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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/let-me-give-you-some-advice).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 112 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, this is our 112th episode. It’s also our “Let me give you some advice” episode, because we have a lot of backed up questions to answer. But also for whatever reason this week a lot of people took it upon themselves to give other people advice. And so I thought we would weigh in on some of that advice that was given this week.

**Craig:** We live in an advice culture.

**John:** We certainly do. Unsolicited advice comes quite frequently. So, our listeners have solicited advice, so we’re happy to provide them, but also want to provide some feedback on some other advice that was offered this week.

And we should start with the big one which is this video that sort of went viral this week called “Dear J.J. Abrams” with these people in Portland made up this really nicely animated video suggesting some things that J.J. Abrams should keep in mind regarding Star Wars.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** So, I watched this and I thought the advice seemed well intentioned and actually relatively good advice. I’m just not sure it was quite targeted at the right person, because while J.J. Abrams is directing this movie, it’s Michael Arndt who is writing the movie. And there are many people involved with it.

So, Craig, what did you think of — well, let’s talk about what the four points of advice were. That might be a good place to start.

**Craig:** I mean, sure. So, he was advising things — Let me just start editorializing immediately. He was advising things that people have been talking about for over a decade now since the prequels came out.

There’s no “advice” here for people making a Star Wars movie. So, don’t do things like the Midi-chlorians, you know, keep the force mysterious.

Keep Star Wars a frontier-based movie in the western style in which it was initially done.

Don’t make it cutesy. So, you don’t do jokes where people are stepping on tails and all the rest of it, you know, Jabba’s tail.

And keep it sort of dirty and gritty so it’s not all shiny and new and antiseptic, but it’s sort of broken down like the Millennium Falcon was sort of a hunk of junk.

**John:** Yeah. And those are all good points. And they’ve all been sort of well made points before. I think it was a useful and visually nice encapsulation of those points, but it wasn’t especially new. It was an interesting way for this ad agency in Portland to get attention for themselves by creating a viral video, so good on them I guess.

**Craig:** I guess. [laughs]

**John:** But I would say it actually got me more excited about a Star Wars movie suddenly because it made me remember what it was about the first three movies that I loved so much and what I’m potentially very much looking forward to in a J.J. Abrams directed version of it.

**Craig:** Sure. I guess that’s true. But, look, first of all it’s mistitled. It should be “Advice for George Lucas for 10 years ago,” or 12 years ago, whenever those movies came out, because really what he’s complaining about are the prequels.

George Lucas, let me just say, George Lucas made Star Wars. He made it! This thing that these grown men are so obsessed about that they’re taking time to make these advice videos over and animating them and regurgitating points that other people have made a thousand times, and far better frankly. George Lucas made that thing on his own, with no help from anybody. In fact, everybody was against it and he made it. He invented the whole thing out of cloth.

So, if you want to go ahead and give George Lucas advice about how to not make the prequels that he’s already made after that that weren’t good — go ahead. Go talk into your time machine to George Lucas. J.J. Abrams and Michael Arndt and Simon Kinberg and Larry Kasdan who are writing these sequels now, you don’t think they know this? You don’t think that they know these points that would fall frankly under Star War Criticism not-even-101, it’s like senior year of high school Star Wars criticism. I mean, come on.

Really, it’s a frontier? It’s a western? Eh, I don’t know. The whole thing just annoyed me because it was facile, it’s been done already a billion times. It’s easy. And it’s weirdly taking credit, pre-credit, for decisions other people, [laughs], greater minds than these guys are making. Can’t we just stop talking about Star Wars?

**John:** But my daughter can’t stop talking about Star Wars.

**Craig:** Yeah, well your daughter is seven!

**John:** She’s eight now.

**Craig:** Eight!

**John:** Well, what’s fascinating and sort of frustrating about Star Wars as a parent is she — I think she likes the original movies better than the prequels, but she watches all of them and she doesn’t actually have a — she hasn’t developed taste in a way yet.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** She doesn’t appreciate it the way that I appreciate that the original movies are better than the sequels.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And so in some ways me showing her this could be a useful way for me to talk about these are the reasons why and she might actually pay a little bit of attention to some of the things I find better about the original movies than the sequels.

**Craig:** No question. But, you know, I have to say that when we were kids and we saw Star Wars that there were plenty of people, who is that critic? John Simon, is that his name?

**John:** I have no idea.

**Craig:** Somebody Simon, the critic, hated Empire Strikes Back. Just hated it. You know, went on and on about how it was an inferior, I don’t know, Ersatz version of old serial movies that were so much better. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You know, and now we’re the old guys yelling at people to get off or lawns and I just feel like, look, maybe — I hated the prequels. Hated them. You know, these guys did their little two minute video. Anybody born in the late ’60s/early ’70s could do a 12-hour monologue about why the prequels were terrible and the original movies are great. And congratulations to us, but the truth is you’re right, our children enjoyed the prequels for what they were.

And, you know, maybe it was for them. And either way, who cares?! This is, I mean, honestly who cares? It just feels like these people just pick over this stuff and the only time I’m ever interested in Star Wars commentary is when it’s funny and it’s revisionist, you know. I mean, Kevin Smith famously had the whole that Luke Skywalker is a war criminal thing.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** And Eddie Izzard does this great thing about Darth Vader just like dealing with employees on the Death Star and the cafeteria, [laughs], you know, having to go to the Death Star cafeteria because there are so many people working there. And things like that are funny, and they’re fresh, and they’re interesting, and they’re respectful, frankly.

And I just don’t feel like that I — I just don’t like it when people invest their time and energy on hit pieces, because let me tell you, this thing is designed as advice to J.J., like he freaking needs this guy’s advice, like he’s not smart enough.

But beyond that, it’s really just a hit piece on the prequels. That’s all it is, just another hit piece tarted up as something else. And, to boot, John, it’s a list of things. Eh, every possible thing to get me angry got me angry.

**John:** Well, here’s another list of things, this one by Tony Gilroy, the screenwriter of Michael Clayton.

**Craig:** Ah, I like this list! [laughs]

**John:** All right, you probably agree with almost everything on this list.

**Craig:** Eight out of ten.

**John:** That’s pretty good for another screenwriter to come up with this. This is a list that Tony Gilroy provided based on an interview with the BBC and so we’ll provide a link to that. Here are the bullet points of his list of advice to screenwriters. Number one, go to the movies.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Yes. Rather than reading books, got to the movies. Make stuff up but keep it real.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Start small.

**Craig:** Yes!

**John:** Learn to live by your wits.

**Craig:** Yes!

**John:** Write for TV.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Ah! Here’s where we disagree.

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah.

**John:** This is specifically what Tony Gilroy said about writing for TV. “It’s getting harder and harder to make good movies. TV is where the ambiguity and shades of reality live, it’s where stories can be interesting. A lot of writers are very excited about TV right now and it’s a writer-controlled business. When writers are in control, good things happen. They are more rational, they are hardworking, they are more benevolent.” Surprisingly he did not use semi-colons there, but.

“Every time writers have been put in charge of entertainment, things have worked out, so with TV maybe we will see a writer-driven utopia.”

**Craig:** I don’t disagree with the positive aspects of what he’s saying. What I disagree with are the negative aspects. If you want to write movies, if you are supposed to be writing movies, you should be writing movies. Tony Gilroy continues to write movies as far as I know.

**John:** But if Tony Gilroy wanted to make an awesome series for HBO, it would be phenomenal.

**Craig:** Maybe. I mean, you know what, because I liked a bunch of his movies. Some of his movies I don’t like that much. Tony Gilroy is a brilliant guy, he’s an amazing writer, and a great filmmaker, but he’s not infallible. And television is a very different medium than film. And writers have had interesting times crossing back and forth. There are some that seem to do so with ease and others can’t. I guess the only reason I disagree with it is, look, there are still people making really interesting good movies out there.

**John:** Agreed.

**Craig:** It’s occurring. And they may not be so interesting to him. And his kind of movie has become very difficult to make, agreed. But, look, I just saw a very late in the process cut of Scott Frank’s next movie, A Walk Among the Tombstones, and it’s terrific and it’s very much the kind of movie that Tony Gilroy is saying nobody makes anymore. Well, they do.

**John:** They do.

**Craig:** Yeah, so it’s not that I, you know… — And look, also, there’s a ton of terrible television out there. [laughs] A ton. A ton! It’s just that the outliers in television are so great, you know. So, I couldn’t get on board with that totally.

**John:** All right.

Number six, learn to write anywhere, anytime.

**Craig:** Oh my god, yes.

**John:** Oh, wholeheartedly agree with this. And people who fetishize their writing process…

**Craig:** Please.

**John:** No, don’t.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Number seven, get a job.

**Craig:** Yes!

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** How many times have I said make Plan B Plan A, Plan A Plan B.

**John:** Mm-hmm. Get a life.

**Craig:** Yes!

**John:** Yeah. You have to do other interesting things, because otherwise you’re just going to write about your toes.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And the things that other people have already made into movies. You’re just going to be copying other movies unless you have something new to say.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Number nine is a point I suspect you disagree with. Don’t live in Los Angeles.

**Craig:** Well, duh. [laughs]

**John:** Duh. So, this has been classic advice that we’ve given this whole time through and I will trot out my standard thing I say at this point is that if you want to write country songs you should probably move to Nashville. And if you want to write Hollywood movies, you should probably move to Hollywood. It’s as basic as that.

**Craig:** Yeah. Tony lives in New York and he’s got that New York think. I don’t know if he grew up in New York or not. I did grow up in New York, so maybe that’s why I don’t have the New York thing. There’s nothing special about, I mean, yes, there’s something special about New York. I mean, I love New York, da, da, da. I do. I love it.

But, there’s a New York chauvinism that occurs that’s just stupid. And I love Los Angeles, frankly, and I like it here. That aside, of course it’s easier to break into the business in Los Angeles than it is in New York. And even the television that’s made in New York originates in Los Angeles. It’s just shot there. I think this is terrible advice that is coming from his kind of Tony Gilroy grumpy, “I’m a New Yorker,” kind of guy thing.

**John:** Number ten, develop a thick skin and just keep going.

**Craig:** Heck yeah.

**John:** Yeah. It is ultimately survival. And so it’s one of those things where you see a bunch of twenty-somethings try to start out as screenwriters. And some of them make it and some of them won’t make it. Talent is a lot of that, but perseverance is another huge factor in who is still working ten years later.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And you just have to be able to roll with it. And if I were to quit all the times where I felt like quitting, none of this would have happened at all.

**Craig:** Yeah. And the other aspect of thick skin is learning where to place pain on the scale of priorities, because you’re going to suffer. And I don’t mean like you’re Van Gogh and you’re suffering for your art. I mean, you’re going to suffer — people are going to be mean to you. People are going to be mean to your face. People are going to be mean anonymously. It’s tough. And they’re going to be mean for all sorts of crazy, weird reasons, and we’re going to get into a few of those I think when we discuss this New York Times article.

But people are unfair and mean in this business. And even when they’re being fair and nice sometimes they cause you pain because they simply don’t understand what you’re doing. They misunderstand you.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, you have to be able to survive that constant drip torture because you’re in for it. I mean, this is a great list, honestly. I mean, aside from number nine which I think is just wrong and the other one which I kind of qualified a little bit, there are some really, really good wisdom in this list from somebody that’s been doing it for a long, long time at an extraordinarily high level of achievement. So, I would suggest everybody take a look at it.

It is excellent advice. And lo and behold, it’s excellent advice from somebody who actually does it and not, say, somebody who doesn’t do it.

**John:** Agreed. So, everything we talk about in today’s episode you can find in the show notes at johnaugust.com/scriptnotes or /podcast, both will get you there.

The next thing which you already sort of set up was a New York Times piece that I sent you a link to. This was something that a reader had sent in based on some follow up on something we talked about this last episode. We had talked about how there’s a dearth of female directors and why is that. Is there any way we can sort of study and figure out what that is?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Well, a listener sent in this link to a New York Times piece which I thought was really fascinating which is looking at why in theater are there fewer female playwrights, or fewer female playwrights who are getting their work produced at the highest level.

And there were some fascinating findings in it. One of the most interesting things really speaks to the question you and I both asked is why do we have — there seems to be a weird discorrelation between how many high powered women execs we have and how few female directors we have, because shouldn’t they be hiring women?

And in theater they found that women artistic directors of theaters were less likely to hire women than men.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Which is fascinating.

**Craig:** It is. Specifically, so this is a Princeton student, so go Tigers, and they did a couple of different experiments, but the one that was the most fascinating was they took one play and for one group, a control group, they sent it out under a male name. And for the experimental group they sent it out under a female name to see what the differences would be and the acceptance. And they found a very significant difference. The same exact play when it was submitted as a play written by a female, it was not received as well. It was significantly downgraded by the people who read it.

But what was fascinating was that when they took a look at who was reading it and who was evaluating it, and then they looked at the gender of those people, what they found was this: men didn’t care at all what the gender was of the author. Whether they got that script as a man or the same script written by a woman, they didn’t care. Their answers were roughly equivalent. It was the women.

The women had a demonstrable bias against female writers. And that was shocking.

**John:** Yes. And so when we say bias we say statistically the numbers were very different for women artistic directors reading women. So, it wasn’t saying that they were emotionally prejudiced or trying to explain why they were doing this. It’s simply that was how the numbers came out.

**Craig:** Yeah, the scientific sense of the word bias.

**John:** Yeah. So that is a really interesting finding that I wonder if it could be replicated in any meaningful way in Hollywood. First instinct flush is to try to do that thing where you switch the names on a given script and see what the results were based on different people reading it and what that is.

Theater is useful in that artistic director is sort of like the one person reading it. And so you can sort of say like that is who did it. Never in Hollywood is it really so clear cut who is the one person reading it and making a decision whether to proceed or not to proceed.

**Craig:** Correct. Yeah. It’s a very difficult experiment to run in Hollywood because also it’s just hard to send out scripts and not have people talking about it and essentially poisoning the research well by calling each other or, you know.

**John:** And our first question was really about female directors. And this doesn’t really speak to female directors. It really speaks to female writers. And we’ve discussed, you know, there’s underrepresentation of women in the writing ranks, but it doesn’t seem as completely out of line as it is with the director ranks. And directors is about a person in front of you in a room convincing you that they are able to direct this movie, so more things get involved. You can’t do a blind study that way.

**Craig:** There is a gender gap among screenwriters and television writers, though. The gender gap seems to occur across writers and directors in every aspect of Hollywood movie and television making. And I am fascinated by this. I mean, a part of me thinks, “Hey man, I don’t have a dog in this fight. I’m a dude.” [laughs] You know? So let’s just go with the most crude reading of the results. Guys are gender blind when they evaluate stuff and women aren’t. Well, I’m on the upside either way, so who cares?

You know, I have a daughter. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah, so do I.

**Craig:** I don’t want her — and she’s funny. And I don’t want her stuck where it’s like… — I guess my question to the world, to the world of women, and I ask questions of the world of women constantly. And either I get answers I don’t understand, or answers I don’t like. But what is that?

**John:** Yeah. I don’t know what that is. And I guess you naturally approach it with the assumption that if women are in places of power that is going to help women who could use that hand up. And this would seem to indicate that it’s not necessarily true.

**Craig:** It seems to indicate that. Now, I mean, my instinct if you had asked me to guess, my guess would have been that in fact women wouldn’t have shown any bias. That their results would have been like the male results, that is to say gender neutral/who cares. “My job is to find great material. That’s what I’m about.” Because that seems like a rational point of view.

But it seems there is something going on. There’s a weird resentment or there’s a thing and, look, it’s feeding into all sorts of creepy stereotypes about women. I have to acknowledge that upfront. Catty. Bitchy. Competitive. And all of that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. So, I don’t want to go down that road and try and ascribe any kind of causality to this.

But I have to say it should be talked about. It’s an important finding, even though it’s limited.

**John:** Agreed. And there’s also the danger of the twice-as-good problem, where basically you end up holding a certain group to a higher standard because of reasons X, Y, or Z, or partly because you are a part of that group. And therefore you hold people of your same group to an unrealistically high standard for what they need to be able to prove in order to say yes.

**Craig:** Yup. That may be part of it. Whatever it is, whatever the motivation — good, bad — it’s wrong. It’s wrong. It’s hard to look at a result like that and make sense of it. I struggle to make sense of it. So, dispiriting to say the least.

**John:** Dispiriting to say the least.

Our last bit of unsolicited advice, I thought we might offer a little unsolicited advice because this is something that you and I separately looked at. This last week Max Landis, who is a screenwriter of the Chronicle franchise, made a choice, which was maybe not the best choice, which is to give an interview to a website in which he was very, very candid about girls, and dating, and sex. And many things you wonder if they were the best choices to divulge.

And I bring it up because on a previous podcast you and I had discussed the whole Ender’s Game fiasco and you had that writer — the novelist I should say — the novelist behind Ender’s Game who became this huge controversial figure and that tainted the movie that he was associated with.

Max Landis I don’t think is in that same category at all. But, in that podcast we did discuss like, well, what happens when you have the screenwriter who suddenly is drawing a lot of attention for things that you may not want the screenwriter drawing attention to himself for?

So, I don’t want to patronizing and sort of offer Max Landis advice, but I do want to discuss that sense of finding that boundary between what you discuss privately and what you discuss publicly, because I feel like it’s a thing.

**Craig:** Well, this is not the first time, [laughs], that this particular gentleman has done this. This is his thing. This is who he is. And he — look, I have trouble. I have trouble here. We’ve laughed before about how at some point somebody accused me of being a trust fund baby, [laughs], even though my parents were public school teachers. But he is the son of a very rich, famous Hollywood director, and he had all the advantages and all the pluses here. And he’s just — his personality is such that this is what occurs.

I don’t even think there’s much in the way of choices here. I just think this is his thing, this is what he does. And I just would prefer that, not he, but people like him… — So, let me spread it beyond the world of writers.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Shut up! Just shut up about yourself. I mean, look, you and I have done — this is 109th podcast?

**John:** 112th.

**Craig:** 112th. Oh, geez. So, 112 podcasts and we talk about other people and we talk about the business. Occasionally we’ll slip into little things, but they’re so mild. I think that this public sharing of the most creepy parts of yourself is lame. It’s just lame.

**John:** I do wonder if some of it is a generational thing and that I need to take a step out of myself and look at the perspective from a person who is in their young 20s, and they just have a different sense of where that line is drawn.

And so Lena Dunham is a friend. And so Lena has, I would say, the advantage of having a fictionalized universe that she can write for herself and talk about things that she wants to talk about within that world and doesn’t have to divulge all of her personal life. But, I would say she draws that boundary between private and public differently than I would now. And that’s just I think partly generational.

**Craig:** Yeah. Maybe and maybe not. You know, I was going to raise Lena as an example, too, but look, Woody Allen has been doing this for 30 years also. Where he, I mean, look, he made a movie about being in love with a 16-year-old girl and then he fell in love with his, [laughs], something was going on there.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And he casts his wives and his girlfriends and his lovers in his movies in succession. This has been going on forever. Artists have been doing this forever. Using your complicated life as fodder for dramatic representation I think is fair game as long as it’s represented, re-presented, and it is done for our entertainment.

Whatever personal growth Lena Dunham gets out of doing the show, Girls, it’s inconsequential frankly to the fact that it entertains a lot of people and that’s what it’s there for. And this is not that. This is not that at all.

**John:** But I wonder if on some level it’s almost the Lady Gaga point of, like, is she creating art or is she art herself? And that sense of — that blurred boundary between the work you are doing and who you are in presenting yourself into the world. And that’s an interesting situation when you’re a screenwriter rather than sort of a pop artist.

**Craig:** [laughs] Right. I totally agree.

**John:** And maybe we’re all pop stars now. Maybe that’s —

**Craig:** No, we’re not. And this is important to point out, because Madonna did this. And, again, people who appear whose faces and bodies, whose physical beings are the product, in part, along with the quality of their minds, can transform themselves into these bigger than life people and their lives become part of the product.

And remember Warren Beatty famously saying…

**John:** Yeah. Kevin Smith. Kevin Smith is, granted, also an actor, but Kevin Smith is really a writer-director who is famous, I think, for his public life.

**Craig:** And it’s our generation, Kevin Smith.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But also my instinct many times when I’ve read or listened to him is, “Shut up!” Because I don’t — I find at some point that all of the stuff that’s done under the guise of honesty and expression and entertainment is really just a pathetic, endless audition for frustrated actors. That’s all it is.

And I get it because, you know, I mean, we all want to be movie stars. Everybody wants to be a movie star, you know. And so you and I, we had like our tiny little moment where we got to sing on our podcast, you know. [laughs]

And that was fun! But it was just one little moment. And you know what, this guy, I’m sure you saw it on Twitter. One guy wrote in and he’s like, “Well, you know, 109 episodes and this was one self-indulgent dud, but I’ll excuse it,” which I thought was hysterical because, like, all right you took the time to point out that we had a dud even though, whatever, you can argue whether it was a dud or not.

But even that guy was like, “Yeah, that was self-indulgent.” You know what? Yes, it was! [laughs] It was self-indulgent. But it was fun and we did it once, whatever.

But we all have that instinct. It’s when you turn that instinct, when you lie about it, and try and make it something it’s not like interesting self-expression, or, I don’t know, just be honest about what it is. It’s narcissism.

**John:** Yeah. Quite possibly.

**Craig:** Anyway, I think —

**John:** So, I have no specific advice for Max Landis. And in no way I do want to sort of put him on shout and sort of do any sort of — I feel like it’s very patronizing for me to even sort of bring it up. But I also thought it was useful to bring it up just in the sense of what is a screenwriter’s public role and does the screenwriter’s public role have any effect on what they get to do next?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Because I do feel like there are going to be people and producers in studios who would read this and say like, “You know what? Maybe we’ll pick somebody a little safer in a way. Someone who like I’m not worried about what they’re going to suddenly tweet a week before the movie comes out.”

**Craig:** I think that’s fair to say. Good work tends to trump everything.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And screenwriters will never be as interesting as even the seventh lead in a movie to the public.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So, I mean, Max’s interview will largely go unnoticed and disappear. And he does this frequently. It’s just what he does. And, you know what? That’s him. [laughs] It’s just Max being Max.

**John:** [laughs] That’s what you get.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s what you get. And it’s like, I don’t know. All I guess I could say about it is I just find it lame. That’s all.

**John:** Well, let’s us be us and let’s answer some questions from listeners because we have quite a few in the mailbag here, so we’ll start with the simplest question we’ve done in a very long time, a question from Alessandro in Los Angeles. “Where can I find good freelance screenwriters for hire? Is there a trustworthy website for that?”

**Craig:** Well, they just shut it down. It was called the Silk Road. You could get hit men, you could get drugs, you could get screenwriters. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] You pay with bitcoin. It was great.

**Craig:** Bitcoin. By the way, side note. I got obsessed yesterday for whatever reason because I was reading about Silk Road. I’m like, bitcoin? So, I started reading about bitcoin. And I finally learned what bitcoin mining was. Do you know what bitcoin mining is?

**John:** I do. Absolutely. So, it’s these complicated computer algorithms and your computer does all this work to generate them. And there’s a limited number of bitcoins that could ever be created mathematically and therefore they increase in value in a way that should be useful. And yet it also feels like a giant Ponzi scheme to me.

**Craig:** Well, no, actually, all right, you’re almost right. And, Alessandro, I promise we’ll get to your answer. The deal is that, okay, so banks process transactions and it’s a very complicated thing to do. But in bitcoin there are no banks. It’s just person-to-person. So, who is processing the transactions? The bitcoin miners. That’s what bitcoin mining is. They’re basically doing all the computer processing to make sure that these secure transactions go through properly.

So, the bitcoin world essentially uses the people that are processing the transactions as a way to create more bitcoins. But they keep changing. Like, it used to be that they would give you 25 bitcoins for so many things that you processed and then it became less. I don’t know. Anyway, it’s super complicated and incredibly dorky, but finally I was like, what the hell is that? Why is it mining? Is there really a mine? [laughs] I’m so stupid.

**John:** Well, it is mining in the sense of like it generates — there’s ways you can actually generate coins from scratch, but it deliberately takes a tremendous amount of computing power and it algorithmically escalates in ways that you and I could never understand. It’s big math. But I can totally answer Alessandro’s question.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah, all right. So, Alessandro’s question, I mean, so where can you find good freelance screenwriters for hire? I’m excited to hear your answer. I have no idea.

**John:** Well, I would say, here’s the thing — you have to take a step back. It’s not like you can just hire them like you’re going to hire a plumber off of Angie’s List, off a recommendation. You’re going to have to read a lot of scripts and you’re going to have to read the scripts and figure out like who is the person who could write this thing. And then you’re going to have to meet with that person and form a relationship. So, it’s much more complicated than a list.

But, the places where you would look for these is the Black List. Those people, I’m saying like blcklst.com, so the people who are submitting their scripts to that and the ones who have ones publicly that you can read, read them. And find the ones that you really like.

Go to film festivals and find people who have made interesting movies and figure out who those writers are, because a lot of those writers don’t have paid work. You’re going to have to find good material and then figure out who wrote that material and start a relationship with them. And that is an incredible amount of long work, but you’re not going to hire somebody off of a list. That doesn’t happen.

**Craig:** No. It doesn’t. And I have to say these questions always make me a little nervous because we are a podcast for screenwriters. And when I hear some guy going, “Hey, where can I find some freelance screenwriters?” You know, like is there a Home Dept where I can pick up guys to do drywall?

Most screenwriters that are worth their salt are in the Writers Guild and they can only work for Writers Guild signatory employers which is a big deal. You have to show that you have the ability to pay residuals and that you have enough assets to cover that and that you have to pay minimums and contribute to pension and healthcare.

And when people are just like, “Hey, where can I find a writer?” I just smell the abuse already. I can smell it.

**John:** Yeah, Alessandro is going to drive up in this pickup truck and say, “Hop on in. I’ve got some writing to do.”

**Craig:** “Anybody here know how to do a third act? Get on. Get in the back.”

**John:** Our next question comes from Bretton in Newton, Massachusetts. And Bretton, who could be a man or a woman, I’m not actually sure.

**Craig:** Bretton. I’m going to say man.

**John:** This person is an eighth grade English teacher. And also a screenwriter. “These two things together are why I have such a hard time when I read things like this snippet below” — that I’ll read — “in a script that seems to have generated some buzz of a writer on a young and hungry list. This guy has representation.” So, basically Bretton has read this represented writer’s script and I will try to tell you what is in this sentence that has been singled out.

“Suddenly; she see’s Smith in the rearview mirror and nearly shit’s herself. She slams on the breaks.”

**Craig:** Misspelled.

**John:** Wrong kind of brakes. “Breaks,” like break a plate. “And she’s out of the cab.” So, those are two spectacularly bad sentences.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so the question is essentially, like, what gives? How does that person get represented and why do I not kill myself when I read that kind of writing?

**Craig:** You know, [laughs], I don’t like it. I find it atrocious and I think it either indicates laziness and sloppiness or it indicates a certain lack of fundamental education. What it doesn’t indicate is whether or not the script is any good.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And this is where, I mean, our question asker points out Quentin Tarantino seems to be notorious for this, too. Well, that’s sort of your answer there, isn’t it? I love Quentin Tarantino movies. I think they’re amazing. If you were to tell me, “Look you have a choice. You can have more Quentin Tarantino movies but…”

**John:** Or better punctuation.

**Craig:** “…or better punctuation.” I’m going to go with more Quentin Tarantino movies. So, you know.

**John:** But, in that answer you’re not saying that grammar and punctuation and the basic rules of English are unimportant. We’re just saying that really great filmmaking is more important than all of those things. But all of those things are really, really important. And all of these things that are singled out here are reasons why I would throw this script across the room, unless I was deeply intrigued by something else that was incredibly.

**Craig:** A-ha! That’s right.

**John:** But, I would still have that temptation to throw it across the room every time I saw one of those things. And so don’t be the person who has any mistakes on the page.

**Craig:** Right. I’m completely with you. It’s lame. That’s my word of the day. And I also think that when you read a script like this, even if you like the story or you like a lot of the screenplay, in your mind you’re also thinking, “I’m going to have to work with this person and they seem like a big dummy. So, I don’t want to work with a big dummy.” So, maybe I’m going to just hire somebody else to fix this, sort of be with me if I’m directing the movie.

This is a little bit like, hey, yeah, if you go in for a job interview at a bank and you are slovenly dressed, there’s a chance that you’re so impressive that they’re like, “Pfft. Who would have thought slovenly dressed guy? But you know what? He’s great at what he does.” Absolutely true.

Generally speaking, though, put a tie on.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. This is not —

**John:** It’s not going to hurt you.

**Craig:** It’s not rocket science. Yeah, exactly.

**John:** Our next question comes from Annie who writes, “I was hoping you could give a soon-to-be-college grad some advice. I am primarily interested in writing but I also want to explore other aspects of theater and film, specifically directing, casting, even performing. I know that it sounds scattered, but technically I’m not part of the real world yet. Can you suggest an industry job for someone like me who wants to gain exposure and experience in different areas?”

Craig, what would you suggest Annie do?

**Craig:** The job that you’re offered. That’s the job I suggest. You’re not in a position to pick and choose and craft your perfect job that touches on all 12 aspects of your interests and then dive into it with gusto. You’re going to get the job you get. Now, if you’re interested in directing, casting, performing, you know, maybe being a PA, trying to get a job as a PA on a movie set or on a television set. You certainly will see a lot of things.

But, since Annie is primarily interested in writing, I will remind her she doesn’t need a job to write. She needs a job to pay her bills and her rent. And then she just needs to write to write.

So, that’s kind of my advice is get the job you can get.

**John:** My general advice to Annie, who is going to be graduating from college and hopefully moving out to Los Angeles or New York — but Los Angeles would probably be a better choice for her — is don’t be afraid of getting a job and figuring it out and then leaving that job to go to another job that is in a different area that you’re interested in. And that’s completely cool and acceptable for people in their early 20s to do.

So, they get a job as a PA at a casting agency and they do that for six months, if they can survive six months doing that. Then they work on a set. Then they work for a producer or they do the agency mailroom. That’s fine. And it’s good to hop around those things, because you’re not going to find one job unless you do all those things. It just won’t happen.

If you are lucky enough to become the assistant to a director in film or television, that would give you little bit more exposure in all those different areas, but whatever is going to happen is going to happen.

My second bit of sort of standard advice, but I’ll just trot it out again: Just meet people who are at your same level. And you are going to meet people who are assistants doing various different things all over the town. Make friends with them, and hang out with them, and have drinks with them. And you will learn from exposure what they’re doing, too.

**Craig:** Great. Great answer.

**John:** Cool. Next question comes from Shawn. And Shawn writes, “I recently watched an interview where Craig informed a reporter that a former boss influenced him to pursue screenwriting.” I think that was at the live show you were talking about that boss, right?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** “At the time you were not confident enough to take the plunge. What is the best way to inspire, encourage, challenge a talented person to take this path? I work with plenty of highly creative assistants in the industry that battle with the same dilemma Craig did, the majority of them being female and/or minorities who come from families that influence them otherwise.”

So, how do you nudge somebody to take that bold step and try?

**Craig:** Well, the person who, I don’t want to say — influence isn’t quite the right word — he said, “You should write a screenplay and then I’ll give it to somebody.” What’s going on with people who are afraid of doing this, taking the plunge, particularly when they feel like they’re disenfranchised for circumstantial reasons to begin with, is that they don’t feel like they have — they’ve looked past the point where they finished a screenplay and then they have no idea what they’re going to do with it.

And the scariest part of writing a screenplay isn’t the writing of the screenplay. It’s the notion that you’re going to write it and you’re going to care about it and love it and it will be unread. Forget unmade. Unread. You don’t even know who to give it to. So, if you are working, this person says that he works with plenty of highly creative assistants. Promise them access.

And you would be amazed. That’s what people want. If you say, look, if you see talent in somebody, you say you write a screenplay, you talk to me about what the idea is. Let’s talk about it. And if it’s something that I think is a good idea, then I can say to you in return, “I’ll give it to somebody to read.” And that’s what’s going to get them to write.

**John:** Agreed. I’m a big fan of if you see something, say something. And that is if you see a person who has talent, let them know that they’re talented. Because maybe no one is actually telling them that they’re actually quite good at this and that you think they could do more there. What you say about sort of promising them access is really important, but also when I have that conversation I make it clear that like I’m not trying to — I have no vested interest in this at all other than I want you to succeed, because I think you will make something good in the world.

And that’s a thing that people don’t hear often enough is that what they’re doing is really good and what they’re doing is sort of important for the world out there and people should see it.

**Craig:** Very good.

**John:** Next question comes from Cole from the USA, just generally somewhere in the USA.

**Craig:** Oh!

**John:** Cole writes, “I am 14 and I have been writing scripts, mostly shorts, for a few years now and people always tell me the most important thing is to know your characters, especially their voices. I can never quite understand what people mean or how to get a feel for the character I’m writing. What are your suggestions for understanding characters better? Thanks.”

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** Voice.

**Craig:** Yeah, well, he’s very young, I mean, so when you’re 14 years old, and this is hard, and I was 14 so I’m going to talk to you now remembering fully well what it was like to be 14. You can’t beat yourself up too much for having some gaps here because you’re still very young. And you’re at a time in your life when your brain is still growing. Not to say that you’re somehow limited by neural capacity, but you’re changing.

And a lot of what it means to understand a character is to understand other human beings, to really understand them. And to really understand human beings, and that means all the wonderful things about them but also their lies, their deceptions, their self-deceptions, their delusions, their desires.

These are things that 14 year olds aren’t particularly famous for knowing. These come — they are earned. Your understanding of humans is earned. It is hard to inhabit the mind of another person realistically and hard to speak through the voice, the distinct voice, of another person realistically if you haven’t earned it through experience. And on top of that, also, frankly there is just a talent component that is innate. So.

**John:** I think there are some things that Cole could do right now to work on some of those skills.

First off is just listen, and listen really carefully, and listen to people who aren’t sort of in your immediate social sphere, so like when you’re on the bus, when you’re out at the mall, wherever you are, listen to some people and actually really hear the words they’re using and how they’re expressing themselves.

And try to write that down and try to sort of continue what they would say and how they would say it. Because right now probably everyone sounds like you because you only know what you sound like.

And so I think you can develop an ear for how other people speak and how people express themselves just by listening really carefully and that can be a useful sort of next thing. But what Craig is really hitting which is so important is that you have to develop the empathy to really see something from another person’s perspective. And you can in some ways practice that in your real life.

And so next time your parents frustrate you, and you slam the door and you’re in your room, literally just try to put yourself in their perspective and see the whole situation from their point of view. And that is going to be crucial for you being able to write from that other point of view, write from other people’s point of view is to inhabit their mind.

**Craig:** Yeah, there are some exercises you can do to start flexing this particular muscle. For instance, ask two friends to pick two people that you know at school. They don’t have to be your friends. In fact, it’s better if they’re not your friends. But they’re two people that you know. And so your two friends are going to assign you two other people. You’re not going to have a choice of whom. And then I want you to ask two other people to come up with two things, something and a situation, almost like an improv show. Give me a situation involving two people. And now ask two other people, okay, here’s a situation with two people. Give me something that one person wants. And then ask somebody else, give me something another person wants.

Until, when your exercise is done you have two people that you know that you didn’t choose. You have a situation you didn’t choose. And you have two competing desires you didn’t choose. Now write five pages of a little short movie. And see if you can do it, like them in their voices.

**John:** That sounds great. What it is, at first that sort of sounds like improv, but improv is about being funny, being funny in that moment. This is not about trying to be funny. It’s trying to create a real thing that could happen there.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly.

**John:** That’s a great idea.

Next question comes from Austin Millet. “My question is this. I’ve heard your Is 15 the new 30 episode about where the first act break generally goes and what it accomplishes. My question is this, what about the break between the second and third act? Should the break immediately precede the climax or set in motion the events that lead to it? I’m sorry if you have answered this before, but I’ve only been listening for a few months and have only gone back so far.”

We haven’t really talked that much about what’s classically the second act break.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so the second act break usually in Hollywood parlance is sort of the worst of the worst. It’s like things are at their darkest and then the hero must do one final push towards victory. That’s the broadest, most simplified explanation of what we’ve talk about with a third act. But the third act is that last chunk of the movie. And that act break in some way — sometimes is a very clear thing that happens.

Craig, do you see anything changing about the third act?

**Craig:** No, I mean, the notion that should the break immediately precede the climax or set into motion the events that lead to it, it depends on the movie. There are movies where the third act really is really truncated. And there are others where it’s quite long.

To me it’s not so much a question of placement, although typically if you’re talking about say a 110-page screenplay, in my mind somewhere in the late 80s or early 90s of page count. That’s usually when this happens. And I like to think of it as the moment where our hero no longer — has changed fundamentally.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Has changed so that they can no longer go back to their life that they had in the beginning of the movie, but they are not yet ready to do what is required to be perfected so to speak. So, they’re lost. They’re without a philosophy. And this is the moment where they are starting to realize that they must gain tremendous courage to do whatever needs to be done to prove that they have changed. And that can come out in all sorts of different ways. But sometimes it’s just procedural and plottish, you know.

This whole act thing is overblown.

**John:** Yeah, I agree. It’s overblown. The simplest thing I can tell people is that when we talk about three acts we talk about a beginning, and a middle, and an end. And fundamentally that’s really what it is, is that everything has a beginning, middle, and end. No matter what you do, it’s going to start, it’s going to happen, and then it’s going to over. And if you think about it in those terms you’ll be less paranoid about what page you’re on and all that stuff.

**Craig:** I was talking to somebody after the live show in New York. We were talking about act breaks. And I said, you know, the funny thing is we only talk about act breaks as screenwriters. Nobody else talks about them. I mean, sometimes in development they’ll say it because it’s early on. But when you make the movie and you’re in the editing room, you talk about reels. So, in the old days, film reels had to be balanced because movies were actually on reels and they could only be so many minutes long.

But we still use it just to divide up the work in the Avid — or I’m sorry, the non-linear editing system. And then suddenly the movie is divided into reels. And nobody talks about acts anymore at all.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s just sequences. So, this act thing is… — Don’t worry about it so much.

**John:** It’s a little artificial. This is our last real question.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** This is from Rocco in Los Angeles.

**Craig:** Rocco!

**John:** “I’ve been speaking with a producer who’s helping me secure funding for a screenplay I wrote and plan to direct. He tells me that one way to go about it is to pay a casting agent between $2,500 and $5,000 to get the script to actors. He also suggests I have an account containing $10,000 to $20,000 to pay actors a deposit in order to secure a letter of intent from them.

“A few years ago I paid a different producer $5,000 for development for the same purpose. And he ended up hanging himself on the Sunset Gower Studio lot and I lost my money. I’m wondering if this is a legitimate way to raise funds and how common you think this process is for indie films, and if you think it’s a smart way to go about it.”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Craig?

**Craig:** Well…the last time you followed this course of action it ended up with someone hanging themselves. No. This is not —

**John:** No, it is not —

**Craig:** This is not a smart course of action.

**John:** A screenwriter should not be paying a producer to start to try to make a movie.

**Craig:** Well, first of all, this is not, okay, the producer is helping you secure funding for a screenplay you wrote and plan to direct. “He tells me that one way to go about it is to pay a casting agent to get the script to actors.” No!

Yes, that is one way, but he left out another one way to go about it is to rob a bank. One way to go about it is to sell drugs. Casting agents, so you understand Rocco, are hired by legitimate film productions that already have financing in order to fill out the cast of a movie. Typically they’re filling out lots of parts, but not say the lead role which has already kind of been put together with the financing by a talent agent who has given the script to an actor.

Nobody, as far as I know, pays casting agents, [laughs], weird, like a $2,500 to $5,000 is like a weird Breaking Bad kind of stuffed envelope amount of money to get the script “to actors.” What actor do you think you’re going to get? Just walk with me down this road, Rocco. And actor gets a call from a casting agent and first of all they’re answering the phone to a casting agent and that person is like, “I want you to read a script. I love it.” And they’re like, “Okay?”

Do you think that’s the way it’s going to work, that the $5,000 is going to get a casting agent to call Brad Pitt. No. Okay, so that doesn’t work. Your producer, who I’m starting to think is quite a bit of a problem, now suggests that you have an account containing $10,000 to $20,000 to pay actors a deposit in order to secure a letter of intent from them. This is not how it works.

Actors will say they will sign these letters of intent to help you get financing and they sign them for free. Do you know why? Because they intend to be in the movie. [laughs] Because they want to be in the movie. What is this deposit nonsense? What is that? And how do you get that back?

And then you paid another producer money for development which is such a no-no. And then he hanged himself.

Rocco, I grew up with a lot of Roccos, and you know, Rocco, that name is supposed to go along with street smarts man. Come on! You’ve got to know better than this. You’ve got to know these guys are playing you here. This is terrible. Terrible way of going about it. It’s not legitimate. I feel super bad that you’ve been suckered before.

And I’m reaching out to you as a friend over the wire and saying you’ve got to break ties with all these people that are asking for money. All of these people. And follow — you asked what the legitimate way is and John is going to tell you.

**John:** A legitimate way is sort of all the annoyingly slow ways we’ve talked about on the show before which is people read your script and say, “This is really good. I want to make this movie.”

Or, “I think you’re a really good writer and I want you to write this other thing.”

Or, “I’m watching your directing reel and you’re really talented. Let’s try to make a movie or another short.”

You’re meeting these people at film festivals. You’re meeting these people at coffee shops, wherever. Wherever you’re meeting these people, they’re not hanging themselves in Sunset Gower Studios. And I just feel like you’re hanging out with the wrong people essentially.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s the wrong crowd. You know what? You can put your script on the Black List website for whatever that is, a couple hundred bucks or something. And people will read it and you’ll get honest feedback. The one thing you can’t do is — if all it took, buddy, was somewhere between $2,500 and $20,000 to get an independent film going, every minute there’s be an independent film coming out in a theater near you. It just doesn’t work.

Believe me, I wish it did, but it doesn’t.

**John:** And the thing is there are a phenomenal number of terrible independent producers out there, but they’re not even charging money for it.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** They’re genuinely trying to get movies made. And they’re ineffective, but they’re not changing you money.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** So, you need to find —

**Craig:** We’re like trying to work them up to just inoffensively ineffective.

**John:** Indeed. So, what you’re looking for is that producer who is above board and effective. That’s not going to be easy.

**Craig:** You know, what an awful world. I feel really bad for Rocco. And I just feel like it just sucks. It sucks that people do this, that they prey on people like this.

You know what we need to do?

**John:** Oh god. What are we going to do?

**Craig:** I know. I know. Whenever I start talking like this you get nervous. But I feel like we need some sort of list of names. We need to just start naming and shaming names of people that ask writers for money for stuff like this. It’s so disgusting and it is so unethical.

**John:** I would say rather than creating a — Black List has already been used — rather than creating a negative list, I will say that something like an Independent Feature Project might be a way to sort of — look at the producers who are making these independent films and are making them legitimately, that’s the way to go. Look for the people who are actually doing the work that’s coming out rather than people who just have a business card.

**Craig:** Just don’t give anyone a dollar. It’s Three-card Monte. Honestly. It’s Three-card Monte. It’s just so depressing. Well, I’m sorry, Rocco. I really am. And believe me, I wasn’t laughing at you. I was just laughing just about the visual of, [laughs], you know, you’ve got this producer and he’s developing your script and you try and reach him and he’s just swinging from the rafters at Sunset Gower.

**John:** At Sunset Gower of all the randomly specific places.

**Craig:** I know. What a great place. Actually, that may be how I finish it up.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** [laughs] I might just get myself a little monthly rental over at Sunset Gower and just string myself up and that’s it.

**John:** I don’t know. Craig, don’t.

**Craig:** I shouldn’t?

**John:** No. I think you’ve got another good ten years in you.

**Craig:** Oh! Do you? [laughs] Great.

**John:** Craig, it’s time for One Cool Things. I can go first or I can go second. What do you want to do?

**Craig:** Well, if you don’t go first then we’ve got nothing. [laughs]

**John:** Ah! So, while Craig thinks of his One Cool Thing, because this was sort of an all advice episode, I’m going to reach back to some advice I had a long time ago which was I had watched the movie Blue Valentine and I liked a lot about Blue Valentine but the thing that drove me crazy about it is the Michelle Williams character who is pregnant and decides not to have an abortion. At no point in the discussion of that did adoption ever come up as an option for her.

And having many friends who have families through adoption, I just want people both as individual people existing in the world and as writers especially to not ever forget about adoption. It’s not at all sort of what it’s been portrayed in movies and TV and literature. This sense that it’s a shame or it’s a secret or it’s that thing you don’t talk about, but no, talk about it, because it’s actually a very great thing that happens in American culture now and sort of worldwide culture now.

And if we don’t portray it honestly and positively in media, no one is going to know that it exists. Because women who find themselves in situations where they may end up going into adoption situations tend to be young women who might not have any other exposure to it except through movies and through television. And so I think we have some responsibility to show that as a thing that exists in the world in an honest light that’s not, you know, unicorns and rainbows, but it’s a thing that is good and real in the world. And there are many families that only exist in the world through adoption.

So, adoption is my One Cool Thing.

**Craig:** Very cool. We know all sorts of people that have… — It’s interesting. A number of families I know who are mixed, so there’s some biological kids, some adopted kids. And we know some families that are all adopted kids. It’s an absolute good.

**John:** One bit of small advice for everyone to sort of keep in mind is whenever you sort of use adopted as like the adjective descriptive of a kid, so if someone is a child in a family don’t say like their “natural son” and their “adopted kid.” So, you were using that because you were explaining sort of how kids got into this situation.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But in media reports, or talking about kids, never say they’re “adopted daughter” in a sort of pejorative sense. It’s important to bring up, say like kid through adoption or whatever, but adopted as just an adjective by itself —

**Craig:** You mean as kind of a pointless modifier. Like if you’re like, “Oh yeah, I have this new doctor I’m going to. He’s black. And he’s really good.” Like, well, why black? Why did I need to know that? That kind of thing.

**John:** My daughter didn’t through adoption, but there were some reports that “John has an adopted daughter.” It’s like, well, actually, that’s not true. But it doesn’t actually kind of matter. Just like —

**Craig:** She’s my daughter.

**John:** Just like daughter.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** Daughter is enough.

**Craig:** Well, you have the other thing, I’m sure, where people are like, “So, who’s the dad?” Do you get that question?

**John:** Yes. And that’s incredibly frustrating and annoying.

**Craig:** I know. It’s just rude.

**John:** And it’s understandable. And I asked those questions when I first encountered two dad families. It’s just not a reasonable question. You don’t ask about the paternity of any other child out on the playground.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, don’t ask about us —

**Craig:** I know. It’s kind of just like —

**John:** Or if you see a parent and their child is racially clearly not the same, don’t ask like, “Oh, so what’s the mom?”

**Craig:** Right. It’s not…go away.

**John:** That’s a ridiculous question.

**Craig:** Right. [laughs]

**John:** It’s not your business what the racial makeup of my child is.

**Craig:** And by the way, who cares? Who cares?

**John:** Who cares?!

**Craig:** What’s the mom? Uh, human. Yeah, she’s a human. Yeah. How about that. Yeah, there are so many — people are curious and they are —

**John:** They’re curious. And they don’t mean to say anything wrong. That’s why I’m trying to say it in a very positive way. Just learn the questions that are great to ask and the questions that are not great to ask.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s just a little prying. It’s a little weird. Well, that is excellent advice.

I do have One Cool Thing that just popped into my head. I don’t know how it popped in but I’ve been using it for months now. So, John, are you a wine drinker?

**John:** I do drink wine. I don’t use the special argon gas that you suggested.

**Craig:** Right, right, the argon gas. So, I’ve been getting into wine a little bit, but I’m very much a dilettante. I don’t think I’ll ever be a fancy wine guy at all. And because I’m not a fancy wine guy, I don’t do these things where I go and buy super crazy bottles of wine. It’s just not me.

But there’s this website and I haven’t talked about this before called WinesTilSoldOut, have I?

**John:** No, it sounds great.

**Craig:** [laughs] I mean, maybe it’s stupid. Maybe I’m being taken advantage of. But it’s a very cool idea for a website. So, this company, WinesTilSoldOut, and it’s wtso.com. They do this thing where basically they get bunches of wine that they’re usually pretty decent and you can do your own investigation. They’ll always put these promotional ratings on there, their nonsense rankings of wine. But you can go and read actual wine drinker reviews of them to double check.

And they put them up at a discount and it’s usually a pretty good discount, sometimes better than others. But what’s interesting about it is it’s just there till they sell out of it. And they never tell you how many they have. They could have 12 bottles. They could have 500 bottles. So, sometimes, and the wines are at different levels of demand, so sometimes they’ll say, okay, here’s a wine, it costs $40, but some until we’re out of it. And it could be gone in five minutes, it could be gone in a day.

Sometimes they have really expensive bottles of wine that have been seriously marked down. If you’re starting to be interested in wine and you don’t feel like spending a crazy amount of money and you like deals, not a bad idea to check out the WinesTilSoldOut people.

And once a month they do this thing where they just blitz through like 100 wines in a day and it’s kind of fun. So, if you’re looking to stock your closet with bottles of wine that you would probably spend $60 on in a store, maybe you’ll get them here for $25. Not a bad idea. Check it out.

**John:** Sounds good.

Craig, thank you for another fun podcast.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** So, standard boilerplate here. If you are curious about anything we talked about on the show, there’s almost always show links in the notes. So, the things for the New York Times thing, the J.J. Abrams advice, they’re all at johnaugust.com/podcast or /scriptnotes. Both work.

If you are listening to us on a device that connects to iTunes in some capacity, which most things do, and you’re in iTunes, subscribe so that we know that you are listening and maybe leave a comment there.

If you want to write an email to us for one of these kind of questions, it’s ask@johnaugust.com.

On Twitter, which is great and handy for short things, I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. And that is our show.

**Craig:** Awesome. I could go another hour, but you know what? I don’t want to.

**John:** Save it.

**Craig:** Save it. Save it, man.

**John:** Good advice, Craig.

**Craig:** [laughs] You, too, John. See you next week. Bye.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [4 Rules to Make Star Wars Great Again](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_joDNOpeWWo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D_joDNOpeWWo&app=desktop)
* Clerks on [Death Star politics](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGOVbXF7Iog)
* Eddie Izzard on [the Death Star cantina](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ2yRTRlMFU)
* Tony Gilroy’s [Top 10 tips for writing a Hollywood blockbuster](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24348113)
* The New York Times on [Rethinking Gender Bias in Theater](http://theater.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/theater/24play.html?_r=1&)
* [Max Landis](http://shelbysells.com/2013/09/30/interview-series-max-landis/) on the Pillow Talk interview series
* Wikipedia on [Bitcoin mining](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_mining#Bitcoin_mining)
* John’s 2011 blog post on [Blue Valentine and adoption](http://johnaugust.com/2011/dear-cindy-in-blue-valentine)
* [WinesTilSoldOut](http://wtso.com/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener The Face of Human Error

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

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

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

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes, Episode 111, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

So, this is an odd episode because you are right across from me. We are sitting in the same room at the same table.

**Craig:** With no buffer guest.

**John:** Absolutely, which is rare. So, occasionally you and I have been in the same room but there’s always been a third person to sort of break it up, yeah.

**Craig:** Break up a fight.

**John:** But, no, I’m looking directly at you as we record this podcast.

**Craig:** Right. And the other fun thing is because it’s just you and me, [laughs], I wish you people could see this. So, John has the headphones on, you know, just to make sure that the audio is okay, but I don’t need headphones because there’s just the two of us here. And he looks like I believe the guy’s name is Lobot, the guy from Empire Strikes Back. You now, Lando Calrissian’s dude, because you have this like apparatus around your head and ears. You look awesome. You look very Sci-Fi.

**John:** Well, very good, I’ll be sure to take a photo and tweet it.

**Craig:** Please do.

**John:** When the episode comes out.

**Craig:** Please do.

**John:** So, we are in New York City. Your bags are packed. You are flying back to Los Angeles, but we thought we’d cram in one episode before we go. We’re recording this on Friday afternoon at 1:15 in the afternoon. And you’re catching me at a really strange moment because as of today the show is frozen. Big Fish is frozen. So, for the first time in nine years I’m not writing Big Fish, which is weird.

**Craig:** And you can’t anymore.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** You can’t write it ever again.

**John:** Not entirely true. I’ll have to rewrite some stuff for the cast album, sort of to get those pesky talking bits minimized.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And then god-willing we do well and we tour at some point, we’ll have to change some stuff for the tour. But, for all intents and purposes, I’m done. And that feels really strange. That’s a thing I would actually like to talk to Dr. Craig Mazin about is that feeling of post-partum separation and all that.

**Craig:** It’s a very real thing. Before we get into that, a little bit of — what do we call it — what do you call it, business?

**John:** Follow up.

**Craig:** Follow up? Housecleaning.

**John:** Housekeeping.

**Craig:** Housekeeping. I like cleaning, housecleaning.

At one point apparently a few podcasts ago I mentioned that Sony Pictures Classics was, I maybe even used the word “moribund” because I was under the impression that they weren’t really open for business. And it turns out that’s totally wrong. They’re apparently incredibly open for business and put out more movies than a lot of movie studios do, so I’m really sorry about getting that wrong. It happens from time to time. So, here come the cops to take me away.

Sorry Sony Pictures Classic. You are the opposite of moribund. You are full of life. You are vivacious.

**John:** Indeed. And Craig is wrong sometimes.

**Craig:** It actually happens.

**John:** It’s great to acknowledge when you are wrong.

**Craig:** And sometimes spectacularly wrong. So, yes, in this case wildly wrong. Sorry. Sorry. Okay.

**John:** There are two bits of new things that came up, so let’s just sort of crank through those first. First off, people sent me this link to this new fund called Gamechanger. And the idea behind it is — we’ve talked on the podcast several times about how there are a notorious lack of women directors. And so this fund is designed to help make movies in the $1 million to $5 million range with female directors to hopefully balance some things out. The numbers that this article that we’ll link to cited showed that women make up about 50% of film school graduates but women only direct 7% of the top 250 movies in a given year. And that’s sort of wildly out of proportion.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Craig, what’s your thought about this kind of fund? Do you think it will have an impact? What do you think is possible or probable?

**Craig:** Well, certainly its heart is in the right place. The idea is that this group is going to fund, they’re saying up to 10 narrative feature films. And they’re making a distinction between narrative feature films and documentaries, because women seem to be fairly well represented in documentaries.

So, to finance up to ten of these narrative feature films in budgets going from the $1 million to $5 million range in all genres. And the idea is that I guess they want to use it to both employ women to direct movies but also to sort of show off to the business that there are women who can direct movies and essentially use this as almost advertising and maybe a launching pad for some of these women.

I think these things are always at the crossroads of intention and effect. I don’t know why this would work. And I guess the reason I say that is because I don’t know why it is the case that only 7% of these 250 movies are directed by women in the first place. Why are women well represented in documentary but not narrative feature? And, you know, at some point someone here says, let’s see, Impact co-founder Dan Cogan says, “There’s an unconscious prejudice in which people just don’t feel confident giving their money to women filmmakers and getting their money back.”

I don’t know if that’s quite true. It’s very hard to pin down an unconscious prejudice anyway.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Women are very prominent in our business. You know, Amy Pascal runs Sony.

**John:** Yeah. And it’s not like she’s the only — we have Amy Pascal, we have Stacey Snyder —

**Craig:** Emma Watts at Fox.

**John:** Tremendous representation of women in those higher echelon power ranks.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, it is interesting that we don’t use women to direct these feature films of a certain size. And so maybe this will have impact. But I think in some ways it’s not going to have the same impact as if Marvel stepped up and had a woman direct one of the Marvel movies.

**Craig:** No question. Yeah, it’s a bit like — and I don’t mean to ding these guys, but they’re sort of saying, “Look, we have a problem where women are a little ghettoized in feature films, so let’s give them feature films to direct that are of the sort that kind of define what it means to be ghettoized,” living in the $1 million to $5 million range. I mean, there are episodes of TV that cost more than that. And that’s sort of a struggling space. It’s hard for those movies to find audiences anyway.

And I also have to say I always get worried when they put these things out and say, “Look, this is to back women alone,” because inevitably you also start to get that backlash of, “Oh, well she’s doing a movie there because they need women to do their movies.” But, believe me, if somebody else wanted to do the movie, wouldn’t a woman rather just go with the marketplace and the biggest numbers?

So, I guess my question for you is why do you think this is the case?

**John:** Why do I think there are fewer women directors?

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** I don’t know. And I wish there were a simple thing you could point to, but I don’t know that it’s s systematic structural bias. I think it’s more likely that there’s a chicken and the egg problem. And actually interestingly one of the production companies in here is called Chicken and the Egg. Until you actually have — you don’t get to be Kathryn Bigelow directing these big movies until you’ve directed small movies. And if you don’t get to direct those small movies it doesn’t sort of work its way up.

Although, I will say that I feel like I see male writers getting that shot to direct their movies maybe a little bit more often than I see the equivalent woman getting the chance to direct that movie. And maybe that’s a thing that this kind of fund could help.

**Craig:** Do you perceive that there is any difference in the desire — and when I say desire I mean unfettered fully fueled desire to direct between the genders?

**John:** I don’t know that there is, but I think you can point to the larger question of women in the workforce. And there are lots of books written about sort of is there something that happens at a certain, it’s not even a glass ceiling anymore, but it’s the choice you make whether you’re going to give yourself wholly over to a career or if you’re going to have a family.

And structurally in American society it does seem that women who would reach the certain point in their career where they could be directing a film, or it could be running a company, have to make that choice between a family and a career. And sometimes they will choose a family.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s not only women who face that thing, but women face it with a stronger degree of urgency than men face it. That’s a possibility.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m kind of with you in the sense that when I see this stuff I throw out my hands and say, “I don’t know why.” Now, that in and of itself can be viewed as somewhat of a radical position. Sometimes just denying that there’s an overt prejudicial bias makes you suspect in some people’s eyes. I just don’t’ know that the evidence is there that it’s the case.

And there are too many strange things like, for instance, the fact that so much of Hollywood is run by women that makes me think it’s probably not the case. But, I can’t say it is. I can’t say it isn’t. I wish these people luck.

Listen, here’s how I look at it as a movie-going fan. If they find a director who otherwise would not have been able to make her movie, and she makes a great movie, and I love her movie, and then she makes more movies because of that, then I think Gamechanger Films has done a great thing.

**John:** Fantastic. I would agree with you. If they make 10 movies and two of those films break out and those directors get a chance to make more movies after that, then we’re in a very good situation.

Catherine Hardwicke is an example of a director who got a chance to make little small movies and then got to make Twilight and got to make bigger movies after that.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** If they can keep doing that, that’s fantastic. So, what I did like about sort of how their approach is, it’s not like it’s an open call for submissions. They’re not sort of doing the Amazon Studios way where like all the people who have been overlooked — they’re definitely targeting agents and managers, tell us these people who are tremendously talented who for whatever reason cannot get their movies made, let’s try to get those movies made.

**Craig:** And in that regard, it’s kind of a brilliant strategy on their part because my guess is that there’s quite a talent pool there that is… — By the way, pick any segment and there is an underserved talent pool.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** 49 year olds. There are some great 49 year olds out there.

So, well, good luck to Gamechanger Films. I hope you change the game. [laughs]

**John:** Ah-ha. Second bit of new business was the new announcement that Gill Garcetti, is it Gill Garcetti?

**Craig:** Gill Garcetti.

**John:** Gill Garcetti, our new Los Angeles Mayor —

**Craig:** Not Eric Garcetti?

**John:** Oh, it’s Eric Garcetti, isn’t it?

**Craig:** Isn’t Gill his dad?

**John:** Yeah, I get confused who’s who.

**Craig:** If he’s listening to this he’s like, “I’m the mayor and they’re still doing it to me! God!”

**John:** Mayor Garcetti..

**Craig:** Well done. Yes.

**John:** …has announced that he has appointed a new Film Czar for Los Angeles. We talked earlier on the podcast about runaway production which is the idea that so many of our movies are written in Los Angeles by LA-based film studios and yet they shoot in other states for tax reasons and for other reasons and don’t film in Los Angeles.

And one of Garcetti’s proposals was we needed to figure out why these movies are going away and try to find ways to keep these movies shooting in Los Angeles. He has appointed a Film Czar by the name of Tom Sherak.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Who’s a very familiar name to oversee this operation, this goal of trying to get more movies shooting in Los Angeles and more film production and television production happening in Los Angeles.

So, Tom Sherak, I thought, was a really interested choice for it, because Tom Sherak is former president of the Motion Picture Academy, former chairman of Fox, and many other titles throughout there. And he really knows the film and TV business. So, it seems like he would be a good person to be able to lobby to his peers who are running these studios to say, “No, no, shoot your movie here and let’s try to find a way to make it make sense to shoot your movie here.”

**Craig:** Yes. He is a great choice. He is exactly the right kind of person for this. The problem is I don’t know what there is to do. You know, he, Tom Sherak, more than anyone understands that you can’t sit down in an office across from somebody who is doing the job he once did and say, “Shoot your movie here even though it costs $8 million more just ’cause.” It’s not going to work.

And in the end I’m not sure what else there is to do. Maybe these guys know of something creative that we don’t know about. All we hear about on our end of things is you can — “Here’s how much money we’re spending. You can shoot it here or you can shoot it here. If you shoot it in LA you get 8 fewer days and you can’t have that cast or that song. And if you shoot it there you can.”

Well, everybody always picks the movie. Everybody. So, I don’t know what he’s going to do. I’m concerned that this is window dressing designed to satisfy political contributors to whom promises were made. But, we’ll see.

**John:** We’ll see. What was promised in the article was Tom Sherak will lead sort of the lobbying effort in California to try to get in Sacramento to try to get funds to do this. As we talked about on the podcast before, it becomes one of these sort of race to the bottoms where everyone is starting to throw tax money at this thing which isn’t really a sustainable goal.

There are certain things about shooting in a city which can make life easier and harder. And one of the things that New York City did was try to make it vastly easier to shoot in this city by cutting away the red tape and trying to make it simpler to permit, and shoot, and sort of get it all working out. And that might be a thing that a Film Czar could really step in and help if it has the mayor’s support to do that.

**Craig:** Yes. And certainly any kind of elimination of red tape, and this is where the other constituencies in LA start to get angry when you shut down commercial streets or things like that and people get angry. And so there’s always interests bumping into each other, but the truth is in the final analysis the reason that productions have left LA isn’t because of the Film Office or red tape. It’s because of tax breaks.

So, they have the lottery system now in California where a number of movies can get tax breaks up to a certain amount. And you’ll see this, also Massachusetts I think is a similar situation, but it is a race to the bottom. That’s the problem. It’s a race to the bottom. And it’s disturbing. I don’t know the answer. It’s one of the, [laughs], this is one of those areas where not just being one state like one country but actually 50 independent municipalities can hurt us.

**John:** Agreed. Although I think if we were one country and we were France, then there’s always the thing of like, “Oh, no, they’re going to shoot in Belgium because Belgium has a tax incentive.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** This is the podcast that there are no good answers.

**Craig:** I know. It’s true. Because, in fact, also then if there’s only one state and your France, then they say, “Okay, you know what? We’re taxing you. We’re taxing you. And people can only work 30 hours a week.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah, so…

**John:** Challenging.

**Craig:** And then everything, everything dies. [sighs]

**John:** Oh, sigh.

**Craig:** Maybe we can fix your problem today.

**John:** Let’s focus on things that are easily achievable — what’s wrong with John.

**Craig:** Before we talk about wrong with you, let’s talk about what’s right with you.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** So, I saw the show, Scott Frank and I went to go see Big Fish a couple a nights ago, a few nights ago. You were right there with us, sitting right next to me, and I really enjoyed it. I think the show is terrific. And I think that it’s a hit. I personally do.

I don’t know, it just has that “hit” feel to it. It’s very accessible. I think it’s really great for families. I don’t know how you’re targeting it or marketing it, but I don’t know, if it were me I would just think I’d love to take my kids. It’s a great spectacle.

It’s not overly long. I mean, Broadway shows tend to be long. Musicals tend to be long. The first act I thought really moved great. And there is some terrific stuff that happens in the second act. It’s very emotional. I just have a really good feeling about it. And I’m — I can’t change the world with my predictions. That is even too much for me to believe. But I still feel like I’m right a lot…

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** …despite the Sony Pictures Classic thing, so I’ve got a really good feeling. Plus, it seems like you guys are selling the place out in previews anyway.

**John:** Which has been great. So, it definitely has felt like, you know, as you go through life you sort of feel the universe forking and sometimes you end up in the fork where things go really well and sometimes you end at the fork where things go really badly. And I do feel very lucky that I feel like we ended up in the fork where things went really well with the show. And so creatively I’m really happy with it. And we’re selling a lot of tickets, which has been fantastic. So that is really amazing.

It was great to have the two of you guys there at the show to see what this has turned out to be, and, of course, to get a drink afterwards. And to witness me just strangle the woman —

**Craig:** That was great. You know, [laughs], so here’s what happened.

**John:** Because actually I’m fascinated to hear your account of it, because I’ve actually recounted this story to a bunch of people but I feel like I just exaggerated it in my head. So, please tell me your opinion of what actually happened.

**Craig:** I don’t think you’re capable of such things. So, during the show, in the very beginning I noticed this man showed up late as I think the music was beginning. I think it was the same guy. There was a just a problem with these two people that were about three rows ahead of us. So, we were in Row G in the orchestra which is essentially, what, the sixth row? Is that right? A, B, C, D, E, F, G…oh, 7.

So, they’re like in the fifth row. It’s a man in his thirties and his girlfriend who I assume is, you know, a similar age. And they’re just annoying. They get in kind of late. Then he leaves at one point. Plus, you can get drinks delivered to you at your seat, which I think is weird, by the way.

**John:** Not in this theater.

**Craig:** Oh, what was that?

**John:** At Scriptnotes you could. But did someone actually — ?

**Craig:** No, yeah, some lady came by. Oh, no, that’s right. There was like an usher that came by at some point to help him. He was carrying his drinks. That’s right. She was helping him get back into his seat. My feeling is she should help him leave — at that point he’s late.

Then after the intermission he came back again. Now, here’s what I didn’t — and he did it again — here’s what I did not notice. I did not notice that this woman was holding her phone up and taking pictures constantly throughout the show, which is a super big no-no. It’s the very thing that got a man screamed at by Patti Lupone. And we should put a link to that amazing — it’s just such a great. Because, okay, Patti Lupone, she’s in Gypsy. She’s paying Mama, Mama Rose, right?

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** And she’s singing, I can’t remember what she’s singing.

**John:** Was it her big song?

**Craig:** I think it might have been Here’s Rose or whatever. And some ding-a-ling is taking pictures and you just hear Patti Lupone go, “Stop! Stop! Stop!” And everyone stops. And she just goes crazy on this guy in such a, like diva, “How dare you! Who do you think you are?!” in like full Broadway voice. And everyone is applauding. It’s great.

Anyway, the guy gets kicked out. Well, this girl is doing the same thing. I don’t notice that. All I notice is that at one point when the usher brings that guy back, you lean across me to the usher and you point at that lady. And you point. And I thought, “Oh, he’s angry because they’re annoying, [laughs], because I didn’t realize. But I was like, aw, but then the usher I think didn’t understand what you were saying and just kind of gave up. Plus, did she even know who you were?

**John:** She did know who I was.

**Craig:** She knew who you were. Okay. So, she just didn’t know what was going on. So, she took the coward’s way out which is just to nod pointlessly and then disappear.

At the end of the show you said, “I’ve got to talk to those people. That woman was taking pictures throughout the entire thing.” And I went, “Oh, that’s not good.” So, Scott and I get out of our seats. We walk up to the stage. And you wait for those two people to come out and when I turn around I just see you heatedly — and I catch little bits like, “You absolutely cannot do that. That is unacceptable. You cannot take photos during a show. It is totally not cool. You can’t do it.”

And then she’s like, “I wasn’t doing…”

“You were! I saw you. I saw you. I saw you do it. Get out your phone. Take out your phone.”

And her boyfriend is like a pretty big dude. And she’s kind of like, “Eh, she’s got that “eh” face. You know? But you made them take out the phone and then you made her go through the photos and you made them — and then the last thing we heard was you saying, “Great, good, fine. I don’t care. Yeah, you too. Don’t care. You too. Whatever. Don’t care.”

And then they left. And then you told us that in fact that exchange was…[laughs]

**John:** And it came — so this guy — basically the girl was so drunk that I kind of couldn’t really deal with her, so I could only deal with idiot boyfriend.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And he was at first sort of like, “How dare you talk to my girl that way.” And then when I said like, “She took photos. She cannot take photos.”

And then he asked, “So, do you work here?”

And I’m like, “I wrote the effing show.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And I was really just rage-filled. It’s one of those things where like almost like Fight Club, like I kind of wanted him to hit me. I kept thinking like just hit me. I would love a black eye right now because I am so incredibly incenses right now.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** But so anyway, he weirdly sort of backed down and he’s like, “Oh, give me your phone.” So, she couldn’t even find her phone. She opened up her purse and all she had in there was like confetti that she stuffed in there from like the end of Red, White, and True.

And it’s like, “Where’s my phone? Oh, it’s in my…”

It was in her bra. So, she pulls out her phone.

**Craig:** Oh boy. Okay.

**John:** Figures out how to unlock it. She already had iOS 7.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** So, she’s capable enough to upgrade her phone.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Or maybe Apple has made it too simple to upgrade your phone. [laughs]

**Craig:** It appears so. It appears that they’ve crossed into Idiotville.

**John:** So, he deletes off the photos. And I wanted the photos deleted, but I mostly wanted him to understand that like you cannot do this. You cannot take photos in a Broadway show.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Because not only could all the actors on stage see. I checked later and like they all saw it.

**Craig:** Yeah, the mermaid tweeted that they were all like, “Who the hell is that girl?”

**John:** The worst thing about taking photos in this day and age is you’re holding up a glowing iPhone.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Everyone behind Row E could see that and could not — and they’re attention is being pulled down there rather than what was on the stage.

**Craig:** Obviously it’s a no-no. And they all know it’s a no-no. But let’s back up for a second. You know what else is a no-no? Getting drunk in the middle of a Broadway musical.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** Can’t you wait? I mean, it’s not cheap. It’s not like you’re going to see a movie for 12 bucks. It’s a show. And it’s over and it’s gone forever. You can’t catch it again on HBO tomorrow.

**John:** Those were expensive seats. Those were like $150 seats.

**Craig:** Really expensive. They’re dead center fifth row. I don’t know if somebody gave them that or they’re just the kind of people that just don’t care.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They didn’t look like swells, you know?

**John:** No. I think they were just douchebags. Douchebags with some money.

**Craig:** Douchebags. That’s what he kept brining was beer, I think, so they were drinking beer.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Something, also, don’t drink beer in the middle of a show. They shouldn’t allow that at the theater.

**John:** They should stop the bar during the show.

**Craig:** They should stop the bar during the show.

**John:** I think that will be discussed.

**Craig:** It’s not like a ballgame.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** In fact, and then they stop beer at the ballgame after the seventh inning so that people don’t beat each other up in the parking lot the way they used to when I was a kid.

**John:** Oh, back in the day.

**Craig:** Back in the day.

**John:** So, no blows were thrown at Big Fish, even though I sort of wanted to get hit. What I recognized, and I ended up apologizing to the theater manager because he came over to see what was going on.

**Craig:** I saw that, yeah.

**John:** And so the usher had recognized that she was taking photos but couldn’t figure out which one it was. And because she was in the middle of the row they couldn’t pull her out.

**Craig:** There was no way to get to her, right, without stopping the show. It’s a really tough spot to be in in theater maintenance.

**John:** Yeah. And so then I sort of was putting him in a bad spot because he knew who I was, the theater manager knew who I was, and if it had come to blows then it would have been a terrible situation for him and for everybody involved.

**Craig:** It would have been bad. Plus, also, I find it interesting that your wish was not to beat him up but rather for him to beat you up. [laughs] That was your fervent wish.

**John:** Yeah, I kind of wanted to get hit.

**Craig:** “I was so angry I wanted him to beat me up.”

**John:** It’s odd. It tells a lot about me.

**Craig:** All right. Now let’s get into your real problems.

**John:** My real issue right now at this moment is for the first time in nine years I’m basically done writing Big Fish and it’s been a very long haul. And literally today I’m turning in the last two pages of like small corrections to the show that’s on, because we have to freeze at a certain point so that next week we are running the exact same show the whole week.

**Craig:** One week prior to your official opening.

**John:** Because critics actually come this next week. The critics don’t come to opening night. Critics come the week —

**Craig:** Of course, so they have time to write their nonsense.

**John:** So that… [laughs]

**Craig:** Sorry, don’t take that out on John.

**John:** That was Craig Mazin who said that.

**Craig:** That’s Craig Mazin. I believe that it’s all nonsense. I’ve already decided the show is good. Who needs to know what you think.

**John:** Craig Mazin has rendered his opinion. So, it’s this weird feeling of — it’s like the end of college to a degree, where you’re packing up your room and you’re like, “Oh my god, I’m so sad to leave all these people.” But it’s also weirdly like dropping your kid off at college, because it will still be running there and I will get on a plane the day after opening and fly back to Los Angeles and it will keep going without me.

**Craig:** Right. Night after night without you.

**John:** Which is a strange thing for me to feel.

**Craig:** Very bizarre. But the strangest thing I would imagine is just that feeling that we all get when it’s over.

**John:** So let’s talk about like when it’s over, because when I was first writing scripts my ritual when I would finish a draft and be done with that — I think I’ve told this on the show — I would treat myself and I would let myself go to Panda Express at Century City and spend the $10 to get like the extra — including egg roll.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Which was like a lot of money for me to spend back then. And that was my ritual for the end of a draft. But it’s a different thing when a movie is finished. When like production has stopped, or really this is like picture lock essentially where there’s no more creative changes you can make. You can just tweak lights on things. It’s a strange thing when that huge portion of your life is just in the rearview mirror.

**Craig:** Right. I know. There’s a bunch of sadnesses that occur and a bunch of anxieties that occur along the way. Sometimes when we’re writing in a very childish way we think, “Oh, this is the worst of times.” But it’s certainly not. It’s actually the best of times.

When you’re done writing something and they say, okay, now we’re going to shoot it or we’re going to mount it as a production there is a certain death that occurs. Now, it’s the death of letting go of an enormous amount of control and getting into the world of sharing with everyone. And so whether you have your director and your choreography, or you’re now on set and the director is directing, or you’re the director, and that’s rough.

But I find actually that the period you’re in right now is the roughest of them all. It’s the period where you’ve lost all control because it’s done. You can’t change it anymore. This is picture lock in film. It’s show freeze on Broadway. But the accountability has yet to come.

**John:** Yes!

**Craig:** It’s a very scary time. So, I remember I was talking with Todd Phillips and he said the only thing he thinks about once that happens is how can I jump ahead in time to after the movie has come out, done what’s it done, and then gone. That’s what I want to get to.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because that’s the time when you go, “Ah…” I’m not talking, because look, here’s what’s coming up. You’ve got a ton of press you’re going to have to do. You’re going to have the hullabaloo and the reporting and the critics and the business. And the this, and the that, and the finance, and the crowds. And all of that is what people dream about when they’re kids and you get there and you realize, that’s the worst, worst of it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You just want that to be done. So, really what I guess I should say to you is in four months I think you’ll be there.

**John:** Yeah, I think so. And four months, time will pass. If we’re still running and award stuff is coming up, then I’ll have to sort of reengage with it. I think —

**Craig:** But that will be like dessert. That’s fine.

**John:** It’ll be dessert. It’ll be fine. It should be good stuff.

What is exciting about this time right now is I suddenly have so much free brain space where like I don’t have to keep running the show over and over and over in my head. Because really for the last nine years, sometimes intensely, and sometimes less intensely, I’ve had the Bloom family and the Bloom family house in my head. And I had to keep it running in sort of a continuous loop so that that reality sort of exists.

And I won’t have to do that. And so all of the brain cycles that are taking to keep that alternate reality existing I can free up to do other stuff.

Then comes the sort of paradox of choice. There’s a lot of things I could write. And I have to decide what I want to write.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** And so, Craig, if you would permit me, I’m going to actually talk through some of the things I’m thinking about writing in a general sense.

**Craig:** And then can I say what I think you should do?

**John:** Yes!

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** All right. So, let me talk you through the possibilities of what I’d be writing in the next six months. So, there is a book adaptation of a book that hasn’t come out yet. It’s a YA title that could potentially be huge. It could be like a big breakout title.

**Craig:** Hunger Games-y kind of thing?

**John:** Yes. As I’ve talked before, I’m not sure if I was officially offered the Hunger Games, but I did pass on it because like, “No, I don’t want to see a movie about kids killing each other.”

**Craig:** Uh…

**John:** I was wrong.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, I would have totally done that. I like those books.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You should ask me about these things on the podcast before you make that decision.

**John:** Well, I should have asked you. This was a good couple years ago. Time machine.

**Craig:** Yeah, time machine.

**John:** And I wrote The Hunger Games. So, there’s this big YA title. And it might happen, it might not happen. So, it’s one of those situations where it could come together or it could not come together. I really like the project. But, it’s another book adaptation, so it’s not wholly mine. There’s a possibility.

There is an adaptation of another existing property that has — it’s hard for me to describe in — it’s an existing IP property that’s not a book that could be adapted and could be a thing. I have less of a clear idea right now what it is as a movie. And I also can already recognize all of the obstacles in its way of getting it to be a movie.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** And so it’s people I would love to work with. It’s a question of whether we could get the everything of it to work.

**Craig:** Understood. Got it. Okay. That’s option two.

**John:** That’s option two. Option three is to buckle down and write the thing for myself to direct in 2014.

**Craig:** Got it.

**John:** So, this would be a follow up to The Nines. Not related to The Nines at all, but with many familiar faces of people who I love who I’ve worked with before. So, that is —

**Craig:** That’s option three.

**John:** A third, option three.

**Craig:** Option for?

**John:** Option four — I would say those are the only strong contender writing projects for me. I have a lot of other stuff.

**Craig:** Stuff, right.

**John:** And so there’s a lot of app stuff that’s going on which I’ve been able to keep going on in a better way. There are some physical goods that we’re talking about making late this year which would also be fun and exciting.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** But writing wise, those three are the top contenders.

**Craig:** I have my strong feeling —

**John:** Life Coach, Craig Mazin, talk to me.

**Craig:** I have a strong feeling. Let’s get rid of option number two because it sounds like there’s trouble involved in option number two. And the trouble — the one thing you don’t need right now is trouble. You’ve had a lot of trouble. Not bad trouble, but it’s been a war to mount a musical. So, what I’m thinking is I’m always looking to kind of like rotate the fields, rotate the crops, right?

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** You plant corn, you plant wheat. Da, da, da. Then you go pot.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** And then do pod peas. Because you’ve just done this, and because this is such an expression of what you wanted to do, and it was really the will to power of John August and Andrew Lippa, my feeling is your thing that you want to direct for you, you can do that, and you’re going to do that, but why not have a nice almost — how should I put it — let yourself be carried along a little bit by something that’s a little easier.

Give yourself a nice easy thing to do. It’s an adaptation. It’s a book. There’s a narrative. There’s stuff there. Maybe take a warm bath of a project for a little bit, you know what I mean?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Make a little money. Chill out. Don’t feel like your life blood must be squeezed out of you for this thing to work, because that’s what a movie is, right?

**John:** That it is.

**Craig:** And you want to make your own thing. So, you’ve been doing that. You’ve been kind of squeezing your life blood out into something. Maybe you just eat the bag of Funyuns instead of something a little more challenging.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Then you can have your sushi. So, my advice is option number one just for mental —

**John:** Yeah, okay, you make good points there. Some of those which I’ll parse out. Making some money would be a really good idea.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Just because I’ve been in this world for so long and have passed on other writing things that would pay me money, which would be a lovely thing to have is a little bit of money.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s something simpler that I can invest all of my words in but not have to invest my heart and soul and self-esteem into would be probably a very useful choice. And something shorter. Something shorter and faster because what makes me nervous about immediately going into the directing project is I know that’s a marathon.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And just finishing, I call this a migration, it’s more than even a marathon. I’ve just been walking for so long that I should probably focus on something small. There’s even like a short film that I was thinking about going off and directing just to sort of stretch those muscles but not, you know.

**Craig:** I think varying things as much as possible helps us stay excited.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know, you and are married men. We’re married to one person. So, we don’t have that excitement.

**John:** People are going to be so confused that we’re married to the same girl. [laughs]

**Craig:** We’re married to one, yeah, to one guy and girl. But, you know, we don’t have the excitement of, you know, there’s the new love excitement. We get our new love excitement from what we’re doing, from what we’re working on. And I do feel it all the time. And I find that if I’m doing three of the same kind of things in a row it just gets diminished. If I’m doing three of the same efforts, three of the same lengths. Anything that’s the same, I start to feel… — I mean, listen, I got stuck doing spoof movies for a long time. I loved doing the first one. The second one I was like, “Okay…”

But, you know, and then by the time I got to the third one I was just on fumes.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I had lost sort of any passion. It’s just samey, samey, samey. And it was also the same length, and it was the same amount of effort, and it was the same people.

So, I go for different every time. So, I say change it up.

**John:** That does sound like a good idea. So, on the writing musicals side, there are two projects that are coming, and some of it I do kind of need to start because this was nine years for Big Fish. I think five years is sort of the minimum I’ve seen that a musical actually really comes together. So, if I wait too long I can’t start on that. But I am choosing things that are — I don’t have to drive everything along which could be a useful thing, too.

**Craig:** Yes. Very much so. It takes a lot out of you. People — this is their lives. You know, musical theater, there are people that just mount these productions and they just do it. And you look at Sondheim and you look at Andrew Lloyd Webber and you think, okay, well that’s all they do. They don’t write movies. They don’t direct things. They don’t do podcasts.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** You know, I’m not even sure they have kids.

**John:** Yeah, most of them don’t.

**Craig:** Yeah. This is it. This is what they do. And you can’t keep that kind of pace with them, nor do you have to. It’s not what it’s about anyway.

**John:** Yeah, it’s not a race.

**Craig:** It’s not a race. I know you keep telling yourself that because it’s true. It’s true. It’s not.

So, anyway, I say option number one. Whoever is producing option number one you may send your check to me. Oh, I’m going to move the thing. Yeah, I want money. The point is I deserve money every time you make money.

**John:** [laughs] As life coach and adviser.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Let’s wrap this up. That was very helpful.

**Craig:** Great. I’m glad I could help.

**John:** So, I have a One Cool Thing this week which is this very cool video on Vimeo. It’s called Box. And in Big Fish we use projections to sort of change our set around. And the projections were incredibly difficult to get working right, but are incredibly rewarding in the actual presentation we’re doing.

**Craig:** They’re very cool. Yeah.

**John:** This video that I saw called Box uses projections but in a very clever and innovative way. So, projections are happening onto this white surface, but that white surface is mounted on a mechanical arm that is robotically controlled and precisely robotically controlled. And so the projections know exactly where it is in space and time. And because it can match it up it can do some really amazing things.

And there’s a guy who looks like he’s actually pushing the thing around, but of course he’s actually just — he’s a dancer who carefully makes it look.

**Craig:** Got it.

**John:** But it creates the illusion of three dimensions and impossible things through really, really good projections. So, I’ve learned so much about projection in this, in making Big Fish. This has me really excited about the possibilities of what projection can do next to create space. Something that you’re experiencing live and in person in front of you.

So, it’s not post-production. It’s projections that are happening right there in space and time.

**Craig:** That’s interesting. I’d like to — I’m going to see that.

**John:** A movie that did it actually really well this last time was Oblivion. Did you ever see Oblivion?

**Craig:** I didn’t see Oblivion.

**John:** I didn’t love the movie but I did love some of the environments that they created in it. And one of them is this house that the Tom Cruise character is in. It’s sort of this lookout post. And it’s sort of like the Chemosphere, that sort of famous house in Los Angeles that’s round, all glass on all sides. And it’s beautiful every way that you look.

And so I assumed originally that they shot that with the normal green screens and then they just stripped in the sky afterwards. But then I read the American Cinematography article and they actually did it all with projections. And so literally if you were standing on that set it looked like you saw the sky around you at all times.

**Craig:** Wow. Cool.

**John:** And because they could do it that way they had this freedom of being able to look in any direction and have it make sense. And they can essentially light with the sky outside which was brilliant.

**Craig:** It’s kind of a return to the old school way of doing things.

**John:** Absolutely. It was false sun, but it was terrific. It was exactly, I think, the right way to do this movie. And with the prep they were able to sort of, you know, they color the sky in the certain way and they could animate the clouds in a certain way. That was really, really rewarding for that movie.

So, I recommend Box as not only sort of something that’s really cool now but as inspiration for other great filmmaking techniques.

**Craig:** I have to say that I love it. I kind of want projection and rear screen projection and all that stuff to come back. It used to be so clunky, obviously, but now if they’re getting it done and making it awesome. I hate green screen. I hate it. I mean, it’s useful but —

**John:** Everyone hates green screen. There’s not an actor or director. No one on earth other than people who make their living in post-production really like green screen because it’s so hard to know what a moment feels like.

**Craig:** There’s a sequence at the end of Hangover III where John Goodman has met up with the guys on this little cliff overlooking Las Vegas. They’re out in the dessert and it’s basically dawn. And it’s really hard to shoot at dawn, because you get about 10 usable minutes of dawn.

And to shoot this scene with all these characters, I mean, first of all it was a long scene. It was like six pages. And everybody was talking.

**John:** There are like 12 people in that scene, too, so any kind of coverage is going to kill you.

**Craig:** Exactly. It’s crazy, right? But we wanted dawn. Todd and our DP, Larry Sher, came up with this plan and basically it was that we would shoot at dusk for dawn. We would shoot all night. And then we would shoot dawn for dawn. And once the sun got out of the way, the green screens went up. So, we shot plates. So, so much of that stuff is actually green screen. A bunch of it is live and a bunch of it is green screen.

And in the end, the green screen is remarkable. You just don’t know that any of it is green screen. But, shooting at three in the morning with people floating in front of space-less green is so disorienting. It is so hard to believe what you’re seeing because the frame has no context. You know you’re framed correctly because you have your references. It’s just psychologically really difficult.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Everyone, you’re right, everyone hates it. It’s a tough thing to do. The only area where it makes life wonderful is when you’re shooting cars because inside a car is just like — driving the process car up and down the road is the worst.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Can’t talk to — and then it’s easier. You can talk to the actors. You can adjust and all the rest.

Well, that’s very cool. And Big Fish did have some terrific projections. Really cools stuff. I love the way that the sort of wood slats moved up and around. I mean, technically it’s a remarkable production.

**John:** Yes, it was very, very difficult. But one of the goals behind it, and Julian Crouch was our designer. And he brought us these reference photos of this old barn he’d found. And like the sun was blasting through this old barn and he’s like, “Well that’s terrific.” So it makes this really warm thing. But then by projecting onto it we can create the other spaces we need to create.

And the challenge has always been when to do enough and not do too much. And we’ve had to sort of be very careful about, you know, when you have those tool boxes where you can do anything, the expectation to do everything.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And we had to stop that. An example would be in the second act there’s a moment where we go to visit this woman who has a house. And we illustrate sort of — there’s a very specific plan around how we animate in the other houses and the trees. That was terrific. But, I had to say like the clouds can’t move. Because the clouds were originally moving and they were so beautiful that I could not pay any attention to the scene because the clouds were incredibly beautiful.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, we had to sort of take it back a step so that you see that. Yet, later in that scene there’s an animation that shows time passing, and so this tree that’s a certain size grows to a full size.

**Craig:** Yes. And everybody goes, “Ooh-ah,” when it happens.

**John:** Yeah. There’s a gasp.

**Craig:** Which is funny because it’s the animation you could see on like a Saturday morning show.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** But there’s something about being in the theater where like, “Oh my god! Look at that!”

**John:** It’s absolutely true.

**Craig:** Yeah. People really liked it.

**John:** That’s been a rewarding scene to see.

**Craig:** Well, you know, I had a One Cool Thing. I’m going to call an audible and change it. Because in a larger sense my One Cool Thing is Big Fish, but really specifically there’s one guy in the show that listens to our podcast, Ryan Andes.

**John:** He’s the best. I gave Ryan Andes a giant hug yesterday because he literally saved — he emotionally saved my life at a very difficult juncture.

**Craig:** He did?

**John:** Yeah. We put in a change yesterday that would not have worked if he had not just been a grounded, amazing person.

**Craig:** Really?

**John:** And he got two big hugs because I wouldn’t be here without him.

**Craig:** Wow, well you’ll have to tell me what the changes are.

**John:** After the show I’ll tell you what the changes were.

**Craig:** So, Ryan Andes plays Karl the Giant.

**John:** Yeah, Karl with a K. You said C in the tweet.

**Craig:** Oh, I did?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Sorry.

**John:** Because Cs aren’t funny. Ks are funny.

**Craig:** But I didn’t know if he was an American. He seemed American and not a German Karl.

**John:** But a giant should always be a K.

**Craig:** Perhaps a giant should always be, yeah. He’s great in the show. He’s my favorite character in the show, not including the main character, but of all the menagerie of larger than life characters in the show he’s my favorite.

He’s sweet. He’s adorable. And he was the guy who says the thing that finally got me to tear up in the show, that finally squeezed tears out of my miserable dark heart, full of umbrage. Roiling pit of resentment.

**John:** Karl made Craig cry.

**Craig:** Yes, Karl was really good. And it turns out, so I’m walking out I’m like, god, that Karl, I told you , is the one who made me cry. And you’re like, “Well, you know, he listens to the podcast.”

And I’m like no way! So, we walk outside, you know, the little stage exit where all the people are there to get their autographs and so forth and there’s Karl. And Karl seemed more excited to meet me, [laughs], and I just thought it was like you have to stop, it’s freaking me out. It’s weird. All I did was sit there and watch it. Karl I loved. He was such a great guy.

Ryan Andes is such a great guy. And he’s so good in the show. Kids will love him.

**John:** Kids do love him.

**Craig:** Everyone is going to want a Karl doll.

**John:** That’s what we need to sell. We’re still working on our merch, so maybe we’ll get a —

**Craig:** Karl doll obviously in the squirrel fur suit.

**John:** Exactly. Yeah, Karl has a couple different wardrobe changes, but it really is original.

**Craig:** Yeah. You want to go for the long hair, giant face, giant beard, crazy Karl.

**John:** Crazy Karl.

**Craig:** Cave Karl.

**John:** Cave Karl is what you want.

**Craig:** Cave Karl is the toy.

**John:** He actually sort of has a Captain Caveman feel. Captain Caveman, the animated character, and just stretched him to —

**Craig:** Elongated. Correct. He was great and he’s such a good guy. So, Ryan, thank you for listening all this time. You were terrific. I was far more excited to meet you than you were to meet me, I promise you.

**John:** Hooray. Standard housekeeping. Here’s stuff at the end. If you are listening to us on a device, you probably subscribe to us through iTunes, but if you didn’t you should subscribe to us through iTunes. Just search for Scriptnotes and we’re there. And we love comments. So, if you want to leave a comment that’s great.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** On iTunes you will see the most recent 20 episodes. If you wanted to go back into the archives, those are available. So, at johnaugust.com/scriptnotes you will see all 111 episodes are available there. The most recent 20 are free for anybody.

**Craig:** Free.

**John:** Free. The further back episodes you can subscribe. It’s $1.99 a month for all you can eat, all the episodes.

**Craig:** Forever.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Forever! Two bucks a month.

**John:** Two bucks a month.

**Craig:** Come on!

**John:** You can save a child’s life or you could listen to Craig… [laughs]

**Craig:** You actually can’t save a child’s life on $2 a month.

**John:** No, you really can’t. You can’t do anything

**Craig:** I feel like people lie about that.

**John:** I don’t know. Maybe you could blow a kid’s nose for $2 a month.

**Craig:** For $2 a month you could probably send them $1 month. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] So, that’s an option if you want to listen to those old episodes.

**Craig:** And when we do our next podcast together will you be back in Los Angeles?

**John:** Wow, I think I might be. This is a Friday. I’m bad at time math. No, I think we’re going to do one more where I’m on Skype.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** I should also say if you would like all of those episodes in one handy package…

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** …we are making more of those USB drives that have all 100 of our first episodes.

**Craig:** That’s the way to go.

**John:** That’s a simple way to go.

**Craig:** It’s like buying the first few seasons of Breaking Bad. And then we’ll do another thumb drive for the second 100. Then we’ll do some mega — by the time we get to 500, it’ll just be brain drive.

**John:** Totally. There won’t be USB drives anymore.

**Craig:** You know, brain drive is right up there with flying car. We’re going to keep talking about piping things directly into people’s brains and flying cars, neither will happen.

**John:** I think there will be some sort of embeddable device that lets you reference things.

**Craig:** Not going to happen.

**John:** Because they already have those things where you can see on your tongue. They can map a camera to your tongue. And so like blind people can actually use a video camera to see which is nutso. So, there’s going to be ways to —

**Craig:** Wait a second. You mean they can…?

**John:** So, essentially they put a little sensor on your tongue, this little white square strip.

**Craig:** So, it’s pushing on your tongue.

**John:** No, it’s actually electrically —

**Craig:** Sending an image. To what?

**John:** To the receptors on your tongue. And your tongue is actually sensitive enough that it starts to be able to see, just a black and white image, but like blind people can navigate with these little video cameras and that could be next week’s One Cool Thing. We’ll send you the link.

**Craig:** Does it work with porn? [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] That would be so awesome. The soldier is like, “I can finally watch porn!”

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly.

**John:** It would be like one of those terrible GIF kind of porn things. But, yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, you know, any technology, within minutes, porn.

**John:** It would seem like magic. Any technology —

**Craig:** Adam Carolla once said, it was so funny, he said, “Just the fact within 15 minutes of something new being invested, some new physical thing being invented, within 15 minutes someone is putting it up their butt.” [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Very likely.

**Craig:** I think he’s right.

**John:** Yeah. And that is or show this week. So, if you have a question for me or Craig, you can write into ask@johnaugust.com and we occasionally go through those questions and try to answer them on the air. You can talk to Craig @clmazin.

**Craig:** @clmazin.

**John:** On Twitter. I am @johnaugust. And, Craig, thank you for coming to New York.

**Craig:** Thank you for having me. Great show. And I’ll see you on Skype.

**John:** Awesome. Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [Lobot](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lobot)
* LA Times on the [Gamechanger Film Fund](http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-film-fund-gamechanger-female-directors-20130926,0,4152777,full.story)
* LA Times on [LA’s new Film Czar](http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-garcetti-appoints-sherak-film-czar-20130926,0,6798783.story)
* [Patti Lupone stops the show to yell at a photographer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WruzPfJ9Rys) on YouTube
* [Box](http://www.botndolly.com/box) by Bot & Dolly
* [Rear projection effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rear_projection_effect) on Wikipedia
* Big Fish production designer [Julian Crouch](http://juliancrouch.com/portfolio/Welcome.html)
* Big Fish’s [Ryan Andes](http://ryanandes.com/), and [on Twitter @AndesRyan](https://twitter.com/AndesRyan)
* [Blind soldier uses tongue device to ‘see’](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/mar/15/blind-soldier-tongue-sight) at The Guardian
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Matthew Chilelli