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The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

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

Craig: I’m 86% John.

John: Oh, good. I’m 86% as well.

Craig: No, no. You told me right before we started that you were 85%.

John: All right. I increased one percent in just…

Craig: I’m sorry, did I say 86? I meant 87. I’m 87%.

John: So I feel like most of my viral sinusitis is gone and passed. My voice is much, much better. There’s something maybe moving into my lungs. I do worry that I’m going to get that sort of thing that gets in your lungs for a long time and you finally have to take a Z-Pak to kill it. But then you take an antibiotic, and you don’t really want to take antibiotics because they’re really not good for you, but we’ll see what happens.

Because I have that slight cough. It’s like if I were a character in a movie and this was a first act and you heard that cough you might say like, “Oh, he’s not going to make it to the third act.”

Craig: Right. This is the beginning of Camille.

John: Yeah. But, it may be nothing. So, I may just be imagining this. It could be a tough of allergies.

Craig: No, no. It’s probably terminal.

John: Yeah. It might be terminal.

Craig: No, I’m pretty sure it’s terminal.

John: If this is our last podcast, Craig, let’s make it our best.

Craig: Oh, no, no, no, this won’t be the last one. We have a year of podcasts of your slowly withering. [laughs] The last one will be at your hospital bed.

John: So who are you going to get to replace me on the podcast after I die?

Craig: Ah, we’re currently, the guys who make your apps are currently going to — we’re replacing you, John, with an app.

John: I like it.

Craig: Yeah.

John: So it will be all my little ticks, and all my little hums and haws.

Craig: Turns out you’re very programmable.

John: I like it. And if need to do a live one, there’s actually a lot of people who look quite a bit like me. So you’ll just stick somebody up there and they’ll buy it.

Craig: Oh for sure.

John: They’ll buy anything.

Craig: No, we’re not going to lie. We’re not going to say that you’re… — We’re just going to say that this is basically John 2.0. It’s an improved John August. It’s all the things you liked about John but none of the many, many things you hated. [laughs] They’re all gone. Like the face that he was organic. Gone.

John: Done.

Craig: Yeah, done.

John: We have one very small bit of follow up this week. Several listeners wrote in, British listeners wrote in, to say that when I had discussed the th-fronting which is that habit we hear in British accents, that I had said is relatively new. And they said, “You’re completely absurd. It’s been going on for 300 years. You’re an idiot, basically.”

So I wanted to clarify that. It is a thing that has happened for a long time. What linguists and people who research language have noticed is that it’s spreading in a way that is through different classes that is new and there are people who didn’t used to have that accent now seem to have that accent. And that’s what’s new about it.

So it’s like, it’s almost like how the Valley Girls speak spread suddenly. This has been spreading in ways that are not necessarily unexpected but are new.

Craig: Well you see it here, too. There’s kind of a running joke on the internet about the fact that in many movies where Will Smith has to save the earth, and there have been a number of them…

John: [laughs]

Craig: …he often refers to the earth as “the earf.” And, yeah, so any time that pops up they’ll talk about how Will Smith has to save the earf.

The one that gets me, the new one, among — it seems like it is metastasizing among young women in the United States…

John: I know what it’s going to be.

Craig: Tell me.

John: Vocal fry.

Craig: Vocal fry. Have we talked about this before?

John: We haven’t. But I’m fascinated by it, too.

Craig: You know, my prior assistant who is lovely had one of the most amazing vocal fries. I had no idea what it was. I didn’t know that there was even a name for it until I read about it. And then I brought her on, I’m like, “Listen, I know what to call that thing that you do. I now have a word for it.”

John: I can’t actually do it. Can you?

Craig: Yeah. Here it is. So this is the vocal fry: Ummmm, you knowwww, it’s when you talk like thissss. And that weird breaking up kind of, you know, it’s like the lady that holds the, what is it, the thermal detonator? It’s thermal detonator voice, you know? [vocal fry] Someone who loves you.

John: So it’s very deep back in your throat and it’s making your vocal cords just sort of like sizzle there a little bit, I guess, just…

Craig: Yeah, you’re basically modulating the air as it goes through.

John: [vocal fry] Uhhhhh.

Craig: And I guess it’s more common… — Yeah, you kind of did it there.

John: [vocal fry] Oh, yeahhhh, it’s, uhhhhh.

Craig: That’s it. That’s it. That’s it.

John: But it’s often done at the end of sentences to sort of like, to keep the momentum alive in a sentence.

Craig: Right.

John: Instead of an “um,” you do an “uhhhh.”

Craig: Yes. For instance, if I were to respond to you in the style of a 15-year-old I would say, “Riiigggghhhhttttttt.” Well what is that? Stop it. I mean, that’s even worse than up-talking as far as I’m concerned, which probably was prior to vocal fry the worst thing ever.

John: One of the articles that was talking about the vocal fry tried to pin it on Britney Spears, because Britney Spears has a fairly limited singing range. And so her lower notes are really just vocal fries. And that becomes sort of her little trademark and sort of how you can recognize Britney Spears singing. And that may have been one of the things that sort of catalyzed the resurgence. But I’m sure it was just a bunch of girls who started doing it and just spread and then they were on the Disney Channel and then it just….

Craig: Yeah. I think history has shown us that adolescent girls are the most rapid conductor of sort of mass hysteria social phenomenon, going back to Salem.

John: [laughs] I was just going to say Salem. Yes.

Craig: They’re just really good at it. They’re just really good at getting together and just deciding en masse, “We’re going to start doing something or believing in something.”

John: [vocal fry] “Really Proctorrrrrrr.”

Craig: Rrrrrrrrrr. You know, yeah. “She went out and kissed the devil under his tailllllll.” Yeah. It’s good stuff.

John: Good stuff.

Craig: Thanks girls.

John: Moving on to actual news that I didn’t know about until you told me about it, and sort of recapped right before the podcast, which I think is fascinating. So, tell our audience this news of Hayden Christensen and his lawsuit.

Craig: Right. So normally when writers sue companies, two things are clear: One, they’re going to lose, and two, they’re not actors. Neither is true in this case. So, very strange kind of story.

Hayden Christensen who played Anakin Skywalker, [vocal fry] Anakinnnn Skywalker. He and his brother came up with an idea for a television show. And they went and they pitched it to USA Television, to an executive of USA Network. And the idea of the show was basically that there was a doctor and he gets expelled from the medical community for treating patients who can’t pay, so he’s sort of a do-good noble guy. He moves to Malibu and becomes a house doctor for the rich and famous.

And the executive heard and said, “Oh, I really like that idea. That’s really cool.” They had a couple of emails back and forth and then apparently that was the end of that. There was no — they never got as far as, “All right, let’s pay you money and let’s figure this out.” It died essentially.

About, I guess it was four years later, USA comes out with a show called Royal Pains, which is a very similar concept. The concept is that there was a guy, I think it was just, the only difference was it was in Florida. But basically it was a doctor who gets booted out of medicine for being a super nice guy and becomes a house-calling doctor for the rich and famous.

Okay. So Hayden Christensen and his brother sue. USA’s defense, as is almost always the case in things like this is, “Hey, ideas aren’t” — and we say this all the time on the podcast — “Ideas are not property. You cannot own an idea. It’s not copyright-able. And because it’s not copyright-able, this whole thing should be tossed out.” And apparently the court, the initial federal court agreed and said, “Yup, summarily dismissed.”

So Hayden and his brother turn around and appeal. They appeal to the circuit court and a judgment was handed down yesterday that was actually quite interesting. Basically they overturned that summary dismissal or the dismissal and said, look, it doesn’t appear like Hayden Christensen and his brother are arguing that USA stole their work, because they didn’t use any of it other than the idea, even if they “used” it at all. What the Christensen’s are arguing is, “Hey, there’s something called an implied contract. If I come in and I pitch you an idea for a show, it is implied that if you use that idea, even though that idea isn’t copyright-able property, it is implied that you will pay me for that idea.”

I don’t go in there and pitch you things with the understanding that you could use that idea without paying me. And you understand that, and I understand that. So what the appellate court basically said is, “Eh, you can’t actually just dismiss this case. You have to fight it out in court.” Now, interesting, the judge didn’t say, “And by the way, having reviewed things I’ve decided that there was an implied contract.” It’s actually kind of, there a series of tests to prove that there was an implied contract. And it gets kind of complicated because part of the question is does New York law or California law apply?

All that aside, John, here’s what’s relevant. I suspect that coming off of this what’s going to happen for those of us who work in the business of selling stuff is that when we go in now to pitch things we’re going to have to sign something.

John: Or sign something that says there is no implied contract and these are all an exchange of — this is a conversation but there’s no implied contract for work being solicited.

Craig: Yeah. I have a feeling that it will go even further than that. I have a feeling that the paper will say what you just said, and also remind all parties involved that ideas are not own-able and so forth. And that a similar idea may come out of that company later, there may exist a similar idea at the company, and that in and of itself is not property and you can’t sue over it. And once more, we are not implying, as you said, we are certainly not implying by listening to your pitch that there might be employment out of it, or even out of that idea.

Will this have a real impact on the way we do business? I doubt it. I do think though it’s, well, a little bit. It’s actually kind of bad.

John: Yeah. I think it could set strange precedence for just being able to go in and talk to an executive about a property. Potential upsides I guess: You know one of the frustrating things that’s really developed in the last five, six, seven years is this idea of we have a general idea for something, or we have a piece of property, and we want like 12 writers to come in and pitch on it. That’s awful, and it happens way too much in that sort of sweepstakes pitching.

…Eh, that doesn’t actually change it at all.

Craig: I don’t think.

John: I’ve talked myself out of my idea.

Craig: Look, there are two areas where I think this is a problem for writers. One is that the kind of casual course of business that sometimes happens may be eliminated. It may be very difficult to sit down, have a drink with a guy at a bar, and then say, “By the way, I have an idea.” And for him to say, “I would love to hear that.” Because he doesn’t have his stupid paperwork with him and he doesn’t want to get involved in a lawsuit later on, you know? So that’s one issue. I just don’t like avenues being shut off.

But here’s the other one that people never talk about. I think a lot of times writers look at a story like this and they go, “Awesome. Two writers took on a company and beat ’em. Therefore I’m for it because I’m a writer and I’m on their side.” Here’s what is rarely taken into consideration: Somebody wrote Royal Pains.

John: Mm-hmm.

Craig: Who is also a writer, who I’m going to guess had nothing to do with the Christensen’s, never read their stuff, didn’t know anything about it. Happened to come up with a similar idea as happens. Worked really hard, wrote something, and now suddenly people are implying that it wasn’t original to them. And, you know, we can’t forget those writers, too. There are always two writers on either sides of these problems. So, I don’t like the idea of people be able to emerge years later.

I mean, you know Koppelman and Levien very famously had to deal with that with Rounders. There was a case, Grosso I think it was. Grosso vs. Miramax. Very similar case that got tossed. But, it’s a bummer, you know, it’s a bummer. So, I don’t really like this precedent. I think it’s just going to cause paperwork and limit our avenues of selling. But that’s me.

John: So the next step is that it’s going back to the original court that has to consider the case rather than just doing a summary dismissal.

Craig: It’s going to go back to a court. And it will, well, presuming that there isn’t a settlement. I mean, at this point now USA may opt to settle; then again, they may opt to actually get some sort of case law here, who knows. But it sounds like at least that’s the move — it’s going to go back. And then Hayden Christensen and his brother will have to prove that there was an implied contract as opposed to just sort of a not-contract.

John: Yeah. It’s a different avenue for suing. Because usually it’s a copyright infringement.

Craig: Right.

John: The only time I’ve been involved with these kind of cases I was a witness. And it was a ridiculous case, but the people ended up settling because it was going to be so expensive to litigate and it wasn’t a lot of money, they just settled it out.

Craig: That’s the dangerous part here is that essentially once you get, once the kind of “quick, make this go away” legal action is removed from your arsenal, you then have to start very seriously considering things like settling because it is, you know, it can be a bumpy ride. And you might lose.

John: I thought today we’d start by talking about endings, and let this be more of a craft episode, because a lot times as we start we start looking at writing screenplays, start writing TV pilots, it’s all about those first ten pages, about getting people hooked and getting people to know your world, getting people to love your characters. That’s not ultimately what they’re going to walk away from your movie with. They’re going to walk away from your movie with an ending.

And so I thought we would spend some time today talking about endings, and the characteristics of good endings, and the things you need to look for as a writer as you’re figuring out what your story is both way in advance and as you’re leading up to those last few pages.

Craig: Yeah. Ending are… — Like I think we had talked in a prior podcast about the bare minimums required to start beyond idea, main character. And for me, one of them is ending. I need to know how the movie ends, because essentially the process of the story is one that takes you from your key crucial first five pages to those key crucial last ten. Everything in between is informed by your beginning and your ending. Everything.

I’ve never understood people who write and have no idea how the movie’s going to end. That’s insane to me.

John: So, I would argue that a screenplay is essentially a contract between a writer and a reader, and same with a book, but we are talking about screenplays. And you are saying to the reader, “If you will give me your time and your attention, I will show you a world, I will tell you story, and it will get to a place that you will find satisfying. And it will surprise you, it will fulfill you. You will have enjoyed spending your time reading this script and seeing the potential in this movie.”

The ending is where you want to be lost. It’s the punch line, it’s the resolution, it’s the triumph. And so often it’s the last thing we actually really focus on.

Craig: Yeah.

John: So many writers, I think, spend all of their time working on those first ten pages, their first 30 pages, then sort of powering through the script. And those last five, ten pages are written in a panicked frenzy because they owe the script to somebody, or they just have to finish. And so those last ten pages are just banged out and they’re not executed with nearly the precision and nearly the detail of how the movie started.

Which is a shame because if you think about any movie that you see in the theater, hopefully you’re enjoying how it starts, hopefully you’re enjoying how the ride goes along, but your real impression of the movie was how it ended.

My impression of Silence of the Lambs, great movie all the way through, but I’m thinking about Jodie Foster in the basement and sort of what happens there.

Craig: Right.

John: As I look at more recent movies like Prometheus, I’m looking at the things I enjoyed along the way, but I’m also asking, “Did I enjoy where that movie took me to at the end?”

Craig: Yeah. I like what you say about contract, that’s exactly right. Because it’s understood that everything that you see is raveling or unraveling depending on your perspective towards this conclusion. The conclusion must be intentional. We always took about intention and specificity. The conclusion must, when you get to it, be satisfying in a way that makes you realize everything had to go like this. Not that it had to go like this, but to be satisfying it had to go like this.

That ultimately the choices that were made by the character and the people around the character led to this moment, this key moment. And I think we should talk about what makes an ending an ending, because it’s not just that it’s the thing that happens before credits roll. You know, I’ve always thought the ending of a movie is defined by your main character performing some act of faith. And there’s a decision and there’s a faith in that decision to do something. And that is connected — it always seems to me — it is connected through, all the way back to the beginning, in a very different way from what is there in the beginning.

That’s the point is there is an expression of faith in something that has changed. But there is a decision. There is a moment where that character does something that transcends and brings them out of what was so that hopefully by the end of the movie they are not the same person they were in the beginning.

John: Either they have literally gotten to the place that you have promised the audience that they’re going to get to. Like if you have set up a location that they’re going to get to. Is Dorothy going to get back to Kansas? Well, you could have ended the movie when she got to Oz, or when she got to the Emerald City because she was trying to get to the Emerald City, but her real goal was to get back to Oz, or to get back to Kansas. I’m confusing all my locations.

Dorothy wants to get back to Kansas. If the movie doesn’t get us back to Kansas, we’re going to be frustrated. If she gets back to Kansas and we’re there for 10 more minutes, we’re going to be frustrated. The movie has promised us that she will get back to Kansas, or I guess she could die trying. That’s a valid choice too.

Craig: I’d like to see that movie.

John: That’s her literal stated goal. That’s her want. And there’s also her need. And her need is to, I guess, come to appreciate the people that’s she’s with, to find some independence…

Craig: Well, but that’s what I’m talking about when I say that the character must have some faith and a choice, and a decision that’s different. In the beginning of the movie she leaves home. She runs away.

John: That’s right.

Craig: And at the end of the movie she has to have faith that by actually loving home, which she finally does now, she can return. And essentially you can look at the entire movie in a very simple way as somebody saying to a runaway on the street, “Trust me kid, if you want to go back home you can get back home. You just got to want to go back home. I know you ran away, you made a stand, you thought you were a grown up. The world is scary. It’s okay. You can go back home. They’ll take you back.”

That’s what the Wizard of Oz is. And the whole thing is a runaway story. And yet the ending… — It’s funny; a lot of people have always said, “Well, you know, the ending, it’s they’re mocking us. She just hands her the shoes. She could have given her the shoes and told her to click the heels in the beginning, we’d be done with this thing.”

But the point is then, okay, fine, maybe that’s a little clumsy, but really more to the point the ending is defined by faith and decision. And I think almost every movie, the wildest arrangement of movies, and look at Raiders of the Lost Ark. In the end he has faith. “Close your eyes, Marion.” That’s faith he didn’t he didn’t have in the beginning in something. It’s not always religious, you know.

The Ghostbusters decide, “We’re going to cross the streams.” [laughs] “We’re gonna have faith that we’re gonna do the thing we knew we weren’t going to do. Forget fear. Let’s just go for it. It’s the only way we can save the world. We might die in the process but we’re heroes now. We have faith in that.” I see it all the time. And I feel like when you’re crafting your ending and you’re trying to focus it through the lens of character as opposed to circumstance, finding that decision is such a big deal.

John: Yeah. The ending of your movie is very rarely going to be defeating the villain or finding the bomb. It’s going to be the character having achieved something that was difficult throughout the whole course of the movie. So, sometimes that’s expressed as what the character wanted. More often it’s expressed by what the character needed but didn’t realize he or she needed. And by the end of the movie they’re able to do something they were not able to do at the start of the movie, either literally, or because they’ve made emotional progress over the course of the movie that they can do something.

Craig: Right. That’s exactly right. And it’s a great way of thinking about, you know, sometimes we get lost in the plot jungle. And we look around and we think, “Well, this character could go anywhere and do anything.” Well, stop thinking about that and start thinking about what you want to say about life through your movie, because frankly there’s not much more reason to watch movies. [laughs] You know?

John: And we are talking about movies, not TV shows. And a movie is really a two-hour, 100-minute lens on one section of a character’s life, or one section of a cinematic world. And so you’re making very deliberate choices about how you’re starting. One of the first things we see, or how we meet those characters. You have to make just as deliberate choices about where you’re going to end. What’s the last thing that we’re going to take out of this world? And why are we cutting out this slice of everything that could happen to show us in this time?

Craig: Right.

John: And you will change your ending, just as you change your beginning. But you have to go in with a plan for where you think this is going to go to.

Craig: No question. I think a huge mistake to start writing… — And frankly if you’re writing and you don’t know how the movie ends, you’re writing the wrong beginning. Because to me, the whole point of the beginning is to be somehow poetically opposite the end. That’s the point. If you don’t know what you’re opposing here, I’m not really sure how you know what you’re supposed to be writing at all.

John: In one of our first screenwriting classes they forced us to write the first 30 pages and the last 10 pages, which seemed like a really brutal exercise, but was actually very illuminating because if you’ve written the first 30 and the last 10 you can write your whole movie because you know — you have to know everything that’s going to happen in there to get you to that last moment.

Craig: I love it.

John: And it makes you think very deliberately about what those last things are. And so I still try to write those last 10 pages pretty early on in the process while I still have enthusiasm about my movie, while I still love it, while I’m still excited about it. And so I’m not writing those last pages in a panic, with sort of coffee momentum. I’m writing them with craft, and with detail, and with precision.

And then I can write some of the middle stuff with some of that panic and looseness if I don’t have… — If I’ve lost some of my enthusiasm, I can muscle through some of the middle parts, but I don’t want to muscle through my ending. I want the ending to be something that’s precise and exactly what this movie wants to be.

Craig: You know, I have the kind of OCD need to write chronologically. I can’t skip around at all. But I won’t start writing until I know the ending. And what I mean by ending, I mean, I know what the character, what he thought in the beginning of the movie, what he thinks differently in the end. Why that difference is interesting. What decision he’s going to make, and then what action is he going to take that epitomizes his new state of mind.

When we start thinking about what should the ending be, I think sometimes writers think about how big should the explosion be, or which city should the aliens attack. And if you start thinking about what would be the best, most excruciating, difficult test of faith for my hero and his new outlook on life, or at least his new theoretical outlook on life.

And, you know, Pixar does this better than anybody, and they do so much better than everybody. And it’s funny, because I really start thinking about endings this way because of Pixar films. And I went, I remember I was watching Up. And they got to that point where he had — Carl had finally decided that kid was worth going back to save. You know, he brought the house right to where he said he would bring it, and no, he’s going to leave that and go back. And I like that but I thought, that’s not quite that difficult of a test. And then, of course, see Pixar knows that it wasn’t enough, that the real test to say “I have moved on” is to let that house go.

And they design their climax, they design the action of the climax in such a way to force Carl, the circumstances force Carl to let the house go to save the kid.

John: Yup.

Craig: And that’s the perfect example to me of how to think about writing a satisfying ending. That’s why that ending is satisfying. It’s not about the details. The details are as absurd as “man on airship with boy scout, flying, talking dogs, and a house tied to him.” No problem; you can make it work.

John: And example I can speak to very specifically is the movie Big Fish, which really follows two story lines, and the implied contract with the audience is you know the father is going to die. It would be a betrayal of the movie if the father suddenly pulled out of it and the father wasn’t going to die. We know from the start of the movie that the father is going to die.

The question of the movie is, “Will the father and son come to terms, will they reconcile before his death, and will this rift be amended?” And so quite early on I had to figure out like, well what is it that the son — the son is really the protagonist in the present day — what is it that the son can do at the end of the story that he couldn’t do at the start of the story? Well, the son has to tell the story of the father’s death. And so knowing, like, that’s going to be incredibly difficult, an emotionally trying thing to do, but I could see all that, I could feel that.

Knowing that that was the moment I was leading up to, well what is it that lets the son get to that point? And you’re really working backwards to what are the steps that are going to get me to that point. And so it’s hearing someone else tell one of the father’s stories, it’s Jenny Hill, that fills in this missing chapter and sort of why that chapter is missing. That backtracks into, “Well, how big is the fight that set up this disagreement?” “What are the conversations along the way?” Knowing I needed to lead up to that moment, knowing what that ending was was what let me track the present day storyline back to the beginning.

Craig: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. There was to be a connection between the beginning and the end. I am excited for the day that Identify Thief comes out, because I can sort of talk specifically about how that — that ending, the whole reason I wrote that movie, aside from liking it, was I thought I had a very interesting dilemma for the character at the end, and it was an interesting climax of decision. And the decision meant something. And it was interesting. And I like that. That to me — it’s all about the ending like that. So, looking forward to that one coming out. Hopefully people will like it.

John: This talk of endings reminds me of… — I met John Williams. He was at USC; the scoring stage is named the John Williams Scoring Stage. And when they were rededicating it John Williams was there, along with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and they were talking about the movies they worked on together.

And John Williams made this really great point, was that the music of a movie is the thing you take home with you, it’s like the goodie bag. It’s the one thing you as an audience member get to sort of recycle and play in your head is that last theme. So as I’m thinking about endings, that’s the same idea. What is that little melody? What is that moment that people are going to walk out of the theater with? And that’s — that’s your ending.

And we’ve both made movies where we’ve gone through testing, and you’ll see that the smallest change in the ending makes this huge difference in how people react to your movie.

Craig: Oh, for sure.

John: It’s that last little thing that they take with them.

Craig: Yeah. In fact, when people are testing movies that have sort of absurdly happy endings, you know, what you’d call an uplifting film, you almost to kind of discount the numbers. You’ll get a 98 and you’ll think, “Well, it’s not really a 98. At this point it doesn’t matter, it’s just that the ending was such a big thumbs up.”

But, you know, if you ask these people tomorrow or the next day would they pay to go see it, you might get a different answer. And similarly when you end on a bummer, or on a flat note, just like the air goes out of the theater, and people will struggle to explain why they did not like the movie when in fact they just didn’t like the ending.

John: But I want to make sure for people who are listening, we are not arguing for happy endings.

Craig: No.

John: We’re not arguing that every movie needs to have a happy ending. It needs to have a satisfying ending that matches the movie that you’ve given them up to that point.

Craig: Yes.

John: Is it one that tracks with the characters along the way? So it doesn’t mean the character has to win. The character can die at the end, that’s absolutely fine, as long as the death is meaningful in the context of the movie that you’ve shown us.

Craig: Yeah. And maybe just a little bit of hope.

John: Yeah.

Craig: You know, I mean, I always thought it was such a great choice by Clint Eastwood, the ending shot of Unforgiven, which really ends on a downer. I mean, this man struggled his whole life, most of his adult life, to be a good person when inside in fact he was awful. And in a moment of explosion at the end truly reveals the devil inside, kills everybody. We kind of sickly root for it. And then he goes back home. And it basically says he never, you know, he just died alone.

And yet there’s something nice about the image because while that’s rolling, and we just dealt with all of that, the final images of him alone on his farm, putting some flowers down — I think by the grave of his dead wife, who we understand from the scroll is somebody that he always, he truly loved and was good to, so that there is a bit of hope there. You know?

John: Let’s get to our question today because we had a writer write in. His name is Malcolm. “I’ve heard two separate execs say that Abraham Lincoln, along with everything else, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, along with everything else is proof that the box office is dying.

“Yes, we know it is gradually shrinking as there are other forms of entertainment, but execs seem incapable of believing that they are making moves that people want to see. When Safe House doubles the expectations for opening weekend no one thinks, ‘Hmm, people must really want to see s[tuff] like that.’ They identify Avengers and Hunger Games’ success as being mostly about the brand as opposed to about being the films that people wanted to see. So, I worry that the reaction is that the movie business reacts…”

Wow, this is not the best sentence, Malcolm. “I worry that the reaction is that the movie business reacts by saying a version of, ‘We can only do Avengers films,’ and contracts faster than it needs to.'”

Craig: Well, that’s a good worry. I mean, I guess the first thing is are those people right, and I don’t think they are. I mean, there’s a standard human response to failure which is to point fingers. And there’s a standard human response to success which is to claim credit.

So, it’s interesting. I work in comedy. There really aren’t brands in comedy; they have to be invented essentially. I mean, there are brands but they start as something original, typically. Well, you know, there weren’t any books or properties that led to The Hangover, or Bridesmaids, or Horrible Bosses, or the 40-Year Old Virgin, or any other movie that’s done well in the last five or six years as a comedy. And there are a lot of movies that aren’t Marvel super hero movies that people are interested in seeing.

You know, I mean, Inception. How much money did that make? Gazillions. And incredibly, aggressively intellectual. I don’t know, I mean, look, it’s not the most intellectual movie in the world, but it’s a challenging piece. It’s about as intellectual as big Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking gets. So, there, I’m sort of damning it, but my point is I actually love the movie. I love Inception. I think there’s a lot of good work coming out. A lot.

And I just think that when this happens people are like, “Oh yeah, the movie business is dying.” Meanwhile people keep buying tickets. It seems like every year the ticket sales are up 3%, down 4%, up 5%, down 2%. You know.

John: And I get frustrated by the discounting of like, “Oh, ticket sales are really down but it’s 3D that’s propping things up.” It’s like, well, but money is still money. Money is coming in to pay for things.

Craig: I don’t even understand what that means.

John: A lot of this is just Monday Morning Syndrome. And so they’re looking at whatever happens last weekend as being indicative of a great trend where it’s just like, no, it’s one movie that did extraordinarily well or didn’t do extraordinarily well. There are some bad movies. And there have always been some bad movies that aren’t going to work.

But I look at, “Oh movie stars are dead and over because Rock of Ages didn’t work with Tom Cruise.” It’s like, well, yeah, but just like last year you were saying that Tom Cruise is still proof of a big movie star because Mission Impossible did great with Tom Cruise.

Craig: Right.

John: So, people want to have — people want to take every movie as an example of their trend that they see which I don’t think is…

Craig: I mean, I’ll tell you a real trend though, this is real. The studios routinely make decisions based on cynical calculations as opposed to the merits of any particular given movie. This is why when Avatar comes out and becomes the biggest movie in history everybody says, “We need our Avatar.” They don’t say, “We need a story that might interest people. We don’t need a filmmaker that people really have this amazing connection with. We just want our big, huge, freaking Avatar.”

So, what happens is then the cycle kicks around. And by the way, they say the same thing about Transformers. Transformers comes out, huge movie. Whether you like it or not, Michael Bay has a way with his audience. Okay? That comes down to a filmmaker. And people kick Michael Bay around all they want. Let me tell you something: It doesn’t matter. As a filmmaker he rewards Michael Bay fans, of which there are many. So he has a deal with Michael Bay fans. “I’m going to be Michael Bay, and you’re going to love Michael Bay,” and that works for them.

So the point is, that guy is that guy. It’s not about the bigness, it’s about a person. It’s about James Cameron. It’s about the people who write those movies.

Now, so the studios see Transformers and the studios see Avatar and they go, “Oh, well we just have to make our own.” It doesn’t work like that, okay? It does not work like that. That is not how good movies are made or interesting movies are made or even popular movies are made. That’s how essentially copies are made. And while sometimes copies work, a lot of times they don’t. And, you know, I think the biggest problem with John Carter wasn’t the merits of the movie John Carter, it was that it seemed like an Avatar copy.

And I didn’t see Battleship, but I think that was the biggest problem they had. Seemed like a Transformers copy. And once it “seems” inauthentic, you’re already in trouble. And since there are such massive bets — massive bets — you can sort of wind the clock back and say, “Maybe we shouldn’t make decisions based on things other than the merits of any given story or filmmaker.” And instead you say, “Maybe the world is ending.” Because that’s a little more comforting than, “Oh my god, I screwed up, and I lit $400 million on fire.”

John: Yeah. So people are, you know, everything is horrible, and terrible, and bad, but like the Avengers made a gazillion dollars. And so they will kind of forget the Avengers made a gazillion dollars. And the Avengers wasn’t a bigger movie than some of the other things that haven’t worked. It was kind of a risky director to pick for that movie. The director hadn’t made anything of that size and that scale, but they’re not going to learn that lesson; they’re just going to learn that it was big, and therefore it’s good.

Craig: They won’t.

John: And Marvel is smart. And Marvel is smart, but that’s not the only lesson to take from that.

Craig: No. The lesson to take from that is hire a director and writer — and in this case it was the same person — with a specific point of view and a proven track record with an audience. And have him deliver the goods as best he can. That’s a risk worth taking. It doesn’t always pay off, but to me that’s so much more interesting of a risk and so much more potentially rewarding than the other way of thinking about it, which I guarantee you is going on right now, where people are sitting around going, “Okay, please list for me at my studio here all of the various heroes we have, create a team for them to be on, and do our version of The Avengers.”

And it’s just going, I guarantee you that’s going on.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And all those movies are going to be annoying. And people are going to smell it. And then the box office will be blamed. But I don’t think that’s a good idea.

John: So this last week I’ve been out with a pitch, and a book that we’re trying to set up, and it’s been really fascinating to be doing that again because I haven’t done that for awhile. And it’s a smaller book, and I think a book that has huge potential, but as we go into those meetings everything is always cautioned on, like, “Well you know this is a huge risk for us to take.”

And it’s like, well, it’s actually not a huge risk. This is going to be a much less expensive movie for you to try to do. And every year several of these moves do extraordinarily well. And so you’ll always say, “Oh, I wish we could have made The Help. I wish we could have made The Blind Side. I wish we could have made that movie.”

Well, I kind of think this is that movie, and it’s not costing you that much, it’s not that much of a gamble that it could be that movie. And yet it’s hard to get people over that hump to see what that potential is. And so like any pitch you’re talking about the characters, you’re talking about the world, you’re talking about how it functions as a movie, how the story functions.

But the second half of these meetings has always been, “This is how we market it. And this is how, I think you go after families. I think you go after women. I think you go after this…”And it’s been very odd to have to plan the marketing campaign before the movie.

Craig: Yeah. It’s the way of the world now. And it is, you know, it’s funny: I remember talking to John Lee Hancock about The Blind Side which ended up at Alcon which is a — it’s a company that’s part of Warner Bros., or they have an output deal through Warner Bros. But prior to that it was at a different studio. And that studio had John Lee, and that script, and Sandra Bullock. They had all the elements and they just passed.

And, you know, he just didn’t understand. I remember we were having a discussion, he goes, “I don’t get it.” I mean, you run the numbers, I mean, we’re talking about a budget of, I don’t what it was, it was $40 million. You’ve got Sandra Bullock. It seems like, what’s the big risk?

And in my mind I don’t think that other studio looked at it and saw a big risk. I don’t think they saw a chance that they would lose $40 million, or even $20 million or $10 million. I think the bigger risk to them was simply that they would only make $5 million.

John: Yeah.

Craig: That they’re in the business of making either a lot of money or not trying.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And so nobody’s looking for doubles or singles.

John: You have to swing for the fences on every movie.

Craig: They swing for the fences.

John: Yes, that’s risk.

Craig: Well, you know, you’re never going to leg out a triple if you don’t hit a few doubles. And, frankly, what’s wrong with a mildly profitable film? And a film… Which by the way, you know Bob Weinstein who made me crazy many, many, for many, many years did say one thing to me, I’ll never forget it, it was very interesting. He said, “Do you want to know how to make money in the movie business?” And I thought, “Yeah, [laughs] yes, I do, Bob.”

John: “Sure, tell me, Bob Weinstein.”

Craig: I would like to know how you think you make money in the movies. He said, “Very simple. Own a library of movies and don’t make movies.” Because when you make a movie the money goes out immediately but comes back in very slowly. But in library films, they have no overhead to speak of at all, but they generate money forever. And particularly those evergreens, they just every year generate money, and they cost nothing, right?

So I just think, what’s wrong with making some of these singles and doubles because then they go in your library and they make you money forever?

John: Yeah. What you will hear when you try to bring up that logic in the room is like, “Well, even if it doesn’t cost that money to make, it costs a ton of money to market.” And, so, okay, yeah, maybe you’re spending twice as much to market this movie as you did to make it. Watch your costs. Figure that out. I don’t want to say it’s not my problem, but it’s sort of not my problem.

Craig: Well, yeah, I mean look, they have to run some sort of model that makes sense for them. I understand that. Nobody’s under an obligation to make a film. But if I’m coming to you with a movie, I mean to say that there’s an audience for it. I don’t bring people, if the budget… — Basically my argument is I don’t bring you a movie that costs X if I don’t think there’s a clear case to be made that an audience will come and replace that.

So, if the movie is going to cost $35 million, I’m arguing you’re guaranteed to make $35 million for sure, probably more, but for sure. And then they’ll say, “Well then there’s the marketing cost.” And I’ll say, okay, well then there’s the DVD, and then there’s the cable, and then there’s the television, and then there’s the foreign. You’ll be okay. What I’m really saying is you’re breaking even…

John: And, by the way, a lot of them are phantom costs. They’re costs they’re charging themselves for things…

Craig: Of course. Yeah, I mean look, there’s real cost to it and then there are other phantom costs. The phantom costs certainly make it so that no one will ever see profit on a film. But, I don’t walk in and sort of say, “Listen, here’s a movie that’s going to cost $50 million. I’m not sure if more than $10 million of business will ever come on this thing, but I really think you should make it.” No. Of course not.

John: No.

Craig: And really what it comes down to is they don’t like backing movies that just break even. They don’t like it. And I understand it. I get it. Who would? It’s a lot of work and a lot of time for a push. But, you know, you and I, I don’t get the sense that neither you or I go and pitch for $200 million budget films. You know?

John: Yeah.

Craig: Where we are, where the studios have to kind of get back to is making a middle ground movie. And I know they are just freaked out; they don’t want to do it.

John: They don’t.

Craig: They don’t want to do it. But, what can I say? Then they’ll get more Vampire Diary situations where they spend… — Vampire Diaries, by the way, probably should have just been made for less money. There was a time when they used to make those movies…

John: You mean Vampire Hunter? Vampire Diaries is a successful television show.

Craig: Oh, that would have been awesome. I think that would have been really great — The Abraham Lincoln Vampire Diaries. Completely better.

John: Yeah. He’s just falling in love with Mary Todd Lincoln and it’s sweet and romantic.

Craig: Oh my god. Let me unbutton my pants. This is the greatest story I ever heard.

John: [laughs] “He takes off his hat very slowly.”

Craig: [laughs] But, you know, remember there was a time when people made horror films or genre films for a price, and it wasn’t just like massive effect-o-rama, you know.

John: And they still do that to some degree. Horror is one of the few genres that is done inexpensively and can pay out sometimes.

Craig: Right.

John: It’s just, there’s still the…it used to be called Dibbuk Box, it’s the Lionsgate. Like, well, Lionsgate and Summit.

Craig: Oh, yeah right. The Possession. Yeah.

John: They make those kind of movies.

Craig: Yeah, that’s right. You know, I feel bad for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter/Vampire Diaries because truthfully it’s such a genre idea, it’s such a genre movie. It seems unfair to saddle it with the kind of budget that then makes everybody go, “Gosh darn, that movie didn’t do well.” Well, it’s the president chopping heads off, you know.

John: It’s an ambitious idea.

Craig: Right, it’s an ambitious idea. Maybe, just crazy here, stick with me on this: Maybe aim to make $55 million with that guy. Spend $30 million, you know, and then maybe, who knows? Like remember when you made Buffy the Vampire Slayer and it didn’t cost that much, and didn’t make that much, but then it turned into a television series that lasted forever and made a zillion dollars?

John: Yeah.

Craig: Just throwing that out there.

John: It’s always possible.

Craig: Always possible.

John: Well, Craig, let’s wrap this up. This was a fun conversation about endings and beginnings and the death of the film industry.

Craig: Mm.

John: But not in a negative way.

Craig: No.

John: I was worried it was going to tip to a negative place. I don’t think it did. I think we were arguing for the continued health of the film industry.

Craig: Yes, that’s right. One of our rare optimistic moments.

John: I like it. Now, Craig, you had promised us in the last episode that there would be some singing this week. Is that going to happen?

Craig: I forgot my guitar. [laughs] I forgot my guitar.

John: All right, well, we’ll save it for another time.

Craig: Next time.

John: And we’ll save our next One Cool Things for next time, too.

Craig: Yes, I’ll sing next time.

John: Craig, thank you for a fun podcast.

Craig: Thank you, too, John.

John: Take care.

Craig: Bye.

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2012/pen-names-and-divine-intervention).

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

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

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

**Craig:** I’m good. It’s funny, I’ve been… Ever since you said last time that we have — what was it, 65,000?

**John:** A lot of listeners, yeah.

**Craig:** So, there must have been some weird tipping point because suddenly now I’m having that weird thing where people that I don’t know mention the podcast. So I went to the premiere of Ted this week, a very funny movie with Mark Wahlberg and Seth MacFarlane as his foul-mouthed living teddy bear.

**John:** I love the outdoor campaign for Ted, just to interrupt your story completely.

**Craig:** It’s great. Yeah, I know, they’ve done a great job. And it is; there’s a ton of laughs in that movie. It’s pretty sick and funny.

And when you go to a premiere you go to like a will call thing and you give somebody your license and they look up your name and give you your tickets. And the guy looked at the thing, and he gave me tickets, and he said, “Oh, hey, I love the podcast.” And I was, like, “Wha — oh!” [laughs] Because, you know, people are listening to it. And it’s strange because the only people I’ve ever heard from up until this point are people I know.

And then I was posting on Facebook with an old high school friend of mine who lives somewhere, not here, and one of her friends in the little comment thread said, “Hey, are you the podcast guy?” So it’s happening, John.

**John:** I was at the Trader Joe’s in Hollywood and we were checking out, and it’s pretty common — like it’s the Trader Joe’s in Hollywood so there’s gonna be some screenwriters working there.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So the guy who’s checking us out, I was talking to him a bit, he was like, “Hey, are you John August?” And what I could tell was it wasn’t he just recognized me — because I have kind of a common face, like a lot of people sort of look like me — but he actually recognized my voice from the podcast.

**Craig:** It’s wild. It’s funny — I was saying to a friend, 16 years of screenwriting and a bunch of movies, and no one knows who the hell I am. Six months of a podcast, [laughs] and people are saying hi to me. It’s just… — I mean a podcast of all things. Not to run our podcast down, I mean it’s cool. But, strange.

**John:** So, before we got on the air we talked: I’m actually fairly sick right now so people who follow me on Twitter know that I got diagnosed with viral sinusitis, which is basically an infection sort of in your head. It takes like seven to 10 days to heal. So I’m on day six of it and I feel better, but not great. So, I may have you do some more of the heavy lifting in terms of question answering today.

**Craig:** Happy to do so.

**John:** But I thought we would answer four questions.

**Craig:** Yeah, we have four questions. Before we get to those, you have to watch that you don’t get a secondary bacterial infection, John.

**John:** Yes, I know. It’s a huge concern.

**Craig:** It’s a huge concern. I’m concerned. But it’s not — you don’t have terminal viral sinusitis.

**John:** No, there’s no such thing as terminal viral sinusitis.

**Craig:** Not yet. You could be the first one.

**John:** Not yet.

The weird thing about getting sick, of course, is I’ve been playing a lot of Plague Inc., the iPad game where you try to design to plague to destroy the world.

**Craig:** Ah.

**John:** And so I’m playing this game while feeling sick which is not a healthy combination of…

**Craig:** Real smart.

**John:** …action. And you start to believe in causation in ways that you shouldn’t believe it.

**Craig:** Yeah. No, it’s just a sinus problem.

**John:** Let’s power through this. So, start with some follow up. A couple weeks ago we talked about how Amazon Studios had brought in Clive Barker on this project, Zombies vs. Gladiators. And so we got an email from Clive Barker’s manager to make a correction. So, Clive Barker’s manager listens to us…

**Craig:** Cool.

**John:** …which is kind of interesting. “Clive, whom I manage,” he says. “Clive, whom I manage, is not attached to direct this project. He’s merely attached to rewrite/reimagine it. I’m not sure if you read someplace online that he’s directing, but that’s inaccurate information if that was out there.”

**Craig:** Oh, okay. So then they did mention the writer.

**John:** They did, because he’s going to be the writer now.

**Craig:** Where did you pick that up? Was that from Amazon itself?

**John:** I think I may have hallucinated it, or honestly it may have been that someone else had blogged about it and added in the writer-director Clive Barker, and therefore I took it as that.

**Craig:** You know, John, 65,000 people rely on us the way they rely on Jeff Daniels on Newsroom.

**John:** That’s why I’m making a for-the-record correction. And I should probably flog myself and make everyone feel guilty.

**Craig:** I’m sorry, Amazon.

**John:** Sorry Amazon.

Oh, by the way, Amazon announced that they’re doing four TV series.

**Craig:** Oh, uh…

**John:** We’ll see if they really are doing four TV series. They made a press release, so that’s something.

**Craig:** Well, they’ve certainly accomplished that. I do feel bad because I like to, you know, when I get worked up and pissed off, I hate wasting it on things that aren’t…

**John:** I don’t know that you fully wasted it. I mean, they did not mention the actual people who came up with the idea who had worked on it up until that point.

**Craig:** Hey, great point.

**John:** Because it’s like when they make a Variety announcement that someone was brought in, really more a Nikki Finke announcement that someone is brought in to rewrite a project, but they don’t mention like whose project it was originally. That’s kind of lame.

**Craig:** All right. I feel better. Thank you.

**John:** Yeah. A follow up on verbs which was a topic from last podcast. Christina in San Francisco wrote in to recommend a booked called English Verb Classes and Alterations — I’m sorry. Alternations. God, I have to get it right — which I looked through the preview on Amazon, it’s kind of an expensive book, so I wasn’t sure I wanted to order it. I looked at the preview and it’s very hard core, but it gets into some of the really specific esoterica I was talking about.

And an alternation helps explain sort of why some verbs can do some functions and can’t do other functions. Here’s a good example I found from just skimming through it. So, here’s two sentences:

Bill pounded the metal. This metal won’t pound.

That second one doesn’t work.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No. But, listen to this:

Bill pounded the metal flat. This metal won’t pound flat.

That does make sense.

**Craig:** It does. Now do I need a book for that? [laughs] Do I need to read this book?

**John:** No, it’s one of those things, as you are a speaker of English you do that naturally. It’s only when you stop to think about like well why does adding the word flat make that sentence possible?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s a strange thing. It speaks to the idea that there’s probably underlying concept beneath our language that are influencing why certain sentences make sense and certain sentences don’t make sense.

**Craig:** Yes. No question. Grammar…and you know, there’s the whole… — Actually, I should have mentioned it last time. So, Noam Chomsky, who’s more famous now for saying absurd things about politics, was initially famous for his work as a linguist, and he was really the first person to revolutionize the notion that grammar is innate to humans and that in all cultures, no matter how isolated, their language follows a certain rigorous grammar that includes elements that are common to all languages.

**John:** As an example, a language will either be subject, verb, object, or subject, object, verb.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** There’s certain ways it can work. And it’s going to work one way. It’s going to work consistently one way.

**Craig:** That’s right. And this became, essentially this became an object of faith for the linguistic community. But, a few months ago I read an interesting article, I’ll dig it up and put the link on, where basically there’s a guy challenging it. And he’s challenging it based on his understanding of a very isolated tribe in Brazil, which is pretty much where all the world’s isolated tribes live now, and his argument was: no, actually their language does not follow this, and the presumptions are incorrect.

That in and of itself seems like a mild debate between scientists. But what’s really fascinating is how viscous it’s gotten. That the way academics circle the wagons when their orthodoxy is challenged is remarkable. Remarkable. I’m going to dig this link up. It was a really cool read because it wasn’t about the theory. It was about people being jerks, which I love.

**John:** It is fascinating that academics can get so worked up about something so seemingly unimportant and esoteric. When you consider that, look at physics — we have Newtonian physics and then we have Quantum mechanics. And they are basically both right. Newtonian physics takes care of most things and most situations. And you can’t use Quantum mechanics and do a lot of everyday things. So, it’s good that we can recognize the value in both things.

**Craig:** Yeah. But what’s cool is that, and you see this is the hard sciences, they don’t really — it’s not like, I mean, there was, even early on, some objection to Einstein, but really what happened was people went, “What? That’s crazy. Let’s test it. Oh, it’s true.” It’s the sociologies, the kind of interpretive sciences — sociology, psychology, linguistics — where suddenly it just becomes emotional and protective and weird.

**John:** Part of it may be that something like linguistics or psychology, you really are building castles in the air. And so if someone challenges the foundation of what you’ve done, everything collapses.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** So, with the hard sciences, well, they’re hard for a reason. Like, you can actually test them. There are ways to measure these things. And it’s very different than the soft sciences.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Let us move to screenwriting now, a completely different topic we could talk about in a podcast for example. We have four questions and you’ve been generous enough to offer to read these questions to us this week.

**Craig:** I’ll do the reading. I’ll do the reading.

So, question number one comes from Z in Los Angeles. Z. And he writes, “My writing partner and I got several meetings from a comedy spec, and one production company with a producer with big credits, we sat down with the creative executive. He said he loved our style and wanted to find something to work on together. He told us that his boss had a couple of ideas and gave us a sparse one line description of each. We liked one. He asked us to come back and pitch our take on it. Two weeks later we did that.

“He loved our angle, characters, ideas, but here’s the bad part: He tells us it would have to be done on spec for no money, but they can get the script read anywhere in town. As hungry, unproduced writers, it’s good enough for us. We go off and write the script, it turns out great.” So he did it.

“Now we’re jazzed, our manager is confident, the exec is psyched; creative executive has his boss, the producer, read it. Here we go. We’re told he thinks it’s funny but he doesn’t love it so he doesn’t want to send it out. Creative executive apologizes and expresses his regret. We’re bummed, of course, but then we were crushed to find out that it’s not ours. Hubba, what?!” That’s what Z wrote. He actually wrote “Hubba what?”

“And we can’t send it out as our next spec to the other places we took meetings. Can that be right? Where does his idea stop and his idea start? Our manager is wishy-washy about it…” There’s a shock. That’s my editorializing. “…and advises us to move on to our next spec.” Wow. What a genius manager you have.

“My partner thinks, screw ’em, let’s just roll the dice and send it out. Thoughts? Frustrated as hell. Z in Los Angeles.”

**John:** Yeah, so several issues kind of bundled up in one big package of misery in this.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** First is writing that script on spec for this big producer with a lot of producer credits.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, it does happen. And it’s not illegal. Typically these production companies aren’t signatory to the Writers Guild, the studios that employ you are. It’s not technically illegal. The whole point of writing something on spec like this in concert with a producer is that it gives you an enormous amount of leverage when you do go to the studios. You now have a piece of material they will either want or not want, but if they do want it they have to buy that. They’re not buying conjecture, like a pitch.

If you’re not a big shot screenwriter it’s a great way to sort of take away all the guesswork on their part. They don’t have to worry if you can do it or not. It’s material, and it’s original material, so it’s exciting.

I would say the bad part is this, but this is insane. I mean, I don’t know about you John, but I think his partner’s right. They wrote a script. It’s absolutely theirs. They own it lock, stock, and barrel. Ideas are not possessions. Adios producer. See you later.

**John:** The producer had no written piece of material that preceded theirs. There’s no underlying story. There was a one-line sentence.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** And I think they can make a very good case for this is all theirs. Now, there’s the aspect of this is a big producer that you’re going to piss off by doing this. But, guess what? He wasn’t helping you anyway.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** If he didn’t like the script he’s not going to be doing something for you next week.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** Making one enemy isn’t going to be a problem.

**Craig:** That’s right. And, look, my whole feeling is there’s a — when you write something speculatively with a producer involved there is a contract. And the contract is, “I’m doing a lot of work here speculatively, you don’t have the ability to stop me from mining it if you don’t like it. I am actually — I have taken full control of this project as the writer from you.” So, the truth is, they can’t stop you. The worst they could do, I suppose, is if you did sell it, go to the studio and say, “I want to get kissed in on this thing because I ‘developed’ it.” And then that’s really for the studio to decide. But, frankly, the studio could also tell them to piss off.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I think the biggest tragedy in this is not that the producer and the producer’s creative executive failed to kind of uphold their end of the deal, because that’s just lions doing what lions do. The biggest disaster in this is that your manager — your manager, who you pay to represent and advocate for you — has actually advised you to literally throw the script away. That is shocking to me. And embarrassing, frankly. Embarrassing.

**John:** Yeah. It’s a manager who doesn’t want to blow his relationship with this producer at the sake of these clients. So he’ll throw you under the bus rather than risk angering this producer.

**Craig:** Absolutely. And, of course, the biggest laugh of all is that this manager’s relationship with this producer apparently isn’t productive enough to get this script to go out with that producer. I mean, it’s just a disaster.

These people, these managers, it’s like, guys, it’s embarrassing. You should be ashamed of yourself for giving that advice. Outrageous.

**John:** A good manager, and there are some good managers, would have stepped in earlier on and made sure it wasn’t going to happen this way.

**Craig:** Of course. Or just say to the producer, look…

**John:** Now, I do want to raise the stakes on this and imagine a worse scenario. Here’s my worst scenario: Imagine that creative executive had been pitching those same kinds of ideas to a couple different writers and had actually been developing the same spec idea with several different writers. And that this week another script is going to go out but this producer has said, “Oh yes, this is the take I like, and that’s when they go out on the town.”

**Craig:** It could happen.

**John:** It could totally happen.

**Craig:** Absolutely. In fact, your point is the exact evidence required when you’re asking, “Well, can we take this spec out on our own.” And the answer is yes, because frankly the producer could do exactly what you said. They could have 12 people write spec screenplays based on this non-possessable item of an idea.

Meaning, all of those writers own their individual scripts. It’s no different than you and I living in two adjacent apartments both working on a script of our own based on the same idea. We can do that.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then it’s, okay, whatever, the best script wins. Of course, Z, you take that script out. It’s yours. You did it. Screw your manager. He’s crazy, crazy to advise you to move on. It’s outrageous.

**John:** The other reason to go out with this script as a spec situation is that people will read it because they might say, “This might be something we want to buy.” And in reading it they will read your good writing and they will consider you for future things.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So you don’t want to stick this on a shelf where no one can read it if it is as good as you think it is. And maybe it’s not. Maybe we’re being too optimistic. But you want people to see it.

**Craig:** Right. Maybe it stinks. Look, if it stinks it stinks. But then, exactly, if you believe in it and you don’t think it stinks, you send it out. If you think, “Oh, well, maybe they’re right and it stinks, then don’t send it out.” By the way, ask your manager, say, “Before we go crazy here, are you really just telling us this because you know it stinks and you don’t want to send it out because it stinks?” That’s fair. But then of course you really need to insist that they be honest from the jump with you and not make up baloney ideas.

The other bit of advice I would give to you, Z, is that in the future if you’re going to go out on a limb and write something on spec like this in concert with a producer, you must get the producer onboard at the very beginning. And you deserve that. You’re going to put in work and effort. You are now in a privileged position to demand that the producer hear your take, listen to what you have to say, sign on and agree that they’re gonna go and push this.

All right.

**John:** My other frustration is sort of just working practices. If this producer really has the credits that Z is implying, a big producer with some big names, they have the discretionary fund that could easily pay for this. And they should.

**Craig:** Well, you know, the funny thing is some of these guys out there are big names with big credits, but those deals are gone. So, they had a deal with discretionary funding. There are so few of those now. So they have all the appearance of being able to have a discretionary fund, but they don’t actually have one.

**John:** Yeah. They have their own money. They could do it. I just think it’s wrong.

**Craig:** Yeah. I agree. I totally agree.

**John:** Spec work in general: if it’s your thing it’s your thing. And that’s why I believe in writing specs that are actually generally yours. Specs that are somebody else’s, it’s just a bad…

**Craig:** Yeah, look, I worked on a script on spec with Michael Shamberg, and Stacey Sher, and Carla Shamberg. And I did it because I thought that the idea that we had and the story we were telling was of the sort where if I went and pitched it maybe I could sell it, but frankly it was so outside of the realm of what I normally do that I was just more comfortable on my own taking the time to spec it and not having the pressure of employment and just writing.

It was entirely my decision. It wasn’t something they asked me to do. If anybody demanded that I spec something I would just say, “Go, go away. I don’t like you anymore.”

**John:** Yeah.

Question 2. Do you want to read that?

**Craig:** Question 2. Justin writes, “A friend of mine was recently working as a PA for a major studio. While working he discovered another PA had sold some movie ideas to a studio for something around,” [laughs], “something around $2,500 to $5,000. How does someone go about selling a premise and does the WGA have any say in these kinds of transactions?”

Um, I don’t believe that the WGA has a minimum that covers a premise. A premise, in fact, or a movie idea isn’t really something that normally people buy, because as I just mentioned it’s not intellectual property that you can defend or own. I think the lowest level of literary material that the Writers Guild covers and recognizes as actually protectable material is a treatment or story. And the minimum for a treatment or story is much more than $2,500 to $5,000.

So, I’m guessing your PA sold it to a non-guild studio or something?

**John:** Yeah. I don’t even know… — I included this question because I just don’t think it’s real. I think the other PA was sort of making stuff up or spreading an old wives tale, because you don’t just like buy an idea for something, because there’s not enough there to actually buy. I mean, you’re sort of buying someone. It’s like I’ll pay you some money so you won’t write this yourself and I’ll have someone else I write it, I guess, but it doesn’t really make sense.

It’s the kind of thing that you would assume happens a lot if you were outside the industry. It’s like, “Oh, I have a great idea and Hollywood is going to buy my idea.” It doesn’t really happen that way.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That somehow this business works.

**Craig:** I agree. This feels like a Penthouse form letter. You know, it’s interesting but…

**John:** “A friend of mine recently…” Exactly.

**Craig:** “I never thought this would happen to me. But I was coming up…”

**John:** “One day I was working as a PA…”

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly.

**John:** Next question.

**Craig:** Question number 3. Lou writes, “When I see a moment of divine intervention in a movie, like a randomly found item that moves the plot forward or an unlocked car with the keys in it just when the protagonist needs one, I usually buy it. I think we’ve all had at least one unexplained moment in our lives that has been just short of miraculous. However, if the writer layers on more than two of these moments of divine intervention the story takes a precipitous plunge in credibility for me. When you’re writing, how do you determine whether or not you should deploy one of these magic moments? And do you have a method to gauge if the act of divine intervention that you’re writing is just too far-fetched?”

**John:** That’s a good question.

**Craig:** Thoughtful question.

**John:** So, to me, it comes down to coincidence. And there’s coincidences that are good. There are coincidences that start the actual premise of your whole movie.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Like two people happen to have the same name, or that this couple that could have met but that didn’t meet. That’s a coincidence. And you’re always going to buy that coincidence if it’s the whole premise of the movie. But if there’s too many coincidences it just feels like, well, these characters are not in charge of the movie; some sort of external god force is in charge of this movie. And you stop believing it. You stop believing in the consequences of people’s actions because another coincidence will get them out of it.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, essentially I think Lou has his own answer. You pretty much get one of those. I always feel like there’s one big conceit to a movie, one big buy-in that people make that makes the story special, but not too. And when it comes to something like this, like a moment of shocking coincidence or shocking intervention, you get one. I think you get one that’s sort of noticeable. More than one, you start to feel, like you said, that the screenwriter is just moving pieces around conveniently to avoid good storytelling.

Interestingly, a shocking coincidence is good storytelling because it reinjects into the audience’s experience, our understanding of life being chaotic, and that’s great. But the fact is if you have two chaotic moments that transform the plot, you’re actually now going the other way; now you’re implying that it’s not chaotic at all, in fact, it’s all rigged.

So, it’s wonderful in Boogie Nights when that guy comes into the donut shop and has a weird gun battle and gets blown away. And the character who desperately needs money to get out of porn and start his business has suddenly a bag of money there and no one around to see him take it. And he takes it. And that’s shocking, and cool.

And then there’s actually an interesting coincidence tied to it where as he’s walking out you see a car driving buy that his porn producer is in with Heather Graham and all the rest, but that’s okay, it was sort of like, because that didn’t warp the story. That was just style.

But more than one of those, I think you’ve got a problem.

**John:** The other thing to keep in mind is that coincidences or like acts of fate shouldn’t always benefit the protagonist. Every once and awhile they should benefit the villain. And so there’s nothing I love more in a fight when the hero seems to be winning and then the bad guy gets lucky. Let the bad guy get lucky every once and awhile. That’s surprising.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s a great point. So when you say, when Lou asks do you have a method of gauging if the divine intervention that you’re writing is just too far-fetched, the answer is: How does it make you feel? How would it make you feel in the audience? It’s not a question of far-fetched. It could be enormously far-fetched, like that bag of money just happening to be there because there’s a random gun battle. But how does it make you feel? Does it give you a little buzz from the kind of insanity of the moment, or does it make you feel like, “Oh, this movie is baloney?”

**John:** The other thing I would keep in mind is take a look at what the time horizon is in your movie. So, if you’re a movie that is taking place in pretty real time, you’re not, in your daily life a lot of coincidences aren’t going to stack up. If your movie is taking place over 20 years there’s a better chance that the moments we’re going to see are going to be those moments of coincidence, where things do occur.

So, if we’re checking in with a character every five years, we’re probably going to be checking with those characters at moments where things aren’t happening, where they are bumping back into somebody that they haven’t seen for awhile. So, you make it a little extra bump if your movie is taking place over a longer period of time.

**Craig:** That’s a great point.

**John:** Craig, I’ve pitched you my take for Hangover III, haven’t I?

**Craig:** No, I’d love to hear it.

**John:** So in case you throw out all the work you’ve done so far, I really think the next Hangover should take place over about 50 years.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** So rather than, just throw out the whole conceit of like it happens all in sort of one long swoop, and just tracks them all the way to their death bed.

**Craig:** Hmm. Well, that’s not what we’re doing.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** [laughs] But I will say that there is one sort of, well, I’m not going to say anything.

**John:** You don’t need to say anything. In the last movie you did go back to Zach Galifianakis’s early life which was a fun conceit.

**Craig:** Yes. There was, well sort of, I mean…

**John:** You saw how he saw himself in the moment.

**Craig:** Yeah, he sees the world…

**John:** Like you were going back to an earlier point in time, sort of sticking a kid version of him in the present.

**Craig:** That’s right. That’s exactly right. We have one more question and this is from Richard. And he writes, “I happen to have the same first and last name of an existing successful screenwriter.” I wonder if his last name is LaGravenese?

**John:** It’s not. That would be a really exotic name. That would be a coincidence. Because that’s an unusual name.

**Craig:** That would be crazy. That would be bad screenwriting if that happened. “I don’t want to cause any confusion, and have thought about using an alias on my screenplays. Is this acceptable? How would I go about doing that? I don’t want to legally change my name?” Well, don’t people just normally use a middle initial at that point or their middle name?

**John:** Yeah, that’s a good bet. So, if his name was, if it’s Richard Smith, there’s another famous Richard Smith, you could go by R.C. Smith and that works fine.

You’re allowed to do whatever you want to do in terms of a pen name or an alias. You don’t have to legally change your name. I did legally change my name before I started working. That’s just because I had a really unpronounceable last name that was frustrating for everybody involved, including me, but that’s not obligatory by any means. So, pick a name for me, too.

**Craig:** I think you have to, I mean, in fact our MBA regulates pseudonyms. You can’t actually — you’re not free to use a pseudonym. If you make more than, I think it’s $225,000 on a project you don’t have the right unilaterally to opt for a pseudonym. The company has to agree to it. And the reason that’s there is because when they pay big name writers lots of money they want to be able to say, “From the writer of blah, blah, blah.”

And so whatever name you sign on your contract needs to be the name you put on the movie. But if it is, so obviously you changed your name officially. That’s easy, that’s done. If you use a middle initial or your full middle name to separate yourself from another Richard Jones or Richard Smith, that would work, because you are using your name; it’s just a different format of the name.

**John:** But Craig’s point though is you can pick, you can choose what name you’re going to do, but once you pick your name you have to stick with your name. That’s a regulated thing. So, if you decide you want to use the name R.C. Smith, as you’re doing your contracts, you contracts will be done as R.C. Smith.

**Craig:** Right. You just have to make sure that R.C. Smith comports with whatever is on your driver’s license. Otherwise you do have to change your…

**John:** Oh, I don’t actually think that’s accurate.

**Craig:** I think so.

**John:** The Wibberleys get away with.

**Craig:** Well, but the Wibberleys, they had to get permission for that.

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** Yeah. Because the thing is when you’re signing a contract, what goes along with that is whatever that tax form is to prove that you’re a US citizen and what your name and Social Security number is. You can’t just make up your own name and then use that.

**John:** But, Craig, couldn’t a provision in the contract say that writer will be credited as?

**Craig:** Yes, absolutely. And then in that case — that’s my point. In other words you could say the writer will be credited this way, and really for the studio I think the only thing that matters to them is that the way you’re asking for credit would easily be associated with you.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So the Wibberleys, okay, great, so if we want to say, “From the writer’s of Charlie’s Angels 2 comes some other movie,” then we know that people will get that the Wibberleys means them.

But, if you were writing a script and you were just a little embarrassed by the job and you wanted your name to be John Public on it, no. They’re not gonna give you that.

**John:** Yeah. And that has happened.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Speaking of, “From the writer of,” Aline Brosh McKenna who will be our guest on the live version of the podcast in Austin, “from the writer of” always gets checked with her but they never actually use her name. So it’s always “from the writer of The Devil Wears Prada,” but they never actually say her name. It’s Aline.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s marketing for you. You know, they are distributing the information that is relevant to the audience and not anything else. It’s easier to… — I mean, “From Steven Spielberg” actually tells you more as an audience member than, “From the director of ET, and Close Encounters, and Raiders of the Lost Ark,” blah, blah, blah. But if you have that one credit that sort of connotes something of marketing value they’ll just say that. Yeah.

Those were our questions. Do you have a Cool Thing?

**John:** Those are the four questions. Now, so I do have a Cool Thing, but you have a teaser for your Cool Thing.

**Craig:** Well, I actually have a, I realize that I do have a Cool Thing and I have a teaser for a thing that’s just a thing.

**John:** Well you go first with your Cool Thing.

**Craig:** Well my Cool Thing was, I was turned onto this by Phil Hay, fine screenwriter.

**John:** A very good man.

**Craig:** And a good man. And Phil and I are both great baseball fans. And he found this book which I’ve started reading called The Baseball Codes. And if you’re a baseball fan you will love this book. It’s basically an investigation and an illumination of all the unwritten rules in baseball. Baseball is the most legal of sports. The rulebook is enormous and dense and full of arcane nonsense.

But, what’s so cool about baseball is that there’s other rules that are just important to the people playing and managing the game that are not in the book at all, that are not in the rulebook at all, but they are sort of about the honor of the game.

For instance, if you are a hotshot rookie and you’re doing really well, someone’s gonna plunk you. And that happened this year with Cole Hamels just threw at Bryce Harper, who’s an amazing rookie and an amazing talent. And pretty much said, yeah, you know, he knows the deal. And that’s the deal. It’s like, “Welcome to the big leagues rook. I’m gonna hit you now with a 92-mph hard ball.”

But there are also little tiny things, like there are rules that are designed to be honorable when you are way ahead in the game. If you’re winning by a lot you don’t swing at a 3-0 pitch. If you’re winning by a lot you don’t score, you don’t try and score on a close play at home. You hold up at third.

Then there are little things like if you’re a left-handed batter and you’re in the dugout that’s to the left of home plate, don’t cross in front of the catcher on your way to take your position in the batter’s box. Just little weird things. And there’s so many of them. And it’s fun because people don’t understand why, for instance, in baseball teams will get into the sort of bean ball thing where pitchers keep hitting other hitters and then charging the mount and bench-clearing brawls. It’s actually all very highly orchestrated Kabuki theater. And this book is a great insight into what’s actually going on.

**John:** And the idea is that these are all informal rules that have been passed down culturally throughout teams and this is writing them all down.

**Craig:** Exactly. And sort of explaining them. And also talking about how they change because it opens with… There’s a very famous — you can put a link up to this — one of the most famous brawls of all time in baseball, Robin Ventura was playing for the White Sox. Nolan Ryan in his final year of pitching for the Rangers plunks Robin Ventura. Hits him.

Robin Ventura starts to move towards first because that’s what happens when you get hit by a pitch, you take your base. Then turns, throws his helmet down, and charges the mound. As he gets to the mound, sort of like you could see him saying, “Why did you throw at me?” Nolan Ryan grabs him, puts him in a headlock and starts upper-cutting his head repeatedly.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** The benches clear. It’s a massive brawl. And all we see as baseball fans is the fun drama of this young kid running out to the mound and getting absolutely schooled by this old man who’s teaching him the old ways like, “This is how you fight kid.” But in reality, when you read this book, what’s so cool is they explain how this had been going on for years between these two teams. That Nolan Ryan was playing old style baseball where if a batter got too close to the inside part of the plate he would brush them back or hit them because that was his, which has stopped happening in part because of the way college players started using aluminum bats which meant that the inside owning the — being able to reach that outside part of the plate wasn’t as big of a deal. In fact, it was better to back off the inside part of the plate.

So, new pitchers weren’t as obsessed with owning the inside part of the plate the way Nolan Ryan was. Nolan Ryan had been hitting people for a long, long time. He was kind of a jerk about it. The whole team had a meeting before that game and basically said as a team in the locker room, “If he hits any one of us, whoever he hits, you run out there and we all go get this guy because we’re sick of him pushing us around.”

So poor Robin Ventura was the one that got hit [laughs] and he had to run out there and just kind of… but when he ran out he didn’t run out with the intention of hitting Nolan Ryan. And in that hesitation Nolan Ryan took the opening and just grabbed him and started pounding him.

And so what looks like this great story about old guy beating up brash youngster really now turns into old jerk being even jerkier towards a guy that really had to charge the mound.

**John:** Team player, yeah.

**Craig:** Team player. Because if you don’t, I mean, enjoy the rest of the season on that squad, you know? So, even if you don’t like baseball but you like sociology you may enjoy this book. Baseball Codes.

**John:** Sounds good. Nice.

**Craig:** What’s your…

**John:** So my One Cool Thing, I was back last week in Colorado where I grew up, and my father who has passed away was a pretty significant photographer. Not like a fancy photographer, but he took a lot of pictures, and specifically took a lot of slides. And, slides are wonderful but slides are very hard to look at. It’s hard to sort of see, “Oh, this is a slide for this.” So, we knew we needed to scan slides but we have like 1,000 slides. More than 1,000 slides. And it’s going to be a lot of work.

So what we have been doing over the last couple years whenever we have a lot of stuff to scan, we have negatives to scan, photos to scan, we use a place called ScanCafe, which is a terrible name for a business because it sounds like, “Oh, it’s a little café, you go in and you scan and you get some coffee.”

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s awful.

**John:** So what the service does is you go on the website. You tell them how many slides, how many negatives, how many prints you have to scan. They say great. They send you this receipt. You stick everything in a box, stick the label on it, and ship it off to them.

They take all of the negatives, all the slides, all the photos, clean them, scan them, and then send them back to you. They either put it on a website that you can download them off a website, or if you have a ton like we do they actually stick it on a hard drive and send you the hard drive back. So it makes dealing with a lot of old photos just remarkably better.

So, it’s not inexpensive. There’s a price per slide, or per photo, but it just creates so much more sanity. And it’s so much easier to share these slides which were otherwise going to be locked away for another few decades with the rest of my dad’s family.

**Craig:** Yeah, there’s a cool transition industry where basically it exists to move analog to digital, or even digital-but-in-the-wrong-format to purely-digital. There are services where you can ship out 1,000 CDs and they will send you back a hard drive with everything ready to just drop into iTunes or something like that.

But it’s not really a great long-term business strategy is it? [laughs] I mean, eventually everything gets converted and you’re done.

**John:** Yeah, but there’s always another thing to transition through. The other thing which we found which I don’t know, we haven’t looked whether ScanCafe does it or not: my parents at some point had made cassette tape interviews with their parents on history and sort of where they grew up and sort of like the history and background stuff, but they’ve never been transcribed. So we will need to find a place that can transcribe the cassette tape, or can take the cassette tapes and do them into audio format, and then we will send them to the same place that does the transcriptions for this podcast and get them types up, which will be really helpful.

**Craig:** That will be. And then I have one sort of — this isn’t a Cool Thing, this is just a goofy thing, but we had talked about me singing and music and all the rest, and so the next podcast, at the end, I will perform a song.

**John:** That’s great. You can play us out for next week.

**Craig:** I will play us out next week. It’s a short little song. Nice little song by John Prine. John Prine? Crine?

**John:** Sure. I bought it.

**Craig:** [laughs] Plant and Krauss did a cover of a John Prine song. We’ll go with Prine. So I’ll play us out next time.

**John:** Wonderful. So, Craig, thank you very much for your help getting through this. My voice is mostly here and hopefully by next week I’ll be at full speed.

**Craig:** I want letters demanding, I want people writing in saying, “Really Craig should be reading the questions.”

**John:** Really should be. And it’s good that we did this today. If we did this yesterday it would have been like you were doing a podcast with Brenda Vaccaro. So, this is a huge improvement.

**Craig:** Is that an option by the way? [laughs] Because if that is I will switch over. Brenda, if you’re out there, I’m avail. I’m totally avail. Feel better, John.

**John:** Thank you again for a fun podcast. Anything we talked about on this week’s podcast is going to be in the links for the show notes which are at johnaugust.com. And thank you very much for listening everyone.

**Craig:** Thanks guys.

**John:** All right, take care.

**Craig:** Bye.