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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2012/amazons-new-deal-for-writers).

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

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

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

**Craig:** I’m fine. How are you?

**John:** I’m good. I’m back. I’m back from four weeks in New York.

**Craig:** I love it. I can tell just from the tone of your voice.

**John:** Yes. I’m actually very tired, but I’m heavily caffeinated at the moment, so I will probably talk faster than usual.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** But I’m happy to back. I’m happy to be back in my bed. And this is a thing about being 40 years old, is I used to be able to kind of sleep anywhere. Like the first three years I lived in Los Angeles I didn’t have a mattress, I just had like two of those egg crate foam things on the floor of my apartment.

**Craig:** As did I.

**John:** Because I was broke. And, like, why spend money on a bed? But now that I am 40 years old, I have a really good bed. I have one of those Tempur-Pedic mattresses that is amazing and sort of absorbs all energy.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So for the four weeks I was in New York I just had the crappy bed that was in the apartment that I rented. You could feel the springs and all that. And I’m like, I could suffer through it. But then when you stop suffering through it and you get back to your real bed, it’s so good.

**Craig:** Yeah. I just got back from a week away with my family, and returning to your own bed is such a good feeling. What is not such a good feeling is you repeatedly pointing out that you are 40 years old knowing fully well that yesterday I turned 41. I know what you are up to.

**John:** But I’m actually 41.

**Craig:** Oh, ha-ha!

**John:** So I would be in my forties. I’m older than you. You are the younger person on this podcast.

**Craig:** When is your birthday?

**John:** August 4.

**Craig:** Oh, I got you by three months. Four months. Oh…the youth flowing through my body.

**John:** You actually have me by like nine months though if you just turned 41. I turned 41 before.

**Craig:** Oh, so you are going to turn 42. You are right. Better.

**John:** You are making feel better with each word you say.

**Craig:** I have you by eight months. Oh…

**John:** Yeah, you are the youngin’.

**Craig:** What’s it like being as old as you are?

**John:** Let me tell you, the aches and the pains…

**Craig:** Oh, yeah.

**John:** …you know, honestly, for the very first… — For like the last week or something I started to notice that I will at some point probably need reading glasses because I felt myself literally holding something a little bit further away.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** What it was, my daughter had like a little — it’s not a hang-nail, but it is that little piece of skin right around the edge of your finger nail that you just have to pull off with your finger nail, that little tag or whatever. And so she held it up to me and it was too close; I had to hold it back away. And, like, ooh, what is that?

**Craig:** My wife has to do that. She wears reading glasses now or holds things away from her face. I, as of yet, have not had that problem. But it is coming.

**John:** It’s coming.

**Craig:** You know what that is caused by, correct?

**John:** It is actually muscular changes.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** Yeah, so it is not really the lenses in your eye. You can’t do a Lasik for that specifically.

**Craig:** It’s called Presbyopia. And Presby, the root, the same root of Presbyterian. And there are muscles in your eye that focus your eye on close things; and those muscles eventually get weak and tired as they have in your incredibly old eyeball. And as they get slack [laughs] and begin their inexorable slide towards non-function and death, old people like you have to wear reading glasses for close up reading. I’m so sorry.

**John:** No, it’s fine. I’ve actually come to accept the fact that this will have to happen. And I remember going on a meeting with Pete Berg. Pete Berg and I flew to New York City to meet with Will Smith — Will Smith of all people — about this movie that he ended up doing. And it was fine. But Pete Berg had like three sets of reading glasses hanging from his tee-shirt because he kept losing them and then picking them back up again.

It’s like, well, I don’t want to be that crazy person with a bunch of reading glasses. So, I’ve also noticed this really geeky trend of glasses that actually clip together, that snap together. They are magnetic and they snap together in front of your nose. So they sort of just dangle from a cord and you can snap them in front of your face.

**Craig:** I fully expect you to engage in that level of geekiness. No question.

**John:** [laughs] No question. No question at all.

**Craig:** No question.

**John:** I thought we would start with a couple of questions.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** A writer writes in, “I’m writing my first spec. Think of Swingers meets Entourage,” oh, stop being Swingers meets Entourage, but okay, “located in LA. Would it be wise to include actual restaurants in the slug line, i.e. Rainbow Bar and Grill, or just something like Interior Restaurant — Day and then describe the restaurant’s features with a sentence? Keep in mind this is my first spec,” blah, blah, blah.

I flagged this question because it is about specificity. And if you are doing something that is very specific to a locale and to a group of people, if you were writing the next Swingers I think you should absolutely pick what the real locations are going to be in your script.

That may not be that you are actually going to end up shooting there, but if that specific location is important to you, use that specific location in your script.

**Craig:** Yeah, of course. I mean, this is the time when there are no clearances; there are no location fees or concerns. You can write anything you want. And there is absolutely nothing irresponsible about calling out specific locations if for no other reason than it conveys your intention to the reader.

**John:** Yes. And so the reader may not be familiar with that specific detail, so it is good to give a line of color to show what that location is like. Give us a sense of what that place is. It should be short — don’t over-describe your locations. But give us a sense of what that place is. Use the real name. Use the real everything you can so that it is meaningful to you and it is meaningful to your characters.

**Craig:** Even if people will never know what it is because it is sort of arcane to everyone, sometimes including those things helps convey a sense that you know what you are talking about. It makes the reader comfortable.

I remember when we were writing The Hangover sequel; obviously a lot of it took place in Bangkok. And we called out specific places all the time as if the reader would know just because it helped get you in the mindset of you were in a real place. So you should absolutely do that.

**John:** Now I have made it sort of my daily vow to talk about Lena Dunham’s Girls every day until the premiere of Girls. Girls is a new TV show on HBO that Lena Dunham wrote, and directed, and created. And it’s great.

And so I saw the first three episodes. HBO did a premiere in New York while I was there. And specificity is one of the main reasons why it is so good. It is so very specifically these characters at this point in their lives living in exactly this neighborhood. And its universality comes from the fact that everyone in this world is living a very specific, finely painted, detailed life.

And you believe the characters really are talking about the things that are interesting to them. So, specificity is…

**Craig:** I’m glad you pointed out that was a TV show because I had no idea what you were talking about. [laughs]

**John:** Wait, you really do not know? I feel like there has been a huge media saturation on this show.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** So there is outdoor… — Also, Craig Mazin, by the way, doesn’t watch TV or see movies. Apparently he actually closes his eyes so he can’t see outdoor ads. He can’t see…

**Craig:** I like reading books.

**John:** Oh yeah. But I feel like HBO has found a way to probably interject it into books, because they are doing a full on hard push on this show.

**Craig:** I did not even realize that this was…

**John:** Do you even know who Lena Dunham is?

**Craig:** No. [laughs] Who is that?

**John:** Wow, it’s so fascinating. So, Lena Dunham is a writer-director. Her second feature was this movie called Tiny Furniture which won awards at South by Southwest. I met with her, I loved her. Judd Apatow met with her, he loved her. He took the initiative to say, “Let’s make a show.” And so they pitched a show to HBO. They shot a great show, ten episodes. It airs, I think, next week some time. It starts April 15th I think.

**Craig:** And is it funny?

**John:** It’s really funny.

**Craig:** I like funny.

**John:** It’s like Louis C.K. or Larry David, but it is a 25-year-old young woman who has written, directed, and stars in the show. And so you meet her and you talk with her, and you are like, “Wow, you are the nicest person. I can’t believe you have survived being so incredibly busy and doing all of these things.”

**Craig:** Well, I will watch it, and I will look forward to us giggling over the fact that I had no idea who this person was.

**John:** Yeah. You have the HBO Go, so you can watch it even though you don’t watch normal TV because you do have an iPad. So you will be able to watch it.

**Craig:** I do watch Game of Thrones.

**John:** Yeah, look, who could not watch Game of Thrones?

**Craig:** And I watch Major League Baseball.

**John:** Yeah. That’s fine.

**Craig:** And that’s about it. [laughs] Yeah.

**John:** Our second question, “I recently listened to the Nerdist Writer’s Panel,” which is another podcast, which is actually quite good, so we will put a link to it because it is really good.

**Craig:** I’m sorry, what was it called?

**John:** The Nerdist Writer’s Panel.

**Craig:** Nerd-est?

**John:** Nerdist.

**Craig:** Shouldn’t it be Nerdiest?

**John:** Nope. Nope. Just Nerdist.

**Craig:** But that’s wrong.

**John:** Well, it’s not. It’s like racist but Nerdist.

**Craig:** Oh, I see. So they have an ism, like nerdism, and they are nerdists.

**John:** Yeah, exactly.

**Craig:** I thought it was Nerdest, but it is Nerdist.

**John:** Actually rather than going for racist, I should have gone for nudist. But Nerdist. The Nerdist Writer’s Panel.

**Craig:** Got it.

**John:** And so it is a good podcast. And they bring in different writers, TV writers, screenwriters, and they talk about the writing that they are doing. It is sort of like how we always talk about how we are going to have guests on, but we never actually have guests on. They do.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, “On this podcast, Matt Nix was a guest.” So, first off, you basically need to discount anything Matt Nix says, because you and I both know that you can’t trust Matt Nix at all.

**Craig:** You can’t trust him as far as you can throw him.

**John:** What a horrible human being.

**Craig:** Bad man.

**John:** Oh, it’s actually, no — we should specify he is actually a very good guy. And he is the writer of Burn Notice, the creator of Burn Notice. And lovely, and he is involved in the WGA, and we love him to death.

**Craig:** And he lives up here by me in Pasadena, and that automatically gets you a pass as far as I’m concerned.

**John:** Well pretty much all working screenwriters and TV writers have to live either in Hancock Park where I live, or over in the La Cañada Flintridge area by you. That’s a rule.

**Craig:** I insist on it.

**John:** “Matt Nix talked about his career in features before he started working in television and shared his frustrations about not getting anything made despite working steadily for eight years. I was wondering whether you were ever tempted to go into the TV world. Obviously you can also work in television development and never get on the air, but at least sometimes you get to shoot a pilot and actually see your work materialize into something. And there is the possibility of working on staff on already existing shows. Is there any particular reason why you never worked in television? Is it something that you can see yourself trying at any point in your career?”

**Craig:** Well you did work in television.

**John:** That’s right. This is Luke from Poland. So, Luke from Poland, it is a well-written question about the American TV industry from somebody in Poland, which I love.

But I did work in TV. I have done three different TV shows. The first thing I did was called D.C., which was the same year that Go came out. And it was about five young people living and working in Washington, D.C. It was basically Felicity-after-college. And it was a disaster. It was a pretty good pilot I wrote, and okay pilot that we shot, and just a really bad series that I got fired from.

I did a TV pilot for ABC called Alaska, which you can also read on my blog. I have a library section; you can read the pilot for that, which turned out pretty well, which was a crime show set in Alaska back when no one was making things in Alaska. And I developed a show with Jordan Mechner called Ops which was about a private military corporation for Fox. And it was going to be way too expensive to shoot. And I just thank god every day that we didn’t try to shoot it.

So I think TV is great. And, so Craig, you have never developed anything for TV have you?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** So here is the thing about feature writers writing for TV is that it is so tempting and appealing because you actually shoot something. Like not every pilot gets shot, but a lot of pilots get shot. And if you are a decent feature writer who gets recruited to write a show for somebody, there is a decent chance you are going to shoot something. It’s going to be quick; like everything in feature land just takes forever.

At least in TV you kind of fail quickly. [laughs] You will write a script and you will turn it in, and they will call you like two hours later saying, “Nope, it’s not for us.” It’s like, “Oh, oh, oh, okay. There. Done.” And then you are done.

**Craig:** Good.

**John:** So I know feature writers who sort of consider it like a trip to the ATM, because you don’t get paid a lot of money for it, but you get paid quickly, and it is something, and it is meaningful.

The challenge, and I think the frustration, and the surprise that a lot of feature writers find is that if — God help you if they say yes and they like it, because then your life is just overwhelmingly consumed by making this TV show.

So, David Benioff, who was really a feature writer before this, now doing Game of Thrones, and good luck with doing anything other than Game of Thrones for awhile, David Benioff.

**Craig:** As was Dan Weiss, his partner on that show. Yeah. I have avoided television for two reasons. One, that reason, and two, what I have heard about TV is that there is this lie that they tell us all that the writer is king in television and the writer is in charge. That is sort of true. Certainly writers are creatively more dominant in television than directors.

However, what they don’t tell you, and what many of my feature friends who have dabbled in TV bemoan is that the amount of intrusion and mishegas you get from the studio network is mindboggling.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Every single thing. They are over your shoulder, criticizing, second guessing, nay-saying, everything. You can’t cast a guy saying, “Here’s your coffee, sir,” without them demanding 14 auditions and then saying, “We like this one.” Who cares?! What?

And just the thought of that grind. And I guess on top of all of it, to be honest, it is such a different kind of storytelling, and the kind of storytelling I like to do is self-contained. I like tell stories where somebody goes from one place to another and finishes. And I don’t like telling serialized stories per se, even in sequels.

You know, I like them to have a beginning, a middle, and an absolute end. And that’s that. So, it is not for me for lots of reasons. I think I would just get too bored, frankly.

**John:** Oh, to me it’s not boring. It’s the overwhelming churn of it. When you are writing a feature you are writing something, and you hand it in, and you get a little bit of time while they are reading it. In TV land, you turn in a script, and literally an hour later they are calling you with notes. You never get that downtime that you have come to kind of crave a little bit in feature land.

Like in feature land, like three weeks pass and you haven’t heard anything, and you are going crazy. But there must be some happy medium in between there. The other big challenge of TV, of course, is let’s say you are a writer and a director in feature land. You are either writing your script, or you are shooting your script, or you are editing your movie, or figuring out the marketing stuff you are doing, one of these jobs at a time.

In TV land you are doing all of it simultaneously. So, you are in a room breaking the entire season, figuring out what the episodes are for the entire season. You are trying to write a script. You are reading another script that is about to shoot. You are shooting a script. You are dealing with the wardrobe for that thing that is coming up. You are editing an episode you have already shot, and you are dealing with the network on the marketing stuff.

And so any one of those jobs could be a full-time thing. I remember talking to Damon Lindelof at the height of Lost, and literally like after dinner would be the time that he actually would be able to go up and start writing. Because the whole day was spent running a TV show.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** The running and the management; it’s a huge deal. But, there are some amazing things about that. And you are able to create these worlds that are unlike anything you have ever seen. And I really like TV. I would be doing a TV show right now; honestly I would be pitching a TV show if the musical hadn’t sort of sucked up every bit of time.

**Craig:** I think at this point I am starting now, even though I am so much younger than you are…

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** …I’m still old enough where I am starting to realize that I’m pretty deep into this journey and I suspect that I will continue writing features until a day comes when I am just kind of done, and want to stop in general and find something else to do with my life, and it won’t be TV.

**John:** So, Craig, are you going to direct more movies? Or are you going to mostly be writing?

**Craig:** That is something I am thinking about. I think that between now and when my kids –my youngest kid is seven, my older son is ten. So, my daughter is going to be gone in ten years, presumably college.

**John:** She won’t be taken away by aliens. She will be somewhere; she just won’t be under your roof.

**Craig:** Well, I don’t know. She might be. [laughs] We don’t know.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** But I think it safe to say in ten years, in one way or another, she will be gone. And then I will have quite a bit of a different kind of day, and a different sort of obligation to my family. And at that point, and quite a bit more experience under my belt, and at that point I might consider directing. I don’t know. I’m not sure.

But right now I have to say I am very happy screenwriting. I’m happier screenwriting now than I have ever been since I started. And, so might as well ride that. But, yes, I think about it. I think that it something I will return to. Cue the gnashing and wailing of critics.

**John:** [laughs] Honestly, part of the reason why I have been careful and selective about directing projects, in addition to the musical sort of wrecking in my life, is the overwhelming time commitment it takes to actually be in production, and the fact that you are not going to see your kid for a couple of months while you are shooting a movie. And that’s a big deal.

And this last week while I was in New York, I was able to bring my daughter to visit the rehearsal for just an hour or two while we were doing stuff. And she wasn’t going to be able to see the whole show, because is it too overwhelming of a show for her to see emotionally, but I wanted her to see that it is really hard work. I didn’t want her to sort of get the experience of, “Oh, suddenly everything is lovely. It’s like Glee. And suddenly everything is happening and no one had to do a lot of work.”

She saw us like running a scene 15 times trying to figure out how to make a joke be funny. And she saw us dancing. And she saw how we are trying to correct this one little tiny moment in the choreography. And that was more meaningful to me, not for her to see the finished product, but this is what your father is doing that is taking him away for three weeks, trying to get that joke to be funny.

**Craig:** Yeah. Daddy’s got a real job. Yeah. That’s a great experience. Even though I will — I often will travel with the movies that I write, the distance apart is a different kind of distance when you are directing because I can… — For instance, for the next Hangover movie, I go with the movie. I go with Todd. I’m there every day.

So, I might be away for weeks at a time from my kids. But when the day is done and I go back to the hotel room, I get on Skype and I talk with them, and I’m relaxed. It’s different.

When you are the director you are never relaxed. And you don’t have free time. And every waking moment you are being devoured by the enormity of your responsibility. And, so it is a different kind of away. It’s a bad thing.

**John:** Yeah. This last month I was in New York. I cannot imagine, I could not have survived it if it weren’t for Skype, if I couldn’t video chat home, I wouldn’t have been able to make it through there. I would have just been a mess.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Let’s go to our next question. A reader writes, I think actually Kevin writes, “I recently decided to start a new screenplay, and when describing the plot to a friend of mine he responded, ‘Oh, it sounds a lot like [movie title redacted].’ I immediately looked up the plot synopsis of that other title and saw there were some obvious similarities. I rented the movie, and thankfully that film and my yet to be written screenplay were actually very different. But let’s say both plot were actually similar. Intellectually I know that everything is down to execution, but I probably wouldn’t have the confidence to continue. Have either of you given up on a spec idea because it was too similar to another screenplay or movie?”

**Craig:** Well, you know, in a case like that where the movie actually exists, in a weird way you are in a better spot. Because you watch it, and if you decide, “No, my screenplay, even if it is the same basic idea is such a wildly different execution,” you will not be… — No one is going to sit there and go, “Oh my god, you just rewrote blankety blank.”

No, they are going to read your script and go, “Oh, it’s a lot like that movie so-and-so, but here is how it is different, or here is how the tone is different.” I mean, the example I always famously turn to — well, it’s not famous that I turn to it. It is a famous example that I turn to is Rain Man and Midnight Run.

**John:** Oh sure.

**Craig:** Almost the same movie about sort of a straight-laced guy who has to road trip across the country with a weird sort of self-obsessive nerd who refuses to fly because he is frightened. And two completely different movies; it’s just not an issue.

Now, if somebody says, “Oh, that sounds like something I have in development over at so-and-so,” now you have got a problem.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then the problem is movie studios really — it’s already a gamble to pay a $1 for a screenplay, much less $1 million. And so if they feel like they are going to get beaten to the punch by a similarly themed…they are more concerned about marketplace confusion and marketing than they are about anything else.

That said, every now and then you get two movies about a guy and a girl who are best friends who also sleep with each other.

**John:** Yeah. And it works out okay.

**Craig:** Yeah. It works out okay. There is Dante’s Peak and Volcano. There is A Bug’s Life and Antz.

**John:** And most famously there is Armageddon and Deep Impact. And so Kevin’s question was have I ever stopped doing something because there is something similar. Yes, I had this whole plan out for an asteroid hitting the earth movie. And basically you know the asteroid is coming and you have to make decisions about what is going to happen. And they announced Armageddon and Deep Impact. I was like, “Oh, okay.” Well, that’s a case where it is probably not a good idea for me to write that movie. And that’s okay.

**Craig:** Yeah. You might be able to beat one movie in development, but not two. [laughs]

**John:** And I always look at that as “now I don’t have to write that movie,” because someone else wrote that movie. That’s great. Freedom to do something else. It’s like a snow day. It’s like a creative snow day. “Yup, I don’t have to do that anymore. I can do something else instead.”

**Craig:** Plus, a little pat on the back that your instincts were correct.

**John:** Agreed. “And I have commercial instincts. Hoorah!”

**Craig:** Yeah. Great. Let me come up with another one.

**John:** Speaking of commercial instincts, let’s talk about the actual news of this last week, which is Amazon Studios changed basically everything. It was like, “Oh, we are making some changes.” No. “Basically we are completely changing our entire business model.”

**Craig:** Yeah. They were very clever about it. They were sort of like, “Oh, we are going to make a few changes.” And they did it that way because really what they did was they went from being an awful, awful place to a very good place. And to announce it that way would have been to admit that they used to be an awful, awful place. But now they are a good place.

And here’s what happened…

**John:** So we really should give some back story, because we can’t assume that everyone knows what Amazon Studios was.

**Craig:** Back story us.

**John:** Okay, so the back story is Amazon Studios is from Amazon… — What do you even call Amazon right now? They are an internet retailer, I guess?

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** Fine. They also make Kindle’s and other things.

**Craig:** Yeah. They are an e-tailer.

**John:** Perhaps you have heard of Amazon. [laughs]

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah. I don’t think we need that much back story, John.

**John:** But we do need back story on the studio’s part of it. So, Amazon launched this initiative called Amazon Studios which was an attempt to do an end run around the sort of classical studio development, and let anybody in America or the world submit their screenplays to the site, and other users, other readers could read the screenplays, give notes on the screenplays, could rewrite the screenplays if they chose to, and Amazon would sift through this and take the most highly rated, and reviewed, and best liked screenplays and developed them further. Give awards to those people.

They would shoot little test movies from those things. And when they announced this, this was November 2010, I had had some conversations with some of the folks about it ahead of time, but I really based my reaction on what they announced. And I thought it was a really horrible idea for a couple of reasons.

The simplest reason is why would you want to, creatively as a person, why would you want to submit yourself to this process where anyone on the internet, any person who reads your script anywhere could rewrite your script and do whatever they wanted to do with it? And that didn’t make any sense.

And then you blogged at the same time — remember back when Craig used to blog?

**Craig:** Remember that?

**John:** Craig blogged, and we will find a link to that old blog post…

**Craig:** Amazon remembers. [laughs]

**John:** …about just the really bad financial and legal concerns.

**Craig:** Yeah. You had sort of thrown this great right hook that basically said this whole thing is kind of creatively corrupt. The whole point of screenwriting is that there is an authorial voice that is relating some kind of vision on a page, and this thing is sort of blowing that all to shreds.

And then I came in with a left hook and said, oh, and also, this is a sweatshop, basically that was not only end running the union and everything that the union brings us like minimums, and pension, and healthcare, and credits, and residuals, but was even more punitive than that. I mean, they were essentially kind of getting everything and being able to use it and resell it. They literally could… — You could write something, submit it; 15 people could rewrite it and then they could put it in a book and sell it, and you wouldn’t even get a dime. I mean, the whole thing was insane.

**John:** And if I remember the right terms, I think it was like 18 months they owned stuff. Like basically once you submitted it, they had over 18 months.

**Craig:** Yeah. They had it for 18 months. And I think they had an option to get it again. And there were no… — It was really bad.

If you link to the post I wrote people will be able to sort of sift though how bad it was. And what you and I did not know at the time, but what I have now learned to be true is that the enormous, many multi-billion corporation known as Amazon read your post, and read my post, and freaked out. [laughs] They were super angry. And apparently called around and called the Writers Guild complaining.

And the Writers Guild, to its credit, and to Executive Director David Young’s credit, entered into a dialogue with them that was predicated essentially on, “No, we think that you should adhere to these basic union rules. That is what this is all about.”

And I am very excited to say, even though it is not breaking news. This was reported a few days ago, but Amazon quietly and calmly has become a WGA signatory. So, if you submit your scripts to them, first of all you now have a lovely option of saying, “Actually, I’m submitting my script to you and I don’t want anyone to be able to touch it.” In fact, you have an option that says, “I don’t even want anybody to be able to read it. I just want you to read it, Amazon.”

Amazon is now saying if we purchase this literary material, that is to say exercise the option, or if we hire you to do any writing, we do so under the full MBA. So you get credit protections, and you get residuals, and pension, and health. And all of that great stuff.

It’s a huge, huge thing. And I have to say, here is why I think it is… — Well, let me back up for a second. First of all, I have to congratulate the Writers Guild and David Young. Spectacular job. And I think it is important for us to say that there is a path to success with organizing that doesn’t involve striking. One of the things that I heard all the time during the strike from very prominent screenwriter was, “The Writers Guild has never gotten a single thing without a strike.” And that is just not true. And there is a way to do this, especially now, and it does involve influential voices, such as yours John…

**John:** And yours, Craig.

**Craig:** Well thank you. Pointing out some very embarrassing things. And I remember when I joined the board, it was actually a year into my term when Patric Verrone came into office with a bunch of his guys. They were big on this whole idea of corporate campaigning. And the notion of corporate campaigning is to embarrass companies for things that are sort of away from the field of play that you are on.

So, if you want to get them to give you reality television, you embarrass them for, I don’t know, investing in toxic chemical companies or something like that. That doesn’t really work. It’s all a bunch of bunko. What does work is your thing is bad. The thing that involves me is bad and here is why, because that is what you know and you can make an excellent case. And that is exactly what happened here. And I have to congratulate Amazon frankly for putting big boy pants on and acting gentlemanly, and recognizing that writers, professional writers, deserve to be treated with this basic minimum amount of respect.

So, that was terrific. And I think that Amazon has gone from something that I sort of viewed as this toxic repository that was abusing writers, to an excellent new option for professional screenwriters. I don’t know if Amazon and their model will ever be successful. What I do know is this: the companies for whom we work primarily, the big studios, can no longer point to Amazon and say, “Well look, we have to compete with those guys, so we have to somehow roll this contract back.” That is now off the table.

In that regard, this is a big step. It also means that if Google or Facebook or anybody else like that should try and get into this space, there is now precedent for the Writers Guild to say, “Great. Do this deal. Just like Amazon.”

**John:** So let’s talk about whether this is a good idea for the individual aspiring screenwriter. Because the original Amazon deal I thought was a bad deal for pretty much everybody, except for Amazon. If you were maybe that screenwriter who had the script that was sitting in the trunk that had never gotten any traction, maybe you submitted it to Amazon and just saw if it stuck.

Now, I don’t think it would be anyone’s first choice to go to, but if you have a script that maybe has won some contests, or got some notice in contests but hasn’t gotten you an agent, but is probably a pretty good script, it might make sense to try this process. The new terms — I think it is like a 45-day exclusivity of an option period. Amazon, if they like something, can extend it for additional time. They can pay you like $10,000 to extend it for additional time. It is not a bad deal…

A lot of times with the original deal, writers would leave comments on my original post and say, “Well, it’s a choice between this or nothing, so I am going to take this.” Well, it was worse than nothing there. Now this really is sort of an alternative to getting nothing out of your script. It is a chance to get someone to actually read it and pay attention to it, and maybe want to try to buy it.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, first of all, let me address this “it was better than nothing” argument, because I got that on my blog, too, at the time. And it incenses me.

Here is why that is stupid: you are either going to be a professional screenwriter or you are not. If you are not, then it doesn’t matter because you are not going to be a professional screenwriter. It doesn’t matter if it is better than nothing; you are not going to win nothing either. You stink.

If, however, you are going to be a professional screenwriter, all you have done is weakened your own hand and weakened the hand of everybody else around you. You have begun the process of termiting through the lumber that supports the floor upon which we all sit. And down the line you will suffer. No question. Either you act like a professional who belongs in the professional game, or don’t. That is, to me, such bedrock principle. That is why I am grateful for all the people who came before me who didn’t just think about themselves at the time, but thought about writers to come. And that is why writers in their 20s should not be reluctant to make sacrifices for writers in their 30s, because they will be writers in their 30s, and so on and so forth.

It’s just a terrible argument. In the question of how writers should now view Amazon, I think they should view it as a very legitimate employer. Look, the choice of is it your first choice, I mean, I think that everybody sort of recognizes that studios that make and distribute films directly are probably still the premiere choice, because they make and distribute films. And that is a very powerful thing. If I sell a screenplay to Universal I know that they don’t have to go find a distributor; they are a distributor.

However, there are a ton of companies out there that are in the same boat as Amazon as far as I’m concerned. And if you have material that is not attracting the eyes of the gatekeepers, but you think has a chance of attracting the popular eye, well I have to say Amazon is a great choice now because one thing that I know about the gatekeepers is that they are particularly bad at determining their own value set for what good is. All they really do, in the majority, is chase what they think people want.

If people tell them what they want, chase over. And your material will get purchased. And it will eventually find its way to a studio. And at that point you are off and running.

So, I think Amazon has gone from a red flag to a perfectly legitimate, perfectly respectable avenue now for screenwriters to seek their first professional opportunity.

**John:** Yup. I have some ongoing concerns with how they are presenting this new version of themselves, which is their open writing assignments. So, an open writing assignment classically is a project that is at a studio where they are looking for a writer to come in. So, it could be a piece of property that they purchased, like they bought a book and now it is an open writing assignment. It could be a remake they are making. Or it could be a script that they have worked on and now they feel like they need to bring another writer in to do some new work.

One of the things they are pitching with this new version of Amazon Studios is, “And we have two open writing assignments. We have,” I think, “it’s Twelve Princesses and I Think My Facebook Friend is Dead and we are going to be looking for writers for those two things.” That feels a little weird to me. And it feels like every script should have new writers come in and do some work on it.

And it is entirely possible that they have worked with those original writers, and they feel like they have come to a point where they can’t go forward on the project now. But that’s, I don’t know; saying that publicly feels really weird.

**Craig:** Well, but is it…it’s the public part that is bothering, because that is all that studios do.

**John:** It is. But, I mean it’s an internal thing. It’s never announced in the world that another screenwriter is coming in to rewrite this thing.

**Craig:** You think it’s embarrassing to the writer? Is that what you’re saying?

**John:** It’s a little bit embarrassing to the writer, and even though it is the way reality often works, publicizing it like that, you should be trying to get one of these two slots to rewrite these big projects feels really weird. They are saying, like, “These are the best two things we have. And we are bringing in new writers to rewrite them.” That feels a little bit weird.

**Craig:** Well, it is weird, but it is the exact same weirdness that goes on at studios. I mean, they sort of say, “Look, this is a script that we believed in so much we spent $1 million to buy it, and then we spent $2 million more for really big shot writers to rewrite it. And now we are saying we love it so much we want a new writer to work on it.”

**John:** And you just hit on exactly why I was chaffing about it, because when you have that big show — “These are our best two things and we are bringing in someone new to work on it” — you bring in your heavy hitters. I’m the kind of person you bring in to do that work that you feel like you need to do to take it to its final level.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** You are not saying, like, “Some writer in America could be the right person to do it, some writer who has never sold a screenplay before.” You are not going to the brand new person to rewrite that thing to put it into production. That is just not how stuff works.

**Craig:** That’s right. But here is what is interesting: Amazon is going to learn just the way everybody else that first starts in this business learns. There is a learning curve for them as well. And I think that they have a certain hope that there is more talent out there than has yet to be discovered by the traditional method.

But they are going to sort of American Idol, like find Kelly Clarkson, and it is going to be great. And it might. But, I suspect it won’t.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I know that people don’t like it when I say these things, because they think I’m a snob, and they think that I am a talentless jerk anyway, so how dare I. But as talentless as I am [laughs], I think that Amazon at some point may come to say, “Look, we have a property here that Warner Brothers is actually interested in making. We have gotten as far as we can with the methods we have been employing. Maybe we should think about actually coming up with a different method, or, maybe not.” That’s their choice. But as far as I’m concerned from the business end of it, they are at least doing it honorably. They are now fulfilling the basic minimum requirements that an employer must fulfill.

**John:** And here is why I wish them every success, and this is honest, is they have a tremendous amount of money. And there are a lot of other technology companies that have a tremendous amount of money. And if Amazon has success making some movies, and making money off of some movies, I hope that will loosen the purse strings of some of these other giant companies — the Facebook’s, who just spent $1 billion to buy Instagram today, to make some movies.

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**John:** Because more money in the system really helps the whole film industry. And it especially helps screenwriters who are essentially the research and development of the film industry.

Right now, a lot of the tensions we are facing are really economic tensions. There is just not enough money in the system right now to pay for as much development as we would like there to be. And I think that would greatly benefit our film industry. And two years from now there could be some real payoff. Even if Amazon hasn’t made much out of this, the fact that they are trying to do this will get other people inspired to do it.

**Craig:** No question. No question whatsoever. It surprises me that it has taken tech companies this long to sort of fallow the lead of Pixar. Pixar was this tiny little company that was making hardware, and decided to make movies to advertise their hardware, and have become a true giant, and a true studio, as big and as powerful as any. And while we say that Disney “owns” them, you can make the argument that Pixar in a weird way owns Disney. They are merged. They are one in the same, but they are enormous.

And there is no reason that these other guys couldn’t arrive at that place. What Amazon, the philosophical decision Amazon has made is to not find a genius like Lasseter and Andrew Stanton, and Peter Docter, and Joe Ranft, and so on, but rather to open it up to the vox populi and see if there are some diamonds in the rough.

I am an elitist. I tend to feel like you have to find really, really brilliant to guide these things, but again, they may arrive there. You are absolutely right: it is a great thing. And certainly for us, to have another legitimate big deep-pocketed MBA signatory — we haven’t had one of those… — You have to understand. You know this. And I’m betting most of our listeners do, too. Fox, Columbia, Universal, Disney, Paramount, Warner Brothers. Those are the big ones, right? I’m not missing any?

**John:** You got them all.

**Craig:** Okay. Those have been the primary deep moneyed employers of screenwriters since the beginning of movies.

**John:** I actually ran a post on this that Horace Deidu had done this great chart that showed basically the top six studios have always been the top six studios.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And there have been some mergers along the way, but basically you can go back to the ’20s, and it is essentially the same companies.

**Craig:** That’s right. But today there is a seventh company that is signatory to the Writers Guild that has an enormous amount of money, frankly, more than some of the studios. And that is huge news for us if it turns the way I hope it does.

I hope that Amazon eventually realizes that there is more profit developing screenplays with, I guess I would say there is more profit targeting great screenwriters than there is sort of panning for gold in a kind of fun marketing type of way.

**John:** My very first instinct with Amazon when they talked about doing a new kind of deal, and making a studio, is that you have tremendous amount of money and you also have tremendous amount of reach with everyone who comes to Amazon every day. So, you know so much about the people who are buying your products. You can target things to them.

And Facebook could do it better than anybody else could. Can you imagine Facebook running a studio? It would be nuts.

**Craig:** Well, it would be. Part of the interesting thing about it is I think each of these places has their own DNA. And they want to impose their DNA on the development process. So, some of that means Amazon’s way of saying, “Everyone can be a screenwriter, and it’s open to all, and we are throwing the doors open,” and maybe Facebook wants to make it all about social connections and people reading and liking and so forth.

But the truth is none of that crap has anything to do with developing a good screenplay. Developing a good screenplay happens when a good writer with a good idea works with a good producer, the way a novelist works with an editor, all in concert to fill the vision of a studio that is focused on making good movies of a sort. That doesn’t change.

So, what I hope happens is that Facebook and Google and Amazon jump into this, at some point realize that the way that they run their normal businesses really doesn’t have anything to do with this, but what does have to do with this is all of their money. And that they can make a ton of money doing this.

And then once they have some kind of brand that means something in the movie space the way that Pixar means something, that becomes extraordinarily powerful for them. And, the more competition that we have, you know, so if six major employers become nine major employers, this is a very good thing for us.

**John:** Agreed. Yeah. Even the small consolidations that have happened over the last few years, like we lost New Line as a separate company. It hurt. And it is one less buyer for a spec script, but it is also one less set of development projects that are out there. If New Line was developing 30 projects, well, those are 30 writers who can be employed. And when that goes away, a lot goes away.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** The other reason to be hopeful, if Amazon is spending some money here, even if it is a company that doesn’t have the intention of really getting deeply into development, or trying to be their own brand, it may just take some of that digital money and push it back towards our system. And so the same way that Disney used to make movies by, they would have these investment packages where basically you could buy into a share of — I forget what it was called. I will have to look it up.

But for awhile they would basically build a slate of movies and you would invest into a slate of movies. That kind of stuff can happen and getting more money into the system helps.

**Craig:** Yeah, like a big Kickstarter for a $200 million movie.

**John:** $200 million Kickstarter is what we need.

**Craig:** Yeah. Or a Kiva Loan. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. Absolutely. [laughs] Micro-lending. Macro-lending. Something.

**Craig:** So it was good news. Good news.

**John:** It’s all good news. And it is great to be back in Los Angeles and at my proper podcasting setup. I have been on my little 13-inch MacBook Air for the last four weeks. And honest to god it is a terrific computer, I love it to death, but I don’t feel at home until I am in front of my big monitor with my weird keyboard and my actual microphone. So it is nice to be back.

**Craig:** I know how that is. I, too, am a creature of habit.

**John:** Well, creature, thank you again for a lovely podcast.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Have a great week. And we will talk soon.

**Craig:** See you later.

**John:** Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2012/all-apologies).

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

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

**John:** And this is the 3rd intro that I just did for Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting, and things that are interesting to screenwriters. How are you, Craig?

**Craig:** Uh, I’m exhausted. I’m so tired right now. Anything could happen. I could say anything.

**John:** Well, today we are going to mostly answer questions, so it should be kind of easy.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** This won’t be a particularly taxing one is what I am trying to say.

**Craig:** Thank God. Because normally, normally, I need to be on my A-game for this sort of thing.

**John:** Yeah. But your C-game, we will let it slide.

**Craig:** Yeah. Oh, by the way, my C-game may end up being my A-game. We will find out.

**John:** You never know.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** We wanted to start off with an update because in a previous podcast we had talked about Toph Eggers who had written a criticism of Steve Koren, who is a fellow screenwriter, that we thought was poorly done. It was a bad choice of something to write about, and it was not the correct thing to do. And we sort of went at length on our feelings about that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But he wrote a follow up piece that was actually pretty nice.

**Craig:** Yeah. It was a pretty well thought out apology. I mean, I guess that is the headline, really, is that he apologized for it, and seems to own completely that he behaved poorly and boorishly. And not only did he apologize in a very convincing and thorough manner, but he also touched on why what he did was wrong, and why in fact Steve Koren doesn’t deserve harassment at all.

It was an A+ apology. And so I offer Toph Eggers my A+ acceptance.

**John:** He wasn’t really apologizing to you specifically, but acknowledgement.

**Craig:** I think he was apologizing to me, because I see everything as about me. [laughs]

**John:** Oh, I forgot the solipsism and narcissism that draws everything out.

**Craig:** Yes. Like he performed the role of “guy apologizing to me” extraordinarily well. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] But I would say, I like apologies, and I like apologizing. It’s weird that people aren’t better at it. I hate the modern form of apology which is, “I’m sorry you were offended.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** This weird way of sort of redirecting it back at somebody, saying, “Oh, it is your fault that you were offended, but I don’t want you to feel bad about it in a strange way.”

**Craig:** Yeah. Liked I’m not apologizing for what I did; I’m apologizing for the weird interaction between what I did and your thin skin.

**John:** Yeah. Really apologizing and genuinely apologizing feels so good.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s like coming out, but of a blame thing.

**Craig:** That’s exactly right. In fact, I remember during the strike when my blog was hoppin’, and there was an enormous amount of attention, I made a mistake. And the mistake that I made was I gave an interview to the LA Times, and in that interview I was very clear about the way I felt, but perhaps I was not as specific about insisting that they include a certain amount of context in what I said.

And when I read the article the next day, they had basically left out half of what I said and made me sound in a way, frankly, that was unflattering and counterproductive to what I wanted, which was an effective resolution to all of this. I wanted something good for the union and I didn’t like the way they made it sound. And people attacked me.

Now, the people attacking me, that was sort of par for the course; I would get that every day. But on that one, they were right, and the mistake that I made was, frankly, not taking my — not being as careful with the responsibility I had that came with the, I guess, my public presence. And I didn’t manage it well enough. And I apologized. And interestingly, I would say half of the people who follow the blog accepted the apology and took it for what it was, which was my mea culpa, and the other half viewed it as an opportunity to kick even more dirt in my face.

And I find people who do that particularly off, you know. [laughs] If somebody makes an apology, why not accept it? I mean, they are apologizing. If you won’t accept the apology all you are really doing is eliminating future apologies from people like that.

**John:** Yeah.

Wait, okay, I just did that thing where I say, “Yes,” and you say something long, and I just said, “Yeah.” It’s part of the drinking game apparently.

**Craig:** You did the “Yup” thing, yeah. You did the “Yup” thing.

**John:** I’m so sorry I just “Yupped” you.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** [laughs] I was reading the transcript of our podcast. One of the unusual things about our podcast is we do actually provide a transcript of all our podcasts a few days later, and it is on at johnaugust.com, you can look for it there. And I was reading through it, which I don’t usually read through it, but I was reading though it and this new person who is transcribing it will put in all of the yeahs that we have, and we say “Yeah” a lot.

**Craig:** We do.

**John:** And I tend to say “Yeah” after you have said something long and profound. And I will just follow it up with a “Yeah.”

**Craig:** I know. It takes all of the wind out of my sails. I feel so good. There is like a brief moment after I finish saying something profound and important where I feel so good. And it usually lasts about a second. And then you say, “Yup,” and then it is all gone.

**John:** Would you prefer in the future that I just leave a long, awkward silence, and then come back?

**Craig:** No. I think instead of saying, “Yeah,” because obviously there is nothing wrong with saying “Yeah” but I think a better word would be, “Wow.” [laughs]

**John:** How about a slow clap. [claps]

**Craig:** [laughs] I would also like a slow clap! I mean, I’m working my butt of here, man.

**John:** Maybe we could provide some sound effects that would sort of show the “Ooohh…”

**Craig:** You know what? We should sweeten this with laugh track and the Full House, “Ooohh!” I love it. Stuart, get that.

**John:** Stuart is on it. One of the most enjoyable things you can watch if you have about a minute to kill is Big Bang Theory without the laugh track. Have you seen this?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** So they take like two minutes of the Big Bang Theory, of an episode, and they just take out all of the laughter, and your realize it is just such a creepy, strange show if you take out the laughter. Because they will say these weird things, and then there will just be awkward silence [laughs]. It looks like a show about serial killers.

**Craig:** That is why I always feel the jump from — and there are people who do it successfully — but jumping from sitcoms to movies is an enormous gulf because there is absolutely no help. And when you whiff, it is brutal. Brutal. Nothing is worse than silence. And, also, impacts every joke after it.

The more you don’t hear laughing, the less you want to laugh.

**John:** My friend Melissa is on a show now that is shot 3-camera with a live studio audience. And so I was talking with her, and they do pre-tape certain things, or they will stuff, like if they are driving a car and it is a green screen thing, so they may pre-record it, or they will do it just to sort of — they will do it for the live, studio audience with them just sitting on boxes on the stage and do it, and then they will actually go back and film the real thing. And they will patch it up with the laughter after the fact.

But she says it is just so odd when you have the audience there and they are anticipating the laugh, and you are waiting for the laugh, and then you have to try to match it in a context when you don’t have that. It has to be frustrating.

**Craig:** Very strange. Are you talking about your friend, Melissa McCarthy?

**John:** I am talking about my friend, Melissa McCarthy.

**Craig:** That’s my friend, Melissa McCarthy, now.

**John:** Oh, you get to work with her now.

**Craig:** Yeah. She’s mine. I took her from you.

**John:** She’s moving on up.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s right. She graduated. [laughs]

**John:** Let’s get to some questions here.

**Craig:** Let’s do it.

**John:** Because questions are easy and I don’t say “Yup” at the end of them.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** Scott asks, “Recently my partner and I sold our first spec to a major studio. It had been a long process that entailed attaching two major movie stars, and Oscar-winning producer, before it went to the market. When it did finally go out, it ended up in a minor bidding war that ended up with a truly modest deal. My question is, what do we do now? After we finish the two rewrites promised in our deal, where should we be putting out time and energy? What should we be asking our agents and managers to do for us? Should we be trying to pitch for existing assignments? Should we be trying to pitch original ideas? Should we be specking something? Should we try to get on staff for a series? What should we do?”

**Craig:** Okay, that last one threw me for a bit, because it sounded like they are feature writers.

**John:** They are feature writers I would say that a lot of feature writers sort of entering right now are really feature and TV people.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And I think it is maybe smart. We can talk about that, too.

**Craig:** Yeah. No, I get that.

**John:** Don’t limit yourself to one thing.

**Craig:** No, I get that. I think it depends on how this particular project has gone for them. Assuming, I’m going to assume the best and it has gone well. If it has gone well then you have material and relationships that prove that you can do the job of professional screenwriting. So, if it were me, I would be asking my agents to get me general meetings and specific meetings about open assignments. Even if none of those meetings turn into work, they turn into relationships, which turn into work. Maybe not immediately, but done the road.

And simultaneously, I would be developing a pitch as soon as possible.

**John:** Yeah. You are going to have to focus your attention in a couple different areas and figure out what is most likely to work for you. But you are going to be going out on generals, which is basically the, “Hey, hello, how are you?” It is the bottled water tour of Los Angeles, where you sit down with all of the junior execs at different places and you see who you like and who you get along with.

Most of those meetings won’t really amount to anything, but they put a face with a name, and talk about stuff you like to write.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Some of those things will be going in for open assignments. And open assignments means that there is a movie that they want to make, or they have an idea, or some piece of property that they are talking to writers about doing. You want to go in and pitch on some of those, because some of those will become jobs. They will actually pay you to do them.

They are also incredibly good practice to figure out how to pitch a movie and how to take a nebulous idea and shape it as a movie and be able to present it to somebody. So, you are going to want to do some of that.

The danger, and what I have seen happen a lot, is you end up pitching on so many of these things that you are not writing anything new. So at the end of a year, all you have was that thing that you sold and a bunch of sort of pitches for movies you can’t make because you don’t have the underlying property.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So I would say, I don’t know, if it is you and your writing partner, maybe you just break it down by day, or you break it down by sort of overall percentage of your time. But maybe on Mondays you are only going to work on your own stuff, which is you are writing that new spec, or figuring out your own pitches for something you can go out with. And Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, maybe you are going out on meetings and doing other people’s stuff.

But, you are going to have to plan for both things being possible. And if TV is a real possibility, you are going to have to have an honest conversation with your agents about what is the series, what is the season that they need you to be available to do stuff to go out on those meetings. What do they need from you to be able to show people so they can get you staffed on the show?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** You are going to probably need to write something new. So it is not just a matter of, “Oh, I will do TV and someone will hire me.” It’s a tremendous amount of work to try to get hired on a TV show.

**Craig:** That’s the key. It is a tremendous amount of work. I think no matter what you are endeavoring, and this is the time when you must be extraordinarily aggressive with your time. You have to really work hard right now, because the door has been opened slightly. And I know that everybody has a romantic point of view on this, that when you finally get there and you have your break, the door is kicked open. And then you get to trip through the field of daisies and pick the jobs you want.

And, in fact, all they have really done is cracked the door slightly. You are going to have to work, and work, to get to that next thing. You want to be a professional writer, you need not one job, not two jobs, not three jobs. I think five jobs. Now you are one of the workforce. Now you are a known quantity.

And so you actually do need, unfortunately, to do a lot of work. And I totally echo your concern about over pitching on open assignments because here is the reality of those: they are a little bit of fool’s gold because nine times out of ten they end up going to whomever a director or actor wants, or a big writer, and you will exhaust yourself and your creative tools by cracking and solving problems for nothing, over and over and over.

So, be careful with those, which is why I suggest — there is nothing wrong with it. You are right; going on those is great practice. And it also helps show your problem solving side to these people. But general meetings are also great. And, pitch. Find something new and get out there and pitch it, because they are always looking for new stuff. And you guys get to walk into the room as people who have done it before, which is a big deal.

So, work hard right now.

**John:** Yes. And whatever you are taking out for your pitch should be something in the same ballpark as the thing that you sold. Because people read that script and they said, “Oh, we like this thing,” you know, minor bidding war. They were like, “Oh, there is something here that is promising.” So, if you sold a sci-fi/action movie, don’t try to go out with a comedy pitch next. That shouldn’t be your next spec because people aren’t going to know what to do with that. And they put you on some list, and they want to work with you, but they are not sure what to do with you on what list.

If you are going out to pitch on an open assignment, maybe that is a chance where you are going to stretch yourself to a genre that isn’t necessarily just like your spec. And they can see you do that because it is lower stakes.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, I guess the only thing I would say is if you have a terrific pitch that is of a different kind of thing, but you believe in it, and you think it is sellable, then you just have to make sure that the expectations are managed before you walk in the room. That they here, “Listen, the guys who wrote this great science fiction/action-adventure have actually come up with this, amazingly have come up with this, incredible romantic comedy, which sounds like they wouldn’t be able to do it, but they have. So if you are looking for that, they would love to come in and talk to you about it.”

But, frankly, this is rarely a problem. Usually people have a natural genre. And early on in your career you should be going for depth rather than breadth, if that makes sense.

**John:** Yeah. You want to be like the guy who they want to do this next project that is sort of like that other project. That can be helpful. A little bit of pigeonholing is helpful very early on in your career.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I got pigeonholed as the guy who was adapting kids’ books. I didn’t only want to adapt kids’ books, which is why I wrote Go. The useful thing with Go, just even as a script, is I could go out for comedies with it, I could go out for action movies with it. I could go out for a lot of different kinds of movies with that script.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s right.

**John:** Our next question is from a guy named Ruckus.

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** “When handing in a rewrite, do either of you preface the draft in correspondence? My writing partner and I just submitted a pretty substantial rewrite, and I found myself struggling with the email. There were a few suggestions made by the producer that we didn’t think worked, but we found an alternate and hopefully more elegant solution in the writing. Is it better to let the producer know how you might have veered from the notes going into the reading, or should you let the script stand on its own?”

That’s a really good question.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s a great question. First, I must of course say, “Can you describe the ruckus?” John, can you identify that quote?

**John:** No.

**Craig:** “Can you describe the ruckus?” I believe it is The Breakfast Club. “I heard a ruckus.” “Can you describe the ruckus?”

**John:** Oh, I don’t know The Breakfast Club that well.

**Craig:** My attitude about it is this: if you feel that you have addressed a problem in a creative and interesting way, that is good, go with it. It is a gamble, but it is a gamble that pays off huge if it works because all I think everyone that doesn’t write, but who advises writers on how to improve their writing, is secretly hoping that you are going to come back and just make them happy. They don’t really want to move your hand for you and type the words for you.

If they could do that, they would be writing. So, if you have a great solution that is off the beaten path of the notes, there is nothing wrong with saying, “Listen. We have in our back pocket the solution we all talked about, but we really wanted to try this.”

And if they don’t like it, just say, “Listen. You know what? It was something we believed in, and we thought about it. We always have the make good back here if we need to kind of go in that direction.” But, there is nothing wrong with showing, in my mind at least, nothing wrong with showing some creativity and some proactiveness, as it were.

**John:** I agree with you. I think if you have the better solution, let the better solution speak for itself. The only case where I would say to think twice is if you have promised that you are going to do a certain kind of thing, and then you don’t do that. Like let’s say you are working with a director and a studio, and you need to turn in this draft. If you promise a director you are going to do something, and you couldn’t do that thing, and you did this other thing instead, you have got to at least tell him or her that that that is there.

Because if it is going to everybody at once, and then they are surprised, and there is cross-talk that is not involving you, that is going to be a real problem.

**Craig:** I agree.

**John:** So there are cases where you want to either have that phone call or have that email ahead of time and everyone knows what is going on.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know, it is really important to ask yourself, “How surprising will this be? And what if they don’t like it? Is this surprise going to compound the negative reaction?”

If you are going to really surprise them with something big, you have got to let them know ahead of time. Frankly, it has less to do with courtesy and more to do with being effective as a screenwriter. Because when people are shocked and surprised, they start to have an emotional reaction that is going to absolutely get in the way of their experience reading the script. That is just something you have to start to feel out, like what are kind of landmine type changes that you need to let them know about ahead of time to protect yourself and the work, and what are things that you can kind of just sort of go about because you are the writer of the script, and you are not a reactor.

**John:** Yeah. The more going into this rewrite process, you were talking about the areas that you were going to work on, but not the specific solutions, then you have a lot more freedom to do whatever you needed to do in order to get that thing to work right.

It is when… — A lot of times when you get very close to production and you had to sort of pitch the exact thing that you were going to do, not down to the word, but it is going to be this, and it is going to fit in this little place, and it is going to be this scene here, that is where it becomes tough where if you are doing something that is just very different it is going to ripple through other changes.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And then maybe you need to really warn people about that.

**Craig:** Yeah. And then there is sort of like, “What is the deal with these people? They are just not reliable. I don’t want to hire this guy again because we all discussed something in the room, he agreed, he went off. He came back and suddenly the guy that was supposed to be a little bit more of a mature dad instead of a bumbling dad has become an uncle from out of town who has no kids at all. What the hell is going on here?”

So be respectful of the fact that there is somebody else on the other end of this conversation.

**John:** Yes. Our next question. Max asks, “I have been writing specs for a while now, and working with producers. I have tons of drafts of several scripts — notes in every draft, brainstorming, what have you. I am just wondering how you, someone who has had infinitely more notes and files to deal with, keeps everything accessible and in place?” So just organization strategy for drafts and files.

**Craig:** That is a question for you. You are the Sort Master.

**John:** I am the Sort Master. But I don’t deeply sort. Most things that I am working on actively, I have in Dropbox so that I can reach them through whatever computer that I am in. Or, I can pull them up on my iPad if I need to. So, in Dropbox I have folders for each of the basic projects. So I have one for Preacher, for Frankenweenie, for whatever, and all of the drafts and everything related to it goes in there.

If something is like an email and is attached to an email, I don’t always drag it out of there and stick it into Dropbox. I kind of feel like mail is another way to get to some of that stuff. And a lot of times if I am looking for a specific PDF that I sent through to somebody else, I will just pull it out of mail rather than pulling it out of Dropbox, because at least then I can see the context of what this last thing was that I sent.

But I am just using Dropbox for basically everything. And I am being very lazy, and sort of hoping that Dropbox doesn’t mess it up for me, for my active stuff.

For older backup stuff, I have it on just a “Projects” hard drive. I have a big tower, and I have four hard drive slots in there. I have one that I use for projects, and I just keep everything related to those projects in those folders in there. And that one I back up once a week.

**Craig:** I don’t really think that there is anything lazy about it, I mean, the way you just described it. Frankly, it is not like our job of archiving is that intense. I do a very similar arrangement to you. I have a folder that is essentially a writing archive. Everything that is done, that sort of sits on a folder, and all of that stuff is mirrored to Dropbox as well. I like Dropbox, just mostly because of the backup factor.

I mean, I take my laptop with me wherever I go, though it is nice to always have mobile access. And the projects that are scripts in progress, that is its own folder. And in that, each of those things, there will be — for instance, in my Identity Theft folder I organize things by sort of treatment. So anything in the treatment folder is all the stuff that led to up to the first draft. Then there is first draft folder. There is the second draft folder. And then once the movie gets green lit, then I create a production drafts folder. And in that folder there is a white folder, a blue folder, a pink folder, a salmon folder, and yada, yada.

**John:** That is actually much more organized than what I do. I just keep it in one big folder and I sort it by date. And the most recent stuff is at the top, and I can usually find everything I need.

**Craig:** Who would have thought that I would be the neat one? [laughs] No one!

**John:** The tidy one.

So now what are you doing with just like little bits of scraps that aren’t quite movies or projects yet? Do you have any sort of dump file for that? I use Evernote for it. Are you using anything like that for storing the bits and pieces of things?

**Craig:** If I have an idea, or a little bit of something, it is almost always attached to a project. And what I will do is I will just make a folder for that project. So, even if I don’t quite know what it is, if it is like, “Okay, I have this idea for a historical drama,” I will just write a folder that says, “Historical Drama Idea,” and then I will put that stuff in there.

But, I don’t have a folder that is, like, “Ideas” or “Whims.” Everything gets kind of a spot.

**John:** I started using Evernote because I did have a folder for like bits and pieces, and I would never really check that folder because there were just drips and drabs and stuff. Or, if I made a new folder for something, a year later I would go back and see a folder that had exactly one file in it. And it was like, “Well, that was weird.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s like that idea sort of never came to anything more than that. So, the stuff that I feel is kind of interesting, that could be a movie somewhere, I’m throwing that into Evernote right now. It’s not perfect.

I use for my day-to-day keeping track of stuff I need to do, I am using OmniFocus, and I will sometimes — I am debating between the “someday maybe” kind of tag you can put on stuff. And so there will be a little idea, and I will put a “someday maybe” on it, and that way it just kicks up for review every couple of weeks. And so it is like, “Oh, that little thing I was thinking about, is that still something I am thinking about? Or should that just go away?”

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m okay with the notion that there are… — I mean I have a couple of folders in my Scripts in Progress master folder that I haven’t touched in three years. And I am okay with that. They are there mocking me, and I like it. I like that one day I will have to address either their mortality or breathe some life back into them.

**John:** Cool. Our next question comes from Salvi from Los Angeles. He asks, “I read about spec scripts or screen rights ‘going to auction.’ Although I am familiar with the concept of an auction, I am wondering if you can explain what exactly this means in a Hollywood setting. What is the process, the formalities? Who manages the auction? How are offers submitted — fax, email, phone call? Where, to whom? How does it work? What is a script auction or a rights auction?”

**Craig:** Uh…I’m guessing that this is… — A script auction, I believe, has to do with the purchasing of a library of material from a company. In other words, a company is going out of business and being sold.

**John:** Yeah. In this case he is talking about spec scripts.

**Craig:** Oh…

**John:** I think what he is talking about is there is the situation where something becomes a bidding more on a spec. So, let’s say you wrote a spec script that suddenly everybody wants. And it gets to the point where you are getting offers from different people. I used to hear about this more. Maybe it still does happen where at some point the agents will say, “Okay, we are going to start at 5pm and say to just start bidding. And people can call in and say how high they will go.” And they will set a time limit on it.

**Craig:** Yeah. To that, there is no rocket science. Basically if it is a hot property, and everybody knows about it, then you just say, “We start fielding calls at this hour, and we will let you know what the highest offer is. And if you want to match it or exceed it, go for it.”

Sometimes the companies, in an effort to short circuit a kind of endlessly spiraling competition will say, “I’m going to offer you $1 million for this. You have to take it or leave it right now, or I am out.” They do all sorts of things.

There are script auctions and rights auctions that occur when companies are being bought and sold. For instance, famously The Terminator rights were auctioned off. And those occur the way assets are auctioned off for any business, when they have to disperse assets. But, probably he is talking about what you are talking about.

**John:** In the case of those big bundle of rights assets, there you would need to know, you have to pre-qualify as a bidder. They have to know that you actually could buy at the price that you are talking about. There would be all sorts of terms and things. But if you just wrote a normal spec script, that is not going to go out as auction in a meaningful way. It is not like Christie’s. It’s not like they say, “We have a new spec script from this writer you have never heard about,” that people can read. That doesn’t happen.

**Craig:** Nope.

**John:** You are just desperate for anyone to read that script if it is somebody you have never heard of before.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** This I am going to read just because this came in with the whole bundle of questions. This is a guy named Josh. He wrote in, “Cool blog. Went there to wash sneaks. CAngel Full Throttle was excellent!!”

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** And God bless him. He kept it all in the subject line. There was no text that went with it.

**Craig:** Oh, no, no. Why would there be text? The subject line is there for you to write your entire thing. Yeah.

**John:** But there was punctuation, Craig, I should point out. There were two exclamation points at the very, very end.

**Craig:** Oh. Well, do me a favor. Read that again, because I got C. Angels 2, I think, or C. Angels, but say it again one more time.

**John:** Because when I first read it, I read it as “Cangel.” I’m like, what is “Cangel?”

**Craig:** Oh, it could be Cangel which was a very good movie. But start from the beginning.

**John:** “Cool blog. Went there to wash sneaks. CAngel Full Throttle was excellent!!”

**Craig:** I’m sorry, watch or wash sneaks?

**John:** Wash sneaks. So, this is something, it is esoteric information that as the person who wrote the blog I can tell you, is I have a random blog post on there that says, “You can wash sneakers.” Because no one every washes their sneakers, but you totally can wash sneakers and they look so much better. And things that you would normally throw out are actually quite wearable again after washing them in the washing machine.

So he probably had Googled “washing sneakers,” ended up on my blog. Saw that I wrote Charlie’s Angels Full Throttle, and that was the movie that he wanted to comment how much he loved.

**Craig:** Cangels.

**John:** Cangel Full Throttle.

**Craig:** Cangel Full Throttle.

**John:** Cangel Full Throttle is due for a remake, I think.

**Craig:** Um…thanks, Josh.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Cool blog!

**John:** So this is a segue for me internally, not to hold it against him, which is a phrase… — Or, actually here is the phrase: let’s not hold that against him. Sometimes in blog posts my name will come up, and they will say, “John August, who wrote Charlie’s Angels Full Throttle, but let’s not hold that against him.”

**Craig:** [laughs] Right.

**John:** It’s the weirdest, most backhanded thing. First off, if you are going to cherry pick one credit just to put for me, you are going to put the sequel to Charlie’s Angels as my credit?

**Craig:** But let’s not hold that against him. And the reason we have to advise you not to hold that against him is because it was a terrible crime.

**John:** It was a crime against cinema.

**Craig:** What a bad thing you did, John. Boo!

**John:** What a terrible, awful thing I did.

**Craig:** But let’s show our humanity and our magnanimity by advising everyone to not hold it against you.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because holding it against you would be an understandable action. Let’s hold that movie against you.

**John:** Yeah, it’s like a genocide, but it is a film that someone could choose to watch, or not watch, at their time. And there is actually a better movie that stars the same movie, called Charlie’s Angels, that is also available for watching. If you like Charlie’s Angels, and don’t like the sequel, that’s okay. You can just watch the first one.

**Craig:** I don’t even think we need to go to genocide. Let’s just start with the most mild crime we can think of. Shoplifting.

**John:** Yeah. Okay.

**Craig:** What’s worse — Cangel or shoplifting? I’m going to say shoplifting. I’m going to say there literally isn’t one single thing for which there is some kind of statute that is worse than writing the worst movie in the world.

People need to shut up.

**John:** Oh, you know where people also need to shut up? They need to shut up in freaking movie theaters.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, I went to go see Hunger Games here in Times Square, and yeah, I’m sort of asking for it, going to see a movie in Times Square, but that’s where I was. And so I saw the movie.

So I saw it opening day. Or I saw it the Friday that it opened. And it was a packed house. And I really, really enjoyed the movie. I did not enjoy, first off, the two women who got into a fist fight before the movie began.

**Craig:** Awesome.

**John:** Which is not great.

**Craig:** Maybe they were hungry.

**John:** They were hungry. They were hungry for some…

**Craig:** Games.

**John:** Movies. But the guy next to me, the stranger who was sitting next to me decided that he had to sort of provide commentary on what he was seeing the whole time through. And I originally thought, “Oh, he must be with somebody and he is talking to that person.”

But, no. he was just sort of talking to me, or sort of anyone who could hear, and providing his sort of like, “Well that’s a dumb choice.” “Oh, come on, fire the cinematographer,” because it was all shaky cams.

**Craig:** Are you kidding? Really? He was doing that?

**John:** He was doing that.

**Craig:** I mean, because I understand the whole, “Bitch, don’t go in there!” But, I mean, now you have a film student mocking the movie next to you? Shut up!

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, come on! What a jerk.

**John:** Yeah. So anyway, that guy — you are a jerk. But, I’m in the middle of the theater, and this is two-thirds of the way through, so I am not going to actually… — It did tamper my enjoyment. Tamper? It muted my enjoyment somewhat of The Hunger Games. But I did quite like it, except for that person next to me.

And as the lights came up, he kind of turned to me to get agreement from me. I’m like, “No, I want to stab you. That is actually how I am feeling now.”

**Craig:** I always say to those people… — I will just say to them, “Hey, come on man, please.”

**John:** My husband will speak up, but then it becomes extra awkward.

**Craig:** I love the awkwardness. It actually makes the movie better for me. And it is hard on a movie like that, because I would imagine it was a packed house. But I will get up and change seats. Anything to get away from idiots.

**John:** Oh, yeah. In a normal situation I would do that.

**Craig:** Idiots, yeah. I remember my wife… — I didn’t see The Sixth Sense with my wife. For some reason we saw it separately. And she said the moment came in the movie where he is…

**John:** Say spoiler…

**Craig:** He remembers. Oh, spoiler alert, in case you haven’t seen that movie. [laughs] The moment comes where he is sort of flashing back and he sees the ring, and he realizes that he has been dead the whole time, and in the middle of that interesting montage where the filmmaker has cleverly designed a cinematic way to slowly shine the light on you, this older woman behind her, who was with her older female friend says in a loud whisper, “He doesn’t know he’s dead.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Got to love that. Just, way to kill it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** “He doesn’t know he’s dead.”

**John:** They make television who need to talk back to the screen.

**Craig:** They also make guns for people who need to talk back to the screen.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Yeah, one of the great spoof moments in spoof history is in the first Scary Movie, the Keenen Ivory Wayans’ Scary Movie where Regina Hall, a terrific actor, is playing the stereotypical black girl who must yell at the screen, at everything. And the audience all participates in stabbing her to death. [laughs]

**John:** I remember that.

**Craig:** Yeah. It was great. It was really great.

**John:** All right, the next question. Austin, who turns out we actually know people in common; we know some very tall women who are dancers in common. He writes in to say, “My partner and I were taken on at a management company,” whose name I will redact, “after they read our glorious first outing. It was a good script, but they didn’t want to make it, nor did their partners at Alcon. What they did want was for us to go off and write Bridesmaids Part 2, or the Hangover Again, or Bad Teacher Even Worse, or some other been-there/done-that thing.”

**Craig:** God forbid you write a sequel to a movie like that. [laughs]

**John:** As I read more about it, it is sort of a dense paragraph here. I think it was that they wanted him to write that same kind of movie. They weren’t literally saying, “Write the sequel to that movie.” They were saying, “Write exactly that kind of movie.”

**Craig:** Got it. And they don’t want to.

**John:** They basically didn’t want to. “They turned in outline after outline, high concept for high concept for high concept, piled like cord wood in the WGA Registry. And ultimately this producer/management company dropped us. Here we are six months later with our brilliant original first outing, plus additional treasurer’s trove of stories to be told. We have no connections in this world, other than the producers that just cut the cord.

I read that poorly, but you got the idea of what it is. So, you know what? That’s going to happen a lot. I would say 75% of working screenwriters had exactly that situation, where there was initial spark of interest from somebody who seemed real, who liked your stuff, and you worked your ass off to try to make them happy. They couldn’t be made happy, you weren’t made happy, and you parted ways.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s far from a rare circumstance. Although, there is a lesson here: don’t chase. And producers — particularly producers — are notorious for chasing. The Hangover happened in spite of quite a bit of resistance. Bridesmaids, I imagine, happened in the face of some amount of resistance. Almost every surprise hit comedy, particularly in comedy, seems to happen counter to what everyone is chasing. And you can see these kinds of cycles that come and go in comedy.

Right now we are in this kind of Rated R comedy for grownups phase. And we will at some point return to — because these things are cyclical, the kind of character-driven, broader PG-13 comedies that ruled the world in the ’90s. But producers chase because, just a little primer on the economics of producing. Producers don’t get paid to develop. They get paid some sort of insultingly small amount of money. It doesn’t support them. It doesn’t keep them going. All they get paid really is to produce an actual money. It needs to get green lit. It needs to be made.

So they are desperate to give the studios what the studios want to make. However, what that often leads producers to do is chase. Therefore, they then put that on you, especially newer writers who they feel they can absolutely tell anything to, and who will… — Finally here are writers that won’t look at me and go, “No, dummy, I’m going to do what I want.”

So then they force those writers to join the hunt in chasing. If you feel yourself chasing, you are never going to win. You have to write something you actually like, that you actually believe in, that you have actual passion for. And that doesn’t mean that it must be artistic or dramatic. It could also mean the dumbest comedy in the world. But you have to love the dumb comedies. And you have to love that style of movie.

Write what you love. If you, and this is a tough one because we are constantly put in our place as the peons, and yet we really are the leaders. We must lead everyone to something new and good.

**John:** You have to remember that screenwriting is essentially the research and development of the film industry. And there is a lag time. So by the time that the Hangovers, and all the R-rated comedies have become incredibly successful, well you could back up like three years before that that they actually started to go through the process.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So if you write a brand new one right now, it is going to be another three years, and that cycle will have passed. It feels very much like all the people, the other companies are trying to make an iPad competitor. Well, they are racing to try to catch up with where the iPad is right now, but the iPad is going to be, again, better by the time they are done with this thing.

So they end up releasing a tablet that would have been, “Oh, that would have been okay a year ago.”

**Craig:** Right. And meanwhile Apple, the iPad to them, that’s a small department where that makes minor iterations. The thing that they are going to come out within a year or two, everyone is going to go, “Wait, wait, wait, what?!” And then they are going to go chase that.

And that is what you kind of have to do. And all of the work that I have done that I sort of look at and go, “Huh, I don’t know if that was a good idea,” which is quite a bit of it, was me being involved in a chase. And getting enlisted in a chase. But it took me a long time, and many, many mistakes, and iffy to bad choices to arrive at a place where I understood that that wasn’t going to do anybody any good. And that — just write what you really want to.

And, look, we don’t have to be precious about it. There are a lot of things that get us excited to write. And we can choose to write something that excites us that we also know other people might be excited by. There’s nothing wrong with that. But when you sit down with these guys, and I am really speaking to the newer writers now, and these producers tell you in no uncertain terms that they are not making this kind of movie, and they are not making that kind of movie, they are only making this kind — just understand: they don’t know what they are talking about. None of them do.

Robert Towne, or was it William Goldman? Robert Towne? “No one knows anything.” Robert Towne? I think it was Robert Towne.

**John:** I think it was William Goldman.

**Craig:** William Goldman. We will give it to William Goldman. “No one knows anything” is absolutely true.

**John:** But, we do know the answer to this question, or at least we have two good answers to this next question. Stephen asks about formatting Shakespeare. “When adapting something like Shakespeare to a screenplay, does the original dialogue of the play get formatted like just normal dialogue, or do you do something different with it to show the verses?”

**Craig:** Oh…

**John:** You have written a lot of Shakespeare-based screenplays.

**Craig:** Uh… [laughs]

**John:** So, I will tell you my answer. If a bulk of your screenplay is going to be in verse, you treat it like as if it was going to be sung. And you are going to have to do something with it so that the lines of text make sense with the… — The end of a line makes sense.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so you may end up doing that thing which I do on some lyrics is I sort of cheat the margins out a little bit, and I put things in. Like Verdana or something. 11-point Verdana. Something a little bit smaller so that the lines can actually line up right.

**Craig:** But this is a whole script, right?

**John:** Yeah. Or you can do this thing which is what a stage play does which is when you get to that kind of stuff, you just really block over it like a lot more left, so you can get the whole line in. And you do the true line breaks the way they would be.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** If you are just doing sort of like Shakespearean-like dialogue, and it doesn’t actually have to — the meter or the rhyme doesn’t matter so much, just make it dialogue.

**Craig:** Yeah. I guess if I were to sit down and do it, I would probably keep the margins basically the same. I’m talking about adapting directly from Shakespeare. So I am pulling the dialogue from the play. Shift-return would be my friend. So, when you shift-return in screenwriting software, it doesn’t advance to the next element; it just does a character return within the element. But I would probably do little combinations. If there were short lines, “To be or not to be, that is the question.” I would probably… — Well, even that one I would probably shift-return. It’s a pretty big one.

But, you know, you need to be able to break it up a little bit so people can get a sense of the meter and rhyme as you just described.

**John:** And you have to remember that even if you are using a chunk of Shakespearean dialogue, you still are writing a screenplay, and so you are going to probably break it up in a different way than how Shakespeare would break it up. You are not going to put huge chunks there, because you will probably be interceding it with action and other stuff so that it really is a screenplay.

**Craig:** It’s an interesting question. You know, I think the smart thing to do would be to see if you can hunt down a copy of one of Branagh’s adaptations. Or…

**John:** John Logan just did Coriolanus.

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly. There you go. See if you can track down Logan’s script and see how one of the professionals did it. It’s a really good question. I don’t know.

And nor will I ever have to know. [laughs]

**John:** I’m going to end with a really easy one today.

**Craig:** Yay!

**John:** Tea asks, “Do you have any advice for writing a scene with numerous characters? It is getting confusing who is saying what to whom, and who they are. Is there a limit to labeling people stereotypically just for clarity sake? This scene is in a holding cell with about 23 people and I cannot omit anybody.” [laughs]

**Craig:** [laughs] Wait, do they all speak?

**John:** I guess so. So, here’s the thing, the first half of the question is completely reasonable.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** And so sometimes there is a… — Don’t say Guard Number 2, Guard Number 3 very much, especially if they are talking to each other. It’s good to have a little shorthand for who that person is. And sometimes you will even see this in the movie scroll. You will see like, you know, Old Lady with Bag, or a character who has a weird name which is really kind of their action.

**Craig:** Or like Sleepy Guard, or Short Guard.

**John:** Sleepy Guard, yes. And that is fine, and fair, and good, because it helps keep things more clear. But, yes, there is a limit. And there is a limit to how many people can be in a scene and actually talk. Because an audience can’t keep track of that many people. So if people are just piping out one line, it is okay to not even introduce them. And just give them the line. And, so, “SHARECROPPER: He’s a monster.” That’s fine.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And you don’t have to sort of keep track. You don’t have to introduce them. You don’t have to say anything about them.

**Craig:** I mean, look, there is so much… — That question took such a hard left into crazy town.

**John:** You can’t have 23 people in a scene…

**Craig:** No! Let’s just start there. Let’s just start with the creative thing.

**John:** …and have any sense of how you are keeping track of people.

**Craig:** No. There is no scene with 23 people talking. That doesn’t exist. In movie history there has never been a scene where 23 individual people spoke in the scene.

There is something terribly wrong with your scene. Nobody is interested in hearing from 23 different people. Frankly, that means there is 23 lines of dialogue at a minimum if they only say one thing. That is a really, really long scene already. So I am bored and confused, and I don’t understand why the screenwriter isn’t focusing my attention on what matters.

So, there is sort of a failure of authorial intent there. But, let me also say this: putting aside whether there are 23 people, or 10 people, or 8, when you become a screenwriter that writes for production, the first time you go through it you will become attune to the concept of the day player. When they make movies, there are actors, and the actors that we think of as stars. But then there are what they call day players — people who show up to do that one or two lines.

A typical scene is your star walks into a 7-11, asks for a cup of coffee, and the clerk says, “I’m sorry, sir, we are out.” And the star storms out upset. Well, that guy is a day player. He has got one line. “I’m sorry, sir, we are out.” Day players, by and large, aren’t the best. It is hard to rely on them to be interesting. So you really need to limit what they say.

If you have a scene where 23 people are talking, and we are not going to see them again, obviously. They are all day players, or half of them are day players, not only do you have a scene that is populated by actors that don’t really command the screen normally, but you are also paying each one of those people a lot of money. And productions hate day players. They try and minimize day players as much as possible. They will go through the script and they will say, “Do we need this guy to actually say this line? Or can he just walk up, try and get a cup of coffee, and there is a sign that says ‘No Coffee Today?'”

So, no. No with the 23. What?! [laughs] No. If you are having trouble sorting it through, trust me, the audience will have an even bigger trouble sorting it through.

**John:** So I am trying to think of situations where you could have 23 characters in a scene. And there is a possibility. Like late in a story, like let say you have met a bunch of different people and they all, it’s like a Cannonball Run kind of movie, where you met a bunch of different people. Or Airplane, where there is a bunch of people in Airplane, and they are all in a similar space. And so they could conceivably, in a scene, everyone could…

**Craig:** There is no way. There’s no way. Think about it. 23 lines of dialogue. That is the minimum.

**John:** He’s not promising that all 23 people are going to speak all at the same time.

**Craig:** In the scene — they all have a line, right?

**John:** I will reread the question. “It is confusing who is saying what to who, and who they are. Is there…” I guess, yeah.

What I was going to say is there are going to be cases where you have introduced people separately, and they are coming into a bigger group. And there is a concept of keeping people alive in a scene. And sometimes you will notice, and this is important — this is actually one of the reasons why a table read is really good. You realize that a character is in a scene, but hasn’t said anything for a page and a half. And that’s bad.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Because in real life, people do say something. And so, “Okay, I need to give that person a line here, or get them out of the scene because it is just weird to have a person standing around there.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I can envision some scenarios in which a bunch of people have come together at sort of the end of a thing, or as like a big rally, and people have come together. And so we know all of those people are there, but not everyone is going to get a line. You are still going to end up treating those people like blocks of people.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So it is going to be that the Mad Mothers are there. And it is going to be the Drunk Fraternity Brothers over there. And it is going to be the Kickboxing Team over there. And one person from each of those things is going to be talking in the scene.

**Craig:** Correct. You will never get to 23. I don’t care if it is the end of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. You are never going to get there. It is never going to happen. It is bad filmmaking. I don’t even know how you direct that, frankly. [laughs] It’s just impossible.

**John:** Yeah. Every person you add to a scene — this is a useful thing to talk about. Like let’s say you have two people at a dinner table, and they are having a conversation. That is fairly straight-forward. You are going to have to cover — you will get masters, you will get each side, you will get some establishing. A minimum of three shots, probably more.

**Craig:** You have got your master, mini-master, over the shoulders, close-ups, extreme close-ups. I mean, you could make a meal out of it. But even if you are… — If you are doing 23 people, the problem is either they are all standing in a freaking clump, like in an audience, at which point why are 23 people in an audience?

You just won’t know where to focus your attention. Just think about it from the audience’s point of view. Who am I listening to? Who am I following? Who do I care about? The audience has the capacity for five or six voices, maybe seven, I don’t know. At some point it gets a little crazy.

**John:** So, wrapping up, maybe we will start doing this every week. I want to talk about one thing this week that I loved. Do you have anything this week that you loved?

**Craig:** Um, you say your thing.

**John:** I will say my thing, and then you can talk.

**Craig:** Is your thing me?

**John:** [laughs] It’s you, Craig.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** I love you. I don’t say that often enough.

**Craig:** You really don’t. Or ever. Yeah.

**John:** I love to apologize. I love to tell people I love them.

The thing I loved this week — I saw Once, the Broadway musical version of Once. So, Once is the Irish film that had Falling Slowly in it, and got Oscar nominations, and I think won some good awards. And I loved the movie. I really loved the show.

So the Broadway show of it is the story of the movie, which means it is very small and slight. And you would think it would just disappear at any moment. But what really struck me about it is how literal — it’s not literal… — Theater can be presentational or representational. Representational means that you recognize what space — it can be acting style, too — but you recognize what space you are in. So, if you are in a post office, it will sort of look like a post office. And then you are someplace else and it is going to look to look like a bedroom.

So in Once, you go in there and as you enter the theater it is this Irish bar setup. And it looks like it fills the whole stage. And you are actually able to go up onto the stage and order a drink. And there are people that they are playing music. And then eventually the show kind of starts, but the lights are still on, and you start to realize, “Oh, the people that are playing music are actually the actors.”

And they never leave the stage. And that set is actually the only set. And they never… — So if characters are going someplace else, they are still in that same set, and everyone is still in the thing, and you are just creating the reality of this moment. Like, this piano comes in, and we are in a music store. And it’s fascinating.

Coming from a screenwriting perspective, where things tend be very…

**Craig:** Literal.

**John:** …literal, it’s nice to experience things where you just have to — you are asking your audience to use their imagination and trust that these people are in their own space. And that they will do the set dressing themselves in whichever way, and they will ignore the people who are sitting at the edges of the stage until they start playing, or singing, and that’s okay that they can do that at any given moment.

Sometimes, like Lars von Trier made Dogville, I guess, which sort of did that same thing, where everyone was around the whole time. But in a movie it is just really, really strange. And in theater you can get away with it. I recommend the show, but I also recommend just thinking about the difference between literality and representing something, versus sort of presenting what something is. It is very hard in a movie to have a space where like I am not sure where I am.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Even if you are filming in Toronto for Washington, DC, you know that you are supposed to be in Washington, DC. And if you don’t have a sense of what this place is supposed to be, you are really uncomfortable as an audience member.

**Craig:** That’s right. You are not sure where the ground is beneath your feet. Correct. But I do like when films adapt musicals or plays, sometimes they borrow that. For instance, when Rob Marshall did Chicago, I’m thinking of the He Had it Coming sequence. Clearly he went for that sort of representational.

He shot a scene that could have been on stage.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And yet it was in the movie, and you were okay because he moved in and out, and it was actually a very smart way of transitioning from the non-musical portions of the movie into the musical portions. You would leave the literal representation and enter this kind of interesting representational space.

**John:** If you were watching Smash you would know that they use that conventional as well.

**Craig:** Huge if. The big if. [laughs]

**John:** Big if. If you are watching Smash you would know that what tends to happen is they are starting to rehearse a musical number, and then it will go into one of the actor’s perspectives, and it will come out as the full production as they sort of see it. And then it will go back to the little version.

**Craig:** Yeah. Actually, now that I am thinking about it, it is kind of a time-tested cinematic device, when the director wants you to divorce yourself from the reality. For instance, if you watch the old Danny Kaye movie, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, when he goes into his Mitty daydreams, it becomes a set. It is quite clearly a set. And it is representational. It is not meant to be real or literal. And then he comes back to his life, and it is real and literal.

**John:** Anything that you loved that you want to share?

**Craig:** You know, I think a lot of people love this, but last night for the 4 billionth time I watched Casino, the Martin Scorsese movie. And I feel like sometimes Casino gets a little overlooked in the shadow of Goodfellas, which I truly love, because.. — And I remember even when I saw Casino in theaters, I thought, “Oh, this is cool. It is sort of like Goodfellas Part 2. And everybody is kind of doing the same thing.”

You know, De Niro is kind of the crafty one, and Pesci is the loose cannon, and it is mobsters and it is ’70s classic rock soundtracks, and corruption, and grifting, and money, and they all come to a bad end. But, there is something wonderful about Casino that is separate and apart from Goodfellas. There is almost, in a strange way, a little more tragedy to it. And I have to say that, what’s her name? [laughs]

**John:** Sharon Stone.

**Craig:** Sharon Stone. Sharon Stone is spectacular in that movie.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Really, really, really good. And there are wonderful moments in that film. Really great stuff. And there is a sequence… — The other thing is, everybody is very familiar with the sequence in Goodfellas when De Niro’s character, Jimmy Conway, I believe, is starting to kill all of the people that assisted him in the Lufthansa heist.

And the soundtrack that plays over it is that great coda to Layla, by Eric Clapton. But in Casino, there is this amazing sequence where they show — where Scorsese shows Pesci and his guys just kind of going nuts, and robbing everybody, and forgetting all the rules about what it means to kind of stay — keep their heads down in this new Wild West of Vegas. And he uses Can’t You Hear Me Knocking by the Stones.

And I think he plays the whole song. It’s a really long song. And it is really great. So, Casino, I think, probably gets its due from a lot of people, but maybe not as many. I love that movie.

**John:** I haven’t seen it in years. I remember loving it when it came out. And I just remember the sunshine of it. I just remember it being light and sunny in a way that you don’t expect a movie that is going to have the things that it has in it.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, and it’s a great choice. And you can see that choice echoed in The Hangover, because I remember when I was talking with Todd about The Hangover, he said it was actually a very important thing to him to show Vegas in the sun, because most movies about Vegas show it at night. It’s so much more glamorous, and interesting, and lit up at night.

**John:** With Go we shot at night. It’s exactly what you want to see.

**Craig:** Yeah. But if you are kind of shooting a little bit of a tragedy, a Vegas tragedy, in the daylight Vegas is pretty grim. It is sort of the opposite of most cities where at night they seem grim. Vegas in the daylight is dirty and dusty and a bit absurd, frankly.

**John:** It’s the woman who is kind of hot when the lights are dim, but then you turn on lights and it is, “Oh my God!”

**Craig:** Yeah. And the Vegas sun is…[police sirens] Oh, there they go. The Vegas sun is truly bad light. And all the artifice of Vegas is exposed for what it is, which is just cheap.

But at night, I have got to say, at night the Venetian looks quite beautiful.

**John:** It does.

**Craig:** In the daytime it just looks dumb. And for a movie about how Vegas is entirely about a kind of false presentation, and what the reality is behind it, it was great that so much of it was during the day. Not much at night. Good call.

**John:** Nice. Great. So, Once and Casino. And one of them is a Broadway musical, and Casino probably wouldn’t be a very good Broadway musical.

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

**John:** We will wrap up here, but I was talking with someone else today. It’s odd that there isn’t a Goodfellas or a Godfather of Broadway musicals. And his theory was that the violence just doesn’t work on stage in the way that you would want it to work.

**Craig:** That’s true.

**John:** It’s strange that that mafia stuff hasn’t become a central uniting principal of a Broadway show.

**Craig:** Well, and I must say that breaking into song is sort of a natural… [laughs]. Naturally undercuts the immediacy and the visceral reaction you want to get from violence.

**John:** Because the Sharks and the Jets, while terrific dancers, are not as threatening…

**Craig:** No. Even Sondheim could not craft lyrics that made those guys actually sound dangerous.

**John:** [singsong] Da-da, da-da-da. Dada.

**Craig:** Yeah. It just comes off, I don’t want to say “gay.”

**John:** No. You need to not say that. It comes off as less threatening. It’s hard to feel like you are in that much danger when people are singing.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know what it is? It’s silly. It’s a silly combination. If you are a killer, you don’t dance and sing, frankly. I feel like killers never performed in their productions in school. And they don’t sing. They are just killers. So, yeah, that’s a tough one.

**John:** Cool. Craig, thank you for another fun podcast.

**Craig:** That was a good one.

**John:** We went into this with absolutely nothing to talk about, and we ended up talking about a lot of things.

**Craig:** We always do. Yeah. And I sang for Stuart while you took a break in the middle there.

**John:** That was very nice for him. I’m sure he appreciated it. Craig, actually, people should know, has a lovely voice. I have heard him sing a nice Broadway song.

**Craig:** Thank you. I was not doing particularly well when I was singing to Stuart. [laughs] But one day I will sing for everybody on the podcast. It will be lovely.

**John:** Lovely. Maybe when we do our live episode. We can do our stuff.

**Craig:** Yeah! There you go. Excellent. Oh, wait, before you go, one last thing. One last thing. As you know, and I suppose many of our listeners know, I am an avid fan of SiriusXM on Broadway, the satellite radio show tunes channel. And you are working on Broadway, and somehow or another I really want you to get on Seth Rudetsky’s show. I feel this is important to me.

By the way, is Big Fish, it’s a musical so there is no reason you shouldn’t be on Seth Rudetsky’s show. Seth Rudetsky is sort of like 80% of the DJing of that channel. And for whatever reason I am just so taken with this guy. He just cracks me up. And I learn a lot from him, and I am a big fan of his. But I don’t do musicals, so I am not going to be with him. But you have got to get on his show. For me.

**John:** I will work on it. I feel like we need to be closer to actually being a show-show. Closer down to being a show that people can buy tickets for, and then I will work on that.

**Craig:** Yeah. But when you get there, you have to do it. For me.

**John:** Come on, I will.

**Craig:** For me.

**John:** It’s a promise.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Craig, thank you again.

**Craig:** Thank you. We’ll see you next time. Bye.

**John:** Bye.