually be a good fit for, who you have the best relationship for. But you’re going to have to be upfront and honest about sort of like, “Hey, I really think this thing is great. I would love to work on this show if you can consider me for it.”

So, you have this sample of the produced episode you did. You should have two other amazing things that they can read that show that you’re a really good writer. Do you?

**TV Assistant:** Specs or pilots?

**John:** Great, so —

**TV Assistant:** No, I’m asking.

**John:** I would say originals. Because they’ve seen you write a show —

**Craig:** Originals.

**John:** Original things.

**Craig:** For sure.

**John:** Because they’ve seen you write the show that they were already on. So, they need to see you write something else that’s great, and brilliant, and shows a side that they didn’t know you could do.

So, you have that, you have those conversations, and one of those three things should work out. Because being a writer’s assistant for four years, you’re there to do what you’re doing. If you got an episode produced, you didn’t shit the bed on that. So, that’s good.

**Craig:** Look, I think you should honestly, it is a good question. I was just kidding with you. I think you should ask all of them frankly. I would cast the widest net possible. And at some point though you need to actually say, “I’m here to be a writer.” They’re not going to ever really take you seriously if they think they can just keep getting you to be an assistant. You’re just going to have to bite the bullet.

**TV Assistant:** So, should I not ask for the —

**Craig:** I think you should say, “I’m here to be a writer. You guys know that. I’ve been doing it for four years. I wrote an episode. This is what I’m here to do.”

Unless you truly want to be a professional writer’s assistant, and I don’t think you do, then I think it’s time for you to find out if you’re a writer or not.

**John:** Great. Thank you so much.

**Aline:** May I interject with something? May I add? One thing that I’ve been talking about recently is there’s kind of more than one component to being a professional writer. And one is —

**Craig:** What?! I’m not trying to electrocute myself.

**Aline:** [laughs] One is actual writing talent. That’s important. But there’s another thing that goes into it which is your EQ and how you understand relationships and how you relate to other people. How you feel about yourself. How confident you are. And those are really difficult things because you can’t learn them, you can’t take them in a class. You can’t do all that.

And you look at somebody like Rawson who out of the box got to direct — he’s like shocked — got to direct his first movie. You know, if you’re super charming, and confident, and outgoing, and people like you, and you can sort of demonstrate that you understand what room you’re in, and that you can be in that room and interact with people and do well at that — that’s just a huge important part of being…

— And I was saying to somebody last night, I had dinner with a screenwriter last night. I was saying, I know some strange people who are screenwriters, but I don’t really know people who are non-functional socially. You know, as I’ve talked about before you have to kind of be —

**Craig:** I do.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** No, you have to kind of be an entrepreneur. You have to be able to go in and represent yourself and sell some things and really forcefully articulate your opinion. And you can be an oddball for sure, but you still have to be able to go sit in a room and understand the feedback that you’re getting from people and present yourself. And it’s very important.

And it’s something that I would encourage you as you go forward to try and imbibe, because it’s something that you learn by doing.

**John:** Cool. I would agree with you. Absolutely. That social skill is crucial. Our next question is…?

**Dodgeballer:** Yes. This question is for Rawson. Talking about Dodgeball, that process of rewriting and going through the different drafts, how different was the final version compared to the first thing that you handed into the production company?

**Rawson:** God, I guess pretty different. I remember going back and reading the first draft, the draft that actually Ben and Stuart got behind and sort of strong-armed DreamWorks into optioning for crackers.

**Craig:** Crackers!

**Rawson:** And I remember reading it, I forget why I was reading it, I reread it and I was sort of shocked at how far I’d come from that draft to the shooting draft.

And I just remember having like this deep sense of gratitude towards Stuart Cornfeld and Ben Stiller for seeing it, seeing it from what in reading it in retrospect was not a very polished script. I still don’t know why they did what they did, but I owe them a great deal for it. I will say, however, that the shooting script to the final movie is very close. Very close.

So, that process of about 18 months, two years of rewriting, and rewriting, and rewriting was really valuable. And I think as a first timer had I not gone through that, had someone been dumb enough to just let me shoot the first thing I wrote, I wouldn’t be here. [laughs] Because it wouldn’t have been a very good movie.

But, thank you for your question.

**John:** Cool. Thank you very much.

**Josh, a big fan:** Hey guys, I’m Josh, a big fan. So, my question is there’s a lot of information about like how do you get an agent, including an episode of your podcast, which was great. My question is what do you do when you have one and what’s the etiquette?

Because I’ve spoken to a lot of established writers and I’m like, “What are the rules? What do I do now?” And they’re like, “I don’t really know. It’s weird for me, too.” And they’re pretty established.

So, could you guys talk about that and like how do you drive things forward. And how do you do it eloquently and not muddle the relationship and —

**Craig:** Good question. Good question!

**John:** Because we have all these people here maybe we should just ask like how often do each of you guys speak to your agent, or communicate with your agent. Aline, how often do you speak to your agent?

**Aline:** Well, it really depends. I mean, I had one agent for 17 years and we’ve talked probably every day. And then for the last three years I’ve had a team of three agents and, you know, we talk pretty frequently. It’s sort of about what you need and what your communication is. And also it’s interpersonal. It’s one of those things that I was saying about the EQ thing, like you sort of have to read the room and know if you’re the person who is calling too much. You know? And sort of be able to tell if you’re having that right kind of communication.

But it is really, the first agent I had scared the pants off of me. And I was — and there were no cell phones and no email and no, I mean, we had answering machines, but I was so desperate to get him on the phone. And then he would call me and I would have built up all these questions for, you know, a week and a half. And then he would finally call me and I would be like, “I wanted to ask you about, this, this, this…” and he’d hang up on me.

And I always felt like I never got a chance to ask the million things I wanted to say, but he didn’t have time for me because I wasn’t making him any money. [laughs] So, it was, you know, at that point when you’re not making people a lot of money, be really like, I mean, I would even write down on a piece of paper like ask them about this, and ask them about that, and can you send this, and do you know this person, and be really specific. Because later on when you have more of a business going people might be more willing to put their feet and have a chit chat.

But it was definitely very stressful in the beginning and it’s a really, really good question, because it is one of those things you just have to feel out.

**Rawson:** My agent I’ve had for, I guess, almost ten years now, maybe a little bit longer. I speak with him daily at this point. And sometimes many times a day. It just depends on what’s going on. And I think it just depends on the kind of person you are and the kind of person the agent is. And a lot of times the agent that you pick says a lot about you and what you want in your life.

I have friends who have an agent and they’re buddy-buddy. They go to birthday parties together. And they want a friend and a cheerleader.

**Craig:** Argh.

**Rawson:** Right?

**Craig:** Ugh.

**Rawson:** Well, exactly. And I think the world of my agent and I would consider him a friend, but I don’t go to his birthday party. He doesn’t come to mine. It’s a professional relationship. It’s friendly, and cordial, and we root for each other, and et cetera. But, I think it’s really about what you want from your agent.

And I know what I want is someone who is really good at their job and will be on the phone with me when I need to talk to them. But I don’t need another friend. I don’t think anybody does really. Everyone is alone.

**Craig:** Forever alone.

**Josh, a big fan:** Thank you.

**John:** Kelly Marcel, how often are you talking to your agent? Now, how often are you talking to your agent?

**Kelly:** I speak to — I have a team of agents, and I speak to them probably every day at the moment.

My advice to you is that your agent at your agency will have a list of open writing assignments. It’s an enormous, enormous document that goes around all the agencies and talks about assignments that are open, they’re looking for writers on. Ask them to send it to you. They shouldn’t have any problem. It’s a big document. Look through it.

See if there’s anything on there that interests you. Then chase it. And chase it hard.

**John:** Richard Kelly?

**Craig:** Richard Kelly?

**Richard:** I’ve been hanging out in a cave with Smaug writing for four years. My agent doesn’t even remember who I am. But I’m coming back.

I’m kidding. I talk to him pretty often. I’ve been with my agent for 15 years. 15 years.

**Craig:** That’s Richard Kelly.

**John:** So, I would say, you would think that as an aspiring writer versus as an established writer you would talk to them more, or less, or differently, and I’ve found that actually the frequency isn’t all that different, but we have a shorthand now because we talk to each other so often, that even if I only talk to my agent twice a week we can bang through stuff really quickly because we all know the same people. We know what’s going on.

I know why he’s not sending me on that thing. Or he could say, “It’s a fishing trip. It’s not a real job. They’re just trying to figure out what the movie is.” We can have that kind of shorthand which is really useful.

But in terms of like being your agent’s best friend and vice versa, I agree with Rawson is that you want somebody who you can talk to on the phone and you’re not ever scared to talk to on the phone, but it doesn’t have to be like he’s your best friend. It has to be someone who you feel can represent you out in the world and you don’t feel is toxic or poisonous or is going to misrepresent you out in the world.

But it’s the business version of you and that’s a very different kind of person.

**Craig:** All I can really add is that we don’t always get the agents that we want, especially when we’re starting. We don’t really have a choice of these.

**John:** And when you get a bad agent, Craig is the best at firing them.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m the guy if you need an agent to be fired.

**John:** I have to just say, Craig, we have mutual friends who will have a terrible agent. And Craig is the best at talking them through how to fire their agent.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m really good at it. I love it.

But, this is really what — to get to the heart of I think what you’re going for here, in order to communicate with your agent unfortunately you have to kind of imagine what their day is like. And I hate having to put myself in their shoes, because they’re supposed to be working for us, but at least in this stage in your career, do it. And really what they need are bullet points. They just need bullet points. And you have email now, which I didn’t really have when I started, you know. Just send them an email and bullet point I want this, this, this. What’s happening here? What’s happening here? What’s happening there?

And then they’ll get back to you. This whole phone tag thing, getting on the phone. They’re distracted on the phone. I had an agent that I fired, one of many, I could hear him typing when I was talking. I could hear the keyboard. He would make me insane. And I’d be like, “You’re typing right now. You’re not listening to me. You’re typing.” [makes keyboard clicking noise] “No I’m not.” He even took the time… — So, anyway. Nice little short bursts of emails. Make sure that you’re getting what you need out of it. Real simple.

But, you know, that probably will get you where you need to go.

**Franklin:** I would actually add one thing. I think people forget this all too often, which is assistants can be incredibly valuable. And you should treat them incredibly well. Both because they have more information oftentimes than their bosses do, but they will either be agents or producers, or executive, or writers, or directors as quickly as six months from when they’re working for their bosses.

**Craig:** Fact. Truth.

**Franklin:** So, treat them well. I mean, if they’re an idiot, ignore them. But they were hired by their boss for a reason. And as a representative of their boss you can oftentimes get just as much information or scripts or whatever you need from the assistant as you can from the agent. And the assistant can also chase up the information you need from the agent in a way that is not going to make you look like you’re annoying.

**Craig:** Great advice.

**Josh, a big fan:** Great. Thanks so much, guys.

**John:** Thank you so much. Great.

And I see you. Please, come on up. I see five people in line and you’re our last five questions, so you’re awesome people. And you have the mic. Come up.

**Adaptation’er:** Thank you. First off, pleasure to meet you all. Mr. Mazin, I have an agent that…

**Craig:** You need me to take care of?

**Adaptation’er:** You could work your magic. But, actually my question is on book adaptations. When it comes to authors, especially, or specifically ones that are known for their language, their pentameter, say like Elmore Leonard for 3:10 to Yuma, and The Devil Wears Prada by Weiner [sic.] and so on, that how much of it was a battle, if there ever was one, an uphill battle or so on to put your stamp onto the script, your own language, whilst also trying to go with the adaptation of the author? How much was it kind of a bargain between —

**Craig:** The negotiation between your voice and the voice of the novelist.

**Adaptation’er:** Yeah.

**John:** I could talk it from Big Fish or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or books I’ve adapted. You’re always mindful that that book exists for a reason and that person wrote that book. And that person wrote the book to write a book. And you are writing a screenplay to make a movie. And they are different things.

And so there are times where the very specific quality of their words or choices, their voice, will translate really, really well to a movie. And so you get the luxury of being able to use that. So, for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory I would highlight one little line from Roald Dahl’s book and use everything I possibly could from his book in there because that felt very much like what the movie was we wanted to make.

Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish, I loved it, but there was very, very little there that I could say, “Oh, that’s the movie version of this voice.” It just wasn’t really going to happen. So, I had to be truthful to what the movie wanted to be.

So, if Derek was here we could talk 3:10 to Yuma. But, in all those cases you’re looking at what is the movie version of this. And if there’s a way that you can use that author’s voice in a way that helps your movie, you do it. If there’s not, you can never feel bound to it because there’s no… — No one is going to benefit if you’re just trying to shove that onto the screen.

Aline, did you have any sense of voice?

**Aline:** You know, with Devil Wears Prada it was like, it was enormously well researched and so I used a lot of that material. And then I did the adaptation and then when it was done I went back and went to see if I had missed any stuff.

I also adapted a book called I Don’t Know How She Does It and I had a little bit of an issue with that book which was I was incredibly infatuated with her writing. I mean, I still am. I worship her. I think she’s such an amazing writer of prose. And so I labored really hard to try and figure out how to get that prose kind of into the script. And it ended up being somewhat in voice over, which in a funny way I don’t know was in the best service of what Allison had done.

I kind of felt at the end of the day that with that book I would have been happy just to watch Allison read the book to me. And that’s maybe not the best starting point to mine things from. Because I always kept going back to bits of language. So, it’s sort of about the relationship you have with the material. And I think there’s some instances where you’re going to want to be more faithful. But in order to make that leap to really a screenplay you kind of have to put that thing down.

I really do think you have to put that thing down.

**John:** I’d offer one last cautionary tale. I think you need to read the book with the mind of like if I didn’t have this voice would I still want to make this movie? Because there could be cases where, I think I Don’t Know How She Does It may be a good example of that. If you just look at the story of it, was there enough story to tell to make that movie independent of that great voice you had in that book? And that may be a useful thing to let you know is this a book I should try to adapt, that wants to be a movie.

Thank you so much.

**Craig:** Thank you. Hi.

**John:** Hello.

**Jeff Pulice:** Good evening and thank you for doing this. My questions are about the Three Page Challenge. It’s my big goal to get on there.

Is that going to be returning? How often do you guys reach out to somebody who has got a really good three pages? And since I’m just chomping at the bit to be mentioned on it, is it better for the three pages to have a thrill or a laugh?

**John:** You know, we have somebody here who could actually answer those questions.

**Craig:** Brett Goldfarb!

**John:** Stuart Friedel, come up here and take a microphone.

**Craig:** Come on, Stuart! I can’t believe we’re letting him talk on a podcast.

**John:** Stuart, take a real seat here.

**Craig:** Come on, up, up. Up in the big boy chair.

**Jeff Pulice:** Hi Brett. My name is Jeff.

**Craig:** It’s happening.

**John:** It’s happening.

**Stuart Friedel:** I wish I was groomed before this.

**John:** You have your hoodie on. Now, Stuart, how many entries do we get for the Three Page Challenge?

**Stuart:** Do we get?

**John:** Yeah.

**Stuart:** We still get like 15 to 50 a week I’d say.

**John:** That’s a lot of pages.

**Stuart:** Yeah.

**John:** And do you actually read every one of them?

**Stuart:** I try to. I try to. I have a theory that some disappear. Like sometimes I’ll accidentally highlight everything and say Mark As Read, because we get a lot of spam in the Ask account. And then I’ll be like, oh my god, there were 15 unread Three Page Challenges in there and I’ll have to remember which those were. But usually I think I catch them all. The odds are still against us —

**Craig:** It’s so weird to watch you lose a job live on air.

**John:** Wow! [laughs]

**Craig:** It’s so weird. What an amazing choice for your debut on the podcast to reveal the most ramshackle method possible for dealing with their dreams.

**John:** Sir, could I have your name?

**Jeff Pulice:** Jeff Pulice.

**John:** Jeff Pulice. Do you recognize his name?

**Stuart:** I do because of your last name. It sticks out.

**John:** So Police like a police officer?

**Stuart:** But —

**Jeff Pulice:** Police, yeah. [sic.]

**John:** So, you recognize that last name.

**Craig:** You haven’t lost his yet.

**Stuart:** I hope not. Or I’ve at least —

**Craig:** I hope not.

**Stuart:** I don’t think that I’ve lost many.

**John:** Or any.

**Stuart:** But it’s possible.

**Craig:** I can’t believe this. This is so embarrassing for you.

**John:** No. It’s not embarrassing for me at all. It’s just delightful.

Stuart, I deliberately — there’s like a little wall, I don’t see any Three Page Challenges. So, tell me about your thought process about, basically I ask you for like send me and Craig three Three Page Challenges, and you just do it. And you’re always really good. You make good choices.

**Stuart:** Well, I hope…

**John:** What is your process?

**Stuart:** Honestly, like —

**John:** I’m fascinated to learn what my employee does.

**Craig:** Yes, honestly. Don’t hold back. [laughs]

**Stuart:** I will not lie.

There’s probably less of a formal process than people think, which I get from the questions that I get. I’m not looking for Something. I’m just like, “Oh okay, that worked.” And then I use the star — the Gmail star colored system. There used to be different folders, and those got too cluttered, so now it’s like yellow star means it’s going to get on, blue star means like, well, if there’s —

**Craig:** What a scientist. Just remarkable.

**Stuart:** Yeah, well, you know.

Basically I’m looking for things that are not bad. Like they can’t be illegible. They can’t be not in English. There are certain pet peeves of badness that bother me that are just like, you know, we talk so often about not using the same first letter and length of name. And I’m not going to disqualify you for that, but if like after hearing that on every Three Page Challenge we’ve ever done you’re still doing that and it’s dated this week then it’s a little bit like, well, you didn’t listen to the lessons we’ve given you so there’s nothing to build off of.

**John:** Yeah. He’s winning us back a little bit.

**Craig:** That’s okay. Okay. Yeah?

**John:** So, sir, what I will say is that because you have bravely stood up there and asked about the question, we will do your Three Page Challenge. That’s a guarantee probably after the New Year.

**Craig:** Now, of course, be careful what you wish for, I mean…

**John:** So, what title should we also look for? Do you know which one?

**Jeff Pulice:** Oh yeah.

**John:** It’s a script called Oh Yeah?

**Jeff Pulice:** How the Genetti Brothers Invented Hollywood.

**John:** How the Genetti Brothers Invented Hollywood. You should listen for that on an upcoming episode of the Three Page Challenge.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Are you excited now? All right, we’re excited, too.

**Craig:** All right. Way to go!

**John:** Hello and welcome.

Stuart, thank you very much. Thank you.

**Craig:** Way to go Stuart.

**Kate Powers:** So, I have had a Three Page Challenge.

**John:** Congratulations.

**Kate Powers:** And it was awesome, so it was horrible, but I used everything. Craig helped me rewrite my opening and I got a freelance off of it.

**Craig:** Yay! Oh great.

**John:** Tell us what you’re Three Page Challenge was because we’ll remember it by topic what it was.

**Craig:** You can tilt the mic down. There you go.

**Kate Powers:** For a shorter person?

**Craig:** Yeah. There you go.

**Kate Powers:** It was a junior producer on a daytime talk show and a bathroom that has a bloody footprint in it.

**John:** Oh, I remember that!

**Craig:** I remember that one. Yes. Yes.

**John:** That was early on in our Three Page Challenges.

**Craig:** That was very early on.

**Kate Powers:** Thank you very much. So, here’s my question and I’m very much hoping there will be some role play or improv on your part in the answer.

**John:** Guaranteed.

**Kate Powers:** So I’m a writer’s assistant and I’ve been really lucky. I’ve been in some really good ruins. And they’ve ruined me. I’m filthy. I’m honest. I say out loud what I’m thinking.

**Craig:** Oh, you mean they’ve made you awesome?

**Kate Powers:** Yeah, that!

And now I’m meeting with people because of the freelance thing and I’m discovering this phenomenon where I’ve worked on shows where like say a guy got gutted with a box knife. And I’ve worked on shows where somebody sweeps everything off the desk angrily but also because secretly he’s in love. And I think these are both equally valid dramatic moments and we talk, agents, managers about what I love, what I respond to.

The box cutter shows are dramatic. The sweeping off of the desk shows are soap operas. And I’m thinking there’s a gender thing going on that when there aren’t as many men on screen an industry shorthand is that’s soapy.

So, and it keeps happening is the other reason I bring it up. So, a great thing for me to know would be a cool, sophisticated, smart way to acknowledge that I’ve just had all the things I like written off as soapy because there are women in them and then keep the conversation going because I would probably just say some really smart ass thing that would burn it to the ground.

**John:** Great. So, your question is as you go into rooms for meetings on shows, to acknowledge that you’re doing both things. I thought you honestly did a nice job setting up that like you’ve done the box cutter show. That’s a good image for what that is. And for the soapy things with women.

But you want to be considered for the job that’s in front of you and you’re a great candidate for the job in front of you because of these things about the show that you’re actually meeting on. And that’s I think the thing to emphasize more than anything else is that, “I can do anything, but I want to do more than anything else is this show right in front of me. Is this show, this job, that you have right here. And let me talk to you about the things I saw in the pilot I read, or the things I think are exciting possibilities…” because they’re hiring you for one job not for everything else you’ve written in your life.

**Craig:** Yeah. I often imagine Hollywood as this multi-armed Shiva the Destroyer who is slapping you in the face with various hands, some of them are the racism hand, and the sexism hand, and the ageism hand, and the “I don’t like your face,” and all the other. And you’re constantly getting slapped.

And you can get so angry about which hand just slapped you that you then — but at some point you realize, “Oh, I’m just going to get slapped anyway. It doesn’t really matter why the hand is slapping me. None of that matters. I’m just in for a good slapping today.”

So, [laughs], with that in mind, I wouldn’t get hung up on why they’re doing it to you because that can send you down a rabbit hole of anger. I would however take John’s advice to say positive and talk about what you’re passion is for the show in front of you. And it’s okay to acknowledge that what they’ve read of you isn’t the show in front of you. Sometimes that’s all they need to hear is that you can see that. Because they get a lot of people who are like, “See, I’ve done it already,” and they’re like, “No, you haven’t. That’s not my show at all.” And everybody thinks their show is special, even when it’s just another show about people picking up blood stains off the floor. Okay?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, show your passion for their show and be positive and just don’t worry about all the slapping.

**John:** Yeah. The last thing I’ll say is that you seem cool. And that’s a quality that’s very important. It’s that EQ thing that Aline brought up. You’d be a cool person to have in a room. And so people are going to see you and go, “Oh, she’d be fun to have in the room. She’s be a great person to have in.” So, hopefully your writing is really good. And you seem like a cool person who is going to be good in an interview and you’ll be a good person to have in a room.

These are all good things in TV. I think you’re going to have good success.

**Kate Powers:** That’s awesome. Thank you.

**John:** Thank you.

**Craig:** You’re welcome.

**Female Action Writer:** Hi. My question is why are there not enough female writers who write action movies?

**John:** That’s a great question.

**Female Action Writer:** Because, you know, for like The Hurt Locker we had Kathryn Bigelow be the director.

**Craig:** Right. But she didn’t write it.

**Female Action Writer:** Yeah, she didn’t write.

**Craig:** No. I don’t know.

**John:** I don’t know. We have two women writers right now and we have Lindsay Doran. So, do any you have suggestions on why there are not more women writers being hired?

**Craig:** Oh, I get to kneel!

**Linday:** [laughs] Are you going to propose now?

I used to work for a woman who had been an agent. I was telling I think Aline this story before she was a production executive. And I was asking her why there weren’t more women in general who were writers. And she said, “Well, I can tell you one thing which is that when I told men that their writing wasn’t good enough they would go out and prove me wrong. They would say, ‘Oh, I’ll show you.’ And when I told women their writing wasn’t good enough they’d believe me.”

[laughs] So, I think there, you know, I think that was awhile ago, but I’m not sure how much it’s changed. I think, you know, if you look at the movies that women are making in the independent world they tend to be character based. They tend to be relationship based. They tend to be about people in homes talking to each other. And I love those movies.

When I was working at studios and looking for writers on action movies and making it very clear that I would love to have women being — not just women who had written action movies, but just women who had written exciting scenes. You know, that’s all they are is just exciting scenes. It was very, very difficult to find people who were literally interested in that.

Now, I know that sounds like everybody is sexist and of course there is some sexism. Of course I’ve heard people say, “Well I don’t want women in my room.” But in general people just want good writing. They’re so desperate for good writing. So, I just — I keep wondering, and I feel it’s a very unpopular point of view, whether it just has to do with interest.

You know, are they just as interested in explosion?

**Aline:** I want to ask a question. Are you an action writer?

**Female Action Writer:** I love action, so I write different genres. But —

**Aline:** But is that something you’re interested in writing?

**Female Action Writer:** Yes. I’ve always had this sort of connection to… — Beau Geste was my first action movie. So, movie. So, movies like Hurt Locker, movies like Lone Survivor that I want to see. They appeal to me.

**Aline:** Can I give you some advice?

**Female Action Writer:** Yes. Thanks.

**Aline:** Just do it. Who cares? Who cares? And I’ll tell you something right now. It would work for you because right now if I saw your name on a script and I was like, “Oh, who is that, that’s a female woman who wrote this kickass action script, that’s great. Oh, you have to see her. She’s adorable. She’s got this cute gray coat. She’s going to kick your ass.”

And it’s going to be like, oh, it’s not going to be like the 20 other dudes who look the same who are in cargo pants. It’s going to be like we have this girl. Her action kicks ass. People would freak out. They would be so excited. And if you’re putting up that barrier in your own mind, forget it. Put it down.

**Female Action Writer:** Thank you.

**John:** Thank you.

**Kelly:** Jane Goldman writes action.

**Craig:** Jane Goldman.

**John:** So, we’re listing women writers. So Jane Goldman. Mary Wibberley.

**Linday:** There’s a ton.

**Aline:** Berloff.

**John:** Yeah, Andrea Berloff writes all the —

**Aline:** [Laida].

**Craig:** Kelly Marcel wrote on Bronson which is pretty violent and manly.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s just another one of those hands slapping you around. Just ignore it.

**John:** Our final question of the evening. Hello.

**Real Voices:** My question is for Kelly. I saw Saving Mr. Banks on Tuesday. I’ve been also reading Valerie Lawson’s book. And I want to know, also they play the tapes over the credits, how you adapt that. They didn’t sound exactly like word for word like what you wrote. So, how do you balance adapting what she actually said to what you think she would have said and everything like that, like Tom Hanks’ Walt Disney, how you think he would have said all those things?

**Kelly:** You know, it’s a really tricky one because ultimately at the end of the day you do have to make a decision about who the characters are to you. So, the tapes, there’s 39 hours of those tapes and you hear them over the credits, so if Emma had decided to play her like that and we had written it verbatim you’d be digging your eardrum out with a fork after two hours of watching that film.

And so I think you just take what’s interesting, the most interesting thing about it, and make it as sayable as you possibly can in the most interesting way. You know, she would go on for hours and hours and I need that to become five lines in a scene. So, I’ll just choose the most interesting ones and then have her say them the way I want her to say them.

And with Walt, you know, there’s a lot of research that you can do with him and he’s a very well known character so he needed to be quite specific. But what there is out there is a lot of Walt being Walt. There’s not a lot of stuff that you can find where he’s really himself. So, we had a lot of leeway there.

We’re not making a documentary. We’re making entertainment, so I think you can take a lot of artistic license.

**Real Voices:** Perfect. Thank you. Awesome.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** Great questions. Great answers.

**John:** And that’s our show. So, thank you guys all so much.

**Craig:** Thank you guys.

**John:** This will be out next Tuesday. And you’re awesome. Have a great 2014.

**Craig:** Thank you guys.

**John:** Oh!

**Craig:** Oh, god!

**John:** Bonus eggnog for us. Thank you!

**Craig:** You spent charity money on this? It’s light eggnog. I mean, ugh.

**John:** Thank you guys all so much.

**Craig:** Thank you guys.

Links:

* [The Scriptnotes Holiday Spectacular](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-holiday-spectacular)
* [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) and [119](http://johnaugust.com/2013/positive-moviegoing)
* [Franklin Leonard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Leonard) on episode [60](http://johnaugust.com/2012/the-black-list-and-a-stack-of-scenes)
* [Kelly Marcel](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2813876/) on episode [115](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-back-to-austin-with-rian-johnson-and-kelly-marcel)
* [Lindsay Doran](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/movies/lindsay-doran-examines-what-makes-films-satisfying.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) on episode [68](http://johnaugust.com/2012/talking-austen-in-austin)
* [Rawson Marshall Thurber](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1098493/) on episodes [100](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode) and [101](http://johnaugust.com/2013/101-qa-from-the-live-show)
* [Richard Kelly](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0446819/) on episode [118](http://johnaugust.com/2013/time-travel-with-richard-kelly)
* The [2013 Black List](http://list.blcklst.com/story/7887) and [blcklst.com](http://blcklst.com/)
* [Saving Mr. Banks](http://movies.disney.com/saving-mr-banks) is in theaters now
* Thank you to the [Writers Guild Foundation](https://www.wgfoundation.org/) and the [LA Film School](http://www.lafilm.edu/) for hosting
* Support the Writers Guild Foundation and get something awesome from their [Holiday Sale of Extraordinary Experiences](https://www.wgfoundation.org/holiday-fundraiser/)
* [Intro/Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Matthew Chilelli

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-holiday-spectacular).

**Franklin Leonard:** Hello. My name is Franklin Leonard.

**Rawson Thurber:** Hi, my name is Rawson Thurber.

**Lindsay Doran:** My name is Lindsay Doran.

**Kelly Marcel:** Hey, I’m Kelly Marcel.

**Richard Kelly:** Hey, my name is Richard Kelly.

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** Hi. My name is Aline Brosh McKenna. And this is Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

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

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

**John:** And this is the Holiday Edition of Scriptnotes. And I am so happy to have six of our favorite guests here with us tonight to talk about things that are —

**Craig:** They are, in fact, our six favorite guests.

**John:** Ooh.

**Craig:** Not “of our.” These are our favorite guests.

**John:** Wow. Right now people are doing the calculations like, oh god, who got left off of this list.

**Craig:** Everybody that’s not here.

**John:** Wow. People are going to feel really bad about that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So we actually have, obviously you can tell, a lot of guests. We have three topics — that’s common for Scriptnotes. We have a microphone back there so we’re going to do a Q&A at the end of this. So, we have a lot to do tonight.

So I thought we wouldn’t dilly dally too much, Craig, unless you have some holiday topics you want to talk about.

**Craig:** Yeah. I wanted to talk about the eggnog situation.

**John:** Okay, let’s talk about some eggnog.

**Craig:** And how disgusting it is.

**John:** Yeah. I didn’t see you drinking any eggnog.

**Craig:** No. But I noticed people were nogging it up. Noggy mouths.

**John:** Okay, a show of hands. Who out there actually tasted the eggnog?

Oh my god, that was a lot. And so by applause who liked the eggnog?

Yeah. That’s only about half the audience who liked the eggnog. So, a lot of people tasted the eggnog and did not enjoy it.

**Craig:** Gross. It’s drinking mayonnaise. It’s disgusting.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s it. I’m done with dilly dallying. Let’s go.

**John:** Craig has done his contribution to the weekly podcast. So, Craig…

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pick on you.

**Craig:** No. That was accurate.

**John:** Yeah, I sort of nag on Craig and I shouldn’t. Actually that can be a resolution for the New Year is I won’t nag on you so much.

**Craig:** Don’t patronize me, August.

**John:** Because it is. Actually when I say I’m going to do nice things, it actually comes across as patronizing.

**Craig:** Yeah. Because it is.

**John:** That’s how it is.

So, Craig, this will be our 123rd episode of Scriptnotes once this goes live on Tuesday, which is a lot. So, thank you all for listening.

And I realize while we talked about a lot of topics on the show, one of the things we never actually spoke about is what happens when people say yes. What happens when people say like, “Oh yeah, I really like your script. I want to buy your script.” We haven’t really talked about that process.

**Craig:** Yeah. It seems like all you do is hear no, no, no, no, no, no, and then one day you hear yes and it’s not the fake yes, it’s the real yes. And go out to dinner and you tell all your friends and you get drunk. And then the next morning you wake up and, oh no, here comes trouble.

**John:** Yeah. There’s a lot of stuff that happens when someone says yes. It’s a luxury problem, but let’s talk about some luxury problems. And who would be better to talk about luxury problems than Franklin Leonard. Come on back up here.

**Craig:** Impresario of the Black List.

**Franklin:** Hello. Hopefully I can get this part right since I screwed up the introduction.

**John:** No, don’t worry about it. We’ll do a take two and it will all be fine.

**Franklin:** Excellent. [Crosstalk]

**John:** Franklin Leonard, creator of the Black List, a person who deals with a lot of writers who are suddenly hot.

**Craig:** Suddenly hearing yes.

**Franklin:** That’s the hope, yes.

**John:** Our other guests for this segment would be Rawson Marshall Thurber.

**Craig:** Yay!

**John:** Rawson Marshall Thurber who last time you were on the show you had this little indie film called We’re the Millers that ended up doing pretty well.

**Rawson:** Yeah. It did okay.

**John:** Yeah, you can set your wine anywhere. Don’t worry about that.

**Rawson:** Thank you. Sorry. Hi everybody.

**John:** Hi Rawson! So, Franklin let’s start with you because this year’s Black List just came out.

**Franklin:** It did. On Monday.

**John:** So, the Black List is an annual assessment of the scripts that development people liked the most. Is that —

**Franklin:** That is a perfectly accurate description. Yes.

**John:** And so talk to us about this year’s Black List. Were there any changes you noticed? What was the tenor of this year’s list?

**Franklin:** It was an odd list this year. I mean, I think fascinating subject matter. I’ll run through some numbers. There were two scripts about the making of Jaws. There were two scripts about Mr. Rogers. Two scripts written by identical twins, which I think is the first time that’s happened.

**Rawson:** That’s just cheating.

**Franklin:** I suppose it is. Right? It’s like two of the same brain generating one piece of material.

If there was a big trend I think it was bio pics. We saw a ton of adapted stories of a moment in a person’s life, with whom a lot of people are familiar.

**Craig:** We call that the Marcel.

**Franklin:** Ah, yes. Lots of Marcels. Are they as good as the original? Certainly not.

**Craig:** No. No. Maybe.

**Franklin:** I don’t know. I haven’t read them yet. There’s one about Stanley Kubrick faking the moon landing, which I’m particularly interested to read.

I think that was the big trend. But I think what’s really exciting as we’ve seen every year is that when you ask Hollywood development executives the scripts that they love, not the scripts that their boss loves, or the scripts that they think will make tons of money, it is a really eclectic list of really ambitious storytelling that very often succeeds in the execution of that ambition. And it’s not big four quadrant movies that don’t have a soul. It’s an attempt to do something that reminds us —

**Craig:** So there is a place for those.

**Franklin:** There is. No, there absolutely is. I’m a fan of those movies.

**Craig:** And everybody has a soul. But they still want to be entertained.

**John:** Now, how many of the scripts on the list this year are already set up someplace, like someone is trying to make this movie?

**Franklin:** A third of the scripts that were on the list this year already have a financier attached. About two-thirds have a producer attached. Leaving one-third having neither a producer or a financier.

**Craig:** Well, you know, when we think about the questions that we ask when we do a live show I’m always thinking about the folks that are here and coming up with questions that relate to where they are right now in time. And one thing I have to say, you know, I started out with the Black List where my position on it was “do not attack.”

**Franklin:** Which was still the greatest praise we’ve received so far.

**Craig:** But I really now am in favor of it. I am positively in favor of it.

**Franklin:** Wow.

**Craig:** It’s a great service that’s getting results and I like to think that there are people here, there’s somebody here, if not one, two, maybe even ten, who are going to write a script that will get on the Black List, will get them noticed, and then someone is going to say yes.

**Franklin:** Yes.

**Craig:** When you see this happening and I think you are in an interesting position to see it happening to people that may not know what the hell is going on.

**Franklin:** Yes.

**Craig:** What happens? Tell them what they’re in for.

**Franklin:** Yeah, I mean, look, I think it’s a case by case basis. But the way that the Black List website is set up, you know, someone downloads your script and reads it. And we sort of step aside at that point. We sort of joke about the website being eHarmony for people who make movies and people who write movies. And just like you won’t see that guy from the commercials at your wedding night being like, “Where’s my 10 percent?” you won’t see us after we make the connection.

So, a lot of times it can be an email out of the blue like, “Hi, I’m a producer at this company. I’m interested in talking more.” Or, “I’m an agent, I’d like to talk to you.”

And I think at that point, you know, get on the phone with them initially, and then I think trust-but-verify is probably a good rule of thumb. And then the other thing is we — our membership are all legitimate Hollywood people. Like if you’re getting an email from someone who says they read your script on the Black List, again, still trust-but-verify, but in all probability they are a legitimate person who can do something significant with your career, otherwise we wouldn’t have approved them for membership.

But, that’s actually a good time, especially if you develop relationships with other people in Hollywood, to then triangulate that information with them and say, “Hey, I just got a phone call from so-and-so. What do you know about this person? Would you like to read my script now that other people are interested?” I think taking advantage of that is always a good idea.

But I’m loathe to give blanket advice generally.

**Craig:** Yeah, but think specific now.

**Franklin:** But specifically in this case, I actually am loathe to, because I think it really does depend on each individual’s sort of circumstances and who it is that’s contacting them. But trust-but-verify is a good rule of thumb.

**John:** I want to just zoom in on that moment of someone says yes and they say we are going to make an offer on your script, because that’s a moment that sort of gets every writer’s heart pitter pattering. But what does an offer really mean and what is it that you would actually do when that situation happens?

So, Rawson, I remember you were working for me when Dodgeball sold. That was your first script sale —

**Craig:** You were like, “I’m out of here, August. Oh, up this.”

**Rawson:** “I never liked you!”

**Craig:** [laughs] I can’t wait for my turn.

**Rawson:** What did you say?

**Craig:** I said I can’t wait to also tell him I don’t like him at all.

**John:** Ah-ha!

**Rawson:** “I quit this podcast!”

**John:** Indeed. You need to direct like two big successful movies and then you’re totally free to do that, Craig.

**Craig:** Wow. Beat me down.

**Rawson:** Instead of write like half a dozen successful movies.

**John:** So, Rawson, what were those last — the last week, the last day, the last hours. Tell me what that feels like.

**Rawson:** I don’t know. I guess I’d always hoped it was going to be that. Like, you know, the balloons would fall from the ceiling and you’d get hit in the face with confetti. And then someone would hand you a big novelty check and you give everybody the middle finger and you’re gone.

But never, at least for me and for most people that I’ve talked to about this, it doesn’t really — it doesn’t usually happen that way.

**John:** So, Dodgeball, this was Ben Stiller’s company became attached to do it. And they made a deal at Fox because their deal was at Fox. There was like a competitive situation for that.

**Rawson:** Right, well it’s significantly worse than that. [laughs] Lots of stuff happened beforehand. Everybody sort of passed on it. And then we sent it to Ben’s company, Red Hour, and the receptionist there, Will, read it and liked it, who gave it to the junior executive, who read it and liked it, who gave it to Stuart Cornfeld, Ben Stiller’s producing partner, who read it and liked it, who gave it to Ben, who read it and liked it, who met me and liked me.

And then they — well Red Hour, his company, had just left 20th Century Fox and had just made a deal with DreamWorks. And DreamWorks said, “Look, we don’t really get it, but we just made this deal with you. And we want to start off on the right foot. So, here you go, here’s…”

I mean, I think it was whatever is like minimum and then a little less than minimum, [laughs], or as low as they could go.

**John:** So, not scale plus ten, but just scale.

**Rawson:** Yeah, scale. And then please wash our cars, you know, also. And I said, “Yeah, great. Whatever!” So, it was not — and then it was — so then it wasn’t even a sale, it was like a really low option. Like I don’t think you could buy a Kia for like the option price.

**Franklin:** I think the Kia Option is a car.

**Rawson:** Is that right? [laughs]

**Franklin:** I’m not sure, but it should be.

**Rawson:** At any rate. And the check, and then you get to the part where like you’ve got to actually do it.

**Craig:** Kia Option! [laughs] Sorry, he’s funny.

**John:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** And then that’s the weird part where you actually like go from prospect to employee and then you kind of have to — you got to step up and do the work. And I rewrote Dodgeball with Ben and Stuart for a year and a half. And we kept turning in drafts to DreamWorks. And Adam Goodman at the time was the executive and John Fox was the junior. And they were kind of saying like, “Wow, this is getting better.” And we’re like, yeah, it’s not like a homework assignment, like we’re trying to make a movie.

And then they said, yeah, we’re not going to make it. And then the very quick summation is we took it to Fox and we took it there because there was a fantastic executive named Debbie Liebling who was there. And she found — she had just come over from Comedy Central. She had found Matt and Trey. And she read the script and loved it and got it and sort of stood up in like the Darth Vader room at Fox and like the long black table. And at the time told Tom Rothman like, “This is the kind of dumb movie we need to make.” And so then they took it from DreamWorks.

**John:** So, let’s talk about this last week you set up another pitch which was a very different experience.

**Rawson:** Yeah. Completely different. Well, for me, a couple reasons. One is I was attached as the director, not the writer. Simon Rich was and is the writer, a very talented guy from New York, wrote for SNL for a few years, New Yorker, et cetera.

And so we went around town and pitched everywhere in town. He had this idea based on underlying material written by Steve Breen, a sort of comic — a collection of single panel comics. It didn’t really have a narrative to it. Simon came up with one and we went around town and pitched.

And the town was split in half with two different producers, which was really awkward for us, for everybody really. And then we pitched and people really liked it. And it was the first time that I had ever been involved in I guess what amounts to a bidding war. There was like, I think, five different studios wanting the same thing.

I’d always heard of this sort of thing, but I’d never actually been a part of it. And it was really cool. And also awful at the same time, because what I didn’t think about for whatever reason is that you can only say yes to one person. And at this point, you know, I know a lot of the people at the studios and they’re friends and we’ve done other things together and both producing entities are fantastic. And, yeah, it was great. It was bittersweet, I guess.

**John:** It’s like The Bachelor. You can only give the rose to one girl.

**Rawson:** We had the final rose ceremony. And it was —

**Craig:** It’s just like The Bachelor.

**John:** It’s just like The Bachelor.

**Rawson:** It is. It is.

**John:** Craig, have you had bidding war situations? Have you had like a thing where you went out on the town and had to meet with multiple people?

**Craig:** Yeah, early on in my career all I did was go and pitch. And that was all the movies that I was doing were based on pitches. And there was one that an executive that I’m very close with to this very day didn’t talk to me for three years because I didn’t pick him. And, you know, and when he was yelling at me I remember I said, “But you have passed on stuff I’ve offered to you before and I don’t yell at you.”

**Rawson:** That’s exactly right.

**Craig:** And they don’t care. They don’t care.

**Rawson:** I mean, that was part of the fun. The shoe was on the other foot this time, for once.

**Craig:** Here’s the thing and this is why it’s touch. We are actually just nicer people. I’m so sorry. We’re nicer people.

**Franklin:** By the way, I agree with you. I mean, it’s like you could have said —

**Craig:** Oh, don’t jump on our [crosstalk].

**Franklin:** You could have also said, “But they’re paying more money,” and I’ll bet he still would have yelled at you.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, probably. I mean, but it’s hard to make those choices. One thing that’s interesting about the first time you hear yes, and I get it from your story about the scale or the near scale, don’t — I don’t want anyone to think that there’s any such thing as breaking in. I know everybody thinks that there’s a rolling in. There is an endless dribbling in. [laughs]

The first movie that I pitched and sold was with a writing partner and our deal was for $100,000. So, I got $50,000, which means I got $45,000, but really means I got $42,500, I think. And then after taxes and it took like a year and a half. And they took eight months to pay me.

**Rawson:** Yeah. [laughs]

**Craig:** So by the end I think I got $20,000.

**Rawson:** Yeah. Gold Lobster. Let’s go. Awesome.

**Craig:** You know, and so I don’t want anyone to think that that first time is going to be some amazing thing. The angels don’t sing, usually.

**John:** The thing I’ve learned over the course of a lot of pitches being set up and stuff, and not really competitive situations usually, is that when you hear the words “business affairs,” that means like, oh, something is actually really happening. So, that’s just not like idle executives talking about stuff, like, “Oh, we’ll call business affairs.” It’s like, Ooh, they’re going to actually bring real people who make money deals into our situation.

**Craig:** Which is great, but then you find out that the business affairs people are awful.

**John:** They’re awful. [laughs]

**Craig:** All the passion, and the love, and the excitement about what you said and you did, that’s real for the people that really want to make a great movie. But then there is this other place that’s cold. And those people, their job is to pay you the least amount possible. And so somebody in a room — And it’s so schizophrenic, because you’ve seen it on your side.

**Franklin:** Oh, absolutely.

**Craig:** Somebody in a room will say to a writer, “You’re amazing. I’ve always wanted to work with you. I need to make this movie with you. We want this movie. Please, please, please. You’re amazing.” And then your agent will get a call from business affairs guys like, “We don’t think that they’re really worth that much. At all.”

**John:** Yeah. “We see this as a one-step deal for about half their quote.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Yeah. That’s literally what —

**Craig:** “Oh, did someone tell you that they liked them? We don’t.” Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. And so the challenge of a writer — if it’s your first day you’re going to end up kind of taking whatever you can take, which is sort of the nature of it. But the challenge of it is that you felt all that enthusiasm in that room. You felt like, oh, this is going to be a thing. I sold a movie. And then it ends up being three weeks of drudgery while that thing gets figured out. And that can be a very long time.

**Rawson:** Three weeks if you’re lucky. Sometimes it’s longer.

**Franklin:** Yeah. I was going to say. Three weeks, you’re very lucky.

**Rawson:** That’s fast.

**Craig:** It can be a year.

**Franklin:** But I think the other thing that’s important to remember, and I say this as someone who is on the other end of the table —

**John:** You were an executive at Overbrook before.

**Franklin:** Yeah, I mean, I was an executive at Overbrook, which is Will Smith’s production company. I was an executive at Universal. I worked for Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company. I worked for Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella.

And on the other side of that table I think it’s important for writers to remember that the moment when someone is interested in your material but you still own it is sort of the apex of your power.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Yeah.

**Franklin:** And once the studio owns it, you have virtually no power. And so essentially make sure that what you are getting for your work, whatever it is, is something that you are okay with seeding the power that you have over the work that you’ve toiled endlessly over to someone who then really won’t feel as though they owe you anything.

And that’s sort of the price that every writer, every person, whether you work as an accountant for a big corporation, or whether you work as a writer, has to determine for themselves. At what price your soul or in this case your writing?

**Craig:** And that is the moment when they will work the hardest to convince you that you have the least leverage.

**Franklin:** That’s absolutely right.

**Craig:** Because they’re smart. They are. Don’t underestimate these people. They’re not smart about story a lot of the times. But they’re smart about this stuff though.

**Franklin:** I would even argue that they’re not so much smart as that they have almost all of the power, because they have the purse strings.

**Craig:** And a total lack of scruples.

**Franklin:** Right. But like I would love to see, for example, an environment where if you had a spec script you could put it onto the market with a timeline and people would have to buy your script like eBay. Because there’s nothing that sort of throws me off more than this idea that the studio is blocking —

**Craig:** Buy it now.

**Franklin:** Exactly. Buy it now, at this price, and if the price goes up the price goes up. And you are as a writer able to see…

**Craig:** ScriptBay.

**Franklin:** …every single offer.

**Craig:** You should do that.

**John:** Well, no, what he’s really bringing up though is the idea of a deadline. And so we see the giant sales that happen, it’s usually because there’s been enough interest in the town that an artificial deadline has been set. Where the agents have called around and said, “We are taking offers until 5pm. And then we’re done.” And that’s crazy.

**Craig:** Is that what happened to you?

**Rawson:** Well it was almost the reverse or the inverse, I guess. So, the first studio N said here’s our offer and it expires at 6:30.

**Craig:** They love doing that.

**Rawson:** And Simon Rich and I share the same agent. And I got to — at the end of the day, we pitched Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Thursday night we went to CAA and we like sat in his office and watched as emails came in and he was on the phone. It was really kind of fascinating to watch. But I mean he’s done this before. So, he said, “Look, I can’t honor that. Don’t tell me that time because I can’t get to all the parties and get you an answer by that time, so that won’t work.”

He deflected it in such, I thought, a really elegant and sophisticated way. But it’s interesting when they put the other — and then they came back in after that. So —

**John:** Was it the first party who came in who ended up getting the script ultimately?

**Rawson:** No. No, no, it wasn’t. Yeah. That was tough.

**Craig:** Oh, good. I like it when that happens.

**John:** They have to squirm and sweat.

**Franklin:** But here’s the interesting question is that who cares who came in first at the end of the day? At the end of the day it’s like who are you willing to work with who is going to pay you the most money to do it? And I don’t — yes, I respect somebody who says I love this, here’s an offer. But if they’re going to explode the offer at a certain time, that’s a negotiating tactic. They’re trying to limit how much money you make.

**Rawson:** But I also made, oh sorry, I also made a mistake with that. There was another project that was like based on a graphic novel and I set it up and I had two different studios that wanted it. And I went with the one that was going to pay me more. They’re both great studios, great people, et cetera, and I went with the one that paid me more versus the one that said we really are going to make this thing.

**Craig:** Ah!

**Rawson:** And I regretted it. I regret it now. I completely made the wrong choice. And sometimes it’s hard to see that at the time where you feel like, oh, well these people say they want to make it, too.

**Craig:** It’s a mistake everybody makes.

**Rawson:** Yeah, it’s just, you never know I guess is all I can say on that.

**Franklin:** I think that’s true.

**Craig:** Nobody knows. So, that’s bleak.

**John:** A sobering thought of nobody knowing anything.

**Craig:** And we’re talking about success!

**John:** I want to thank our first panelists, Franklin Leonard. I’m sorry, you have a last thought?

**Franklin:** Oh, one thing.

**Craig:** Franklin has a little Christmas gift for everybody.

**Franklin:** I have a little Christmas gift for everybody.

**John:** A holiday present. I’m sorry.

**Franklin:** Craig mentioned that maybe one, or two, or ten people in the audience may have a script on the Black List and end up sort of oozing their way into Hollywood.

**Craig:** Dribbling.

**John:** Here’s a question for our audience right now.

**Craig:** Painful, burning dribble.

**John:** First off, is anyone in this audience on the Black List that was just published this last week. Do we have any people who got that award?

**Craig:** Oh, those people are way too busy to show up to this.

**John:** Yeah, they’re too busy. They’re fielding all the calls that Rawson’s agent was taking. Is anyone here currently on blcklst.com?

**Franklin:** Does anyone have a script on the Black List?

**John:** Oh yeah. Very nice. Very good. So, for people who don’t…

**Franklin:** For people who don’t, and everyone who does I’ll be standing outside afterwards with the coupon for a free month of hosting for a script on the Black List.

**Craig:** Woo!

**Franklin:** You get a script! You get a script! It’s my Oprah moment.

**John:** Franklin, you are our Oprah.

**Craig:** It’s like t-shirt gun kind of…

**Franklin:** I asked for a confetti cannon to shoot them out of and I got a response that I can let Craig clarify.

**Craig:** I talked about my confetti gun.

**John:** [laughs] And Craig made it pornographic is really the answer to that email chain. Franklin, Rawson, thank you so much.

**Craig:** It’s colorful.

**John:** Yay!

**Craig:** Who is next?

**John:** We’re going to talk a bit. So, Craig, I’m writing now. I’m actually writing a screenplay, which is such an unusual experience for me.

**Craig:** What’s that about?

**John:** It’s really fun to write a screenplay, but really hard because you have to have all these characters, and you have to like do stuff.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No, not at all? Oh, you write comedies, I forget. You basically make a little outline and then Zach Galifianakis says something funny.

**Craig:** That’s not entirely inaccurate.

**John:** All right. So, I’m writing this screenplay and it’s going good.

**Craig:** Oh, look. Look who is angry at you. My little pit bull.

**John:** Oh, Kelly Marcel is angry with me.

**Craig:** Well, Marcel will deal with you later.

**John:** She’ll have her moment.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But I’m going to be totally honest. I’m having some challenges where I know I want to be able to articulate what the two main characters sort of want at any moment. Both what they would publicly say they want and what they sort of ultimately kind of inherently want. And I’ve been wrestling with it. And there’s stuff in the second act that I’m like leery about getting into because I don’t kind of know the answers to these things. I don’t want to write stuff that I don’t have the answers for.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** But, we have two panelists here who will tell us the answer and they’re going to come up and it’s going to be awesome because they’re going to be helping a lot. Lindsay Doran, the amazing Lindsay Doran.

**Craig:** Lindsay Doran!

**John:** And our inaugural guest, our Joan Rivers —

**Craig:** The Joan Rivers of Scriptnotes. Aline Brosh McKenna. And I should say that for all of the stick I give our brothers and sisters in the studio suites that Lindsay really is —

**John:** Lindsay is kind of amazing.

**Aline:** Let me talk about Lindsay.

**Craig:** She’s pretty amazing. I mean, she is — she is the exception that proves the rule, frankly, that people like you are terrible, but you’re not.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Yeah, thank you.

**Aline:** I wanted to say two things before we started this topic. The first is this is a holiday party and I’m really glad you guys dressed up. And you can tell they’re dressed up because Craig is not wearing a hoodie.

**Craig:** No, my wife has it over there.

**Aline:** And John is wearing a hoodie.

**John:** I’m wearing a hoodie.

**Aline:** And that’s how you can tell that they’re all dressed up.

**Craig:** You really are the Joan Rivers of Scriptnotes.

**John:** We basically invite you on to insult us is basically…

**Aline:** Yes. The other thing I want to say to insult everyone is you’re very lucky to have Lindsay here, because she is the closest, one of the closest that Hollywood gets to having a guru.

**Craig:** She is.

**Aline:** And she is a guru.

**Craig:** She is.

**John:** Hooray.

**Aline:** So enjoy.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, guru, help me out. This is literally the problem I’m having right now. So, I have two characters who are sort of a key relationship. They’re not a love interest relationship but a key relationship. Each of them has different things they need to do. And in trying to articulate what it is, it’s like what would Sandra Bullock in Speed say her — what is she trying to do? If you’re carried along on a ride in a story, what does she say she’s trying to do? And how do I get that out? Does that make sense at all?

**Aline:** How does she articulate her wants.

**John:** How does she articulate her wants?

**Craig:** Isn’t she trying to just go faster?

**Lindsay:** “I don’t want to crash.”

**Craig:** Yeah, like, “I have to go faster than 55mph.”

**Lindsay:** Is that so hard?

**John:** Sandra Bullock was a terrible example.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, let me step back.

**Craig:** I’m feeling better about myself right now I have to say.

**John:** What does Demi Moore in Ghost want to do?

**Lindsay:** She wants to, wow, that’s hard, isn’t it?

**Aline:** Is she the main want though? Is Patrick Dempsey, oh Patrick Dempsey. Patrick Swayze.

**John:** Wouldn’t it be amazing if Patrick Dempsey was in that. Patrick Swayze has an easier —

**Craig:** Swayze wants to save her.

**Aline:** Yes, he wants to —

**Lindsay:** The good news is that it changes, right?

**John:** It does, yes.

**Lindsay:** At the beginning she wants this Whoopi Goldberg woman to go away and leave her alone to her grief. She wants her husband back. She can’t get that. She wants this woman to leave her alone. And then at a certain point she wants to believe. And that’s when we can break her heart and show that Whoopi Goldberg is just some fake con artist and then we have to win her back again. So, it’s a long bunch of stuff.

**John:** Does she want to believe? Does she ever consciously realize she wants to believe? Or is it an inner thing that sort of comes out? That’s a want/need question.

**Lindsay:** There’s a remarkable moment, something that we used in the trailer to great effect, where Whoopi Goldberg is trying to persuade her that she’s sitting there having a conversation with Sam and she gets up to leave. And Patrick Swayze says to her, “Tell her that I love her.” And he says it, “Tell her he loves you.” And she turns around and she says, “Sam would never say that.” And it’s so viscous and real when she says that. And in the trailer —

**Craig:** Because he didn’t in the beginning. He couldn’t say.

**Lindsay:** That was the whole thing. He would always say, “Ditto.” And it was in the trailer. It was like, oh god, this is a real movie about real people with real relationships. And then eventually, yeah, you do track points at which she really wants to believe. There’s the thing with the penny coming up into the air. And that’s the moment when she finally does believe.

But, yes, it is difficult. She’s not the protagonist. It’s really easy what Sam wants. But if it’s interesting to anybody, we had a really interesting thing with Ghost because in the pitch, which was very, very long, I had to as the executive in charge get that down to about a 30 second pitch for the head of production. And in trying to reduce it I realized we had a problem.

And I went back to the writer and said Sam wants to be alive, of course. He wants to tell his wife that he loves her, of course. But it’s not concrete. We need something that drives the story. And so it became he has to save her life.

**Craig:** The crime angle.

**Aline:** Right.

**Lindsay:** We have to do something with the guy sneaking into her apartment so it looks as though he has to save her life. So, that was the thing. He comes back from the dead to save his wife. And it’s in the trailer. [laughs] It was in the pitch. It’s barely in the movie. Barely. It was so scrunched in there. But it became, it was so concrete and important as opposed to something as misty as he wants to tell her that he loves her.

**Craig:** That was pretty misty.

**Lindsay:** And it made a good thriller premise as opposed to just a romantic —

**Aline:** It kind of hardened the wants.

**Lindsay:** Yes. It hardened the… — Ooh, that’s good. Harden the wants.

**John:** Oh my god. Aline Brosh McKenna. She nails phrases that become like iconic. Things about squirrels and robots. That’s why we have her on the show.

**Craig:** I mean she really is —

**Lindsay:** But I don’t know if any of that helps you.

**John:** It helps me tremendously in the sense of I always wrestle with the degree to which characters are aware of what they need, what they want and what they need, and the ability to have characters to articulate what it is they’re actually trying to do.

**Craig:** Well, I always feel like what they want and what they need should be in complete opposition in the beginning of any movie, of any story, because what they want is for the movie to not happen. And you’re going to force it on them. That’s why the movie is interesting. Something is forced on them.

And what they need is to go through this very painful thing. Nobody wants to get a splinter pulled out of their finger. Nobody. They want to just not be in pain. But what they need is for the splinter to be pulled out of their finger. So, I like to think of those things in opposition. I like to think of a movie as a progression where want and need slowly finally become the same thing. You know?

**John:** I like it. I like it.

**Lindsay:** That’s good.

**Craig:** Thanks. Yeah, I believe you.

**Lindsay:** I’m a guru.

**John:** Aline, talk to me about characters in films you’ve written. Devil Wears Prada, or as you have a protagonist, are they able to articulate what they’re going for at the start of the film? And is it true to what the actual story is or just what the character is feeling at that moment?

**Aline:** Well, I agree with Craig that the thing, the stated goal, is often not the actual goal. But one thing I’ve been thinking about lately that I think is helpful for this, and might be helpful for the people in this room, is when you first write a script you’re just trying to have it make some sense. You’re just trying to have the goals be really super clear so that, you know, there’s that — what was that song? Things That Make You Go Hmmm, or something.

You want your script to not be things that make you go, huh, and a lot of your first scripts are really that. Where you don’t really know what people want. That’s usually the issue. And then when you get some skill going you can sort of depict like what people want, but it’s a little flat. It’s a little bit direct, so people say, “I want to get the briefcase there by noon on Thursday.” And then you’re watching everyone do that. And it’s very flat. And one thing that I’ve sort of realized in my own writing is — I’m sorry, are we boring you, Craig?

**Craig:** No, no, no, just you.

**Aline:** One thing I’ve noticed is you want to have an evolution in what the want is and you want to have some sort of epiphany moment for the character but also for the audience. And I think a great example of this is in Frozen. In Frozen you kind of think you know what she wants. How many people have seen Frozen? A lot of people have seen Frozen.

**John:** Yeah, good.

**Aline:** I just loved it. And you think you know what she wants and I’m not going to spoil it for anyone, but you think you know what she wants and you see the guy going towards her.

**John:** Who?

**Aline:** The main character. The younger sister. And you see the guy coming towards her. And you’re sort of okay with that want. And you sort of have signed off on that want. And it would work perfectly well and it would track perfectly well and it’s in keeping with what her expressed goal was. And then the movie does this amazing thing where she has an epiphany, we have an epiphany, and it does something which I think is miraculous where it takes the theme and the character to another level that you hadn’t imagined. And I really think that’s what separates a good script from a great script.

And in that moment you have this incredible insight into her, but also this incredible insight into the world that she’s created thematically. And that’s the other level to get to. I think the first level to get to is just to make sure that the audience is not confused about what people want. And then the great thing you can get to is if there is an evolution, an epiphany for the character and for the audience. And if you can do that you’re really well ahead of it.

**Lindsay:** You have to think a lot about what does the audience want. That’s what I — it’s like what do you want the audience to want? Because in Frozen you want them to think they’re invested in that relationship, but you don’t want them so invested in that relationship when you turn the tables on them that they go, wait, what happened to that relationship? And I’ve certainly been in previews where you go, oops, they wanted — I bring up Pretty In Pink all the time. Oops, we wanted them to make the transition for her to be in love with Duckie and guess what, they never got there.

**Aline:** Right.

**Lindsay:** They wanted her to be in love with Andrew McCarthy and we had to change the ending. So, you have to be really, really clear. And a lot of decision making has to go into making sure that you’re tracking what they want and how you’re going to pull the rug out from under them and they’ll go with you.

**Aline:** And there needs to be an evolution in, as Craig said, the difference between the want and the need. There needs to be this evolution between what they think they want and the thing that they really need. And so that is often that little twist where the character makes a shift. It goes past what we think their actual goal is.

And that happens to Sandra Bullock in Speed. I mean, she thinks she wants a certain thing. She just wants to live. She just wants to make it through this day. And then she starts to really want to save this guy and want to save these people and it evolves. And your wants and needs should evolve. If they don’t, you’re going end up with something… — What happens I found once you clear the first barrier of trying to have clear goals is they become flat. And you’ll have these scripts which feel a little flat.

**Craig:** Yeah. You don’t want a movie where you’re just waiting for somebody to do the thing they said they were going to do on page five.

**Aline:** Exactly.

**Craig:** People don’t actually want to do what they’re supposed to do. Nobody wants to exercise. Nobody wants to eat better. Nobody wants to, you know, address the things that were uncomfortable or painful in their lives.

What we do want to do is take pills, and sleep, and do things that are generally papering over the problems that we have. We are really good at just taking the path of least resistance.

**John:** And so the challenge, the screenwriter needs to find ways that the characters are not going to be able to take those paths of least resistance, to continually escalate the stakes to burn those bridges behind them so they can’t go back to those safe [crosstalk].

**Craig:** That’s the fun of it. And Pixar does it so much better than everybody. It’s so simple to see what Marlin wants. Marlin wants to keep the one surviving member of his family alive. The one that’s the hardest to keep alive because of his bad fin. That’s what he wants. It makes total sense. To the point where he will refuse to let anything happen to that kid. But look where he is at the end. What he wants is to let him go and do these things, even at the risk of dying.

That’s, to me, that’s the fun of movies. That’s the fun of storytelling is watching somebody finally realize that what I want isn’t what I need.

**Aline:** And it’s fascinating to me that animated movies, lately, are the ones who really have dug into this storytelling thing in a way that’s really fascinating. I mean, they really kind of take it to the wire in terms of having these stories which are really interesting and complicated, where the characters change their wants.

In some ways I feel like they have a rigor. And it may be because they can do so many iterations.

**John:** That’s what I think it is. Because an animated film goes through scratch reel, so you’re seeing it being built up again and again. So, you get to watch the movie, it’s like, “Well that doesn’t work.” And so then you’re able to change a story and do it again and again.

Even Frozen changed tremendously over the course of their shooting. I remember the stories of new songs go in, new things come out. Suddenly the reindeer could talk, the reindeer can’t talk. You figure out what the movie really wants to be because you get to see the movie in front of you which is a luxury that we rarely have in live action.

Although you can reshoot also. You can —

**Craig:** Yeah, but much, much easier to do in animation. Plus, also, I mean, you have a lot of experience with animation. I mean, I would imagine one gift of animation in terms of making stories is when we make a live action movie the actor has an enormous amount of power on the day. Either I’m saying it or I’m not. You know?

And we, this is it, we’re here once, you know? And in animation we can just try. We can just try. Try it this way, try it that way.

**Lindsay:** Yeah, it’s true. And because I come from live action I’m always saying, “But why couldn’t somebody just write Toy Story and then make it? I don’t understand why it’s been four years getting to that screenplay. I don’t understand it.”

And the argument that came back to me originally from Chris Miller and Phil Lord was, yeah, but look at the number of great animated movies compared to the number of animated movies. And at first I bought that argument. But then I thought, wait a minute, when I’m working in animation, these are the goals: It has to be funny — laugh out loud funny; it has to make you cry; it has to be universal — it has to be so universal that kids all over the world will understand; it has to appeal to children and adults; and it has to have a theme that you want the whole world to understand.

Well, if that’s where you start, of course you’re going to make a better movie. Of course you’re going to have a better — because your goals are so high. They’re so high. On every single one I’ve worked on, and I’ve worked on about twenty now, that’s where you start. And you’re always articulate.

**Aline:** But I always think of that thing that Michael Arndt said in the New Yorker which is we work on our — he says, “We work on the Pixar movies for five years and they suck for four of them.”

**Lindsay:** Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. It’s true. But I keep thinking, why can’t —

**Aline:** There’s so many times in the live action movie —

**Craig:** Just get it right the first time.

**Aline:** There are so many times in a live action movie where you’re thinking, oh, if we only had this line covered this way. If we only could reinterpret this. If we could only get him coming from this side saying this. And you just don’t have it and it’s so hard to get. So, the fact that they have this ability to make those changes is really such an advantage. But I don’t know that that accounts totally for — I think what you said, which is the goals that they set out with are so concrete and so specific and so really what storytelling is.

**Lindsay:** Well, I know when I was at Austin this year I was on a panel about theme. And somebody said, “Does every movie you work on have a theme when you’re starting out?” And I went, “Every animated movie does.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Lindsay:** It’s not particularly true of every live action movie, but when you sit down that first day on an animated movie, theme is foremost in everybody’s mind. Who does that?

**Craig:** I do it.

**John:** Craig does it.

**Craig:** I do it and everybody makes fun of me.

**John:** [laughs] I never make fun of you, Craig.

**Craig:** Nah.

**John:** Nah. Never.

**Craig:** I know.

**Lindsay:** Does that help you, John?

**John:** That helps me a lot. I guess my last question for you and writers up here as well is to what degree before you started writing the script do you have answers to all those questions about what the character would say he or she wants at this moment? Because this is one of the first times I’m really challenging myself to do it before I write those scenes. And do you have an outline that would really articulate that? Or are you just going by gut feeling that like, “Yeah, she knows what she wants.”

**Aline:** For me an interesting thing was in writing Devil Wears Prada was what she wanted was just to survive that year so that she could do something else.

**John:** And does she articulate that?

**Aline:** And survive that year is not an incredibly propulsive narrative goal. And so it was very difficult to always get to her through the thing where she’s just trying to get through this, trying to get through that. But that is a movie where she takes the thing that is the most important thing and she throws it in the fountain. She literally takes the thing which is her stated goal and just kind of forgets about it and moves on from it.

And that was a good sort of object lesson for me in exactly that thing which is the thing she needed was to see that the world was different from the way she understood it. And that was different from what she wanted which was to have everyone tell her she was a genius.

And so what I think is really interesting about the theme is you can start out thinking something in particular, but I always find that as I write it I think, oh, I thought it was about this, but it’s actually about this. That always happens after the first draft that you really kind of find your theme. And I have found that countless times.

It’s very interesting — that is one of the many weird intangibles about writing is, and it’s not that the characters say it, or they teach you or whatever, but there’s sort of an emerging message that comes out of the script and it’s sort of the script knows that that’s what it wants and the characters start to tell you that.

And it’s almost impossible to know that when you go into it.

**John:** It’s like you know what happens and then finally you realize why it happens. It is just like I know this thing is this way and then ultimately like, oh, this is the reason why it’s happening this way. This is why this character is in this moment.

**Aline:** One thing I would say though which is maybe a helpful crafty thing is if you find yourself, I was just watching a movie where they had a character that was there just so that the lead character could say this is what I want and this is what the movie is about. If you find yourself doing that, try and cut that person out completely. Because it should be completely visible in the action.

And if you find yourself wanting a character who is going to show up and explain, you know, the best friend character, or the kindly train conductor, or the super helpful telemarketer, or somebody who is going to try and draw out those thematic goal things, something is wrong with your storytelling often. And you have to try and get those… — You know, you can get so much about what a character wants from action and that’s really what you want to do.

And I think when you find yourself having people say, “This is all I want is…” there might be something a little hanky in the way you’ve set it up.

**Craig:** I got to tell you I do think about this from the start. I organize my story around this very thing. I really do think about the story as a hero who is not always heroic wants simply to maintain their life of acceptable imperfection. And then the movie happens to them and they slowly start to become aware that there’s something wrong with their organizing philosophy of life, the way that they have — what they have decided their life is about, and that there may be another way to live.

And they get glimpses of it and they get hurt by sort of moving towards it. And eventually must act in accordance with faith in that thing.

**Aline:** But does that change when you’re writing it ever?

**Craig:** It can. But what that — but at least to start with and I know this: my story is connected to my character fundamentally. And if it changes I will change it so that both change together. But there is not character end of story. That story is for that character.

And, by the way, I haven’t always done this, but I’m doing it now. It’s something that I’ve come to and I believe in. So, I would say to you if you’re thinking about that, think about how the only difference between your character in the first scene where we meet her or him and the final scene is that they’ve changed their mind about this most fundamental philosophical question.

**Aline:** And here’s a question I ask maybe Lindsay at what point in the writing process did they write, “I was a better man as a woman than I ever was as a man.” You know? I don’t think they wrote that on day one.

**Lindsay:** Well, when I was working for Sydney Pollack, but not when he was making Tootsie, after that, but he said, you know, when he was asked to do it, because it was supposed to be Hal Ashby or something, and pretty close to production Hal Ashby dropped out and suddenly Sydney was dropped in. And he said that was thing about being a better man by being a woman, that theme was when he sort of decided to do the movie.

He said, “Once I knew that, I knew what to do with everything. I knew there had to be a baby over here so we have a baby over there.”

**Craig:** It tells you what the story is.

**Lindsay:** Yeah. It was like I knew exactly how to —

**Craig:** It tells you what the challenges are. It tells you how it should end.

**Lindsay:** How to organize it.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** But can I tell you a really interesting thing? Sometimes you go to make the movie and the director has a different idea of what the theme was.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**Aline:** And I was just talking to somebody who wrote a movie which is a great movie and is up for Oscar buzz and stuff and he was saying that his idea of what the movie was about was different from what the director’s movie was about. And he said to me, “I think my movie is still in there.” But it really is this thing where because that is the intangible, you can always say to someone, well, they need to get the briefcase to Moscow by noon, but if you say to them this movie to me is about someone who understands that love is more important than money, you maybe be giving it to a filmmaker who thinks something completely differently.

**Craig:** Yup.

**Aline:** And what’s really interesting to me is I have made movies where I thought, oh, they’re still going to see what I wanted to do. They’re still going to see what I wanted to do. I know it’s in there. And it wasn’t in there. And it can be the same similar scenes and similar characters and similar dialogue and the thing that made you want to write the movie and the thing you were trying to say can disappear down the bathtub drain. And that’s one of the very strange things about being a screenwriter.

**Lindsay:** One of the things I’ve learned as a script whisperer, because I do all this consulting on things, when I come in on high level, high priority development, is I have everybody in the room, the producer, the writer, the studio executive, the director, whoever is there take a piece of paper without showing it to anybody else, say what is the most important relationship in this movie.

**Craig:** Oof.

**Lindsay:** And frequently I get four different answers.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**Lindsay:** And that conversation is where you discover what everybody thinks the movie is about, what the last scene should be. You know, somebody said, your Devil Wears Prada, it’s about her and the boyfriend. You go, wow, that’s a different movie than if it’s her and Miranda, and that’s a different, you know what I mean? Or it’s Stanley Tucci. It’s like all of those are interesting movies, but everybody has to know who that last scene is about.

**Aline:** And I would actually say in some respects you know you’re in a good process when everyone is saying the same thing. If you actually looked at someone’s piece of paper and went like, “Ooh!”

**Lindsay:** And when that happens they don’t need me, because it means they are all on the same page. And it’s like only when —

**Craig:** What a bummer for you when they know and they’re like, “Get out!”

**Lindsay:** But usually the reason I’m there, the reason that everybody is having problems is that they haven’t quite all figured out that they’re making different movies. And then it’s about everybody figuring out what movie they want to make.

**John:** Well I know that we need you both very much. So, thank you very much for this discussion.

**Craig:** Thanks guys. Thank you.

**Aline:** Thank you very much.

**Craig:** Now it gets weird.

**John:** Now it gets weird.

**Craig:** Now it gets weird.

**John:** Because we know the history on these things.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah, here we go.

**John:** You’re going to set this up because I don’t even know what to say. You like it when I’m drunk and you saw me drunk.

**Craig:** I love it when you’re drunk. Austin John August is the best John August. We just had the best time with these two. I would love for them to get married.

**John:** Oh my god!

**Craig:** Because then Kelly Marcel would become Kelly Kelly, which is so exciting.

So, we have — I’d like to welcome up here for a discussion of good and bad habits, mostly probably bad, but maybe a few good. Richard Kelly of Donnie Darko fame and Kelly Marcel of Saving Mr. Banks.

And normally, I mean, this is just working out great because I’m sure you haven’t been busy or anything.

**Kelly:** No.

**Craig:** Kelly’s film opens wide tomorrow.

**John:** Tomorrow! Woo!

**Craig:** And it’s really good. Really good.

**John:** Yeah, so Kelly when you were on our last live show in Austin I had not seen your film yet, and so I got to see it right after Austin. It was fantastic.

**Kelly:** You were my date.

**John:** I was your date. What was so wild is you’ve been basically promoting this film that entire time since we last spoke.

**Kelly:** And the month prior to Austin as well. Three months.

**John:** So, that’s a thing we have not really talked about on the show is what the writer’s function is in promoting a film, an award-caliber film that you’ve written.

**Kelly:** I had no idea that you had to do this much stuff to open a movie. I don’t know if it’s the same for every writer. And I think it’s been like this — I think it’s been this crazy because it’s a film that’s got a lot of award buzz. But, we worked out, John Lee and I worked out the other night that we’d had five days off including weekends in three months.

So, I’m a little bit tired. This is the last night of anything I have to do.

**Craig:** Yay!

**John:** It’s Kelly’s last night everyone!

**Kelly:** I’m going to get so drunk…

**Craig:** Well, this means that we could probably get her to say anything tonight. I feel like this is the night.

**Kelly:** This is the night.

**Craig:** Where she calls Walt Disney a Nazi.

**John:** [laughs] Yes.

**Kelly:** [Gasps]

**Craig:** Tonight!

**Kelly:** Melissa! Beat him up.

**Craig:** Oh, no, she’s not going to help. No, no, she loves this chaos. She loves chaos. That’s my wife, Melissa, she’s over there. It’s my wife. I’m married!

**John:** She’s a real person.

**Craig:** Just wave so they know you’re real.

**Kelly:** She just said no. [laughs] No.

**Craig:** That’s it? We’re done?

**John:** She’s gotten embarrassed of this podcast.

**Craig:** We’re done? Yeah. All right. Well…

**John:** And Richard Kelly, we got to hang out some more in Austin, too, and I had known you before Austin but I didn’t kind of really know you until Austin.

**Craig:** And I still don’t know him really. Can you know Richard Kelly?

**Richard:** Yeah, it takes some time. Yeah. [laughs]

**John:** So, since we had a great conversation about Donnie Darko, but you like Kelly are sort of strongly identified with the films you’ve made. And so does it become exhausting at a certain point to be the ongoing representative of the Donnie Darko franchise, of this thing you made?

At what point are you allowed to sort of say like, “You know what? I made that movie, that’s awesome, and now I’m going to go be Richard Kelly over here by myself.”

**Richard:** Yeah, well I mean, listen, it’s a blessing to have a film that stays with people and it continues to haunt you and be tattooed somewhere on your body, or on other people’s bodies usually.

**Craig:** He’s so weird. So weird. I love it.

**Richard:** I’ll take it. I’ll take it. But, listen, it’s all about constantly just evolving and trying to reinvent yourself. And not write the same movie over and over again, or not direct the same movie over and over again. And I think that’s tricky in this business because they always want to, like I said, put you in a category or a box, so to speak.

And for me in sort of trying to evolve as a writer I’ve been trying to just venture out into different kinds of stories. And change things up. You know, it’s like when you work out at the gym you’re supposed to change your weight lifting habit every few weeks.

**Craig:** We do that.

**John:** Yeah, that’s us. That’s us totally.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** You can tell here that this…

**Richard:** But it’s constantly just like changing the way you’re exercising your muscles or your brain. And I don’t know, it’s just switching up the process I’ve found.

**John:** Well, and we’re approaching 2014, so are there any things you want to change up for 2014, or any things that you see in yourself that you want to do differently for 2014, especially in terms of you’re writing, your craft, your filmmaking. Is there anything?

**Richard:** Well, I’ve been writing for myself for probably three years. I’ve written probably three or four scripts over the past three to four years of all different kinds of genres. And I’ve been pushing into new territory. But I think for me it’s about getting back behind the camera, obviously, but in terms of writing, I think venturing into a place where I’m doing like two to three hours a day of really essentially work and that’s it.

I used to try to think I needed to write all day.

**Craig:** Not possible.

**Richard:** That I needed to. And it was just a mistake. I was writing too much. I was over-thinking things. I was creating too many characters that were extraneous. And it was actually an unhealthy process. So, I think I’ve learned now it’s like you just need to make sure when your brain is the most functional, what time of day is that, what environment do you need to be in. It’s a very almost — it’s like a dietary exercise thing in a lot of ways. Not to be too physiological.

**Craig:** No, no, totally applies to us as well.

**John:** Not at all.

Kelly, how about you? Your 2014. Do you have any things you are looking at doing now or in this new year that are different?

**Kelly:** Having a little sleep.

**John:** Sleep is so good.

**Craig:** Sleep.

**Kelly:** Really just want to do that mainly. No, I think I’m going to do some television next year.

**John:** That would be great.

**Kelly:** There was a TV… — When I sold Terra Nova, that brilliant show, [laughs] I also sold another show, I told you tonight’s the night I can just say anything.

**Craig:** Here we go.

**Kelly:** I sold another show called West Bridge to Showtime which went into development but never got made and now because of Banks it’s been picked up. And so we’re going to do it as like a closed end series. So, that will be exciting.

**John:** So, talk about your writing though during this time, because you’ve been so busy doing —

**Kelly:** There is no writing.

**John:** There’s no writing at all?

**Kelly:** There’s no writing.

**Craig:** Very disappointed to hear.

**John:** But I’ve not done as much writing during the whole Big Fish thing as I wanted to, so it’s been exciting to get back into it. But are you on the Richard Kelly plan of a couple hours a day, or what’s your thing?

**Kelly:** I’m trying to do what you told me to do, [laughs], in Austin which is just do three hours a day. And it doesn’t matter which three hours that is. Just do three hours. But, you know, really the way my life works at the moment is I wake up, the phone starts ringing, I do press, I do phone interviews, all that —

**Craig:** Don’t forget the hair and makeup people.

**Kelly:** The fucking hair and makeup people. Swear to god if someone comes near me with another makeup brush! Um, yeah.

**Craig:** We also have a lot.

**John:** Yeah, you can tell. You can tell.

**Kelly:** They call it “grooming,” like I’m a dog.

**Craig:** Yes!

**Kelly:** You need to be groomed.

So, phone interviews happen all day and then I don’t think there’s been a night this week that I haven’t done a Q — I was on this stage last night doing a Q&A. It’s every single night.

**Craig:** And that is, I mean, I have to just say, one of the worst things about Q&As, when you’re doing Q&As for a movie is that you will be asked the same question over and over and over and you start to lose your mind. It’s a weird form of mental torture to be asked the same question over and over and over.

**Kelly:** Yeah. I started to make things up.

**Craig:** Out of curiosity, what’s the one? What’s the one that is driving you the most crazy so that I can now ask it.

**Kelly:** Ha! Normally the Banks questions are kind of what they are, but obviously everybody wants to know about Fifty Shades of Grey. So, I’ve started to tell everyone I’m a virgin and that I don’t really know —

**Craig:** You’re not? I bought that.

**Kelly:** No, that’s true. Yeah. And that a really good friend of mine had told me that, you know, when you have sex like what you have to do is sit on a rabbit or a duck and then you rub a bald man’s head. And then you either get pregnant or flowers. And that doesn’t seem to going down too well with the studio funnily enough.

**Craig:** Walt Disney is not impressed.

**Kelly:** No. [laughs]

**John:** Craig, are you a two or three hour, you’re a two or three hour work person. And what are your two or three hours, because I’ve started to try to make it the morning so that I can get stuff done. The first thing I do when I get in the office, I don’t do anything until I’ve written stuff.

**Craig:** I’m not that way. But what I will do is my plan is as I’m going to bed I’ve actually found a pattern. I didn’t realize I had one, but I found one. As I’m going to bed I start thinking about the next day’s work. And then I fall asleep. And I don’t worry about writing anything down because we all know when your dreams are nonsense.

But then when I wake up and I take a shower, I take a very long shower and in the shower I start to think about the scene. Once I’m out of the shower I should — I usually have a sense of what it is I’m going to write. If I don’t, I know it ain’t happening that day. But if I do, then I know I have all day to pick the three hours. And it’s just waiting for the moment. And then I do it.

**John:** So, Melissa, how long are the showers?

**Craig:** [laughs] She’s not in there with me when this is happening.

**John:** What’s a long Craig Mazin shower?

**Melissa Mazin:** Oh, I don’t know.

**Craig:** That’s my wife. There you go. 15? No.

**John:** Only 15? No.

**Craig:** No, no.

**Melissa:** 20 minutes. I don’t know.

**Craig:** Do you live with me? [laughs] It’s never when she’s there by the way. Here’s the other thing: She wakes up at 6:30 in the morning. I’m going to bed sometimes at 6:30 in the morning. So, she wakes up, she’s gone. So, now I’m talking like 9:30 or 10 I go into the shower. Easily sometimes I’ll go for a half an hour. Easily.

**Kelly:** Why does she get up at 6:30 and you get up at 9:30?

**Richard:** Uh, because he’s a writer.

**Kelly:** This is bullshit.

**Craig:** I got to go. [laughs]

**John:** Because she’s the parent who gets the kids off to school I bet.

**Craig:** She’s the responsible one.

**Kelly:** So you don’t help taking the kids to school or anything like that?

**Craig:** This is neither the time nor place, [laughs], to discuss this matter. We’ll talk about it later.

**Kelly:** I’ve got your back, Melissa.

**Craig:** I regret everything. Everything! This is kind of where it was eventually going to go.

**John:** You still have like the benefits of a bachelor writer life.

**Craig:** I do. Actually she’s great about that. Actually, I will say that if you have somebody that you share your life with who understands what you do and gives you the flexibility and space to do, that’s wonderful.

Now, if six years go by and you haven’t sold anything, that person is going to get super grumpy…

Yeah, she’s like, “Yeah!” She’s like, “I am super grumpy.”

**John:** What is the difference between like an aspiring screenwriter and a freeloader? It’s a really fine line.

**Craig:** It’s so…it’s right there. But, you know, assuming that you are actually earning a living then it’s nice to know that you’re living with somebody who kind of gives you the space you need to do the crazy job that we do.

**John:** Yeah.

**Kelly:** Like sleeping in?

**Craig:** I am so uncomfortable.

**Richard:** Well, the thing is if you’re only really required to work three hours a day, sleeping in is not that big a deal.

**Kelly:** Right.

**Craig:** Thank you, Richard Kelly!

**Richard:** And you need the sleep to rest your brain so you can make those three hours count.

**Craig:** Great point, Richard Kelly!

**Kelly:** No, but my argument is if it’s only three hours a day then there’s all the other hours in the day to help out, right?

**Craig:** That makes no sense.

**Richard:** There’s things like Angry Birds.

**Kelly:** And that’s how you make films.

**John:** And the gym. Don’t forget to go to the gym. That’s another crucial thing here.

**Craig:** Right. Although I’m also forgetting to go to the gym.

**Richard:** It takes a good hour and a half to go [crosstalk].

**John:** Yeah.

**Kelly:** Look at those guns.

**Craig:** I actually think I could fill enormous wads of my day with nothing. I don’t even know what happens. I don’t know what happens. But I do say, look, if you are writing a screenplay I will say this: I’ve never missed a deadline in my career. Not once. I am really responsible. I don’t know how. I just know that by this day it’s happening. And I’ve always gotten there, so I am very responsible. I’m very routinized in certain ways. In other ways, maybe not so much. What the hell! [laughs]

I mean, ugh…

**John:** Well, we’ll be able to ask more questions about Craig and his life during the Q&A.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** But, Kelly, congratulations on your movie. Congratulations on all you’ve done with this part of it.

**Kelly:** Thank you.

**John:** Kelly Marcel, you don’t naively think that you’re done doing press?

**Craig:** Oh no.

**Kelly:** What?!

**John:** No, there will be more.

**Craig:** What?!

**John:** But for now you’re movie is coming out and congratulations, that’s awesome. Richard Kelly, thank you again for being here.

**Craig:** Richard Kelly. The great Richard Kelly.

**Richard:** Well, thanks for having me.

**John:** You guys can get up because we’re going to start our wrap here.

**Craig:** Get off. [laughs]

**John:** We have so many people to thank.

**Craig:** You especially. [laughs]

**Kelly:** Ha!

**John:** We need to thank the Writers Guild Foundation, the giant logo behind us. So, thank you very much for hosting us again. LA Film School for this venue, which was great, and so helpful —

**Craig:** Thank you LA Film School.

**John:** I need to thank Matthew Chilelli. Matthew, are you here? I never actually — he’s right there. He wrote a lot of the best outros you’ve heard. He also wrote the Christmas —

**Craig:** This guy is cool.

**John:** He’s pretty great. He also wrote the opening music that you heard tonight, sort of the holiday remix of the [hums Scriptnotes theme].

**Craig:** It’s amazing what you’ve done with such a mundane tune. Thank you so much.

**John:** Yes. It’s really remarkable what you’ve been able to do. So, thank you again for writing these for us. Thank you.

**Craig:** Thank you. Wait, what about, are you going to get to them?

**John:** I’ll get to them eventually. We’ll thank Stuart Friedel. Stuart Friedel —

**Craig:** Stuart! Stand up, Stuart!

**John:** Tonight the role of Stuart Friedel will be played by this —

**Craig:** Stuart is played by this actor, Brett Goldfarb.

**John:** [laughs] Yeah, he’s fantastic.

So, the Writers Guild Foundation who is this giant slide behind me, every year they have this holiday sale of Extraordinary Experiences, which you can find on their website, so wgfoundation.com.

**Craig:** This is the charitable. They are not part of the union. They are a 501c3 not-for-profit charitable organization. Great organization.

**John:** They do great work with veterans groups, with other aspiring writers, schools, all sorts of special programs. Once a year they do the sale of Extraordinary Experiences where you can have lunch with a certain given writer, or coffee, or someone will read your script.

So, if you go to the website you will see the Extraordinary Experiences that they have up for sale. This year some of our panelists will be also offering new special things after tonight, because we will strong arm them. So, I would encourage you to go there because it’s a great organization and it’s a great way for them to raise some money to pay for the eggnog you had here tonight.

**Craig:** Argh!

**John:** Ugh.

**Craig:** It coats your mouth.

**John:** Yeah. It’s good if you have like hot spicy food though. Insulation.

**Craig:** No, because you’re putting heat next to milk. It’s disgusting.

**John:** Well, at least we’ve bookended the show with the talk of eggnog.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, Craig, thank you, and have a very happy holidays.

**Craig:** I thought you actually meant that.

**John:** See! I can feign sincerity when I need to.

**Craig:** Merry Christmas to you, John.

**John:** Aw, thank you, Craig.

**Craig:** I always mean it.

**John:** And thank you all very much for being here.

**Craig:** Thank you guys.

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) and [119](http://johnaugust.com/2013/positive-moviegoing)
* [Franklin Leonard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Leonard) on episode [60](http://johnaugust.com/2012/the-black-list-and-a-stack-of-scenes)
* [Kelly Marcel](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2813876/) on episode [115](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-back-to-austin-with-rian-johnson-and-kelly-marcel)
* [Lindsay Doran](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/movies/lindsay-doran-examines-what-makes-films-satisfying.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) on episode [68](http://johnaugust.com/2012/talking-austen-in-austin)
* [Rawson Marshall Thurber](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1098493/) on episodes [100](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode) and [101](http://johnaugust.com/2013/101-qa-from-the-live-show)
* [Richard Kelly](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0446819/) on episode [118](http://johnaugust.com/2013/time-travel-with-richard-kelly)
* The [2013 Black List](http://list.blcklst.com/story/7887) and [blcklst.com](http://blcklst.com/)
* The New Yorker on [live action versus animation](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/17/111017fa_fact_friend?currentPage=all)
* [Saving Mr. Banks](http://movies.disney.com/saving-mr-banks) is in theaters now
* Thank you to the [Writers Guild Foundation](https://www.wgfoundation.org/) and the [LA Film School](http://www.lafilm.edu/) for hosting
* Support the Writers Guild Foundation and get something awesome from their [Holiday Sale of Extraordinary Experiences](https://www.wgfoundation.org/holiday-fundraiser/)
* [Intro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Matthew Chilelli
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Fred Tepper