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The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2022/scriptnotes-live-in-la-2).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. Heads up that today’s episode has just a little bit of swearing in it.

Hi.

**Craig Mazin:** Thank you. Thank you. That was so jaunty. Love it.

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

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

**John:** This is Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about what?

**Audience:** Screenwriting.

**John:** And?

**Audience:** Things that are interesting to screenwriters.

**Craig:** Honestly, for a second there, I thought maybe none of them listened to the show.

**John:** Oh my god, that would be so amazing if no one knew what that was.

**Craig:** Literally no one.

**John:** Not a one. Jerome on the piano, thank you [crosstalk 00:00:52]!

**Craig:** Thank you, Jerome. Thank you.

**John:** What a lot of people may not know is that Jerome is with us every week on Scriptnotes. Matthew just doesn’t cut him in to the actual show. We have to have backing piano. Jerome, it’s so great to have you here with us tonight live to provide [crosstalk 00:01:08].

**Craig:** Finally mentioning your name after 590 episodes.

**John:** Matthew and Megana get mentioned all the time. I believe Megan McDonald’s also here in the audience, one of our previous-

**Craig:** Megan right there!

**John:** There she is!

**Craig:** Hey!

**John:** I didn’t see, is Stuart Friedel here?

**Stuart’s Dad, Lee Friedel:** Stuart’s sick.

**John:** Stuart’s sick, oh, no!

**Craig:** Seriously sick?

**Unknown:** [inaudible 00:01:26].

**Craig:** Oh, fuck him.

**John:** We’ll be fine. Craig.

**Craig:** Yes?

**John:** It’s our first live show in three years?

**Craig:** Three years, yes. Something happened along the way, and we weren’t able to do it. Lovely to have everyone back. I feel like it’s like riding a bike. We couldn’t have possibly gotten worse at it.

**John:** We possibly could have gotten worse at it.

**Craig:** We might’ve.

**John:** I remember early in the pandemic we did our live show with Ryan Reynolds and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. It was exciting, but also, it was on YouTube.

**Craig:** This is nice.

**John:** Now we have one and a half glasses of wine in us, and we’re better prepared for a live show.

**Craig:** Might’ve gone up to one and three quarters.

**John:** Who do we have on our live show this week?

**Craig:** We do have an amazing show. For starters, we have the amazing Joel Kim Booster.

**John:** So excited, Joel Kim Booster. We have Megan Ganz?

**Craig:** We do. We have world-famous Ike Barinholtz.

**John:** We love Ike Barinholtz. It would not be a return to Scriptnotes without our own Aline Brosh McKenna. Plus, we have things we can only do with a live audience, including a raffle, a dumb little game show I made up about streaming, and we have to have Megana on the show, because she’s become a crucial part of the show.

**Craig:** I believe I heard a yeah and a yass, and I agree with both of those. Megana will be helping us out tonight with spooky audience questions, because she loves the spooky season.

**John:** The spooky season.

**Craig:** Which I will reiterate is horseshit.

**John:** What is not horseshit, Craig… Segue man.

**Craig:** Segue man.

**John:** We actually have breaking news to share. I texted you this afternoon about this news that is so fundamental to Scriptnotes.

**Craig:** Just so you guys know, you get breaking news about four hours after I get breaking news. This is great.

**John:** I do tell Craig first. If I told him onstage, it would be maybe more authentic to the experience. We’ve talked about doing a Scriptnotes book for a year or so. Some of you have signed up for updates about the Scriptnotes book and sample chapters. We put together a full proposal, which we will happily email to all of you, because we sent it out to publishers. We got offers. We’ve signed a deal today to do a Scriptnotes book.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** It’s Crown Books. They’ve done small, little things like the Obama books.

**Craig:** That’s about right.

**John:** That’s about right.

**Craig:** We should be up there with them.

**John:** We should be up there with them. 2024 probably. It could be sooner. 2024 feels like a safe bet. If you want to see the sample chapters and the proposal that we put out, go to scriptnotes.net. We have a special little thing there where you can put in your email address, and we’ll send you what we’ve done so far. We’re so excited. I need to thank Dustin and Megana and Drew and Chris, who were doing the real yeoman’s work of putting together this proposal and getting this book ready to go. We’re so excited to share it with everyone.

**Craig:** It actually looks quite good, I have to say, as somebody that has nothing to do with it. It looks gorgeous. It will be an excellent stocking stuffer for those of you who care about screenwriting or things that are interesting to screenwriters.

**John:** It’s like 500 pages, so it’s a big stocking. Get bigger stockings for 2024 is what we’re saying. We’re so excited to have this in book form. We’re more excited at this moment to be back in live form, in person, to welcome a guest in front of you, who we can ask questions of. Our first guest is Joel Kim Booster.

**Craig:** Joel Kim Booster, let’s give him a hand.

**John:** Let’s welcome out Joel Kim Booster!

**Craig:** There he is. Thank you for coming.

**Joel Kim Booster:** Hey.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**Joel:** Hi, guys.

**Craig:** Hi.

**John:** Joel Kim Booster.

**Craig:** Welcome to the couch.

**John:** You are an actor, a stand-up comic. You’re a writer. You’ve worked with television. We’ve seen you on Shrill, Search Party. Your Netflix comedy special, Psychosexual, is terrific.

**Joel:** Thank you.

**John:** Thank you for that. Everyone in this audience probably saw you most recently in the Hulu film Fire Island, which you wrote and starred in. Congratulations, Joel Kim Booster.

**Joel:** Oh, man, thank you so much.

**John:** I want to ask you the first question here. We talk on this show a lot about screenwriting, TV writing. We don’t talk a lot about stand-up writing. I want to talk to you about putting together a stand-up set, because you did Psychosexual, you’re probably in development on a new thing. What is your process for figuring out how to do stand-up and how to put together a stand-up that makes sense as a special or at least as one performance? What’s your process for getting stand-up jokes put together?

**Joel:** It’s really sloppy and bad. It’s completely different from my process writing scripts or anything else really. It’s very much a conversation I have with the audience. I’m not a comic who goes to a coffee shop and sits and writes down every setup and punchline word for word and then tries it out that night. I usually show up to a show when I’m working on stuff with premises and bits of jokes that are half-formed. Then I mostly do my writing on stage with the audience, doing a lot of crowd work.

**Craig:** That’s scary.

**Joel:** It was, and it is, but it’s freeing at the same time, because I can show up to a show and know like, okay, tonight I want to talk about the Electoral College and all of the fucked up things about the Electoral College that I can think of. Then I just talk to the audience about it and get a lot of feedback. In the special you saw the repeated crowd work with the guy. That started as just an early stage of writing that special and putting that special together, was in those early stages where I would just find that person to test it. That rolled into how I am writing this special as well.

**John:** It feels so unsafe, because as writers, we’re used to… We are just like, “I’m in my own little bubble.”

**Joel:** I’m raw dogging it.

**John:** You’re just out there. How do you balance that, like, “I want this to be funny for the people who are there with me, but I also want to experiment and find new material.”

**Joel:** I should say I’m constantly writing new material, even slipping it into my longer sets and things like that. When I go to a night, like a bar show or a set here at Dynasty Typewriter, which is one of my favorite places to work out new material, plug, I’m not doing 10 minutes of crowd work. It’s usually four, five minutes of crowd work that I’m doing with the new stuff, forming it, figuring out what hits and what doesn’t hit, and then mixing that in with the stuff that I’ve been workshopping a month ago, so that there are fully formed jokes. Most people paid at least a little bit of money to see me, so I don’t want to completely bite it, but I have.

**Craig:** I’m just fascinated, because you have this raw dog version. You go out there. You wing it. You see what happens. Then on the other side of things, you’re writing a screenplay for a feature film, which is the epitome of not raw dogging it. Not only that, but you’re writing a feature film that is based in part, or at least inspired in part, by Pride and Prejudice. You have this preexisting narrative. You’re obviously doing it in your own way with your own characters and your own vibe. I’m curious, going from the freedom of the stand-up stage to both the rigidity of the form of screenwriting and production, and honestly the rigidity of working inside of a preexisting narrative, was it awesome? Did you ever feel trapped? Talk us through the difference there.

**Joel:** The thing is, as loosey goosey as I am with stand-up writing, I am a very structured screenwriter when I write scripts. I started as a playwright. Even back then, I was outlining my ass off before I would even touch paper, because structure is what turns me on when I’m writing. It is something that I need to tackle and figure out before I actually go into script. That being said, by the time we were shooting Fire Island, the script supervisor hated me, because there were full monologues that I would show up to set and say, “I hate this as written.” I would tell Andrew, the director, I’d be like, “I’m just going to wing it.”

**Craig:** Oh, no.

**Joel:** The monologue that I give to James Scully at the end of the film, trying to convince him to go after Bowen Yang, that was completely made up that day and was fairly different every single take. Everyone from the script supervisor to Andrew to the editor all hated me, but it worked out.

**Craig:** It did work out, because it’s fantastic. I wonder, is the process of writing it and then showing up on the day and saying, “I hate this but let me find something new,” can that only happen if you do write it first?

**Joel:** Oh yeah, absolutely. It only happens when you’re also the executive producer and the star of the movie.

**John:** That does help, doesn’t it?

**Joel:** I wouldn’t recommend that if you’re not wearing all three of those hats at the same time.

**Craig:** You can’t fire yourself.

**Joel:** No one can really say boo. The structure has to be there. The technique has to be there. I went to theater school. I’m very staunchly in the camp of like, theater school, acting school, any of it doesn’t really make you better or can’t give you talent. Everybody who got there who was good got slightly better. Everybody who got there who was bad never got good.

**Craig:** They got poorer.

**Joel:** The reason the people who were good got better is because you learn all of these really annoying techniques that you’re like, “Okay, I’m never going to do this in practice.” When you get it all down into your body and into your brain and it’s running on autopilot in the back of your head, that’s when you can lift off and fool around with form and fool around with structure and make up a monologue on the spot, because you have all of the pieces in place running in the background to make sure that you have a safety net.

**John:** You’re talking about structure. You’ve written features. You’ve written television shows. You’ve written stand-up. We know structure in movies. We know structure in TV shows to some degree. Your stand-up shows also have structure. You have callbacks. You have a plan to go through things. As you’re developing your next special, how are you going from like, “Okay, I have these jokes about this thing and these jokes about this thing.” How do you make it feel cohesive? What is your practice?

**Joel:** That takes a lot longer than just writing the jokes. Right now, I would not say I have an excellent closer. For me, when the special or when the hour really comes together is when I land at the end. It’s very similar to how a lot of people write scripts, I think. I think most of us really start being able to write it when we find the ending. It gives us a good map to get there. Since I haven’t found that out yet, I don’t know what’s tying all of this together yet. I would say too that I don’t know that it’s absolutely vital that there is a cohesive structure.

My special on Netflix definitely had a point. It wasn’t full Nanette, but there was a point being made through the comedy of the special. That is actually a very British thing. They write new hours of stand-up every year and go through this festival system where they take that hour from festival to festival basically all year. They all come from this school of thought that stand-up is very much associated with theater almost. There is always a through line and a message or a point to the special that leads up to it. I spent a lot of time over there and in Australia where they also do that. That was another reason why the special came out the way it did, is because I was absorbing all of that process.

**Craig:** Are you workshopping that as well, the notion of what is this all about and what unites all these things together? As you’re doing your set in development for when you then shoot Psychosexual and it’s on Netflix, are you looking to see what’s landing and how?

**Joel:** Yeah, absolutely.

**Craig:** Not comedy-wise. I mean thematically.

**Joel:** Okay, because I was like, “Babe.”

**John:** Laughter.

**Joel:** Of course.

**Craig:** I definitely wanted you to call me babe. I’m happy about that.

**Joel:** I’m definitely doing that.

**Craig:** Stop it.

**Joel:** That’s harder, because with the jokes, it’s an immediate feedback system. You know if that’s working or not. I think for me, even in Psychosexual, I dip into moments of seriousness, but it’s a secondary goal for me. The primary purpose of stand-up is to make people laugh.

**John:** Make people laugh.

**Joel:** The rest of it is just set dressing. If that works for some people, then great. Overall, the set should work on its own without any of that as a piece of comedy. That’s more for me.

**Craig:** Interesting.

**Joel:** I care less about if that’s working.

**Craig:** Working for them.

**Joel:** As long as I’m closing strong and there’s a good joke-per-minute ratio throughout, I’m happy if that is all funny. I don’t care about the rest of it as much.

**John:** A common theme you see both in Psychosexual and in Fire Island is the specificity of being a gay Asian person making it through the world, and the special things that you’re encountering that other people may not be familiar with. Some of the job you have to do is deciding how much you’re going to tell the audience or explain to the audience about what things are versus just putting it out there and letting them figure it out. What is the balance there? How much do you feel like you have to educate people in like, “This is why this is funny,” or, “This is why this is important.”

**Joel:** You know what? I feel less and less beholden to that the longer I do all of these things, stand-up and writing. No matter what it is, I feel more and more free to let people fill in the blanks a little bit. I’m also coming with a good amount of privilege now, especially because the Netflix special is out. People who are coming to my shows, I’m not having to introduce myself completely to them every single time, which makes things a little easier. Then it also is a real shock to the system when I do get in front of an audience who has no fucking idea who I am, and I’m suddenly like, “Oh, this is good, because now I have to be a real comedian again. I can’t just rest on my laurels.” I really shot myself in the foot though in Fire Island in regards to that, because I added that fucking voiceover.

**John:** At what point did the voiceover happen? Was that always in the script?

**Joel:** It felt like a good idea at the time. It was always a part of the script. I always wanted it to be a part of the script. Actually, fun fact, when it was at Quibi, there was a moment when it was not going to be a personal first-person narrative. It was going to be a third-person narrative done by, we were hoping, Emma Thompson, because she was available to do a Quibi.

**Craig:** That’s right. You’re right. That would’ve been awesome.

**John:** Remember Quibi? Aw, Quibi.

**Craig:** Quibi.

**John:** Vertical video.

**Joel:** The problem with the voiceover for me became in post, because there are a lot of things that are unfixable in a normal movie, unless you want to spend the money on reshoots, which Searchlight was not spending money on reshoots for this movie.

**Craig:** Pour a little VO sauce on it.

**Joel:** All the notes were, “Can we explain this joke in the VO? Can we explain this moment in the VO? Can we fix this with the VO? Can we do this in the VO?” Is it a little bit more than I wanted in the film? Absolutely. Do I hate it? Absolutely no. That kind of stuff makes it a little harder when other people are asking you to explain it, because my thing was, I was always fighting back and saying the audience is smart, and the moments that go over audiences’ heads… I don’t know, when I’m watching movies that are about cultures that I’m not a part of, those are the moments. The moments that I don’t necessarily understand are the moments that make me feel almost the most engaged with the story.

**John:** Because you’re having to pay a lot of attention to figure out what’s happening there.

**Craig:** You’re learning.

**Joel:** You’re learning. There’s stuff that you look up afterwards and you figure it out, and it’s enriching. It makes the movie even better on a second watch and things like that. I think there are plenty of moments like that in Fire Island still. I was happy to leave even more of them in the movie than I think the studio would have liked. That’s the studio’s job, to make sure that it’s palatable to as many people as possible.

**Craig:** They do stand in as a little bit of a proxy of the average person that might buy a ticket. I’m interested in that. That oftentimes is focused on the other. They’ll say, “Okay, but what if you’re not gay and Asian? What will those people think?” I’m actually more interested in if you felt any pressure in the other direction, meaning when you’re telling a story from inside a group, there is a little bit of that syndrome of, “Okay, you’re going to tell our story. You better tell it fucking right.” Did you feel a squeeze that you were maybe going to be held accountable in ways that maybe other writers weren’t going to have to be?

**Joel:** Way more than the other thing. Way more than the other thing. Andrew’s constant refrain to me on set was, “We cannot write this movie for Twitter, Joel,” because it was in my head a lot. I was like, “What are people going to say about this moment? Gay Twitter’s going to drag me for this and that and the other thing.” I’m glad we were able in our press cycle to talk about the movie and how much we loved the movie and loved each other and loved the comedy of the movie, and we weren’t necessarily pressured to make it about our identities as much or anything like that, because I think that that can… I don’t know, people don’t like to go and see a movie that feels like homework.

**Craig:** Homework, that’s the best word for it.

**Joel:** We were really lucky that the studio didn’t pressure us to go in that direction. I think because we were able to present it as a hyper-specific movie… There were definitely people in my community who hate the movie. Trust me, no one is more willing to tell you that than a drunk gay guy, to your face.

**Craig:** Oh my god.

**Joel:** I think because it wasn’t couched in universal terms… It wasn’t like, “This movie is for all gay people. This movie is for all Asian.” It wasn’t couched in those terms.

**Craig:** It was just the characters that were in the story.

**Joel:** I think I was able to fly slightly more under the radar than I think other projects have been able to.

**Craig:** That makes sense, absolutely.

**John:** You’re saying so many words we try to say on the podcast all the time. You’re talking about specificity, about being a unique, original voice. Whether you’re starring in the movie or just the person writing the movie to put out there in the world, it’s about what is it that you specifically can say about this situation, what is the story that you can tell, that other people couldn’t tell. You’ve been able to do that both with your stand-up and with your film. What is the next thing we can look forward to seeing you in or seeing you writing?

**Joel:** Right now, I’m getting ready to shoot Loot Season Two, which is an Apple TV show that I’m on, that I’m very grateful to be a part of.

**Craig:** Maya Rudolph.

**Joel:** With Maya Rudolph. I’m furiously working on my next screenplay.

**Craig:** Good.

**Joel:** Writing it on spec.

**Craig:** That’s good. I’m glad.

**Joel:** Just trying to keep my hands busy doing that. Then there’s a bunch of other stuff that will come out.

**Craig:** Fire Island was fucking great. If you haven’t seen it-

**John:** See Fire Island, Hulu.

**Craig:** I don’t watch things.

**John:** Craig doesn’t.

**Craig:** I loved it. I thought it was terrific. I don’t know, it was delightful. That’s the word I think is the best word. It was a delight. You should absolutely check it out. It’s fantastic.

**John:** Joel Kim Booster, can you come back for some Q and A after the show?

**Joel:** Yeah, absolutely.

**John:** Joel Kim Booster, everyone!

**Craig:** Thank you, Joel.

**John:** Now, we have a raffle.

**Craig:** Oh, here we go.

**John:** This is all just figured out as we’re doing this.

**Craig:** Now it’s gambling time. Here we go.

**John:** Talk us through how we should do this. I see that there are different prizes here. These are the tickets. There’s a grand prize. Exciting. For listeners that are home, who don’t have the video here, there’s Item 1, Item 2. Item 1 is the Camp Scriptnotes shirt plus a guaranteed question during the show, correct? Is that right? No, I was wrong. I was wrong. I was looking at the wrong card. Matthew, edit.

**Craig:** Matthew, do not edit that.

**John:** Item 1, a Momofuku basket plus two tickets to The Huntington.

**Craig:** Now, the Huntington meaning the garden.

**John:** The garden. I remember bumping into you at The Huntington gardens.

**Craig:** I’m there all the time.

**John:** Before the Scriptnotes show started, I bumped into you and Melissa and your son at The Huntington gardens.

**Craig:** If you have a little baby, it’s a great way to-

**John:** There you go. Having a baby is mostly about how you kill a Saturday and a Sunday.

**Craig:** Just fill a Saturday. You’re certainly not killing it with sex or anything like that.

**John:** We identified Item 1.

**Craig:** Item 1, here we go. Item 1.

**John:** Item 1.

**Craig:** Item 1.

**John:** Craig, I’m going to open this up. You’re going to reach in there and pick one of these tickets.

**Craig:** I’ve got one. The number is 3559437!

**Audience Member:** Yep.

**John:** All right! I see someone back there. You can stay there, but remember, hold onto that ticket, because we’ll remember that.

**Craig:** Hold onto that ticket. I gotta say that “yep” was pretty much the right response.

**John:** “Yep” is the absolute right response. We’re going to put this on top of this.

**Craig:** Based on what we were giving you, yep. What else do we have?

**John:** Item number 2. Thank God for Jerome. You’re saving us here.

**Craig:** Jerome, thank you. Thank you for saving this sinking ship.

**John:** What is Item 2 here?

**Craig:** Item 2 is a pumpkin spice basket and four tickets to The Broad.

**John:** Now, Craig, we know you have issues with spooky season. What is your feeling about pumpkin spice?

**Craig:** Bullshit.

**John:** Oh, man.

**Craig:** Now, I will say that pumpkin spice in a pumpkin pie is amazing. Otherwise, get it the fuck out of there.

**John:** I like pumpkin bread. I like pumpkin bread. You like pumpkin bread?

**Craig:** Okay, that’s you. Here we go. Are you guys ready? This is for pumpkin spice.

**John:** Pumpkin spice.

**Craig:** Pumpkin spice, the worst of the Spice Girls. Here we go. 3559411.

**John:** Oh, fantastic! We see you there. You are the winner of the pumpkin spice.

**Craig:** That didn’t even get a yep. That got nothing.

**John:** It got nothing.

**Craig:** Silence.

**John:** We’ll sit this here. Now, we are up for Item number 3. This is bigger. This is bigger.

**Craig:** Here we go.

**John:** I recognize the studio. What do we got?

**Craig:** We have a DreamWorks basket. I don’t know what’s in there, but it’s exciting. Maybe the shark from that shark movie.

**John:** It could be Shrek.

**Craig:** And two tickets…

**John:** I’m excited about this, to the Hollywood Wax Museum.

**Craig:** I didn’t realize we hated them.

**John:** No, it’s exciting. It’s exciting.

**Craig:** Let’s see who the big loser is.

**John:** You could be a winner. There’s three tickets in here.

**Craig:** I know. Nobody wanted this. I’m so sorry, the owner of-

**John:** [crosstalk 00:23:47] now.

**Craig:** Ticket 3559389.

**Audience Member:** It’s me.

**Craig:** I’m so sorry.

**John:** Hooray!

**Craig:** Did you hear what she said?

**John:** “It’s me.” I’m sorry.

**Craig:** “It’s me.”

**John:** “It’s me.”

**Craig:** “It’s me.”

**John:** We’re excited for you. It’s so nice to win things.

**Craig:** Hey, listen, we can’t all be winners.

**John:** Oh my god, now-

**Craig:** Here we go.

**John:** These are the real ones here. This is serious.

**Craig:** Realer than that?

**John:** Realer than this. The winner of number 4 gets-

**Craig:** Number 4 gets a Camp Scriptnotes T-shirt and a guaranteed audience question. What does this mean?

**John:** That means they will absolutely get their chance to ask their question, no matter what.

**Craig:** What if they’re an idiot?

**John:** That’s the risk we’re taking.

**Craig:** I love it.

**John:** It’s really on you, because you’re going to draw this ticket. If it’s a terrible question, it’s all your fault.

**Craig:** Gulp. Here we go. Here we go. 355, I’m going to say it every fucking time, I don’t care, 9418.

**Audience Member:** It’s me.

**John:** Yay! Are you going to ask a great question?

**Craig:** “It’s me.”

**Audience Member:** Will you come back next year and do this for Hollywood Heart?

**John:** Sure, we’ll do it again.

**Craig:** Absolutely. Aw, you’re so sweet.

**John:** You can also ask a real question during the time.

**Craig:** She may not have one. Let’s not pressure her.

**John:** We’ll ask you in the moment. If you don’t have a real question, that’s fine too. Thank you very much for bidding on this. Oh my gosh, look how many… This is Item number… Wait, what’s the grand prize? Now I’m confused. What’s number 6?

**Craig:** Number 6 is the grand prize.

**John:** Number 6 is the guaranteed… Oh, that’s the Three Page Challenge. Oh my gosh, this is worth a lot. This is number 5.

**Craig:** Number 5, also a Camp Scriptnotes shirt.

**John:** We love the Camp Scriptnotes shirts. You might think there might even be too many Camp Scriptnotes shirts and we’re trying to get rid of them.

**Craig:** You’re right. And a lifetime Premium membership to Scriptnotes. That’s a lifetime of not spending $5 a month.

**John:** Let’s do the quick math here. Scriptnotes, the annual membership is-

**Craig:** I think we need an actuarial table to see how old they are and also do they smoke.

**John:** This could be worth thousands of dollars, honestly. Thousands of dollars. Look how many tickets there are. There are so many tickets in there.

**Craig:** There’s a lot. Oh god, people want this.

**John:** People want this.

**Craig:** People want this. Guess who’s gotten it? Number 3559487.

**Audience Member:** Yay.

**Craig:** Hey!

**John:** Hooray! Hooray.

**Craig:** I gotta tell you, I love the way you guys are taking victory in stride. “Yay.”

**John:** “Yay.”

**Craig:** This isn’t making us feel weird or anything.

**John:** Congratulations on this. We’re going to put this over here.

**Craig:** “Yay.”

**John:** Identify yourself later, and we’ll find you for your lifetime-

**Craig:** Here we go.

**John:** Wow, this is worth a lot.

**Craig:** This is the grand prize. The grand prize, a guaranteed Three Page Challenge. That’s right. Bid on the opportunity to have your script pages featured in our next Three Page Challenge segment to receive feedback from John and Craig and a call-out on Scriptnotes.

**John:** Megana will tell you that we will have 200 people write in [crosstalk 00:27:12].

**Craig:** That’s a lot.

**John:** She’s reading through a lot. You could jump the line. No matter what, good, bad, you’re there.

**Craig:** A little bit of a monkey’s paw, this one. I gotta be honest. Here we go.

**John:** Craig, draw it out.

**Craig:** Oh yeah, a lot of people wanted this one, but only one person can get it. Their ticket will begin with a 355. The winner is 3559453.

**Audience Member:** That’s me!

**John:** Hooray!

**Craig:** Finally, someone with some passion!

**John:** I’m excited about that.

**Craig:** Thank you!

**John:** 453, what is the script you’re going to send through? Do you have a title for the script you might want to send through?

**Audience Member:** Skullduggery.

**John:** Skullduggery.

**Craig:** That’s a good title.

**John:** Everyone listen for Skullduggery.

**Craig:** I’m into it. It’s going to start with like, “Skullduggery started so well, but then hm.”

**John:** Thank you, everyone, for the raffle. Yay!

**Craig:** Thank you! Way to go, rafflers. Wow.

**John:** Wow.

**Craig:** Now things are going to get a little weird, unfortunately.

**John:** Oh my god.

**Craig:** I gotta sit down for this, because this is going to get bad.

**John:** This is going to be a challenging moment here.

**Craig:** Not every segment we do on these live shows are what we would call easy or fun.

**John:** They’re not all giggles.

**Craig:** Some of them are tough.

**John:** Some of them are tough. Over the years of doing Scriptnotes, we’ve been able to highlight some real success stories, like people who are doing good in the world, like Pay Up Hollywood. That’s people who are doing some great stuff.

**Craig:** Hollywood Heart.

**John:** Hollywood Heart! I think we’ve also taken the time to call out some bad actors, people we felt like who were not helping screenwriters, especially aspiring screenwriters.

**Craig:** No question.

**John:** What were the words you might use for those people?

**Craig:** The people that we don’t like?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Dickheads.

**John:** Dickheads, yeah, dickheads. Sometimes it’s gotten contentious. I’m thinking back to Episode 129, the one with the guys from Final Draft.

**Craig:** They were great, weren’t they? That was fun. I wish you guys could’ve been there to see John like…

**John:** I have serious PTSD from that episode.

**Craig:** Because I’m like, “No, John, hold on.”

**John:** The thing I’ve taken from this is that conflict is not necessarily bad, because sometimes in conflict you illuminate and elucidate some real issues there.

**Craig:** Make things better.

**John:** Yeah, which is why tonight, we want to take a risk and invite on somebody who we’ve talked about a lot on the show. You probably have the strongest opinions about the person.

**Craig:** I am very hesitant about this, but in the spirit of hoping that it goes well, I have agreed to do this.

**John:** You’ve never been shy about telling your listeners what you think about this. Now he’s here to give his side of the story. Please welcome The Manager We Told You to Fire.

**Craig:** Here he is, The Manager We Told You to Fire. Oh, god.

**The Manager We Told You to Fire:** In town. Let me grab my water.

**John:** Oh my god.

**Craig:** Here we go.

**Manager:** Can’t really see past the first few rows, but I can tell it’s a bunch of average-looking people, because it’s writers! Because it’s writers, right? Come on, we’re all on the same team. We’re all in the same game.

**Craig:** We told you to fire him.

**Manager:** God.

**John:** Chad, thank you for coming.

**Manager:** That’s what she said.

**John:** God.

**Craig:** Chad. Chad.

**Manager:** Come on. Come on. It’s back.

**Craig:** No, Chad.

**Manager:** Woo! I’m happy to be here at this New Balance convention. Holy shit. Listen, man, I love the show. I listen to the show. I love it. It’s great.

**Craig:** Do you?

**Manager:** Yeah, I listen to the show when I can get to it. A lot of podcasts out there. I got you guys. I got Rogan. I got Logan Paul, my new client. He’s starting to write now. He wrote a feature, and it’s pretty good.

**Craig:** Basically, everybody that rhymes with “ogan,” you have.

**Manager:** Yeah, but also you guys, Pod Save America, Dax, another client, Dax Shepard.

**Craig:** That’s real.

**Manager:** You fucking heard of him?

**John:** I guess it’s good that you listen sometimes, because you know we talk about managers on the show sometimes, and people write in with questions and concerns.

**Manager:** I know. I know. I heard the show. I told you. You don’t believe me? I can do Sexy Craig. You ready? Hey, it’s Sexy Craig. Sexy Craig wants to touch your hair.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** You sound like that.

**Craig:** I don’t sound like that.

**John:** That’s what it sounds like in my head every time.

**Manager:** That’s what it is. That’s what it is.

**Craig:** No.

**Manager:** Hey, can I do a One Cool Thing?

**John:** No, you don’t-

**Craig:** You can’t. I’m going to go with no, you can’t.

**Manager:** Can I just say, the problem with you two is-

**Craig:** Oh, please.

**Manager:** You guys have never had a manager. I’m going to get real with you, no cap. You don’t even know what a manager does.

**Craig:** Great. Why don’t you tell us what the fuck it is you do?

**Manager:** It’s in the name. It’s manager, manage from the Latin manage.

**Craig:** What do you manage though?

**Manager:** I manage writers or writer/directors if they have rich parents, that type of thing or, oh, the golden goose is a writer/director/actor, multi-hyphenate. You get that shit, those people are desperate, like a groundling. Oh, give me a groundling. I want a groundling! Yeah, baby. They’ll do whatever.

**Craig:** You’re terrible. You’re a terrible person.

**Manager:** You know what I say?

**Craig:** No.

**Manager:** Hate the player. Don’t hate the game.

**Craig:** I should’ve known that he was going to say that.

**John:** Let’s get back to what you actually do as a manager. For example, do you read your clients’ scripts and give them notes?

**Manager:** John, yes, I read their scripts. Of course I do.

**John:** That’s good.

**Craig:** What’s the process?

**John:** Talk us through the process there.

**Manager:** Okay, the process. I’m on the Peloton, and I get an email. I’m trying to listen to Logan Paul’s podcast. I get an email from whatever. Let’s just call him, I don’t know, fucking Groundling Gus. He’s like, “Hey, I have a script. It’s about two turtles that are in love.” I just write back, “Boring!”

**John:** That’s it? That’s one word. Do you give them anything they can work on?

**Craig:** That’s your management, “Boring.”

**Manager:** I think it’s implied. I’m going to give you guys some free advice. Don’t write boring shit, especially this one about turtles. It was so bad. No one wants to see turtles, guys.

**Craig:** I gotta ask you a question. Did you actually read the turtle script?

**Manager:** I read the email. I read the subject of the email.

**Craig:** Fuck, I hate him.

**Manager:** Listen, man.

**John:** We told you to fire him.

**Manager:** What good is it going to do for me to actually read the script when I promise you no one’s going to buy a fucking script about turtles in love, about turtles in general, unless they’re Teenage Mutant variety, in which case, let’s talk.

**Craig:** To be clear, your entire process is you just read the log lines? You don’t read the material?

**Manager:** Yes.

**Craig:** Great.

**Manager:** Look at the movies that came out this year. I would’ve told my clients, if I represented any of them, not to write them. Bros, little too gay.

**Craig:** Can’t say that.

**Manager:** Fire Island, too gay and too Asian.

**Craig:** Can’t say that.

**Manager:** Double whammy. Double whammy.

**Craig:** Can’t say that.

**Manager:** Double whammy. Death on the Nile, not gay enough.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** I will say there was actually a lot of-

**Craig:** No, I agree with him.

**John:** There was a surprising amount of gay coding there.

**Craig:** There’s coding.

**John:** If you look at Poirot’s relationship with Bouc, it felt like there was a thing that was happening there.

**Manager:** I didn’t see it. I didn’t see it. Also, I don’t fucking care about subtext. If it’s there, just write it. Who cares?

**Craig:** Great. Let’s get back to the real question. What service are you actually providing to your client?

**Manager:** It’s the service of being their manager.

**Craig:** You don’t do anything!

**Manager:** No, I do, okay. I make it feel like something is happening in your career. You didn’t have a manager, and now you do. Nobody wanted to read your fucking script, and now maybe somebody will. Your mom can tell her friends, “Oh, my son Shmuli, he’s got a Hollywood manager.”

**Craig:** Shmuli?

**Manager:** Hello? Antisemitic much, Craig? The way you said that was fucking weird.

**John:** Let’s move on. A lot of times on the show, we’ve talked about open writing assignments. What is your policy or philosophy about OWAs and your clients?

**Manager:** I love them. They’re my bread and butter. I send all my clients out on open writing assignments, doesn’t matter.

**Craig:** All of them?

**Manager:** I will send literally every client on every writing assignment. As Gandhi said, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

**John:** That wasn’t Gandhi.

**Craig:** He didn’t say that. He did not say that.

**Manager:** He did. I think he did.

**Craig:** Just to be clear, he didn’t. He’s a great man. How dare you? Your clients are all competing against each other for every single open writing assignment?

**Manager:** Yes, it’s survival of the fittest. We pit them against each other. It’s like the movie with the Japanese teenagers where they all fucking kill each other.

**John:** Great. Even if one of your clients does book the job, the rest of them have all wasted days or weeks of their life going after that one job?

**Manager:** They learn how to pitch. That is a very valuable skill. Whatever they wrote up, they can leave behind to the executive.

**John:** Oh, gosh, no.

**Manager:** Just walk out and just drop it on the ground.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** That’s not how that works. That’s a terrible idea.

**Manager:** Whatever. Whatever. I’m not a real person, I guess. I’m a straw man that you created to stand in for all the terrible managers your listeners are always writing in about. What you’re forgetting is that a lot of your audience, they hear these tales about terrible managers, and secretly, deep in their hearts, they still want one, even a shitty one like me, because it’s scary never knowing if you’re going to make it-

**Craig:** That’s fair.

**Manager:** … if you’re good enough, if anyone will even care. Getting the tap on the shoulder from one person vaguely connected to the industry is a game changer. Why do you think people do your Three Page Challenge? Because they need that hit of validation. We’re not so different, you and I.

**Craig:** He did the line.

**John:** He did the [inaudible 00:37:44].

**Craig:** He did the line.

**Manager:** These mildly unattractive writers know there is a wall surrounding this industry. You don’t want the truth, because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.

**John:** You’re Sorkining. Congratulations.

**Craig:** Sorkining.

**Manager:** I would rather that you just said thank you-

**Craig:** He’s still Sorkining.

**Manager:** … and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand the post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to!

**Craig:** Just out of curiosity, did you order the Code Red?

**Manager:** I did the job. You’re goddamn right I ordered the Code Red!

**Craig:** I have no further questions.

**John:** Let’s give it up for The Manager We Told You to Fire.

**Craig:** The Manager We Told You to Fire. Thank you.

**Manager:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Ike Barinholtz, everyone!

**John:** He’ll be back for questions.

**Craig:** He will be back at the end of the show! Well done, Manager We Told-

**John:** Nicely done, Ike Barinholtz.

**Craig:** I gotta say-

**John:** Hate you, hate you, hate you.

**Craig:** We were right to tell them to fire him. He’s dreadful.

**John:** Good choices we made. Good choices.

**Craig:** Absolutely fucking dreadful.

**John:** Oh my gosh.

**Craig:** God.

**John:** Craig, that’s stressful. It’s stressful having him around.

**Craig:** Can we have nice people [crosstalk 00:39:08]?

**John:** We should welcome some nice-

**Craig:** Nice people.

**John:** … warm, caring people who make things.

**Craig:** Nice, warm, happy, smart people.

**John:** People who make things.

**Craig:** Make things, yeah, not people who exploit us and treat us like shit, in a hilarious way.

**John:** Let’s brainstorm on who these ideal next guests could be, if we were to pick our next guests.

**Craig:** You’d want somebody with the skill of an Aline Brosh McKenna, but also somebody with the stick-to-itiveness and insight of a Megan Ganz.

**John:** These are really good choices, because they’re both TV showrunners. They both created shows. They know how it all works together. Maybe we could even read their credits a little bit before we bring them out, to set up the audience for who these people are.

**Craig:** It’s not that I don’t know what they’ve done, but I’d like to refer to this card.

**John:** I will talk about Megan Ganz, who’s a comedy writer and producer whose credits include The Onion, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Community, Modern Family. She co-created the Apple TV comedy series Mythic Quest, along with-

**Craig:** Starring myself.

**John:** … Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day.

**Craig:** And myself. Aline Brosh McKenna, I’m going to tell you who she is, even though you all know. She is a writer, producer, and director known for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and The Devil Wears Prada and 27 Dresses. Her feature directorial debut-

**John:** Her feature debut.

**Craig:** … Your Place or Mine will come out next year on a small channel called Netflix.

**John:** Megan, Aline, please come out.

**Craig:** Megan, Aline, please come on out.

**John:** Welcome to the couch.

**Craig:** Welcome to the couch. Have a seat. Please feel free to discard all of the cards that The Manager We Told You to Fire has left behind.

**Megan Ganz:** What’s great about having two women is we only get paid 60 cents on the dollar, so two of us-

**Craig:** Sorry, you guys are getting paid? John.

**John:** Sorry.

**Megan:** With two of us, you’re getting a buck 20 worth of value.

**Craig:** [inaudible 00:40:46] nothing.

**John:** It is so amazing to have both of you here. That last segment was very stressful to me. Hopefully, you can talk us all down. You are both people who create TV shows. You run TV shows. This last week, we saw a huge change that’s happening with our streaming services. Our streaming services that have never had commercials before are suddenly going to have commercials. Disney Plus is going to start having commercials. Netflix is going to start having ads in the middle of it. I want to talk to you about that, because that’s a different thing than we’ve encountered before. Megan, on your show on Apple TV, so far there are no ads, but are you-

**Megan:** Bringing back the act break? Is that what you’re asking?

**John:** Yeah, is that act break going to happen?

**Megan:** Bringing back the act break?

**Craig:** Because you have a lot of experience with ad-supported television.

**Megan:** I do. I started out in network television, so I started out thinking about act breaks a lot. In fact, on Modern Family, they always called the first act break the Hey May. Have you ever heard this phrase?

**John:** No, tell us Hey May.

**Craig:** No.

**Megan:** Hey May was that something really exciting had to happen before the commercial break, so that the guy that was watching it would say to his wife, “Hey May, you gotta see what’s happening on this show that’s coming up.” That was the phrase that they-

**Craig:** [crosstalk 00:41:48] name is May. What year are they from?

**Megan:** Cheers. They were watching Oklahoma. I grew up on knowing act breaks and very strict time limits for shows, and now that all went out the window, but apparently it’s coming back. That’ll be interesting. What do I think about it? When I was in network, and everybody was going to streaming and everybody thought streaming would fix all the issues, it was like, it’s just going to become the new dinosaur, right? Then whatever’s next, TikTok, will take over. Then in a few years, we’ll all be desperate to write TikTok shows.

**Craig:** The TikToks.

**John:** We first knew you of course as a feature writer. Then you were [inaudible 00:42:37] Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, when that was going to be a thing. Originally, it was a Showtime show, and then it transitioned to a CW show, so you had to figure out how to do act breaks.

**Craig:** The act breaks.

**John:** Are act breaks natural to you now? Are they part of your blood?

**Megan:** No, they’re not, they weren’t, and they never were. I’ve really only worked on one TV show for any sustained amount of time.

**John:** It was a good show.

**Megan:** We had six acts, which was too many.

**Craig:** CW’s pumping those ads out.

**John:** The network required you to have six acts?

**Megan:** Six acts. There are episodes where it’s 20 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes, 2 minutes.

**Craig:** That’s how they did it?

**Megan:** No, you could put them wherever you wanted.

**Craig:** Oh, I see.

**Megan:** They had to be at least two minutes long. We would sometimes get to the end of the episode and just have just extra shit happen because we didn’t have… It would be a page and an eighth. I would have to be in editing, trying to pump the last act. The first act had been 22… It was a haphazard process. I was saying I enjoy watching things where I feel like, end scene, and then you’re moving. I think it’s a good discipline. Especially it works for comedy.

We’ve been through an interesting shift. For the old people on the stage, we wandered off to a thing where they were like, “This is a comedy,” and you’re like, “This is not funny, has no jokes in it, and is 48 minutes long. I don’t know what’s happening.” It feels like there’s a nice move towards more traditional. The cycles are accelerating at such a rate. People will write more towards those act breaks. Hulu’s always had ads, so they’ve always done that.

Then the other thing is I think formats are getting more… Everything is getting more juiced, because as we were talking backstage, for a streamer, you have to nab people really quickly. Also, you’re competing with things like TikTok now, and so people are… They want to know what they’re looking at, really, so the pace of things. You go back and watch a movie from 1978. You’ll be dead on the ground. It’s all like, “I need to go somewhere.” Then it’s the person opening the door and walking to their car, opening the car door, getting inside the car, backing out of the driveway.

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** That’s so funny you say that, because something I would say a lot when I’m directing is, “I know how cars work. I know how walking works. I know how drinking works. We know how eating works. We know how buttering works.” There is a certain genre of thing where we’re going to watch this man unbutton every button. I feel like now it’s to the point where it has to be one or the other. It has to be the most eye-grabbing, attention-stealing thing ever or it has to be so bland that you could leave the room for minutes at a time and come back and miss nothing.

**Megan:** It’s so true. It’s like we’re in TikTok or we’re in profoundly Swedish, slow, slow… You come back and the tumbleweed has just turned over once.

**Craig:** That’s the best kind of Swedish is profoundly Swedish.

**John:** With shows you’re developing now, because Aline, you’ve set up some new shows, congratulations, and Megan, you’re working on new stuff as well, are you thinking about where the commercials will go if they ultimately stick commercials in? Craig, Chernobyl has commercials. We got the email in from France. Chernobyl in France has commercials in it.

**Craig:** That’s fucking France.

**John:** That could very well happen to HBO Max as well when people are watching Chernobyl here.

**Craig:** I must admit that I put blinders on in terms of what happens once it leaves the confines of the United States. I go, “I’m not there.” I’m not there when the tree falls. I don’t know.

**Aline:** Also now, we’re just aware that you’re spending all this time making something beautiful, and people are going to watch it in their bathtub with their grubby fingers.

**John:** Megan, would you…

**Aline:** Are you bothered? You say, “Who cares Chernobyl’s got commercials in France?” If you knew that they were interrupting in the middle of a line of dialog to go to commercial and come back-

**Craig:** It would be kind of amazing if they were just like, “That is how an RBMK reactor… “ Boom, and go-

**Aline:** Then commercials, and then it comes back.

**Craig:** Then it comes back and it’s already exploded.

**Aline:** Can we talk just a minute about the captioning? Now, somebody was telling me today it’s like 70% of people watch their TV captioned. They’re riddled with errors, riddled with misspellings. As you mentioned, I have the movie coming out next year. I desperately want to see the captions, because if the grammar is incorrect or spelled incorrectly, it’s going to make me nuts.

**Craig:** Why are you putting this in my-

**Aline:** I’m trying really hard to get it so that I can see it.

**John:** [crosstalk 00:47:16].

**Craig:** You know what just happened is that her Jewishness went into my Jewishness and just created this awful mega Jewishness of my anxiety now that they’re going to fuck the… Oh, goddammit.

**Aline:** It’s nerve-wracking with a W, come on!

**Craig:** Ah!

**John:** Practical guidance though for, let’s say we have our folks out here who are writing their pilots. If you were writing a pilot today and you wanted to be staffed on one of your shows, do you think these people should be putting act breaks into a one-hour, into a half-hour?

**Megan:** I don’t know for one-hours. I’ve never written a drama. For comedies, I did the act break thing for a long time, and then I ended up on Sunny, and they never talked about act breaks. All they talked about was that in every scene, every character should have a specific motivation and a want and that something should happen in that scene that changes the story and that moves them into a different place. Once I got into that mode where I was thinking more scene by scene, now I never think about act breaks anymore, because if the story is moving, it’s moving. I don’t think that your general uneducated TV viewer is like, “Oh, interesting first act. I wonder what’s going to happen once we get into that road of trials. Where’s our atonement coming from?”

Some of it is almost instinctual too. Story breaking has always felt like something to me that’s a little bit like I can almost explain why I think that the story should go this way or that way. It’s almost innate. I wouldn’t push act breaks on, because again, you’re never going to know. Maybe you write them all in, and then somebody yanks them all out again.

**Aline:** If you’re writing a spec for a particular show and you know the format, for that, I would [crosstalk 00:49:03] writing a pilot.

**John:** You just set up a new show with [inaudible 00:49:06]. For that, will there be act breaks?

**Aline:** It’s ABC network, so it’s a network format. Whatever network you’re selling it to generally has a format of some kind, or they have none. They generally have length guides. Actually, there were a lot of restrictions in working on the CW. I got to perversely enjoy them. We only had a certain amount of runtime. Then I got really into something I never thought I would be interested in, which is those previously-ons. You think they’re computer generated or something. We worked really hard on them. Really hard. I loved working on those.

**Craig:** Those are great.

**Aline:** We tried to craft them in editing, so it helped you understand what the episode was you were going to watch. Now I know that most people fast-forward through them. We put a lot of thought into them so that they would frame the episode correctly. I’ve grown to love them as an art form. It was Mad Men that famously had the string of just non sequiturs that you could not… They’re pretty fabulous. I think they can really help a show. Again, I like some of the more traditional format things I enjoy. I think that we might regret throwing out some of the baby with the bathwater.

**Megan:** Structure is good. I like structure.

**Craig:** Having some sort of thing to follow. You just mentioned what’s coming and what just happened. You’ve both worked on shows that have been ongoing shows. There’s the world of cable television or premium cable, whatever they call it, where here’s a limited series, or it’s a series but it’s only going to run for two seasons. You guys are working on shows that are designed to run for a long time. I’m curious, just from a craft point of view, how you guys balance the need to keep the flywheel going year after year without leaning too hard on things that you know are grade Hamburger Helper, like will they, won’t they, or we made it, we lost it all. What do you do to keep it going and fresh when there is this interesting meta problem that you need to reset it every time no matter what?

**Megan:** It’s got to be the same but different-

**Craig:** Same but different.

**Megan:** … every single time you have it. For me, it’s been different on the two different shows that I’m currently working on. On Sunny, they get around that by making them cartoon characters that know-

**Craig:** Learn nothing.

**Megan:** … nothing they do influences the next episode whatsoever.

**John:** [crosstalk 00:51:24].

**Megan:** They never learn their lessons. There’s no third act in Sunny. It’s great. You just get them in a really bad situation, and then you roll credits. Then the next week, they’re out of jail somehow. That’s great. That’s the way they do it on that show. That’s why they’ve been going for 16… I’m about to start on Season 16-

**Craig:** Oh my god. Amazing.

**Megan:** … of Sunny in a couple weeks.

**Craig:** Mythic Quest is a workspace.

**Megan:** Mythic Quest is a workspace, real people that have things that carry over. It has been difficult. We don’t have a romantic relationship between our two leads, so we can’t rely on that. We didn’t want to get into the place, because it’s all about a video game. We didn’t want to rely too much on is the video game going to be successful or not, because I don’t think most people care about that. We really try to pin it on the emotional relationships.

From the very beginning, we tried to make the thing that makes you coming back is there’s this odd couple, these two people, they love each other, they hate each other, they’re making this thing together. It’s like two people raising a kid, where it drives them insane, but they also can’t leave each other, so they’ve got to figure it out for the sake of the kid. We’re hoping that that tension is bringing people back over and over. What helps that is that it’s 10 episodes a season and not 24, which is what I used to do. In 24, you need a love interest.

**Craig:** You’re not going to make it otherwise.

**Megan:** You’re not going to make it.

**Aline:** Also, don’t we love a filler episode?

**Megan:** Oh, I love filler.

**Aline:** I love a filler episode. I love something where they just go to Costco for the whole episode. Honestly, they’re some of the most fun. The great thing about those episodes, they’re often later in the run. You’ve established so much about your characters that you can trap them all in a room together, and then you can really pay off these character-based emotional things. That’s why I love a good bottle episode. I think once you earn that thing where you’re like, “Guess what? We’ve set up so many things that we can put these people in one space and just let them talk to each other, and you’re going to be entertained for a half-hour.”

**Craig:** They can hash it out together.

**Megan:** Great.

**Aline:** Our last season was extended from 13 to 18. We managed to make one of them a live special, but then we still had four. We ended up doing things we never… She had a brother she didn’t know about. We just had a lot of fun.

**Megan:** Find a dog.

**Aline:** She knew that he existed. She’d not really spent any time with him. You can just chase wild herrings. She went to a waterpark. That was some of the funnest stuff we did. It’s not my podcast, but somebody said to me-

**John:** Really?

**Craig:** It basically is.

**Aline:** Never stopped me before.

**Megan:** It could be, by the way.

**Craig:** It is.

**Aline:** I wanted to ask you guys a question, because somebody said to me the other day… I was talking to an executive, and they said my… Their theory is that feature writers can write TV more easily than TV writers can write features.

**Craig:** I agree with that.

**Aline:** They said that if you’re a feature writer, you’ve learned how to wander in the woods by yourself big chunks of time, so then when you go to write TV, you have that sense of the whole scope, but you can write these tinier chunks faster, and it doesn’t have to be the complete thing. I don’t know about that. I’m curious about that.

**Craig:** I agree.

**John:** Here’s the other version of that. It’s that sometimes you see these streaming shows just feel like, “Oh, I see it as a 10-hour movie.” I’m like, “Oh god, I don’t want a 10-hour movie.”

**Craig:** That would be bad.

**John:** I want a sense of [crosstalk 00:54:34].

**Craig:** Episodes.

**John:** Episodes. I want a sense that things [crosstalk 00:54:36].

**Craig:** I’m a big fan of episodes. I do think that feature writers know how to finish something, and a lot of television writers have never actually been in a spot where they had to finish something. It was always designed to keep the machine running. We know a lot of television shows really stumble at the finish line.

**Aline:** In TV you finish-ish.

**Craig:** Ish.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Finish-ish.

**Aline:** Finish-ish. You give them enough of a thing that they can go to bed that night, but then they gotta come back.

**Craig:** They gotta come back, exactly.

**Aline:** Literally, Act 1 is the pilot, then you have 70 episodes of Act 2, and then Act 3 is the last 15 minutes of the entire series.

**Megan:** Oh god, that’s great.

**Aline:** I could do it now.

**Craig:** You’re showrunners. I have been a showrunner, and I’ve learned a lot along the way. One of the things that’s blown my mind, and I’ve gotten used to it, but it’s been a little hard, when you’re not a showrunner, whether you’re a feature writer or you’re working on staff at a show, your job ultimately is a creative job. You’re supposed to be playing, and you’re supposed to be just being creative and writing and all the rest. When you are a showrunner, you have to do these things. You also are the CEO of a fairly large corporation. You are kind of a mom or a dad to a lot of people. How do you guys reconcile those two sides of yourselves when you’re doing the work?

**Aline:** I have a thing that I think may be different from how other people think of it, which is a lot of showrunners and movie directors have this thing where they’re like, “This is my process. Now welcome to my movie. Welcome to my TV show. I’m the boss, and this is my process.” I don’t do that, because I don’t think… I am assembling a group of creative people. Particularly with actors, they’re all very different. They all have a different process. They all approach things differently.

I’ll just tell you guys, we had Reese and Ashton on this movie. We also have Tig Notaro, Steve Zahn, Zoë Chao, Jesse Williams. They’re all really different actors. They approach things really differently. On Crazy Ex, we had people from Broadway, we had stand-ups, we had all different… I like to very much meet the actors where they live and explore what their process is and then even what they need on a particular day.

With the writers, you can only really have one process, but what I like to try and do is figure out how to make every writer there feel comfortable so that they can contribute the most. All writers are different that way. Some writers come in, and they just are very comfortable speaking to authority. They’re very comfortable speaking out. Some need more encouragement and more direction. That’s true with department heads too. I will be collaborating very, very closely with costumes. When I hire a costume person, I’m saying, “You’ll be sick of me. I’m going to go down to the socks with you.”

My process is a little bit different based on who I’m working with, as opposed to like, “This is how Aline does stuff.” There’s a few things that are baseline things with me. I’m not great with lateness. If there’s more than two people in the room, and someone’s late, the disrespect of that is really hard for me. There’s just a few things that I do a certain way.

Basically, instead of coming in and saying, “Gosh, I want this done a certain way. I gotta get everyone to do it,” I try and go more with like, “I have a goal. Our goal is to take the mountain, and we can all have a different approach to that,” because what you want to do is bring out the best creative work that you can from everyone. Everyone’s different.

For example, in the writers’ room, sometimes I will say to someone, “If you don’t feel comfortable speaking up in the room about something, come find me later or send me an email or put a note on my desk. If there’s something where you want to say, ‘I really think we should do X, Y, and Z,’ and for whatever reason, the room wasn’t the place where you felt like you wanted to say that, just let me know some other way,” or for an actor, if someone wants to send me a six-page email, but someone else doesn’t need that, I like to adjust my… I think if you’re trying to get everyone to be you and to approach things the way you would and to think that… You’re going to rob yourself of good ideas. It’s not going to work.

**Craig:** Megan, you’re toxically rigid, so what do you think?

**Megan:** I was going to say, have you-

**Aline:** I’m contrasting myself to Megan, obviously.

**Megan:** I was going to say, so your first room was Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

**Aline:** See, this is why I’m not a really good sample. I had been in other rooms, little, tiny things here and there. Basically, I didn’t come up being a staff writer.

**John:** Megan, give us the real dirt. How does it really work?

**Megan:** That sounds amazing. That is what I am, now that I am a showrunner, trying to do. What that process feels like to me, in an adjustment from the way that I saw showrunners being when I was coming up and the way they acted towards me, the way that I’m trying to be a showrunner is like… I bought mushrooms recently.

**Craig:** Go on.

**Megan:** This woman that I bought mushrooms from gave me this chart of different dosages.

**Aline:** I didn’t know what kind of mushrooms we were talking about.

**Megan:** Sorry.

**Craig:** You thought she was talking about [crosstalk 00:59:58].

**Aline:** I was like, “Are we porcini? What are we-”

**Craig:** Oh, Aline.

**Megan:** She gave me the scale of all the different things you experience, different levels. At six grams of mushrooms was ego death. That is what I feel like I’m experiencing as being a showrunner, because I think in order to do it right, it is exactly what you’re saying.

**Craig:** Ego death.

**Megan:** In order to do it right, what you have to do is go, “I am your captain, but only in the senses that I am here to make everyone aboard this ship feel safe and a part of this team and feel like we’re all rowing towards the same place.” That’s not my experience when I started. When I started, it was like, “I’m in charge. You do what I say. If I tell you to come in at 10 a.m. and sit in a room until 7 p.m. without me entering that room, you’re going to sit there.” I didn’t have that experience coming up. When I was trained, it was very much like you shove a million ideas to your showrunner, and then they take the best ones, and then those somehow became their ideas. Then they go on with that.

**Aline:** Megan, my training ground as a feature writer, which these guys will know, is working for sometimes wonderful, occasionally-

**John:** Often monstrous.

**Aline:** … not wonderful people who are not trained in story often-

**Craig:** Who have authority over you.

**Aline:** … who couldn’t express their ideas with words, to whom I would have to say, “Oh my god, that’s so amazing. That’s so interesting. I love that. I was wondering if we could do something that made sense or advanced the story or had to do with the characters. We don’t have to.” As a screenwriter, it is a certain way similar to being on a staff and being semi listened to.

**Craig:** You’re working for writers.

**John:** Writers [crosstalk 01:01:45].

**Craig:** In features, you are often working for people that just don’t understand [crosstalk 01:01:51]. They haven’t done it themselves.

**Aline:** Most of my really bad experiences, by the way, were with things that never got made. I worked with a gentleman whose entire way of communicating to me was to send me screen caps.

**Craig:** Efficient.

**Aline:** “I was thinking this scene could be like this.” It would literally be a screen cap of a cartoon from the ’40s.

**Megan:** I’m not trying to say that I’ve had it worse than anybody else. Let me just say that. I will say that that is what I’m trying to do as well, which is to say… Really, it’s come out of my experience, because I realize that if you’re not properly incentivized to believe that your contributions matter to your showrunner, you are not showing up every day to do your best work. You are showing up every day to be there until they let you go. Then you go home and you do things that matter to you. What I am trying to do as a showrunner is say, “I hear you. Your voice is important. The things that you say are important. Your thoughts are important. If you need to tell me something, send me an email,” those sorts of things.

**Aline:** You’re saying no 85% of the time.

**Megan:** Yes, all the time. I’m resisting my inner nature to not be like, “You should be so lucky that I’m even listening to you, because I never got that.”

**Craig:** I wish that you would express that more. I want you to release the Kraken. I’m just curious, do you ever miss just being the… Jerry Seinfeld once got an award, and he said, “I don’t want to be up here accepting this award. I want to be back there making fun of the guy accepting this award.” Do you ever miss being the person who, after the showrunner finally lets you go, you can go out in the parking lot and go, “What a dick.”

**Aline:** “What an asshole.”

**Craig:** Now you’re the dick.

**Megan:** I do. I do, because the place that I’m in right now is between the two better places, which is you can either be one of the guys rowing, that’s like, “God, the captain’s an asshole,” or you can be the captain. Being the guy that’s below the captain, that passes along the captain’s wishes to the rowers, and then the rowers complain to you, and then you try to go tell the captain. He’s like, “I don’t give a shit.” Then you’re like, “Okay, I guess I have to go back and tell the… ” That position, that’s where I’m at right now, which is in between those two things.

**Craig:** Which honestly is the dream of most of these people.

**John:** Indeed. It’s honestly the dream of these people to have a show on television. There are so many shows on television. Back when we started our careers, it was pretty easy to keep up with what was on television. You could go into a general meeting, and you haven’t seen the show, you fake it, because you know what the shows were.

**Craig:** There were 12 shows on TV.

**John:** There were 12 shows on TV. Did I ever watch Gossip Girl? No. Could I fake my way through a meeting about it? Absolutely. In 2022, it’s actually much harder. You guys have staff people, so you know it’s hard. We’re guessing that even two fancy TV showrunners like you couldn’t tell us-

**Craig:** Here we go.

**John:** … where these streaming shows are airing, or if they’re even real.

**Megan:** Oh, no.

**Craig:** Here we go.

**John:** We’ll give you the title of the show-

**Craig:** And a little description.

**John:** … and a little description.

**Aline:** Can we confer?

**John:** You can confer, yeah.

**Craig:** And the platform.

**Aline:** Two women’s minds are better than one.

**John:** We’re going to tell you the title of the show.

**Craig:** We’re not going to say the platform.

**John:** You’ve gotta tell us what platform it’s on. If you don’t recognize the show, we can give you a log line and the star.

**Craig:** That’s it.

**John:** It’s hard, because we tried this. Are you ready to play I’ve Been Meaning to Watch That?

**Craig:** Here we go.

**John:** I’ll do this first. Mythic Quest, where would we find that show?

**Craig:** Is it real?

**Megan:** It’s on Apple TV.

**Aline:** It’s an extra special show starring Craig Mazin-

**Craig:** That’s right.

**Aline:** … on Apple TV, which I have watched.

**Megan:** Yes, it’s starring Craig Mazin on Apple TV.

**Aline:** I have watched.

**Craig:** They nailed it.

**John:** They nailed it.

**Craig:** That is correct.

**John:** One for you.

**Craig:** Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

**Megan:** [inaudible 01:05:36].

**John:** It’s streaming.

**Megan:** The CW?

**Craig:** That is not a streamer.

**Megan:** What is The CW? Is that Disney? That’s Disney, because-

**Craig:** Did you just arrive in this country?

**Megan:** I don’t know, Hulu?

**Craig:** Tell them.

**Aline:** It’s on Netflix.

**Craig:** It is on Netflix.

**John:** Netflix.

**Aline:** Some people think it’s a Netflix show.

**Megan:** I watched it when it was on legit CW TV.

**Craig:** There we go. Now the game gets-

**John:** Now it gets hard.

**Craig:** Basically, the difficulty level goes like… Here we go.

**Megan:** We know Chernobyl is on Disney Plus. Keep going.

**John:** [inaudible 01:06:08].

**Craig:** It’s very Elden Ring-like, as you guys know.

**Aline:** It would help that I don’t watch TV, right?

**John:** As you keep showing us.

**Craig:** It won’t hurt.

**John:** Our next program is Salvage Marines. Where is it streaming, or did we just make it up?

**Aline:** If it is streaming, it’s on Discovery.

**Megan:** It’s gotta be on Discovery, right?

**Craig:** We can give you a little information if you want.

**John:** We have a log line.

**Craig:** “In a green future of corporate tyranny and deep space combat, Samuel Hyst dares to dream of a life beyond the polluted industrial planet of Baen 6.”

**Aline:** Is it on the Syfy network?

**Craig:** No.

**Megan:** It’s not real.

**Craig:** Do you want to know who it stars?

**Aline:** Not real, I’m going to guess.

**Craig:** You’re incorrect.

**John:** Incorrect. A real show on Crackle. You can watch it now. Starring Casper Van Dien.

**Craig:** It is on Crackle. Here we go. The Old Man.

**Aline:** That’s on FX.

**Megan:** That’s real. That’s on FX.

**Aline:** That’s Jeff Bridges.

**Megan:** On Hulu.

**Craig:** Hulu, you’re right.

**Aline:** No, it’s FX for Hulu.

**Megan:** FX for Hulu.

**Craig:** What the fuck is the difference?

**Megan:** It’s FX for Hulu. It’s FX for Hulu.

**Craig:** You got it.

**John:** You got it.

**Craig:** You nailed it.

**John:** You got it!

**Craig:** It’s correct.

**Aline:** I watched it. I love it.

**Craig:** Nice work.

**John:** Irma Vep.

**Aline:** That’s on HBO. It was a French production. It’s Olivier Assayas. It stars-

**Craig:** Good Lord.

**John:** Jesus.

**Aline:** It stars the beautiful-

**John:** She’s getting the extra credit here. She’s like, “Teacher, teacher, I know more.”

**Aline:** Alicia Vikander. Alicia Vikander.

**Craig:** Correct.

**Megan:** Wow.

**Craig:** Mostly Fine.

**Aline:** I don’t…

**Craig:** You want a little description?

**Aline:** Sure.

**Craig:** “Two strange sisters deal with divorce, motherhood, and their father’s legendary china shop.”

**Megan:** Is it F-E-I-N?

**Craig:** It is not. It is F-I-N-E. Would you like stars?

**Megan:** Sure.

**Craig:** Lauren Graham and Zooey Deschanel.

**Megan:** No, that’s not real.

**Aline:** No, that can’t be.

**Craig:** It is not a real show.

**John:** [inaudible 01:08:07]. Rutherford Falls.

**Megan:** That’s real.

**Aline:** Rutherford Falls, yeah.

**John:** Where?

**Aline:** God, I did watch that too. I watched it too.

**Megan:** [crosstalk 01:08:16].

**Aline:** It’s Ed Helms. It’s Ed Helms.

**John:** Yes, that’s great.

**Aline:** The showrunner’s name is-

**Megan:** Sierra Ornelas.

**Aline:** … Sierra Ornelas.

**John:** Where is it?

**Aline:** It’s on…

**Craig:** I’ll give you a hint. Meh!

**Aline:** Oh, Peacock. Peacock. It’s an NBC show.

**Craig:** People don’t know that’s what they sound like, but they do. Roar.

**Aline:** That’s real, and it’s an anthology series. Alison Brie was in it.

**Craig:** Where do you find it?

**Aline:** It’s on Apple?

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** [crosstalk 01:08:52].

**Aline:** I was at an Apple event literally last night talking to another person that came up and said, “Oh, I’ve got a new show.” I said, “Where’s it at?” He’s like, “Apple.” I’m like, “I never heard of it.”

**Craig:** Gulp.

**Aline:** I’m so bad! It’s so bad. We’re on the same things now, and we don’t even hear of each other’s shows.

**Craig:** There’s too much. Surely you’ll know about this one.

**John:** Woke.

**Aline:** That’s a semi-animated show starring Lamorne Morris.

**Craig:** Wow.

**Aline:** It was on Hulu.

**Craig:** We picked the wrong person to play this game.

**John:** Yeah, dear God.

**Craig:** Let’s see if you know about this one. Heartbreak High. Would you like a summary?

**Aline:** Yes.

**Craig:** “Emory becomes a social pariah when the mural she made of everyone’s past hookups goes public.” Heartbreak High.

**Aline:** This is a blind spot for me, because I don’t really watch high school shows.

**Megan:** I know, yeah. I don’t either.

**Aline:** I’m going to guess that is real and that it’s on… What are those high school shows on?

**Megan:** Freeform?

**Craig:** No, but it is real.

**John:** Real. Netflix.

**Craig:** It’s on Netflix.

**Aline:** Netflix.

**Megan:** There you go.

**Craig:** Heartbreak High.

**John:** Chapelwaite.

**Aline:** Isn’t that a British crime show?

**John:** I don’t know. You tell me.

**Megan:** Can we get [crosstalk 01:10:13]?

**Aline:** Is it a British crime show?

**John:** [crosstalk 01:10:14].

**Megan:** Use it in a sentence.

**Craig:** I have not heard of Chapelwaite.

**John:** “Set in the 1850s, this series follows Captain Charles Boone, who relocates his family to his ancestral Maine home. Charles has to soon confront his family’s sordid history to fight the end of darkness that has plagued them for generations.” Starring Adrien Brody.

**Craig:** Chapelwaite.

**John:** Chapelwaite.

**Craig:** Chapelwaite.

**Megan:** I have never heard of it.

**Craig:** Is it real?

**Megan:** It’s probably real, and it’s on a bus stop near my house I walk past.

**Aline:** Epix!

**John:** Epix is right. Aline [inaudible 01:10:49].

**Craig:** That’s inappropriate. Also, I thought it was Epix. Okay, next. Okay, smarty.

**Aline:** What?

**Craig:** Wendy.

**Aline:** Wendy.

**Craig:** Not Wendy Williams.

**John:** Yeah, Wendy.

**Craig:** Wendy. Would you like a summary?

**Aline:** Yes, please.

**Craig:** “Based on the classic Harvey comic, Wendy the Good Little Witch leaves the haunted forest but finds new terrors lurking in her high school hallways.”

**Aline:** No, that’s not a show.

**Craig:** That is not a show. You’re right.

**Aline:** It’s about a woman. It’s about a young woman. Why would you put that on the air?

**Craig:** It did say she was a witch.

**Aline:** If they did make it, it would be written, directed, and produced by a man.

**Megan:** That’s true.

**John:** I’m going to jump ahead to our last one here.

**Craig:** Let’s get Joel Kim Booster back up here.

**John:** The Last Kingdom.

**Megan:** That’s real.

**Aline:** That’s on Netflix. It’s a thing that my husband always wants to watch.

**Craig:** He sounds like a man.

**John:** My brother, who doesn’t watch anything, was like, “Oh yeah, we watched all four seasons and the movie.” I’m like, “This whole thing is just… ” You guys have won the-

**Aline:** There’s four seasons of it?

**John:** Four seasons. You have won the game-

**Craig:** You have won the game.

**John:** … I’ve Been Meaning to Watch That.

**Craig:** Well done.

**Megan:** Nice.

**John:** Let us welcome back to the stage Joel Kim Booster and Ike Barinholtz.

**Aline:** Oh, great.

**John:** Ike, I want to say, because in real life you’re not a douche bag manager. We just want to make that clear.

**Ike Barinholtz:** No, not anymore.

**Craig:** Not after tonight.

**Aline:** Not a manager at all.

**John:** I’m wondering if you could please answer this in the form of a question for us. This screenwriter, director, and actor is best known for The Mindy Project, The Afterparty, and Hulu’s upcoming History of the World, Part II. What is your question in the form of an answer, or answer in the form of-

**Ike:** Who is Ike Barinholtz?

**John:** Ike Barinholtz, everyone. Jeopardy champion, Ike Barinholtz.

**Craig:** This is my favorite part of the show, because we don’t have to prepare anything.

**John:** Nope.

**Craig:** We are deluged by questions.

**John:** Usually on our live shows, we have to give the warning of, if you’re going to ask a question, it actually has to be a question rather than a statement. We’re always nervous about questions.

**Craig:** Make your question a question.

**John:** This time, we did something different. We asked our audience to submit their questions in advance. They filled out little cards. They have been curated by our very own Megana Rao.

**Craig:** Yes, Megana Rao.

**John:** Please welcome to the stage, Megana Rao! Where are you, Megana? Megana, should we start with the audience question or your question? You get to choose.

**Megana Rao:** Let’s [inaudible 01:13:31].

**John:** Carefully step down the stage there and find [crosstalk 01:13:34].

**Ike:** Can I just say, this set is absolutely terrifying.

**John:** It is.

**Megan:** It’s very spooky.

**Ike:** That freaking skeleton up there, oh my god.

**John:** If you were the person who has a question for Megana, who won the raffle, do you want to ask your question, or are you passing?

**Audience Member:** I don’t have a question.

**John:** Aw.

**Craig:** That’s honestly the best gift you could’ve given us.

**Aline:** Aw.

**John:** Megana, I think she’s basically gifted you a question. Do you have a question you want to ask of any of these people up here?

**Craig:** That’s a big no. I can tell.

**Megana:** I spent enough time in the greenroom with them.

**Ike:** You have heard all the-

**Joel:** She’s so sick of us.

**Ike:** [crosstalk 01:14:06]. We’ve been talking for 30 minutes.

**John:** Megana, you’ve looked through these questions. What questions do you have for us here on the stage?

**Megana:** These are all questions from the audience, that came in before the show. Someone who did not sign it wrote, “Writers are upset about TikTok kids getting development deals, but is this different from a comedian getting a deal or optioning a bestselling book?”

**Craig:** Oh boy, here we go.

**John:** Oh, man.

**Craig:** How does that feel, gentlemen?

**Aline:** First, writers are just upset about young people being born every day, new people entering the world and trying to change things that we’ve set into place.

**Joel:** The bottom line is that they’re either going to make something cool or they’re not. It doesn’t really matter where you’re coming from. When you get these deals, they’re not meaningless, because you get a lot of money, but they don’t mean anything about the quality of the work. We’ve seen time and time again that a lot of social media stars do get these deals and then they don’t produce anything, because it’s a much different medium than what they’re good at. Some of them do end up making it and doing really awesome work that I enjoy. I don’t really pay too close attention to where they’re coming from. I’m mostly concerned about what are they making.

**Aline:** I love that answer. I love that.

**Craig:** That was the first good answer we’ve had on this entire podcast, ever.

**Aline:** I think that’s really smart. I think that’s really smart.

**Megan:** I met Bloom from YouTube. She just had uploaded her video. It didn’t have to go through a development program and a, I’m really bashing on men today, but another man and another man named Dave and another man named Brad and another man named Jeff to get to me. The thing that I love about TikTok is it’s people in their living rooms, it’s kids, and it’s not all people dancing. I’m going to talk more about that. I think if you create something great and then you’re put in a larger format and you can make it work for you and it’s something good, people will be judged on what they make, not how they broke in.

**Ike:** People are haters. It’s me and my friends living in a house, making our fucking TikToks. If they don’t like it, fuck off.

**Joel:** There you go.

**Aline:** I see you doing one of those where they come at the camera in a row and they’re dancing, and then one goes this way and the other one goes that way. What do you think?

**Ike:** We love it. We love all of our dances, don’t we, folks? Don’t we love our TikTok dances?

**Aline:** Didn’t Robert Evans just climb out of a swimming pool, and somebody saw him and was like, “Hey, you’re a star, baby.” What’s different about that from TikTok? It’s all the same.

**Craig:** I agree. You know what?. If you’re good at what you do, I don’t think you should be afraid of anybody. I don’t care what the new thing is. It doesn’t matter. If you’re a good writer, it’ll work.

**Aline:** I’m sure you experienced it, but when I worked in TV, developing pilots, they would give you a list of who the network was really into. It would be like, “We’re dying to do a show with this person.” It was always like, why?

**Megan:** Why?

**Aline:** Why? Didn’t it seem like the most random selection process?

**Megan:** Yes.

**Aline:** Then you would be walking around being like, “I’m doing a show for this person. The network really loves them.” Your friends and family would be like, “What?”

**Megan:** “Who?”

**Ike:** They’re talking about Mario Lopez, by the way, in case you’re wondering.

**Aline:** Be like, “He’s so funny in those interviews.”

**John:** Megana, do you have another question for us?

**Megana:** This one’s going to be a Megana question.

**John:** We love a Megana question.

**Craig:** Yay.

**Megana:** It’s a follow-up, because Joel and Ike were talking about social media. What is your take on writers having social media and the idea of building a brand as an emerging writer?

**Craig:** Brand.

**John:** Brand.

**Craig:** Brand.

**Megana:** I know, I set you up for that.

**Craig:** You’re not a person. You’re a thing.

**Joel:** Developing my brand on Twitter is just my fun, flirty way of saying I’m developing a mental illness.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**Joel:** Every day, deepening, deepening, deepening every day.

**Aline:** May I say I love you on Twitter though?

**Megan:** Your mental illness is so funny.

**Aline:** It’s a thing. I’ve found a lot of people. That’s how I knew who Joel was to begin with. There are a lot of great… I don’t know. I’m really shilling for the big corporations here.

**Megan:** I don’t think that it’s the thing that’s definitely going to get you a job, but I do know that when I’ve been recommended writers, I tend to Google them, and the first thing that comes up is their social media.

**Ike:** That’s what I was going to say. I would be careful what you tweet.

**Craig:** I think that your answer was perfect. It does feel like if you are aiming for a brand, then you are probably trying to monetize your personality disorder, and you should not do so. You should try and be as authentic as you can possibly be. There’s nothing wrong with that. You don’t have to go crazy. You don’t have to tell everybody everything, because people do that. Calculating a brand, it gives me the willies.

**Aline:** I can’t think of writers who I’m like, “Wow, social media’s killing it.”

**Ike:** Just don’t tweet about other writers, because you might be interviewing them.

**Craig:** Or don’t tweet at all.

**Ike:** That’s another option.

**Megan:** I read that, Ike, what you said about me, by the way.

**Ike:** So sorry. I thought I deleted it. I don’t know how to delete it. Someone needs to show me.

**John:** A question.

**Megana:** “What makes a great elevator pitch?”

**Ike:** It just has to have a pulley system strong enough to lift what’s inside.

**Craig:** I knew it was coming, but I was happy that it happened.

**John:** John Gatins [inaudible 01:19:10] on the stage. We have a microphone. You can share a microphone. You need to pitch something. You have 15 seconds to pitch something to somebody in an elevator situation. What are the crucial things you’re trying to get out there?

**Aline:** Couldn’t be a wronger guy to ask this to. Couldn’t be a wronger guy than John Gatins.

**Megan:** [crosstalk 01:19:25].

**Aline:** Here is one of the things that John has been saying to me for… John and I have known each other since 1997. He’s been retiring since then.

**Craig:** That’s true. That’s fact. That’s fact.

**Aline:** I would say 8 to 10 times a year he’s retiring. The other thing John says all the time is, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” He goes, “I went to the movies. I saw that. I don’t know. I [inaudible 01:19:48] TV. I don’t know. That guy just got made the head of a studio. I don’t know. I don’t know.” It’s actually really great. I’m going to tell you one… I have many, many, many, many, many pearls of wisdom from John Gatins.

**Craig:** “I don’t know.”

**Aline:** One of them is a gift that I have given to many people, which is that John says, “Hollywood remains undefeated.” It is incredible. I wrote that down and hung that up in our office, because it is incredible. So many people look like they’re winning in Hollywood. The car’s about to cross, and then something happens. Hollywood remains undefeated.

Then the other thing that’s actually a helpful tip that I got from John, which is, when you’re upset about something to do with work and something’s really gotten you in the gut, John has this 40-hour rule. We’ll talk about something, and then John goes, “You know what? Call me in 40 hours.” It’s a great amount of time. It’s like the glass and a half of wine. It’s not two days. It’s not two full days.

**Ike:** It’s a workweek.

**Aline:** It’s just enough time for you to… Every time we’ve ever done that and I’ve called him back, I’ve gotten over myself in 40 hour.

**Craig:** Nice.

**Joel:** I think a good elevator pitch elicits-

**Aline:** You wanted us to answer the question?

**John:** Joel, if you’ll answer the question.

**Joel:** I think it should elicit a question. Don’t give it all away in the pitch. It should make the person be like, “Oh, that’s interesting. Why are you talking to me in this elevator? I’m trying to go to my doctor’s office.”

**John:** That’s actually a very good point, because basically, you’re not saying, “Oh, I only have these 15 seconds.” You’re trying to get them to ask the next question that makes it go on longer than that little, short period of time you had. So smart. Megana.

**Megana:** Chad is a storyboard artist, and he says, “In boarding, we have exercises like retro-boarding or watching a movie and pausing and drawing what the storyboard might have looked like. This helps you learn the craft. Anything like this in screenwriting?”

**John:** I think I’ve told this on the podcast before. When I was first trying to figure out what the hell is screenwriting, I would tape an episode of a show, like Star Trek, and I would actually just write what I was seeing, so all the dialog, but also what would the scene look like around that. It’s a thing you can do. It’s free for everybody. It’s just figuring out what would the scene look like underneath that scene. The good thing about the internet now is we can probably look and find the actual scene pages behind that and see how does mine compare to what the actual real screenwriter wrote. You definitely can do that. It’s a thing we can experiment with.

**Megan:** I actually had to do this when I wrote my spec script that got me my first job in TV, because I didn’t go to… I was an English major, so I never took a screenwriting class. Then all of a sudden they told me I needed to write a spec script, and I didn’t know what that was. I watched an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Then I wrote out all the lines of dialog for every scene, and exactly what you’re talking about, and reverse engineered a script. Then I went, “Oh, it’s about 28 pages long. I guess that’s how long scripts are supposed to be.”

**Ike:** Then you use that as your sample.

**Megan:** Then I sew that back in.

**John:** [crosstalk 01:22:55].

**Megan:** They’ve done so many episodes.

**Ike:** It’s not cool.

**Megan:** They couldn’t tell the difference.

**Ike:** Those morons.

**Megan:** They just hired me and I worked.

**Ike:** “She really understands the tone. This script is awesome.”

**Megan:** It was sort of reverse engineering. Then what’s been useful to me after that is that sometimes I will write down more like an outline of what happened to describe what happens in the scene, because all the best TV shows that I love… If you can’t describe what actually happens in the scene, especially comedies… You sometimes get distracted by the jokes. What I try to do is I broom away all the jokes, don’t write down any of the funny stuff that’s happening, just write the nuts and bolts of what’s happening in the scene, because then when I go to sit down and outline my own episodes that I’m writing, it lets me be more honest about is there anything actually happening in the story or is it just funny.

**Craig:** Great.

**Megana:** “What is the smallest hill you’re willing to die on?”

**Aline:** One space after every period in the script.

**John:** Yeah, one space.

**Craig:** Yass.

**Megan:** No.

**Joel:** No.

**Craig:** Bones.

**Megan:** No.

**Craig:** Bones. Bones.

**Ike:** I’ve been broken. I was a two-space guy, and I’ve been broken to the one space.

**Craig:** You should be, because you only need to do one space.

**John:** I look at old scripts of mine that have two spaces, and I’m like, “Who was this person? I can’t recognize him anymore.”

**Craig:** What was this idiot who needed all this extra space to know that the sentence ended? Please.

**John:** The period did that job.

**Craig:** The period does it.

**Megan:** I think we’re all going to Hell because no one knows the difference between fewer and less.

**Craig:** Ever since Game of Thrones made a point of it, I think it’s been coming around. They did a pretty good job.

**John:** It was in there. It was a little [crosstalk 01:24:28].

**Ike:** The word “desperately,” spelling that one. There’s just certain words, I’m just like, my brain cannot spell it. I can’t even think of them right now, but there’s four or five words that I’m just like, “Man, fuck those words.” I can never spell them correctly.

**Craig:** Fuck those words.

**Ike:** How about you?

**Joel:** I would say that Season 10 of Ru Paul’s Drag Race is an underrated season.

**John:** Remind us who the queens were on Season 10.

**Joel:** Season 10, the winner of course was Aquaria, Eureka O’Hara’s second go at it, Asia O’Hara, the butterflies, tragic but iconic, and then of course Kameron Michaels. That’s the smallest hill I’m willing to die on.

**John:** That’s a small hill.

**Craig:** He stole my answer.

**John:** Megana, one more.

**Megana:** “With all the bleak news about mass buy-offs, show cancellations-”

**Joel:** Ending on a high note, cool.

**Megana:** “… decreased box office sales, etc-”

**Ike:** Global warming, hunger.

**Craig:** My cat dying.

**Megana:** “… what can you tell those of us who are working to become working writers that might give us hope about the future of the industry?”

**Craig:** Oh boy, you asked the wrong group of people.

**John:** Hope, hope, hope, hope.

**Craig:** Hope.

**John:** Oh my god.

**Craig:** Megan, they don’t know.

**Megan:** Sorry.

**Ike:** I think honestly, if you really focus on stories that you think are important and you throw everything into those stories, there’s a chance that you could end up working on Jeff Bezos’s sky raft. If you’re in the sky raft, you will live through the second atomic war. Once you’re up there, I don’t fucking know. I don’t know. Do whatever he says. To get there, really tell the stories that matter to you.

**Aline:** I’m going to give a more sincere answer. I have a production company. I have four wonderful people I work with. They read a lot of stuff. I read stuff after they curate it for me. If you write a great thing, it’s still really, really compelling, just because there’s more stuff, just because it’s harder, just because I think we have a huge problem with breaking people into the business now. It couldn’t be harder. It shouldn’t be so hard. It’s very hard to break in, very hard to earn a living. If you write a great thing, and that’s really what you want to do, a great thing does still really stand out and will get passed along and will be treated with reverence.

**Craig:** Here’s a little bit of hope. The things that you’re reading about are echoes of shit that’s already happened. It’s already old. Sometimes when we talk to people that work at these places, I’m startled by how they’re monomaniacally fixated on what they’re going to be doing in 2026.

The stuff that happens now, it may feel like you’re in the middle of it. You’re actually not. It’s already happened. You don’t actually know what’s going on, because they haven’t shown it to you yet, but it’s happening now. It may very well be that the evidence of things being wiped away and collapsed is already being undermined by things being created in even larger amounts. We just don’t know. We don’t know. Maybe the Netflix ad-supported thing, suddenly all these new shows get made. We just don’t know.

It’s probably best to not pay attention to that stuff, because you can’t control it anyway. It does go up and down. It’s a very cyclical business. If you concentrate on what you love and anything you feel very passionate about that’s unique to you, that’s all you can do. That’s literally all you can do.

**Megana:** Aw.

**Craig:** Thank you, Megana.

**Joel:** Or you can become huge on TikTok.

**Craig:** That’s the other myth.

**Joel:** That’s the other option.

**Craig:** [crosstalk 01:28:25].

**John:** The one other thing I’ll remind people about is that if productions shrink, if we’re not making as many shows, we probably won’t make for a while, if we’re making fewer movies, if you’re an actor, it’s tough, because as an actor, you’re waiting for somebody to cast you in a thing. As a writer, you always have the ability to create your own stuff and find a new way to make that thing. One of the huge advantages of the people on this stage is we can just go off and do a new thing. Do that new thing and figure out where the next place is that you can create some things for the world. That’s the luxury of being a writer. It’s what sucks about being a writer is we have to do all our own stuff. We have to be entrepreneurs, but we can just do our thing whenever we need to do our thing.

**Joel:** Entertainment is democratized in a way it’s never been before. Maybe there are less opportunities to make a shit ton of money doing writing. There’s also a million opportunities and ways to put out your work now. You can take that screenplay and make it a podcast. It’s so easy to do that now. It can get out to as many people as you can get it to. You just might not make as much money.

**Craig:** I don’t know, those guys just sold their podcast, what’d you say, for $75 million?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** We gotta get that.

**John:** We made a book. We’re starting, Craig. [crosstalk 01:29:33]. That’s our show. [inaudible 01:29:37].

**Craig:** That was a great show. That was a great show.

**John:** We have some people we need to thank. We need to start off by thanking Hollywood Heart, Jessica Martins, Sarah Eagen, everyone at Hollywood Heart, our own John Gatins.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** Also apparently UTA for their support. Hollywood Heart, everybody.

**Craig:** Of course, we would like to say thank you to all the volunteers who helped make tonight possible, and of course everybody who showed up here in person and online. We appreciate you.

**John:** There’s people watching the livestream. Hi, livestream people.

**Craig:** Hello, folks.

**John:** I want to thank Dynasty Typewriter for hosting us. This is just an ideal venue. This was great. This is terrific. Thank you very much for making this all possible here at Dynasty Typewriter.

**Aline:** Air conditioning in here slaps.

**John:** I love it. It’s so good. Jerome Kurtenbach on piano!

**Craig:** Yay.

**John:** Thank you.

**Craig:** As always, Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. Yay! We are the least popular things in our own show. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli.

**John:** Matthew! Thank you all. Have a great night!

**Craig:** Woo! Thank you guys. Thank you for coming. Woo!

**John:** Yay! Thank you so much!

Links:

* Learn more and donate to [Hollywood Heart!](https://www.hollywoodheart.org/)
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* [Ike Barinholtz](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0054697/) on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/ikebarinholtz), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/ikebarinholtz/), and [Celebrity Jeopardy!](https://www.instagram.com/p/CjwlUK4ITxt/)
* [Megan Ganz](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3836955) on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/meganganz) and [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/meganganz/)
* [Aline Brosh McKenna]() on [Twitter]() and [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/abmck/)
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* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/571.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2022/inspiration-vs-motivation).

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

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

**John:** This is Episode 569 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, how do you sit down to write? We’ll discuss inspiration versus motivation both for your characters and for you as a writer. We’ll also talk about the phenomenon of showrunners as promotional vehicles for their shows. Does this elevate the writer/creator or amount to unpaid labor? In our Bonus Segment for Premium Members, insects. Why do we have insects?

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** Yeah. First, right before we started recording, I apparently changed your life. In case we have other people out there listening, talk through the problem and solution, and people’s lives will be better.

**Craig:** I am shooketh. For the last all of my life, while I’ve been drinking coffee out of cups like Starbucks, Coffee Bean, whatever, every now and again, I would say half the time… Because I drink an Americano. I’m a straight up black coffee kind of dude. Two shots. Two shots, John, small size. About half the time, the fricking lid is like a dribble cup. There’s just these drips that come out, and they hit me on my shirt or my pants. It’s really annoying and hot. I was just complaining about it, and you said… What did you say to me, John?

**John:** I said, “Craig, is the lid of the cup lined up to the seam?” You were confused by what I meant. Then as you examined your cup, you saw that the plastic lid is on top of the paper cup. The paper cup has a seam on it. If the hole in the lid is lined up to the seam, it will dribble on you.

**Craig:** Yes, it will. I just put the lid back on so that the hole was not over the seam, and it didn’t dribble on me, and I love you.

**John:** Aw, thank you.

**Craig:** I love you, and I’m also very angry, because why… In their training at Starbucks University, I don’t know what… By the way, what is Starbucks’s training university called? What do you think it’s called, Espresso College or something?

**John:** I bet it’s Starbucks University, something like that.

**Craig:** You think it’s just straight up Starbucks University?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** At Starbucks U, this should be the first and last lesson. Just don’t put the hole over the thing where the cup seams together. Here’s the thing. I’m drinking coffee without fear. I’m not afraid that it’s going to burn me.

**John:** Megana, you were aware of this life hack, correct?

**Megana Rao:** I was not, and I had to look it up on the internet-

**Craig:** Of course.

**Megana:** … to verify that this is true.

**Craig:** So Millennial.

**Megana:** A lot of forums agree with this knowledge. There’s a conspiracy out there that baristas do this on purpose.

**Craig:** Here we go.

**John:** Oh yeah, so people they hate. It’s like, “Oh, that Craig.”

**Craig:** Why would it be half the time the seam is… I don’t know how many… What do you call those, degrees?

**John:** Yeah, degrees, radians. I’m not sure what the math is.

**Craig:** The quantity of radians of that seam is maybe like 3 out of 360. This should be happening 1 in every 120 times I get a coffee.

**John:** The hole doesn’t have to line up exactly, because if you think about when you tilt the cup up-

**Craig:** True.

**John:** … you’re putting the coffee against that whole side of the thing. Really, you just need the hole-

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** … directly opposite the seam.

**Craig:** Really? Okay.

**John:** Yeah. That’s your safe spot.

**Craig:** I’ll tell you what. I’m never going to have this problem again. Never.

**John:** Never.

**Craig:** Never. I’ll tell you another thing, John. You just earned yourself grace. Do you know what I mean by this? One day you’re going to do something. I’m going to get angry. Then you’re going to say, “Craig, I would like to use my grace.” I will say-

**John:** It’s like real life DnD inspiration, like I get to roll an extra D20.

**Craig:** No, you just say, “Grace.” Now, the grace will get used. It’s not a permanent grace, of course, but you possess grace.

**John:** Love it. While we’re talking about Millennials manifesting things, I would actually like to try to manifest something here on this podcast. I would like to make a Van Halen biopic. I think there’s a great biopic to be made of Van Halen. I’ve done some work to try to figure out who would control the rights to this, what are the complications here, does any producer control some part of the story. What I’ve run into is basically it seems like it’s impossible to do at this point because there’s such disagreement between the Van Halen people and David Lee Roth’s people and that it’s going to be a mess.

There are complicated things to put together to make this movie happen. Obviously, you need all the rights to all the music, not the permission, but the blessing of Eddie Van Halen’s family, whatever representational things you want to get for David Lee Roth. There’s a fricking great movie to make from Van Halen. If you are a listener who has some access to some part of this complicated mess, reach out to me, because I really think there’s a great musical biopic to make of Van Halen.

**Craig:** Pasadena’s own Van Halen. A lot of people don’t know that Eddie and Alex Van Halen are biracial.

**John:** They’re also international. They’re born in Europe.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** They’re genuine prodigies. They were in several bands before Van Halen. The whole backstory before that is great. The actual story of being in Van Halen and the conflicts within Van Halen and overcoming those conflicts to some degree, they replaced him with Sammy Hagar, all of that is great and fascinating and could make a really amazing biopic.

**Craig:** I don’t know their story well enough, but I feel like Michael Anthony, the bassist for Van Halen, had a very privileged position of just sitting quietly, watching everyone fight around him. He’s just like, “Guys, when you’re done, I’m here, ready to play.”

**John:** I saw Van Halen play at Iowa State University. It was an amazing show. There was a very long drum solo in it. That was appropriate, because that’s what you wanted in that era. You wanted a long drum solo.

**Craig:** Also, Alex Van Halen, incredibly good drummer.

**John:** Yeah, therefore he should have a solo.

**Craig:** Stupidly good drummer. Originally, I think when the parents got them instruments, Eddie was given the drum set, and Alex was given the guitar.

**John:** They both were started on piano, because that’s [crosstalk 00:06:10].

**Craig:** Of course. They are. They’re prodigies. I believe they played a concert at La Cañada High School back in… That’s a scene.

**John:** I’m not sure that’s going to make it into the picture, Craig.

**Craig:** Aw.

**John:** It could. You never know. It could happen.

**Craig:** (sings)

**John:** If you are a person with the power to manifest a Van Halen movie, know that I want to write this movie. I figured I might as well put that out there and stake my claim in it to some degree.

**Craig:** Maybe Alex Van Halen is a podcast fan.

**John:** Yeah. We have some follow-up. Megana, help us out. What did Andrew have to say?

**Megana:** Andrew wrote in and said, “I appreciated the discussion of casting stars, as it’s a question I have thought about a lot. However, you focused a lot on casting for film, and I’d like to know about the difference for television. Are there different factors involved? I’m thinking of the recently premiered Monarch, in which Susan Sarandon plays a dying woman at the head of a celebrity country music family, or Cobra Kai, where they’ve gotten many actors from the original movie series to come back, but the focus is clearly on the younger characters. I’ve thought about writing a show where the main character’s played by an unknown actor, but have more established actors in a parent or advisor character role. How should writers think about something like that?”

**John:** In television in general, you’re not as star-focused, but also who is a star changes a lot of television. Scott Bakula is a television star. If he agrees to be on your CSI spin-off, then he’s going to be the centerpiece star of that. He’ll be paid really well for that. Television is not generally as star-driven. It makes stars rather than casting stars. Is that your experience, Craig?

**Craig:** I think that that’s been the way it’s been. It has changed to an extent over the last 10 years with the rise of the limited series. The limited series are different. The reason that television stars were traditionally different, separate from movie stars, is because television stars had to make these long-term commitments to one thing. If you are let’s say Tom Hanks, you don’t have to do that, because you don’t want to be stuck on one thing, because Steven Spielberg wants to come and do this movie and someone brilliant over here wants to do this movie, and so you get to pick and choose. You don’t want to tie yourself down, whereas Mariska Hargitay has made this brilliant career but on one show.

Lately, with the rise of the shorter seasons, a lot of television series running between 6 and 12 episodes, and sometimes just once, actors, what we would call traditional movie stars are less concerned and are okay with tying themselves down for a stretch, because they know it’s not permanent. They aren’t going to be stuck on this thing for 10 seasons, 22 episodes a year. That does make quite a difference. You see a lot of people… Matthew McConaughey doing True Detective was a sign.

**John:** Agreed.

**Craig:** There’s been fuzzying of the lines. In terms of how you think about this, Andrew, just don’t worry about it. You write for who you want. For whom you want. How dare I?

**John:** How dare you?

**Craig:** How dare I?

**John:** His second question there is what if you cast an unknown actor in that main role but a more established, better known actor in those supporting roles? That can be tricky. Definitely it’s possible, but think about that as an audience member. If you have no idea who that central person is, and yet you recognize those other people, you are going to expect those other people are going to have really big, significant things coming up. There’s just a weird expectation game that happens. It can totally work. Just be aware that there could be some bump for your audience there if they don’t recognize your central person but they do recognize the people around them.

**Craig:** That too I think has gotten a little bit worse because of the amount of television. Let’s go back once more into the way back machine and think about Game of Thrones. They had Sean Bean. Sean Bean was somebody that people knew, but I don’t think, at least in America, he was what we would call a star. Nobody was building movies around Sean Bean. He was the bad guy in Golden Eye. Spoiler, by the way. You think he dies, and he doesn’t. He’s the bad guy. He’s Trevelyan. Other than that, a lot of people we didn’t know, and Dinklage. Even Dinklage, I have to say, was-

**John:** He was in an indie film that people liked that was-

**Craig:** Exactly. He was in The Station Agent, which is a wonderful movie. He’d been around, but again, not somebody that people were building movies around. Everybody was okay with it because we learned new people. It’s a little trickier now also looking at the new Game of Thrones show, House of the Dragon.

**John:** You kind of recognize Rhys Ifans, but there’s not a lot of-

**Craig:** There’s Paddy Considine.

**John:** Paddy Considine, yeah.

**Craig:** Doctor Who.

**Megana:** Matt Smith.

**John:** Matt Smith, of course.

**Craig:** Matt Smith, right. There are some, but again, for Americans, not these people that anyone’s building a movie around. You can still do it. I think, Andrew, cast who you want in your head, and then we’ll deal with it later when life starts happening.

**John:** I think we’ve talked about this on the show before. I’m a big caster in my head before I start writing. I like to see that there’s at least one actor out there who could play the role. Is that the person who’s going to play the role ultimately? Almost never, but it does help me to be thinking about that in my head. If you feel like you need a person with giant movie star charisma in that central role, cast that that way, but know that other factors are going to determine whether it is a movie star, TV star, or an unknown in that slot. Last bit of follow-up here. We got a lot of emails about burials and cremations and such.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** I want to say that we are not going to talk anything more about it.

**Craig:** Nope.

**John:** There’s clearly a market for a burial podcast. If you’re thinking, “I really want to start a podcast, but what should my podcast topic be?” the topic of burials and cremations and what do you do with dead bodies seems to be fascinating to a huge subset of our listenership.

**Craig:** You got to find that small Venn diagram intersection between knows a lot about burying people and interesting. If you can find that person, I’m down.

**John:** Something like internment and interesting, I feel like there’s a thing that can go together there. There’s something about that. People are obsessed with death, because they’re obsessed with murder podcasts. There’s going to be something about dead bodies.

**Craig:** We’re all going to be dead.

**John:** Universal experience.

**Craig:** We’re all going to be dead, even you, Megana.

**Megana:** Never. No.

**Craig:** It’s happening. What, do you think you’re eternal?

**Megana:** I’m knocking on wood so it doesn’t happen.

**Craig:** You’re knocking on wood. Knocking on wood doesn’t even work for things that are forestallable. You’re knocking on wood against death?

**John:** I want to defend knocking on wood, just as a tradition of saying, “Listen, I recognize that what I just said could potentially come back to haunt me.” It’s a public way of doing it. I would never knock on wood privately, but I might do it publicly.

**Craig:** Interesting.

**Megana:** Interesting.

**Craig:** Do you think Megana’s really starting to think about her own mortality for the first time right now?

**John:** Based on our previous insect discussion, I think she was already a little bit worried for our own lives.

**Craig:** She was halfway there. We’ll get to that in the Bonus Segment, but first, we have a marquee topic.

**John:** Indeed. Let’s talk about inspiration versus motivation. The idea behind this came from a recent issue of Inneresting, the newsletter we do. Chris Sont, our editor, linked to this blog post by John Scalzi, who is a very good writer of science fiction and other things. He has this blog post called Find the Time or Don’t. Basically, people ask him questions like, “How do I find the time to write?” His point is either you find the time or you don’t do it.

I’ll just read one little quote here. He says, “The answer to the first of these is simple and unsatisfying: I keep inspired to write because if I don’t then the mortgage company will be inspired to foreclose on my house. And I’d prefer not to have that happen. This answer is simple because it’s true — hey, this is my job, I don’t have another — and it’s unsatisfying because writers, and I suppose particularly authors of fiction, are assumed to have some other, more esoteric inspiration.”

I like the post, but I would like to separate out the idea of inspiration and motivation, because I think they get conflated and confused. For our discussion, Craig, if we can talk about inspiration being that desire to write the specific thing and that flash of genius, like, “Oh, this is the thing I’m called to write,” versus motivation, which is what gets you in the chair every day to write, which is getting you to get the work finished.

**Craig:** I think it’s a great distinction to make.

**John:** Both are really important, but they don’t always happen at the same time.

**Craig:** No. One needs to happen all the time, and one sometimes happens when it feels like it. Inspiration does not adhere to a timetable. You can’t plan it and you can’t force it. That’s why it’s inspiration. If it weren’t, if you could just say, “Oh, I’m going to be inspired in 10 minutes,” then it wouldn’t be very inspiring. Also, people talk about the spark of creativity. Sparks last a millisecond, and then they’re gone. They’re just meant to ignite. Then the rest of it, honestly, all the rest of it is motivation.

**John:** Let’s go back to your spark thing, because what I really like about that idea is, as a person who builds fires with flint and steel, yes, you had that one little moment, but then it’s all the work and careful work, diligence of just like, “Okay, now I’m going to get it in the tinder. I’m going to slowly add the kindling and slowly build it up into a thing.” That’s the whole work. It’s not the striking at the flint and steel. It’s the actual building of the fire. That’s what a lot of people don’t do. You see people who wander around saying, “I have this great idea for a movie. I have this great idea for a book.” They have inspiration, but a lot of times they don’t actually have the motivation to actually get a thing done.

On the contrary, sometimes in movies we’ll see this cliché scene of the guy sitting at the typewriter, and he’s like, “I can’t get any words out.” He’s just waiting around for inspiration. That’s not necessarily the case for most people. Really, it’s that they kind of have the idea, they kind of know what they want to do, but they cannot physically get themselves to sit at that typewriter and try to work on a thing. They’d rather do anything else. That’s procrastination. That’s perfectionism. It’s all the other reasons why they’re not willing to sit down to write.

**Craig:** You do hear the dog, right?

**Megana:** Yeah, so cute.

**John:** The dog barking in the background?

**Craig:** It’s not just me.

**John:** That dog is my dog Lambert, who’s sleeping and dreaming in the background.

**Craig:** Aw.

**John:** I’ll take a picture and I’ll post it on-

**Craig:** Lambert.

**John:** … my Instagram so everyone can see how cute he is as I’m recording this.

**Craig:** Everything you said is spot-on. The marketplace of creative romance overvalues inspiration. By the way, inspiration sometimes is wrong. Sometimes you get so excited. You’re like, “That’s it. I figured it out, this brilliant, wonderful idea. All I have to do now is the easy part of just unraveling it.” Then you realize that you were inspired stupidly, that the inspiration did not stand up to the test of what motivation has to deliver, which is execution and work. You’re allowed to be falsely inspired. Don’t overvalue your aha moments. They’re aha moments if they pan out. If they don’t, they’re not. Simple as that.

**John:** I often say on this podcast that we are our own main characters in our own stories. Let’s think about how characters relate to motivation and inspiration. Inspiration in a movie, that classic call to adventure, there’s a thing that happens early on that’s like, oh, this is the thing that you are destined to do. You can choose to follow that path or not follow that path. Something is going to change in your life, or you have characters who fall in love at first sight. That inspiration in movies tends to be the enduring quest. That’s a thing that they are called to do. That’s not them actually leaving home and doing the work. It’s a siren song, but it’s not the actual plot and story and work of the movie. That’s generally motivation, because the motivation is what’s getting them from this scene to that scene, what’s getting them to say the next line, what’s getting them to move and take some actions.

**Craig:** Sometimes the causal flows in the direction opposite from what we would imagine. Sometimes you are uninspired, and you just have to do stuff. In our own lives, this is true. We don’t want to do a thing. We’re forced to do a thing. We start to do a thing, and lo and behold, something happens while we’re doing it that then feeds into a kind of inspiration. The idea of waiting to be inspired is a trap.

Dennis Palumbo of Episode 99, his big prescription for writer’s block is start writing something, even if it’s nonsense. If you are a writer typer, start typing stuff. Start typing about how you can’t write. Start typing anything. It doesn’t matter. If you’re a pen and paper guy, start pen and papering. Move your hands or fingers in a writing motion. Then, lo and behold, you may find suddenly you are in the groove and inspiration occurs.

**John:** Let’s talk about motivation for writers, motivation actually for characters as well. We’ve talked about this on the show before. You can have intrinsic motivation, which is something that is about who you are. It’s generated from inside. It could be about your self-perception, your self-worth, this vision of who you are as a person. Calling yourself, “I am a writer,” that’s an intrinsic motivation to do the writing because you’ve perceived yourself as being a writer. It can also be negative intrinsic motivation, like shame or guilt, that’s pushing you to do that.

**Craig:** That’s what I have.

**John:** We’ve got those. Those could be the things that are motivating you to do this creative writing or to literally show up and do the work on that day. There’s also extrinsic motivations, as Scalzi’s saying, like, “I have to pay the bills. I have a deadline that I’m required to meet.” Sometimes it’s good to have a balance of the things that you were doing because it’s a part of who you are, the intrinsic things. Also, setting deadlines is a way of external accountability. That’s also motivating you to write.

**Craig:** I wish that our motivations were all positive. I wish that we were all motivated by a sense of self-worth and value. I wish that I could wake up in the morning and think, “I should write today, because I’m good, and people are interested.” That’s not what happens. What happens with me is that I wake up in the morning and I think, “I need to write today.” I’m already in trouble. I just start off the day, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble. I’m behind. I’m bad. The best I could do is try and write my way to just get my nose above the waterline so that I don’t drown in my own shame and misery.

Now, that’s an anti-romanticism. I don’t recommend it. I don’t think it’s good. It is so common that I suppose the reason I’m talking about it is because I don’t want people to feel like that is bad with a capital B. It’s bad with a lowercase B. So many of us have it that if it gets us writing and it makes the work happen, as long as we can somehow find ways to hug ourselves afterwards, and I really do try, then I think it’s okay. It’s okay. I just don’t want people to beat themselves up for beating themselves up, if that makes sense.

**John:** Definitely. I’ve had moments in my career where I could not wait to write. That combination of inspiration and motivation were happening at just the right dose at just the right times, where it was like, “I’m going to leave this party and go home and write this scene, because I just know exactly what this scene is.” There’s been projects where for two weeks at a time, all I wanted to do is write the project, but that’s rare. I think the career of writing is recognizing that will happen sometimes, but that’s not going to be your normal experience.

Your normal experience is going to be probably some mix of the lowercase B bad motivations to get you there to do the work and recognizing that while you’re doing it, you’re going to have some discoveries, sometimes moments that you might happier about the work at the end of the day than at the start of the day.

**Craig:** I’ll tell you that one remarkable motivation… I’ve never had this before in my life. Working on The Last of Us, I had I think half of the script done by the time we started shooting, with the understanding that I had to write the other half. Neil wrote an episode, but I had to write all the remaining ones, including one with Neil, while we were in production. That’s terrifying, because I don’t have to imagine people waiting. They’re there. I can see them. They come and find me. They’re like, “When are we going to… Can you give me a peak? I would just love to know,” because they have jobs to do.

I made a point of saying, “Look, schedule-wise, I need to deliver a draft of a script to everyone, meaning I’ve already given it to HBO, great, now I can give it to everybody, with two months’ time between them getting it and us shooting it,” which in television, sadly, that’s quite a luxurious amount of time, because there are people that deliver these things the day of.

**John:** Classically on network procedural shows, sometimes they’ll get so backed up, you’re prepping off of an outline, if that. Scripts are being written as they’re shot.

**Craig:** There are showrunners that we’ve spoken to on the show, who I have great admiration for, and they’re notorious for-

**John:** Last minute.

**Craig:** When you show up on the day, you find out what you’re… They’re that behind. It all works for them. I did find that the reality of a machine of human beings needing the pages was remarkably motivating. I guess I didn’t have to draw so much from my bottomless well of self-loathing, so that was nice. Instead, I borrowed from my bottomless well of fear, you see, which is actually preferable, I think, to self-loathing, just terror as opposed to disgust. These are my wells that I get to draw from in the morning. Megana, do you… I know John’s not like me. I know that.

**Megana:** Yeah, we’re shamecore.

**Craig:** Good. Thank you. I just needed to know that there was another shamecore on board here.

**Megana:** Yeah, I feel you.

**Craig:** I love it.

**Megana:** I primarily operate out of fear. Writing is just so fun. What you guys are talking about, I feel like it is really fun, and it is all of the fear that gets in the way of me actually sitting down to write.

**Craig:** Fear.

**John:** Megana, when you’re saying writing is fun, is it fun when you’re in flow or is it fun even when it’s a struggle?

**Megana:** I think it’s fun when you’re in flow. To me, the desire to get back to that state has to outweigh the fear. That is when I sit down to write.

**Craig:** That’s quite perfect. That is a great summation of what’s going on with me. I just need the desire to get into the flow of it to outweigh the fear. That’s just perfect. Chef’s kiss. You know what? You’ve earned grace.

**John:** I changed your life, and she says one nice thing?

**Craig:** I know. It’s hard. It’s hard knowing me.

**John:** This is grace inflation.

**Craig:** I never promised you a rose garden, and I’m not fair. Megana, you have earned grace. Here’s the thing. She’s never going to need it. When is she ever going to do anything where I’m like, “Meh!”

**Megana:** Just you wait.

**Craig:** Not that you do, John. Honestly, John just never does anything either. I’m really handing out grace to people that don’t need it. That’s the God’s honest truth.

**John:** I’ve talked about this before with Arlo Finch. Writing those three books was one of the rare experiences where for two or three months at a time, I was just writing those books. My entire life was just writing Arlo Finch books. I did build up some good routines and habits where I just need to write 1,000, 1,500 words a day, and that the books will get done. Sitting down to do that work and finishing that work was actually a lot easier, because I could sit down knowing this is going to take a couple hours to do, and they’re going to be done, and I’m going to feel really good about it. It was a rare case in my life where the motivation was positive, because I knew I’m going to feel good about having finished that work. I’m not going to finish the whole book today. I’m just going to finish this chapter, and that’s going to be enough.

**Craig:** That’d be so nice, just to feel good.

**John:** Recognizing when enough is enough is good. Actually, this last script I did was a similar situation where… Granted I had really good inspiration going into it. I really wanted to write it. With every scene, I was like, “Oh yeah, this is exactly what I want to be doing right now is writing this scene.” Sometimes it does happen.

**Craig:** That sounds so nice.

**John:** Recognize that it’s rare when it does happen. It’s lovely when it happens.

**Craig:** Again, I don’t know if I ever feel good. I just make some of the bad go away. It’s just who I am. I have to accept it. This is the therapy thing. Part of therapy is saying you’re okay as you are, also oh my god, you’re screwed up and you have so many problems.

**John:** It’s a dialectical struggle is that you’re both imperfect and you’re doing your best.

**Craig:** I’m trying to change, and also I’m fine the way I am. I don’t see this going away. I think I’m just making my peace with it. At least I can put it in perspective. There is a difference between thinking I am bad and I feel bad about myself. That’s a very important distinction. By the way, this has turned into a therapy session for me and probably Megana. You’re fine, John, again. I think that’s part of it. I don’t recall a time where I ever wrote something and then sat back and said, “I feel great.” I just feel like I made the bad go away. I guess if that’s how it works for you at home, I’m just saying that’s okay. I’m sticking up for the shamecore people.

**John:** For sure. Let’s wrap this up with a… Let’s a quote from Scalzi which I think puts a good bow on this. He says, “Being a writer isn’t some grand, mystical state of being. It just means you put words to amuse people, most of all yourself. There’s no more shame in not being a writer than there is in not being a painter, a botanist, or a real estate agent, all of which are things I think personally I do not regret not being. It’s a weird thing we put this pressure I think on what a writer identity has to be and what it has to mean. If you take some of that pressure off, that can also be helpful for people.

**Craig:** I love this quote, and I love him for saying it. I think it’s so important to hear good writers, and he is a very good writer, deromanticizing what we do. There’s so much BS out there, so much glowy nonsense from people about writing. Makes me want to barf, always has.

Ted Elliott of Pirates of the Caribbean fame and Shrek and Aladdin, the original, and so many other things, he talks about writers describing receiving inspiration from the heavens and how they suck at the crack in the cosmic egg. It just makes me laugh, because he’s right. It’s just so ridiculous. It’s not romantic.

Most importantly, it’s okay to not be a writer, the way we have always said to people, “Hey, it’s okay to stop.” If it’s not working, if it’s not making you happy, or even not unhappy, as is the case for the shamecore people, you can stop. It is not magical. I can tell you from my own personal experience that you can do really well as a writer, you can be successful, you can have credits and go to premiers and know famous people, and it still is not romantic at all.

Don’t think that there’s some magical thing on the other side of the velvet rope. There isn’t. In fact, that’s how you know you’re a writer, because you get to the other side of the velvet rope, you look around, you go, “Oh my god, it’s the same thing as the other side of the velvet rope, and I still have to write.” That’s it.

Anyone that talks about the cosmic inspiration and being kissed by Jesus and connecting with the grand river of energy that runs through all of us or crystals or any of that, just run, because they’re not real. I just don’t think they’re real. This guy’s real. That Polish lady that said that when you’re successful it feels like failing, she’s real. Those are real writers to me. I love this. Love this. This plus the coffee thing has made my day.

**John:** Let’s see if we can keep your-

**Craig:** Yay.

**John:** … streak going. Let’s talk about creators, showrunners, the responsibility for them being promotional vehicles for their shows, for the things that they create. We’ve talked a little bit about this before. Yesterday as we were recording this was The Last of Us day, so you were tweeting out about the new teaser trailer. You were having little conversations online. That got a great response, which was terrific.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** A thing that has happened over the time we’ve been recording this show is that showrunners and creators are more and more responsible for interacting directly with fans about the things that they are making. Back in the day, you might see Steven Bochco interviewed in the New York Times, but he wasn’t responsible for the day-to-day promotion of his show. Now, because of social media, that is becoming much more of an expectation.

I just want to talk through the pros and cons of that, because I think it is great that the people who are able to make these things can get the popular culture credit for the things that they’ve made, which is terrific. It also just feels like so much work and unpaid work to be doing that I wonder I some people who would otherwise make shows are reticent to do it, because they are just not social people and they don’t want to have that responsibility.

**Craig:** It’s not a requirement. It’s not like it is for actors. Actors have to promote the show or the movie. They’re not paid to promote the show or the movie. They’re paid to act, and then it’s expected that part of the payment for acting is go promote the show and the movie. By and large, that’s who people want to hear from. We can flatter ourselves and say, “People can’t wait to hear what I, the showrunner, has to say.” There’s some people, and I love that, but it’s not like… Pedro Pascal can say anything on any given day, and it will be viewed by vastly more people than anything I say. It will be viewed with more interest, because that’s the way it ought to be. Famous people are famous.

It is not a requirement. Just to be clear, if you are contemplating being a showrunner, and it’s a real thing, you don’t have to be on Twitter at all. You don’t have to. You don’t have to be on anything. They can’t force you to be on it. If you’re not on it already, they don’t even need you to be on it, meaning if you have a social media presence, they want to leverage it. If you don’t, there’s nothing to leverage anyway. It doesn’t matter.

All you can really do at that point is probably screw up, because what’s going to happen is someone’s going to say something stupid, because believe it or not, people say stupid things on social media, and then people who aren’t accustomed to it or people who are new to it are going to react. Then suddenly, there’s a problem. It is not a requirement.

I will say if you are a showrunner on social media, you have to make sure that you can preserve your own legitimacy and authenticity as a voice, because if you start to sound like a brand or a corporate sloganeer, you just aren’t as interesting. People will see through it instantly. I will say the social media system is… Once you start to see how it all functions on the other side of it, not the way I do it, but just the way that very famous people and brand names and the influencers and all this stuff… It’s reality television, meaning it ain’t reality. It’s all so rigged. It’s incredible how calculated so much social media stuff is.

**John:** I’m thinking about showrunners who left social media. David Lindelof famously left social media after Lost and his frustrations there. Other friends of ours are infrequent tweeters, but then when they have a show, they’ve told me that they feel pressure from the studio or the network to be live tweeting episodes and to be hyping stuff up, in some cases out of fear, because if it doesn’t hit out of the gate, then what’s going to happen? I get the pressure to want to support this thing that I love. I always respect that, because it’s one thing for a novelist to be promoting their stuff. You get that. With a TV show, it is yours, but it’s also everybody else’s. You have to grapple with the internet. All the ugliness of the internet, while trying to make something beautiful, is frustrating.

**Craig:** A network will always ask people to do stuff. That’s what they do. Anybody that can possibly go out there and promote and support the show, they will say, “Hey, can you go and promote and support the show?” That’s their job to do. There is no showrunner on the planet that is essential to a show’s success in terms of social media promotion. None. Shonda Rhimes doesn’t go on Twitter and talk about her shows. She doesn’t need to, because people love her shows.

**John:** She’s also beyond that though.

**Craig:** My point is, if you’re not beyond it, then you’re not in it. You can’t help. There’s no special Goldilocks zone where a showrunner is not beyond it but also can make it a success by tweeting. Either people will like it or they won’t, and they will watch it or they won’t. I can’t imagine a world where a network is like, “Look, that show would’ve worked, but the writer didn’t talk enough on Twitter.” No.

**John:** That’s true.

**Craig:** That’s just not a thing. They’re going to ask, and you’re allowed to say no. If you feel pressure, that’s because you’re being pressured, but only because that’s what they do. They just pressure everybody into doing it. If the actor, the star, if Pedro Pascal is like, “I’m not promoting The Last of Us,” oh my god, there would be lawsuits. That’s a huge deal. He is, by the way. My point is, nobody would be like, “Oh my god, Craig isn’t tweeting about The Last of Us. We have to sue him.” They don’t care. They don’t care. That’s one of the best parts about being a writer.

**John:** I want to circle back then, maybe close on a pro of promoting stuff on social media is that the degree to which you are identified with a show that you create can be helpful with your power vis a vis the studio, the network, and future seasons and future negotiations. If people see that the fan base responds to the show but also responds to you as the showrunner, as the person behind it, it’s a little harder for them to fire you or to do crazy things down the road. We’ve definitely seen situations where people who have been a guest on the show have big fan bases who know them, and so it’s going to be inconceivable for them to be booted off one of their own shows.

**Craig:** I will challenge you on this.

**John:** Please.

**Craig:** I think that networks prize showrunners who are delivering. If the showrunner is not delivering, then it’s not happening anymore. It’s rare that there’s a circumstance where the show is fine and doing great, but they have to get rid of the showrunner. When things like that are happening, it’s typically because there is an HR problem.

**John:** Yeah, or drama behind the scenes, a conflict with another producer, another-

**Craig:** A massive conflict with-

**John:** … star.

**Craig:** Most importantly, that showrunner is not indispensable.

**John:** That’s true.

**Craig:** Now, if you are not indispensable, it does not matter what your fan base is. You will be dispensed with, because what they know is everybody loves the show. The drama that would happen over the dismissal of that person would last all of the day. Then tomorrow, somebody farted on TV, oh my god, everyone, new story, and that’ll be the end of that, because they like the show. That’s how it works. If somebody else can come and write that show and make it great and run it, people will keep watching it. Look at, what was it, The West Wing.

**John:** West Wing, that’s true, [crosstalk 00:39:21].

**Craig:** Aaron Sorkin was like, “I’m leaving.” They were like, “Okay.” Then John Wells came, and people kept watching. That’s how it is. If they think are you are indispensable… Jesse Armstrong, there’s a good example. Jesse Armstrong is the showrunner of Succession. Jesse Armstrong’s not on Twitter. Nobody hears from Jesse Armstrong. He doesn’t have a podcast. He’s the quietest guy. He is indispensable to that show. If Jesse Armstrong was like, “I don’t want to do it anymore,” it’s over, because he’s indispensable to that show, and everybody knows it.

I guess my point is, just like social media itself… Social media overemphasizes the value of social media. Underneath all of it, there is a reality of who has value and who does not. Yes, there is value, promotional value. There always has been to famous people. That’s why we have always had stars in Hollywood. Beyond the actors, Spielberg doesn’t need to tweet.

**John:** Let’s do some listener questions.

**Craig:** Yay.

**John:** We’ll start with Kiefer. Megana, can you help us out with Kiefer’s question?

**Megana:** Kiefer asks, “An acquaintance who’s working on a series for a large streamer just told me they’ve been told to put explicit act breaks in their scripts just in case a streamer decides to launch an ad-supported subscription. Are commercial breaks bad? How do you write both for viewers who will just see a two-second fade to black and those who will be diverted from your perfect, shiny streaming show and besieged with two minutes of Fancy Feast cat food commercials?”

**Craig:** Oh, no, Netflix.

**John:** Kiefer, you’re right. You will notice that some streaming shows really do have act breaks in them. I’m thinking of Only Murders in the Building has things. I guess Hulu actually has ad-supported too already, so I guess it makes sense for that. You’re going to see more of this. I would say be aware of it, because if it feels like it’s a thing that could happen, it’s not the worst idea to plan your show in a way that it could work.

Remember that Mad Men never really did act breaks properly. It just suddenly would stop, and there would be a commercial, and they would just keep going. You can get by without doing the explicit buildup to rising actions and things like that. Classically, in the broadcast model, your acts are really clear, because they have to have some kind of cliffhanger, something that gets you back after the commercial break. We don’t do that in streaming, for good reason, because it’s really artificial. It may be worth thinking about if you were to put a commercial in here, where would it do the least harm, and be thinking about it that way.

**Craig:** I assume that the acquaintance is working for Netflix, because Netflix is talking about putting ads in. What’s going to happen is Netflix is going to offer two tiers of subscription, I believe. One is ad-supported, and one is ad-free. The whole idea is, hey, spend more, and then you don’t have this chopped up thing that’s annoying because Fancy Feast just showed up. By the way, it may not be Netflix. It may be another one. I don’t know. Better not be HBO. All I can say is don’t worry about it yet. One of the things that we were just working on here on our show is we were putting the main credit sequence in and the main titles, the credits in the beginning.

**John:** Craig, I want to stop you and say I thought it was a really bold choice to have it all be like this model of the whole world, and the camera flies over it, and there’s a sun, and there’s little gears and things. I thought it was so innovative, what you’ve chosen to do there.

**Craig:** Shut up. We don’t do that. It’s an interesting choice you make. Episode to episode, it’s a little bit different. Sometimes there’s something that happens, and then we stop, and then we do the thing, and then we return to the episode. Sometimes we just do it, and then we do the episode. It’s basically how we feel it works best.

We do have to suddenly go, “Okay, this thing that we’ve put together, we actually have to now find a spot, stop, talk about a fade, talk about a cut, talk about how it works,” meaning if you have an episode that is designed to run uninterrupted, and someone says, “You have to find three interruption spots,” you can do it. You can do it. It’s annoying, and you don’t like it. I would hate it. I would throw a tantrum. I won’t do it. You can do it, is my point. It’s not going to be a disaster, meaning you don’t have to worry about how to write something that is and is not at the same time this Schrodinger’s episode that can both be ad-supported and not ad-supported. Just deal with it when it happens.

**John:** Another thing to stress is that, Kiefer, this is already happening overseas. Many things that are made for cable-

**Craig:** Oh, god.

**John:** … and for streaming-

**Craig:** Don’t tell me that.

**John:** … here actually debut internationally on ad-supported.

**Craig:** No. You’re telling me that people are watching Chernobyl out there, and it’s being chopped up with ads?

**John:** Ah, that’s a great question and a thing our listeners will know. If any listeners have seen an ad-supported version of Chernobyl, do let us know.

**Craig:** Please.

**John:** I suspect it could be out there.

**Craig:** Write in and break my heart. Do it. Please. We’ve all gotten very sensitive about this, because, John, you and I have been doing this long enough, so we remember that when we would write a movie, the movie would be in theaters, then it would go to home video, and then eventually it would-

**John:** Go to broadcast TV.

**Craig:** It would go on broadcast TV.

**John:** Charlie’s Angels.

**Craig:** Yes, they would put it on television.

**John:** Charlie’s Angels was a $25 billion deal for ABC.

**Craig:** It was so much money. You would get a lot of residuals for that. Of course, they would chop the movie up. They would chop it up. They would replace language. There was a whole network TV ADR session you had to do. It was a thing.

**John:** We had to do that for The Nines, which to my knowledge has never actually been broadcast, but [inaudible 00:45:03].

**Craig:** We had a bunch of stuff running on TBS, I think, or something. Anyway, point being, they used to do this all the time. We weren’t such babies about it. Now I’m a big baby.

**John:** Now everything has to be exactly frame by frame. Craig is going to go to everyone’s house and turn off motion smoothing.

**Craig:** That’s right. I’m the Stanley Kubrick of motion smoothing.

**John:** We don’t have to rant. Everyone knows motion smoothing is terrible. The best thing you can do-

**Craig:** No, not everyone knows.

**John:** While you’re home for the holidays, grab your parents’ remotes and turn off motion smoothing.

**Craig:** Turn off motion smoothing or anything that sounds like motion smoothing. Just go to the Menu. Go to Picture. Look for that stupid setting and turn it off. Next question.

**John:** Let’s go with Peter’s question. Megana, can you tell us what Peter had to say?

**Megana:** Peter asks, “I’ve been curious about this question for years. I’m a screenwriting nut like everyone else here, but in my chill time I love to research the projects of my favorite writers. IMDb never has them all. This I’ve known since the ’90s. I scrounge through trade articles as best I can to find them. For example, I’ve confirmed that Sheldon Turner has set up or been attached to at least 104 projects in film and television as a producer and/or writer. Something like 84 of those were scripts he’s worked on and been paid for since he broke into the biz in 2000. My question is, does the WGA have a database that has a list of every project every writer has been paid for in their careers, specs, rewrites, adaptations, script doctor jobs, and quick onset polishes?”

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Peter, so Sheldon Turner, a busy screenwriter for sure. He came in really about the same time as me and Craig, so he would have a bunch. I don’t know that I have 104. I have a lot.

**Craig:** I don’t know how many I have.

**John:** The second part of your question is does the WGA have a database of every project? Yeah. If you’ve been paid by somebody, a WGA signatory to do work, yeah, it’s in the database there. That is-

**Craig:** Wait.

**John:** … a record that you worked on that project, but not a public thing. That’s just behind the scenes. If you want to check for yourself, all the checks you’ve… No, there’s not a public-facing thing for that, because those aren’t movies that came out in the world. They’re just development projects.

**Craig:** Also, there’s not a database that shows the things that you’ve just been employed on, because part of the credit system is that we say, “Look, here is the credit for this movie.” Now we’ve started changing it. The point is, there isn’t like, “Oh, and here’s the 80 people that were employed on it.” No, there is not a public database with such a thing. Of course, the Writer’s Guild is aware, because you have to pay dues every time you’re employed, so they know. When it says he’s been set up or been attached to, I don’t even… Been attached to is a weird thing.

**John:** It’s a weird thing. It doesn’t mean anything.

**Craig:** Sometimes I’ll see these articles in the trades where someone’s like a writer’s been attached to something. First of all, I don’t want any article about me ever. Then second of all, I can’t imagine having an article that says I’m attached to something. That’s almost like, “So-and-so has asked this girl out on a date. Did she say yes?”

**John:** I think attached as a writer is a strange thing to me. I’d get I guess if there was a book, and this writer’s attached to do the adaptation. Attached as a director means something, although directors will attach themselves to 19,000 things they’ll never do.

**Craig:** Precisely.

**John:** Actors will attach themselves to things they’ll never actually do. Also, you’re saying 104 projects that he’s a producer and/or writer. Some of those producer projects there may not be really a record for, because if he’s just producing a movie and he’s not actually writing on the movie, there’s not going to be a WGA contract. He’s not getting paid as a writer. We won’t know to what degree those things were real.

**Craig:** Do you know how there are words that suddenly pop up in our business that are annoying, but people start to use them all the time in meetings and things?

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** You know what I’m talking about, like little weird metaphors and things?

**John:** Yeah. “At the end of the day,” happened.

**Craig:** Exactly, the blank of it all showed up 10 years ago and never stopped. I don’t know, it must’ve been 70 years ago, someone said, “No, this person hasn’t been hired or anything, but they’re attached to it.” That became this cool, new, hip thing to say. Now we just accept it, like that it’s a thing. It’s not. It’s just dumb words that don’t mean anything. What does that even mean?

**John:** It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just like hip-pocket deal or something, like wait.

**Craig:** What does that mean? “This agent hip-pocketed me.” They don’t represent you. That’s what that means. That means they chose to not represent-

**John:** They represent you if you’re getting work but not if you’re not getting work.

**Craig:** Exactly, so you don’t have an agent. That’s what that means. You’re attached to something, so they haven’t paid you? Okay, I’m attached to everything. What does that mean? It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything.

**John:** I’m trying to attach myself to the Van Halen movie, which does not exist but I believe should exist.

**Craig:** No, you have attached yourself to it.

**John:** I have attached myself.

**Craig:** You have officially attached yourself to the Van Halen movie.

**John:** It’s in the transcripts. People will be able to Google it, like John August attached to the Van Halen movie.

**Craig:** You’re attached to it, absolutely, completely. I’m attached to Scarlett Johansson.

**John:** Do you know Scarlett? Scarlett’s great.

**Craig:** I don’t know her.

**John:** I like her a lot.

**Craig:** I don’t know her.

**John:** I just saw a clip of her on Kelly Clarkson, and she was [crosstalk 00:50:11].

**Craig:** I’ll tell you this much. I know that she married a guy from Staten Island, so that means I got a chance.

**John:** She also married a guy from Vancouver.

**Craig:** Wow. I’ve been to Vancouver. I don’t know. I’m already married. You know what, Scarlett? How about this? No. I’m turning you down. I’m already married.

**John:** You’re already attached.

**Craig:** We are no longer attached, Scarlett.

**John:** Wow. Good stuff.

**Craig:** Brutal.

**John:** Let’s do our One Cool Things. Craig, I see what’s here, and I don’t know what this is. Talk to us about your One Cool Thing.

**Craig:** This is an advance. This is a One Cool Thing amuse-bouche for what is almost certainly going to be my next One Cool Thing. My next One Cool Thing, there is a game coming from Rusty Lake. You’ve played the Rusty Lake games, right?

**John:** Oh, yeah, I’ve played Rusty Lake games.

**Craig:** They’re amazing. There’s a game forthcoming to Rusty Lake called The Past Within. The Past Within is coming out on November 2nd. That will happen-

**John:** The day before the live-

**Craig:** Oh my goodness, that’s coming. The Past Within, the forthcoming Rusty Lake game, is unique in that it requires two people to play it. The idea is that you are both on the app at the same time. You’re either in the same room or you’re talking over Discord or the phone or whatever. You need to cooperate, because you’re each seeing things on your version of the game as Player 1 or Player 2 that impacts how the other person is going to solve a puzzle. As an amuse-bouche, there is a game that does this very same thing. It is called Tick Tock: A Tale For Two. It’s been out for a bit. Let’s see. It looks like it came out in 2017 actually. It’s lovely. I played it with Melissa. You can play this with Mike. You can play it with Amy. Play it with whomever you want. Not Lambert. He is a dog. He’s stupid.

**John:** He’s sleeping too.

**Craig:** He’s sleeping and he’s dumb. It was quite gorgeous. The puzzles were very good. I thought they implemented the back and forth in a very smart way. It was engaging. What I liked about it was that we never got frustrated with each other. It was more like we really had to cooperate. It’s a short game. I think there’s only three chapters in it, or there’s a prologue and three chapters. It’s quite beautiful. The story makes no sense whatsoever. None. That happens all the time.

**John:** They get a mechanic [crosstalk 00:52:35].

**Craig:** Narrative is hard. I get it. The story is really just, what? Then again, the Rusty Lake folks, their stories make sense, but purposefully also don’t make sense.

**John:** They’re surreal.

**Craig:** They’re fully surreal, so I give them a pass on everything. They’re wonderful. I think Tick Tock: A Tale For Two is a very fun game. It is on literally every possible platform. Check that one out if you have somebody you like playing games with, in a good way, not like head games.

**John:** Sounds good. My One Cool Thing is Whisper by OpenAI. OpenAI are the people who do Dall-E. They have these giant train models of searching the whole internet to figure out what things are. They’ve been able to make Dall-E. Whisper is their version of a spoken language. Basically, it listens to countless hours of people talking and can understand what they’re saying and can give you transcriptions, and nearly real-time transcriptions of what people are saying. Craig and Megana, I have a link in the Workflowy here. Click through that and take a listen to this demo. I want you to see what it is you’re hearing.

[unintelligible audio clip plays]

**John:** Craig and Megana, what was it that you heard?

**Craig:** I’ll go first. That was Scottish. It was a Scotsman speaking with a strong Scottish accent. I heard helmet. I heard three holes. I heard something about weather. The rest of it was unintelligible to me.

**Megana:** I heard something about Merlin, but it was a Scottish accent. It was a man with a Scottish accent who was outside. There was a lot of bird noises.

**Craig:** Yes, I heard the birds as well.

**John:** Great. This is the actual transcription. “One of the most famous landmarks on the borders. It’s three hills, and the myth is that Merlin the magician split one hill in three and left the two hills at the back of us, which you can see. The weather is never good though. We stayed on the borders with the mists on the Yildens or Eildons. We never get the good weather, and as you can see today, there’s no sunshine. It’s a typical Scottish borders day.”

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** The model could actually figure out what this guy was saying, which is really impressive.

**Craig:** Wow.

**Megana:** Wow.

**Craig:** I thought he was saying holes and helmet, and he was saying hills. You got Merlin right.

**John:** You got Merlin. You got Merlin.

**Craig:** Well done, Megana.

**Megana:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Boy, that is… Wow. The program understood? It knew that that’s what that guy was saying?

**John:** It did. It was able to take that. Even with some of the tools we’re using to do Scriptnotes, we have transcription stuff built in, but it’s really trained on very specific English accents. It’s murky at times and doesn’t get a good sense of this. Here, because they trained it on all the languages, it can hear French and give you a real-time transcription in English. It’s really impressive. As great as all of the “draw me a flying cow” stuff has been, this is so useful and practical. You can imagine a year from now, five years from now, how important and impressive this is going to be.

**Craig:** We’re getting close to that day where everybody understands everybody. Then we can all be yelling at each other faster.

**John:** That’s what you want.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Speed. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli.

**Craig:** No!

**John:** Our outro this week is by MCL Karman. If hearing this outro has inspired you to write one of your own, let us provide you with some motivation, because we really do need some more outros. Send us your outros to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts and sign up for our weeklyish newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts. They’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. Hoodies too. You can sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and Bonus Segments, like the one we’re about to record on insects. Craig and Megana, thank you for a fun show.

**Megana:** Thank you!

**Craig:** Thank you!

[Bonus Segment]

**John:** Megana, you have an insect infestation in your apartment, correct?

**Craig:** Infested.

**Megana:** Yes, absolutely. My place is overrun.

**John:** How many did you see?

**Megana:** So far, I have seen one earwig.

**Craig:** Oh my god. Oh my god. This is like that Creepshow episode where the guy was completely surrounded by cockroaches. You are surrounded by ones of bugs.

**Megana:** I went to bed at 8 p.m. last night because I saw this in my living room, and I was like, “I can’t.”

**Craig:** Wait a second. I got to roll back. You in your 20s went to bed at 8 p.m. like somebody who lives in a rest home, because you saw… Now, by the way, I hate earwigs. We can discuss my horrible run-in with an earwig many, many years ago. It sent you to bed. You were that shaken. You had to get into bed. Did you fall asleep?

**Megana:** I did not fall asleep, no, actually, because once I identified what this bug was, and I Googled earwigs, the second entry that came up on Google… You know how they have those suggested questions?

**Craig:** Yes.

**Megana:** The second entry was, “Can earwigs get in your bed?” The answer was yes.

**Craig:** Of course they can.

**John:** They are mobile.

**Craig:** Exactly. They’re mobile. Unless your bed is surrounded by some sort of force field, yes.

**John:** A moat would be a choice.

**Megana:** I don’t know, I don’t really think of spiders as being in your bed.

**Craig:** Oh, they are.

**John:** Oh my god, I’ve had spiders in my bed.

**Megana:** Oh my god.

**Craig:** Did you not know?

**John:** I’ve been bit by spiders in my bed in college.

**Craig:** Absolutely. I get bit by spiders. We have so many spiders in La Cañada. I get bit by them all the time.

**John:** That’s why he’s moving.

**Craig:** You wake up, and you have a bite. It’s not itchy. It’s just a bite. You’re like, “The hell is this?” Then you realize it’s a spider.

**Megana:** I guess I just had this willful ignorance that bugs-

**Craig:** Respect your bed?

**Megana:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They know, like, “You know what? Guys, she’s in bed. Let’s leave her. It’s her private place.” No, they don’t care. They don’t care.

**John:** While Megana’s dealing with her one earwig, at our house, because of all the heat… This happens whenever it gets super, super hot. A bunch of ants get into our house.

**Craig:** They look for water.

**John:** Ants just suck, and they’re annoying. You see the line going through. It’s like, “Why are you here?” Their entire mission is to get to one little piece of toothpaste that is left on the counter. That’s going to be their meal for the whole colony.

**Megana:** Aw.

**John:** It’s so, so much.

**Craig:** See, the bugs in your house are cute. The bugs in her house are nightmares that need to be extinguished in fire.

**Megana:** Absolutely.

**John:** Then we put out the ant traps. The ant traps do work. It takes the poison, and it kills the colony eventually. It is still just so annoying to have ants and to wake up in the morning and see now there’s a new line headed from point A to point B [crosstalk 01:00:00].

**Craig:** There is a real life horror show when you pick something up… I was actually at a hotel a couple of months ago. It was a really nice hotel, but they had an ant problem. I lifted something, and a billion ants went nyah. I was like, “Oh, god.”

**John:** As we established last week on the podcast, there’s 40 quadrillion ants on Earth. Ants outnumber us 25 million to 1.

**Craig:** There are so many.

**John:** They’re going to win.

**Craig:** No, they already have won. That’s the joke. We are here on ant planet. We have all of our debates. We fight wars where millions of us die. Ants are like, “What? I’m sorry, millions? Lol. That’s not a number. Call us when you’re into the trillions. We’re in the quadrillions, jerks.” We’re just guests on ant planet.

**John:** Craig, you promised us the earwig story, which we heard pre-show. Obviously, this earwig changed your life, and we want to hear about it.

**Craig:** I’m so angry about it. Growing up on the East Coast, I just never saw one. I assume there are earwigs on the East Coast, but there weren’t any in New York. There weren’t any in New Jersey as far as I could tell.

**John:** You had roaches.

**Craig:** Roaches, of course.

**John:** I hate roaches. I did not see roaches until I came to Los Angeles.

**Craig:** Roaches in New York, sometimes they’ll cosign a lease with you. That’s no problem, but earwigs, no. I’m in LA. I’m in West Hollywood walking down… I believe it was Fountain. I believe I was on Fountain, John.

**John:** Take Fountain.

**Craig:** I suddenly feel this stingy, pinchy, nasty, bitey pain on my neck, like on the nape of my neck. I reach my hand back, spasm, like ah, and there’s something there, which is the worst feeling in the world. You never want to feel anything. You just want to feel your own skin.

**John:** You want it to be an illusion.

**Craig:** You just want to think, “Oh, this was one of those weird exogenous, no, endogenous pains that just come out of nowhere,” but no, there’s something there. I’m like, “Ah!” I throw it down. Then it’s on the ground. It’s on the concrete. I look down at it, and it’s a fricking earwig. I didn’t even know what it was called.

**John:** Because we have international listeners who may not know what an earwig is, we’re describing an insect that is maybe an inch long. Is that the size for both of yours?

**Craig:** Yeah, I would say.

**Megana:** I would say five inches.

**Craig:** That’s not correct, Megana.

**John:** [Crosstalk 01:02:14] five inches.

**Craig:** At all.

**John:** Largely flat. It has just way too many body parts and limbs to it. It’s flat and [crosstalk 01:02:23].

**Craig:** The worst part is-

**Megana:** It has this weird pincer thing.

**Craig:** That’s the thing, its butt.

**John:** That’s the thing.

**Craig:** Its butt has two pincers sticking out of it like a lobster claw. It bites you for no reason. I didn’t ask it. First of all, how did it get on my neck? How did it get on my neck?

**John:** Did it drop? Did it climb up to it?

**Craig:** It dropped down. It paratrooped down onto me. Then it bit me. That’s the thing. Essentially, it bit me with its ass. It ass-bites you. It doesn’t die. At least bees have the dignity to die. They sting you, their stinger breaks off, and they die. You think, “You sacrificed yourself stupidly, but fine.” There’s some poetry to that. No, not this little bastard. This little thing just bites you for no reason. To that day, I have hated earwigs. We’re talking about 20 years, 30 years, still, if I feel a sudden pain, I think earwig. I’ve never been bitten by one again, or ass-bitten.

**John:** We cannot discuss insects without discussing the worst of all insects and the insect that must just be banished from the Earth, which is the mosquito, because when you and I moved to Los Angeles, Craig-

**Craig:** There were none.

**John:** … there were not mosquitoes.

**Craig:** There were none. It was actually one of the best things about coming from the East Coast, which is 98% mosquito, to Los Angeles where there were none. No one ever got a mosquito bite.

**John:** Then we imported some sort of-

**Craig:** What the hell happened?

**John:** Apparently, it was a slow roll-up from the South or some other place. We got these little mosquitoes that are down on the ground level.

**Craig:** They bite your ankles.

**John:** They’re ever-present. They’re always biting your ankles.

**Craig:** Ankles.

**John:** They’re the worst.

**Craig:** The worst. They’re just so terrible. Megana, I can’t explain what a paradise it was here. I have a friend named Linus Upson. I’ve known him since college. I think I’ve talked about this before. He was the Senior Vice President of Engineering at Google Chrome. He’s since moved on to a much more noble effort, which is trying to get rid of mosquitoes entirely.

**John:** Love it.

**Craig:** He has one of these groups that is essentially genetically engineering a mosquito to… The women are the problem. The male mosquitoes don’t bite you and make you itchy. It’s the females, apparently.

**Megana:** Oh, really?

**Craig:** Yeah, apparently it’s entirely the females. Basically, they’re genetically engineering these male mosquitoes to only get female mosquitoes pregnant with male mosquitoes. I’m probably butchering this. The point is, through some crazy breeding thing, they’re going to get rid of mosquitoes. Basically, the population eventually just goes completely sterile. They run out of women and they die.

**John:** [Crosstalk 01:05:12].

**Craig:** Like a lot of the corners of the internet. All the girls are gone, and it’s just guys angry at each other, and then it’s over. Mosquitoes are awful. They have been killing people forever with malaria. They’re no good. They’re everywhere now.

**John:** Their role in the food chain must exist, but it’s not substantial. Some bats and other things eat them, but we’ll make it work.

**Craig:** Exactly. I feel like we’ll be okay. We’ll be okay without them. It’s not like ants. We probably need ants to decompose everything.

**John:** They do. They help chop stuff up, which is really useful.

**Craig:** Help chop stuff up. Do we need roaches? Probably not, although again, they probably also break down a lot of garbage. They do show up where the garbage is. Maybe there’s a reason, but mosquitoes?

**John:** My first year at USC in grad school, I was living in campus housing. I had never encountered roaches before. I was in this apartment I shared with a guy. At one point, I unplugged the power adapter for my phone answering machine. This is way back in phone answering machine time. I unplug it, and all these tiny baby roaches were swarming around it because of the heat of the transformer for the adapter. That’s where I first learned about boric acid, the powder acid that you put out that they walk through and it kills them horribly. It’s the worst. Finding a roach on my pillow one morning was just-

**Megana:** Oh, no, your bed?

**Craig:** That’s terrible.

**John:** … terrifying.

**Craig:** That’s terrible.

**John:** I still have nightmares from that.

**Craig:** We’re not helping. Megana, we haven’t talked about spiders much. Do you hate spiders? Are you afraid of spiders?

**Megana:** I am very afraid of spiders. I do not like them. I feel like I’m slowly making my peace. Is the spider going to eat this earwig?

**Craig:** That’s the thing. The spider is your friend. My daughter is terrified of spiders. She will fly out of her room in tears over this. I’ve tried to explain to her that these little spiders that we get in our house, they’re wolf spiders, they’re not going to be a problem. That said, we do have a lot of black widow spiders up where we are. Megana, can I tell you a little bit of a ghost story about the black widow spiders?

**Megana:** Okay.

**Craig:** I’m going to get real close to the microphone. Here we go. When my daughter was young, she was in the Girl Scouts. One day, we had a Girl Scout event at the house. The girls, as the evening came, they wanted to sleep outside, like camping. We had tents. We have this pretty large lawn on our property, down in the back of the property. We set up the tents. Me and another dad were setting up the tents. There’s this little retaining wall with these little river rocks in it that bound that little lawn area. As the sun went down, the other dad was shining a light, and he said, “What are those?”

**Megana:** No.

**Craig:** Yeah, and I shone my light on the wall, and Megana, I’m not saying there was a black widow or 5 or 10. There was thousands of them.

**Megana:** What?

**Craig:** Thousands, all emerging, because they had been living inside the wall, in the cracks of the rocks. As the temperature lowered, they came out. They were swarming, all of them, black widows. I said, “Okay, let’s calmly get these tents down, go back inside.” Here’s the thing. I didn’t think that the black widows were going to be leaving the wall. It was like, “There’s a lot of them, so let’s go back inside and tell the girls they’re sleeping inside, because… We’ll just make something up.” I can’t remember what we made up. Wolves. “There are wolves.”

**John:** Wolves.

**Craig:** Megana, you would’ve died.

**Megana:** I would’ve died. I’m very close right now. Is that real? Do they live that close to each other?

**John:** They can. They can live in groups.

**Craig:** Why are you asking John, as if I told you a lie? Megana, first of all, John’s not a bug expert.

**John:** I have been bitten by a black widow spider. I’m, out of all the people on this call, the only person-

**Megana:** He’s a Boy Scout.

**John:** … to actually survive a black widow spider.

**Craig:** He is a Boy Scout. That is true.

**John:** I used the venom extraction tool and got it all out and was fine.

**Craig:** That’s good. Did you think that black widow spiders were just loners, where they’re like, “I don’t want to talk to another black widow spider.”

**Megana:** Yeah, I thought you would just, worst-case scenario, see one.

**John:** I’ve only seen one at a time in my life.

**Craig:** There were so many of them. I’m looking up swarm of black widow spiders right now on the internet.

**Megana:** I’m so glad you’re moving.

**John:** He’s going to bring the spiders with him though.

**Megana:** I just want to put out a request to our listeners. If anyone is cool with bugs and they want to be my friend or if they have a good solution for being really scared of bugs, I would love to hear either possibility.

**John:** To be honest, cognitive behavioral therapy is probably the way to get through any of those kind of phobias. Basically, they desensitize you to it.

**Craig:** Some things we’re supposed to be afraid of.

**John:** It’s an overreaction of a natural innate fear.

**Craig:** Megana, you’re supposed to be afraid of black widow spiders.

**John:** We’re hardwired to be afraid of snakes. You can show a baby monkey a piece of hose, and they’ll freak out because, oh, it’s a snake.

**Craig:** (singing)

**John:** We need more baby monkeys, less black widows.

**Craig:** Aw, baby monkeys.

**John:** Aw.

**Craig:** Megana, you’re not afraid of baby monkeys, are you?

**Megana:** I’m not, but monkeys are vicious.

**Craig:** Oh, wow. You’re not wrong.

**Megana:** Growing up, going back to India all the time, monkeys are more of a pest than I think people realize.

**Craig:** I saw those things where in the early days of the shutdown of COVID, there was a town. It was a village. It was a city in India where everyone had just gotten off the street because of the shutdown, and the monkeys took over. Oh my god. They were fighting each other, like monkey gangs fighting. It was amazing.

**John:** Eventually, they formed a society of their own. Were there problems? Yes, but eventually they found a good leader and democracy ruled.

**Craig:** Damn dirty apes.

**John:** Thanks, guys.

**Megana:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [Starbucks Seam Life Hack](https://www.reddit.com/r/lifehacks/comments/16pvai/does_your_starbucks_cup_leak_sometimes_make_sure/)
* [John Scalzi’s Blogpost: Find the Time or Don’t](https://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/09/16/writing-find-the-time-or-dont/)
* [Happy The Last of Us Day!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBRRDpQ0yc0) Check out this trailer.
* [Whisper by Open AI](https://openai.com/blog/whisper/)
* [Tick Tock the Game](https://www.ticktockthegame.com)
* [Sign up for the Inneresting Newsletter](https://inneresting.substack.com/) for more writing resources!
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/gifts) or [treat yourself to a premium subscription!](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by MCL Karman ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/569standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2022/writing-as-acting).

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

**Craig Mazin:** Oh, oh, right, my name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** This is Episode 568 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, there are actors and there are writers, but deep down, what is the difference between writing and acting? How can writers use the techniques of acting to help build effective scenes? We’ll also discuss retirement, cutting characters, and how the central dramatic argument applies to TV. In our Bonus Segment for Premium Members, we’ll discuss the future and what we owe it.

**Craig:** Nothing!

**John:** Nothing. No, we owe the future something. It’s a question of how much and how much we should prioritize near-term solutions versus long-term solutions and other such things.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Great. We’ve got some follow-up here. First off, Writer Emergency Pack XL, which we launched last week, is now fully funded. Thank you for everyone who backed us on Kickstarter for that. You still have a couple, maybe 20 days left to back us if you’d like to. We funded it in the first couple hours, which is great.

**Craig:** Great. Congrats.

**John:** Thank you for everybody on that.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** Hooray. Some more follow-up. Last week we were discussing burials for some reason and coffins and concrete vaults.

**Craig:** Just stupid.

**John:** We have some feedback on how to do that in a more environmentally sound way. Megana, help us out.

**Megana Rao:** Ben wrote in and said, “I just heard the September 19th episode, and your dislike of caskets/concrete burials reminded me of the Green Burial Council and other organizations/movements. In case you didn’t know, there’s folks trying to reduce the carbon footprint of laying people to rest. I’m definitely planning to be memorialized this way. Hope you check it out, and maybe I’ll be a One Cool Thing or Premium bit.”

**John:** Great. We’ll put a link in the show notes to Green Burial Council. There’s also an LA Times article about human composting as an alternative, where they put you in a muslin bag and stick you in the ground. I’m for it. Good for me.

**Craig:** Until we get the instant atomizer, which would be fun. I would love to be atomized.

**John:** Cremation takes a lot of energy. It’s not as much energy as making a casket and burying it. As energy becomes cheaper and cheaper, cremation will get cheaper and cheaper too.

**Craig:** I would like to be shot into the Sun.

**John:** That would be nice, but that’s experience. Isn’t that what Johnny Depp got in trouble for with Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes?

**Craig:** He tried to shoot them into the Sun?

**John:** He put them into space.

**Craig:** Oh, Johnny Depp.

**John:** Oh, Johnny Depp. That’s the most controversial thing he ever did.

**Craig:** Otherwise, spotless record.

**John:** Spotless record. Hey, let’s go right to our main topic, which is actors and writing. This is all based around this article we ran in Inneresting this last week, which is an old blog post of mine from 2010 where I was talking about my then young daughter was trying to practice how to seem sad, how to cry. It’s this thing where little kids, they’re like, “Oh I’m so sad, I’m crying,” and they’ll cover their eyes, but they’re not really tears. They’re trying to get you to see things. It got me realizing that she’s trying to act, she’s learning how to act.

I was thinking about how as writers we are acting all the time. We’re all experimenting with how do I portray these emotions that we’re putting on the page rather than on the stage. Craig as a writer and actor, I thought we might have a few minutes to talk about the experience and what you see as the similarities between the craft of pretending something is real for the purposes of writing a scene versus pretending something is real for the purposes of staging a scene.

**Craig:** Thank you for introducing me correctly as a world-famous actor. I think that actors probably have as much diversity in their approach to how they perform as writers do in their approach to how they write. Some writers are organizers and thinkers, and then they write. Some writers are just, “Wee!” and they write and see where it goes. Most people are combinations of the two.

I think that holds true for actors as well. There are actors that are very thoughtful and are perfectly aware that they’re acting. This would be the Laurence Olivier, “Have you tried acting, my boy?” school. Then other actors seemingly can’t do it unless they disappear inside their character and just go bananas. Everybody’s different. For me, I guess my approach is pretty similar to the way I write, which is to think about what I’m supposed to be feeling and thinking and then feel and think it.

**John:** That is a relatively modern incarnation of the actor’s, I don’t want to say method, because that breaks into a whole conundrum of other things that are involved in the actor’s method. The idea that a performer on stage is supposed to be believably in the moment that they are portraying isn’t actually all that old of an idea. If you look back to old plays, there was a more presentational quality to it. You were playing to the back seats there. Now, also I think partly because of the arrival of film cameras, we’re in close, and we’re hearing whispers, this sense of like, oh this is a real person in a real situation is much more crucial. That’s often what we’re trying to do on the page as well.

**Craig:** Over time, I think there has been a general movement towards realism, which was not always a thing, as you point out. For a long time, drama was never intended to be real. It was entirely representational, and it was intentionally so. It would’ve been strange for people to see things presented hyper-realistically. They would’ve been bored to tears or confused. As time has gone on, we seem to have found our way more and more towards a very naturalistic style, some more than others.

I think that holds true for writing as well. The vast quantity of television I think has done more to advance a naturalistic writing than anything else, because there’s so much of it. It all seems to be trending in that direction, not all of it, but some of it, and to varying levels of success. Naturalism and truth, trying to create something that seems real and believable, while yet being not at all real, and rather dramatic, that seems to be the name of the game.

**John:** It strikes me that so much of what we learn about how an actor prepares goes back to whatever their education was, whatever the techniques they learned along the way. This is how an actor approaches a role. They’re doing some work to figure out, okay, this is how this character stands, this is how this character sits, this is how this character relates to a space, this is the vocal affectations this character uses, this is how they approach these things. To some degree, we may do that as writers, but writers don’t tend to study the same way that actors study. I think there is some things we could probably take from that. Actors practice. They go through rehearsals playing many different characters. They have to swap roles. They have to make changes on their feet. They have to respond in ways that I think sometimes as writers we’re not being forced to do that.

So often as writers, we’re always being pushed on structural things or like, “Oh, this scene should move here.” We’re always looking at the bigger picture. We’re not necessarily doing that in-depth scene work, which I think is part of the reason why we keep coming back to these Three Page Challenges, is that we’re really looking at, moment by moment, how are these dots connecting on the page.

**Craig:** You can do similar exercises with acting when actors perform a scene and other people watch and then they critique. That’s what acting class generally is. It’s like endless Three Page Challenges or scenes. You’re getting at a fundamental difference. Acting is interpretive. Writing is purely creative, meaning unless you’re adapting, even in an adaptation, you are creating. There’s nothing there, and then there is something there. That is very different. So much of what acting is is about the choices you make of how to interpret the text that is there. That’s where it gets interesting.

You’re right, they do have to incorporate elements of themselves that we generally don’t, like their bodies. When we’re writing, our bodies probably do very similar things, form terrible postures. Not you, I guess. The rest of us. You apparently get even better posture when you write. Everybody else is just slouching and tightening up their neck muscles. It’s all mental. Acting is very physical.

One of the things that you do think about when you’re acting is what do I do with my arms. The answer is nothing. Unless you have something to do with them, just ignore them. Normally, during the day, when you’re talking to people, your arms are just there. You don’t think about them. Suddenly the camera goes on and everyone’s like, “My arms. What do I do with my arms?” They’re just fine. They’re fine. You’ll be okay. Just ignore them.

Figuring out all that stuff is about making choices based on something that has already been created, and you are bringing it to life. That is an aspect of things that we don’t quite do, or sometimes I think we also misunderstand how complicated that process is.

If you are a writer who is dealing directly with actors, the best advice I can give you is respect what they’re doing, even if you think it looks silly or sounds silly or sounds pretentious or confusing or pointless. Doesn’t matter. Respect what they’re doing, because it’s what they need to do to get where they need to go. You, when you were writing, didn’t need to do anything other than the stuff in your head, including get dressed, take a shower, or stand.

**John:** Let’s talk about the stuff that you were doing in your head as a writer, because I find that so often, I’ll be doing press on a movie, and they’ll say, “Oh, what was it like to have this person play this character?” or, “What was your relationship with the director? How do you talk to the director about the characters?” and stuff like that. I find myself saying, yeah, it’s a weird thing that I am all the characters in the movie, and then one by one, they get assigned away. It’s not like it goes through the directors. It was my character, and now suddenly, it’s their character. I have to watch what they’re doing with their choices of the choices that I made. There is this strange handoff.

I played Edward Bloom for many, many years. I played Will Bloom for many, many years. I knew internally how all those scenes worked and played and what the dynamics were that are driving them. Ultimately, I can do no more to affect that down the road than what I could put on the page and what I could help communicate to the actors if they ask me questions, but I can’t do that for them. Ultimately, it is entirely in their hands now.

**Craig:** You will find yourself landing in a strange middle world where if you are directing things you’ve written, you have to pay attention to the intentions and the imagined performance that went on in your head, because it does inform how things ought to be. You also then have to pay attention to the reality of the actors in front of you. Then you have to guide those actors towards what would be a better performance that gets more truly and cleanly and interestingly to the heart of what you’re trying to do but isn’t necessarily accountable to the imaginary performance in your head, but rather accountable to them. It’s a really interesting emotional and mental gymnastics routine you have to do inside your head.

On top of all of that, there are trust issues, because you need to make sure that actors trust you. Trust is everything. They’re not going to trust you if they feel like you have an ulterior motive. For instance, let’s say that I cast a movie with, we’ll go with Harrison Ford. I shot a week with Harrison Ford, and then he died. Sorry, Harrison. In this story, you die.

**John:** Bleak.

**Craig:** We have to replace Harrison Ford, so I get somebody else. Who would be a good replacement for Harrison Ford, by the way? Who should I go for here?

**John:** That’s a good question. Not too far off in range. Josh Brolin?

**Craig:** Great. I get Josh Brolin. We’re halfway through the day, and I keep saying things to Josh Brolin that make him think, “He just wants me to be Harrison Ford. I get it. He doesn’t want me. He didn’t want me. He wanted Harrison Ford. Harrison Ford died. I can tell he’s just pushing me to do a Harrison Ford impression, but that’s not what I do. It’s not even fair to me. I’m Josh Brolin. I’m my own person, my own actor. I need to get to this part naturally, or else it’s going to stink. It’ll just seem like I’m doing a bad impression of another guy. I’ll never be connected to it. No one will like it anyway.”

That’s kind of the same thing. If they feel like you keep steering them back towards whatever was going on in your head as you were writing this, then that is not the same as acting for them. That’s just chasing your phantom, because the phantom that you have in your head, they don’t have to be accountable to being in physical space, standing there, doing anything you don’t want them to do. They literally disappear into your blind spot when you don’t want to see them. You have to work with the people there. They have to trust that you are working with them and not someone else in your head.

**John:** A thing that strikes me that actors and writers are both responsible for doing, that’s a difficult skill, and they’re analogous skills, is they have to remember and forget at all moments. For example, actors have to forget that the camera is there. They have to forget that one of the walls is missing. They have to pretend that the space is real so that it feels natural, all the while also being aware of where the camera is, because that is important, also being aware of what the other people’s lines are, even though they need to be able to react as if they’ve never heard those matching lines before.

Writers have to be aware of what is the purpose of this scene, what is going to happen next, what’s going to happen 20 pages from now, why is this scene here, and at the same time, make it feel like this is just a natural moment that’s happening between these characters that is not there just to set up the next thing. That kind of remembering and forgetting at the same time is a skill.

**Craig:** Good actors, I think, know that they need to divide their attention in weird ways. They need to have an external understanding of what the whole point of the scene is. Good actors need to understand where they sit in the scene. Are they in the middle? Are they the person that’s being shot against the middle? They need to know why the other person’s saying the things they’re saying. Then they need to forget all that and just be them. They need to know those things before they can forget those things.

When you are writing, you are hearing music in your head, and you’re putting notes down. Then you show up with performers on stage. There they are with their instruments. Now if you’re directing, you’re a conductor. Your job is to make sure that they’re all moving in the same fashion, towards the same goal. There you have it.

**John:** I like it. Director’s conductor. Composer is writer. Actor is the first chair violin.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** Good analogy. Reaching back to another Inneresting blog post from the past, this was on cutting a character and saving a scene. It actually feels related to what we’re talking about with actors. I found myself in a situation where I could not make this scene work. I realized there was just one more character in there than I could actually support. Once I cut that character out, the scene felt very natural.

Similarly, just this last week, I was working on a scene where because of changes, I actually had to add a character into the scene. It was important this character be in the scene. It was impossible to take the existing scene and just add that character in. It seems like it should be the simplest thing, like we’ll throw one line to this new character. It just never works that way. A development person’s note might be just to stick them in there. If you just stick an extra body into a scene, it tends to fall apart. We’ll put a link in the show notes to this great video of Patton Oswalt on King of Queens. He was a small part of King of Queens.

**Craig:** He was the best. He was the greatest.

**John:** There’s this one scene where Patton Oswalt is in this scene. He has to be there, but he has no lines for a long time. He chooses to stand just completely still the entire time.

**Craig:** Frozen.

**John:** Frozen.

**Craig:** It’s amazing.

**John:** No one notices.

**Craig:** No one notices. I could be wrong, but I feel like when he did it, he didn’t tell anyone either. It wasn’t like he said to everybody, “Hey, let me just do this. It’ll be funny.” I think no one knew. It’s wonderful. He’s the best.

**John:** He’s fantastic.

**Craig:** I think he’s such a great stand-up comedian. He’s got a new Netflix special.

**John:** Let’s plug his Netflix special.

**Craig:** He’s not even on the show. I’m plugging his stuff.

**John:** One day.

**Craig:** One day.

**John:** Let’s talk about that. Craig, you’ve had this experience throughout your entire career, I’m sure, is that so often the challenge is not just what is the scene about, it’s who’s in the scene and how do you support those people being in the scene. There are times where this would be so much easier if I could get rid of this character. You can find a way to get rid of them if you can. Other times, the simplest version is impossible because of who’s there.

**Craig:** Everything is a souffle. I say souffle all the time. When things are arranged correctly… It’s very hard to get things to be arranged correctly. It’s very hard to make a souffle. It’s hard to get the souffle to rise. Then someone comes along and says, “Oh, but just throw one more thing in,” or take one thing out or do this or do this or do that. It seems very small to them, and it’s not. It makes the souffle fall apart.

By the way, this goes right to acting again. There are things you can do where you might ask an actor to do something, and you can see them tense up. I think for a lot of people who don’t quite get what’s going on there, they may think it’s just a defensive actor being defensive, but sometimes it’s just, in fact most of the time I’d imagine, it’s just I’m going, “Oh, you’re going to mess up the souffle. It’s a little tiny thing, but you’re messing it up. Now I know it’s just not going to be as good.”

There’s no magic to removing a character and suddenly everything’s amazing. You probably put that character there for a reason. There’s nothing wrong with being right. Sometimes we’re right. We’re allowed to say, “I know, it seems like you could just move that one little piece, but as it turns out, it’s a load-bearing wall.” Just fill in whatever, souffle, structure, metaphor you’d like.

**John:** I can talk about the sets I’ve been on in my experience as directing, but I’m curious what yours has been. Do actors know when a scene is working, or do they sometimes not know when a scene is working? I’ve definitely seen cases where the actors are convinced this is great and golden, and what we’re seeing on the monitor is like, “Oh, that’s not the scene. We’re not there yet.”

**Craig:** It’s been my luck or good fortune to work with actors that tend to worry that it’s not working than rather just be thrilled with themselves. We’re all the same way. We’re all very nervous and trying to make sure it’s great. There are times where it’s easy enough when you’re behind the camera to go, “That’s it. Cut. I have it.” Then they’re like, “Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you?” “Yes, trust me. I have it. We have it.” There are also times where they may say, “We had it on take two, and now it’s take five.” There can be disagreements.

By and large, I think good actors question more than they presume that things are great. They are reasonably concerned that they’re going to look stupid, because no one’s going to see me. They’re not going to see me. They’re not going to see the screenplay pages. They’re going to see the actors. In movie theaters, they’re enormous. If they look stupid, everyone makes fun of them, especially now. Now you can’t even be stupid and be made fun of briefly. You’re made fun of forever. You live forever on the internet.

**John:** You become a meme.

**Craig:** You become a meme.

**John:** You’re this little slice out of there.

**Craig:** It’s not fair.

**John:** I would say that like you, more cases, the actors are not convinced it’s working when it actually is working, because they’re just not seeing what we’re seeing. They may feel and think about the space between this character and I, the lens is just seeing things differently. I’ll grant that.

There’s also times where an actor is making a choice that they believe is great and it’s working, and it just comes across differently. Those are just difficult conversations to have, because you as the director, you as the writer, you know how all the pieces also need to fit together.

So often, actors are only thinking about this one moment, this one scene, where am I at in this one scene. They don’t know emotionally where they need to get to, what came just before this. Those can be the challenging conversations to have, because it’s not even necessarily that they’re making a wild choice for this moment. It’s just that choice is not going to fit overall what needs to happen around the scene.

**Craig:** I do try and talk about the moment before and the moment after. I think the moment after is just as important. I just remember everybody what’s happening before and what’s happening after, because we don’t shoot things in order, especially when you’re shooting across lots of episodes, where it’s a lot of stuff. Yes, there are times where they think something is spot on, and maybe you disagree.

Other people are different, but my general philosophy is that directing actors is a little bit like being a parent and thinking I can guide my kid as I’m raising my kids. I’m not saying actors are children. Just go with me for this. I can teach them some things. I can give them some values. I can say I don’t like that or I do like this. Basically, they are who they are. I can gently nudge this way or that. What I don’t want to do is parent them in such a way that I’m saying you should not be who are you, because that’s not possible, and everything will go bad.

I think with actors, you can nudge, you can massage. If you know they have three different gears, and they’re in the wrong one, get them to the other one, but don’t ask them to be in a gear they don’t know. Don’t fight against their natural nature. Oh my god, I just said natural nature. Let’s leave it in. I think people need to know how bad I am at talking.

**John:** I’ve had a few mistakes this episode too, so I think we’re all good.

**Craig:** No. There are none in evidence. See, there are none in evidence. Mine will stay there forever.

**John:** Craig, what you’re really saying though is that casting is absolutely crucial, because casting is when you actually decide what is the fit between this actor or this role, and who is the person who can basically… They have the innate sense of how to play this character. Within that, you could make some changes. You could amp some stuff up and down. They have to be able to be that person on the camera.

If you have the wrong person, it’s just not going to work. That’s why sometimes you start shooting with somebody and recast them, because that’s just not going to work. It’s just not going to fit. There’s nothing you could do to change that person’s performance along the way. They were just the wrong person in that role.

**Craig:** There are times when somebody above may send a note. This didn’t happen to me, happily. There was a movie I worked on where this did happen, where the studio said, “Listen, we’ve been watching the dailies for two weeks, and we think the actor should be more like this.” I wasn’t directing the movie, but I remember thinking, “That’s not going to happen. You don’t even want it to happen.” In fact, the worst possible thing would be if that actor went, “Oh, okay, got it,” because then they wouldn’t be themselves. They would not be acting out of their own body and face and brain and heart. They would be just acting towards something artificial. You got to dance with the date you brought.

**John:** I had a situation early on in my career where there was an actor in a role, and the big studio note came like, “This is not the character we want. This is not the performance we want. This is not working.” I had to go and try to do as much as I could in what days were left shooting it, but also in ADR to bring that performance up to a more comedic place. We did get 10% of the way there, but ultimately we had to recast and re-shoot. That was the wrong person in the role. I hadn’t picked this person for the role. It had been forced upon me. The other alternative could’ve been, if we had to keep that actor in the role, was just rewriting what they were doing, because it just wasn’t going to work with this actor.

**Craig:** That’s okay. While it may be disappointing, I’m sure it would be disappointing for that actor, the only thing worse than being recast is being forced to be something that you can’t be, and every day, day after day, 12 hours a day being told you’re not doing it right, do something that you don’t understand how to do. That would be terribly frustrating.

**John:** Our friend Rachel Bloom is in a new show called Reboot on Hulu. It’s delightful. In the second episode, there is an actor who’s cast in a role onto this rebooted TV sitcom. She’s wildly miscast. Everyone has to scramble around to figure out, “What are we going to do with this character who cannot possibly play the scene? Do we rewrite the scene or do we somehow teach this person how to act in a completely different way?” To its credit, it goes through all the different permutations of what it could do, including have her act with her hands or not act with her hands. As Craig would teach you, don’t act with your hands.

**Craig:** Don’t act with your arms. You can absolutely act with your hands.

**John:** Hands, but no big arm movements.

**Craig:** Between shoulder and elbow, you really just want to isolate that.

**John:** You got to keep it small. I would recommend anybody who’s enjoying this conversation to check out this show called Reboot. Rachel Bloom is not the only great actor in it, but Rachel Bloom is a friend, and so you should see it for her.

**Craig:** You should always see Rachel Bloom.

**John:** Let’s go to some questions. This first one is a big one from JP.

**Megana:** JP asks, “Quick question. While listening to Episode 76, How Screenwriters Find Their Voice, I was shocked, simply shocked to hear Craig say that after turning 50 he was going to start seriously thinking about retirement. Does that plan still stand, or is it safe to say Craig’s shift from feature writer to TV writer/producer/emperor changed his view on things?”

**John:** Craig, did you renege on your promise to retire at 50 because Chernobyl did well? What happened?

**Craig:** No, I didn’t promise anything, first of all. I said I would seriously think about it. I think about retirement all the time. I think most of the time when I talk about thinking about retirement, what I’m really talking about thinking about is failure and everyone just going, “Oh my god, enough of this guy,” and then that’s that, so then I have to force retire.

I’m not currently thinking seriously about retirement. I’ve got a few more things to do. I just turned 50 not too long ago, year, year and a half ago. That’s not to say that five years from now I might be like… At some point, I have to decide, what do I like more, working or not working, which is a nice problem to have, because I do really enjoy what I do a lot. There are days, man.

**John:** There’s days you prefer to play D and D.

**Craig:** By the way, honestly, that’s what saves you. D and D saves you. If I didn’t have D and D, I’d probably be retired by now.

**John:** I don’t consider retirement at all. I think Mike would probably love me to take some time off and just be more freely available to do other stuff. I intend to be one of those people who I die with a script half written and 19 things. I want to die with things being messy and unfinished because there was stuff. I want to owe somebody a script when I die.

**Craig:** Wow. That’s just aggressive. That feels hostile. That feels like you’re punishing everybody, like, “You! You!”

**John:** Writers could write for a very long time. Directors can direct for a very long time. We see people in their 70s and 80s working hard. I want to be one of those people. I really enjoy what I do, so I can’t think of that. We also have friends who are involuntarily retired. Basically, the phone stops ringing. It becomes harder and harder to make a living. That also happens. I think we have to make sure that we are structurally planning for the work may not come forever and that we are setting aside our own money, but that we also have Guild money and other things that are keeping us potentially afloat in our later years.

**Craig:** You certainly plan for forced retirement, and then make your choice. If you’re not forced, then it’s a choice. I think right now I can’t imagine retiring, because I feel like I’m getting better. I think I’ll think about it much more if I feel like I’m getting worse. If I get worse, I’ll just stop.

**John:** If for whatever reason you are not allowed to write film and television anymore, is there a career switch you would make?

**Craig:** A career switch, I don’t know about that. I think I would do a lot of volunteer stuff. A bit like this podcast, I like that we don’t have ads, so it’s not a job. We don’t work for anybody. We don’t have to listen to their nonsense. We don’t take any guff. We can take guff from Megana.

**John:** I really liked teaching my daughter to read. I think I would probably do more volunteering in teaching elementary school kids to read, because I really dig that. Once a kid can read, they can do everything.

**Craig:** I’ll tell you what I wouldn’t do. What I wouldn’t do is go teach at USC or anything like that, not that they would have me. I wouldn’t do it, because it’s sick enough already. How much more can I talk about this stuff?

**John:** I would consider teaching one semester at a time at different universities around the country, because it would be fun to just live in different places.

**Craig:** It’s not about them.

**John:** It’s not about them. It’s about me.

**Craig:** Just the thought of having to stand there and have people ask me questions about the central dramatic argument and such, I can’t bear it. Anyway, what’s our next question?

**Megana:** Taylor wrote in. She says, “In Episode 403, Craig discusses how to write a screenplay beginning with the central dramatic argument. Forgive me if you’ve heard this one before, but I’d love to hear thoughts on how the central dramatic argument maps onto a television series. If the protagonist is undergoing change in each hour-long episode, does that mean there’s a unique dramatic argument for each episode and an overarching dramatic argument for the entire season, or is there simply one dramatic argument that you continuously work towards in each episode. Mad Men’s Don Draper is put through a new ringer in each episode, but every episode is also part of a unified whole, his season-long journey.”

**John:** Craig, let’s talk about this, because you just did a TV series. Is there a central dramatic argument? How does the central dramatic argument map onto either Chernobyl or Last of Us? What were you thinking along those lines as you were doing it?

**Craig:** I think you basically have it right, Taylor. There is a big one, and then there are little ones episodically. I’m not a big fan of the whole, “My television series is just a really long movie.” I hope not, because then how do I know why did an episode end in a particular way?

I think every episode does need to be its own short movie with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and there does need to be some sort of resolution. The characters that are undergoing those things change very typically from episode to episode. There is one character who’s probably the central protagonist. That central protagonist’s central dramatic question is the one that gets answered by the end. You have a circle made up of circles. You don’t need to be particularly pedantic about it. You don’t have to make drawings or sketches. You just need to know. Otherwise, it’s like, “What was the point of that episode, and what did I learn? What was the point of this whole season? What did I learn?”

There are shows where it’s different. Purely episodic television cannot have a central dramatic argument, can’t, because it needs to go on forever. Soap operas need to go on forever. Soap opera covers all sorts of genres. There is this new limited series-ish vibe that goes on where certain television shows are not meant to go on for 20 seasons, but maybe 3 or 4. Each one of those seasons has a point and an impact and a statement to make. All those questions need to be thought through and answered. I think if you’re doing a television series that has an ending, a circle made up of circles.

**John:** Craig, while you were off doing Last of Us, I’ve had a bunch of showrunners on, talking about their process. I think they would largely agree with what you’re saying. When you talk with them about how they were setting up their writers’ rooms and how they were thinking about the season, how they were thinking about each episode, they really would come down to, either call it theme or call it central dramatic argument, what is the unifying principle behind this episode’s story, and how is it progressing the character development and what we want to see these characters be doing over the course of this season, be that a 6-episode season or a 22-episode season. They are mapping out where they are going overall, what are their arcs that are happening.

These were shows that were long movies in the sense of characters would have big transformations and enter one place and exit another place. You look at Girl From Plainville or you look at Liz Meriwether’s show The Dropout, they were movie-like arcs, but they were very clearly set up to have each episode have a point of entry, a point of exit, and you could really feel like that was the conclusion of this episode, that was the conclusion of this part of the story. It was all fit together. That’s from the outlining stage. That’s when you’re on the whiteboard figuring out what are the important beats in this episode. You figure it out then.

**Craig:** That’s right. That’s how you get to interesting ends of episodes. That’s also how people get a sense that you’re being intentional and thoughtful, that it’s not haphazard. You’re not just going, “There, stop this one here. We’ll start it up again next week.” Everything’s crafted, should be ideally crafted, so that every single episode feels satisfying in its own way and yet drives you with interest to the next one. Then after all is said and done, when you look at all of them as a whole, you go, “Okay, everything that was being said here and here and here and here and here was all being reflected back here, here, here, here, here. This was all part of one big thing and not just a haphazard bucket of narrative bolts.”

**John:** It’s also much easier to apply this kind of framework to an 8-episode season versus a 22-episode classic broadcast show. You look at what Lost had to do or what Buffy the Vampire Slayer had to do. They could start a season with real intention, but they couldn’t really know where the end of their season was. They couldn’t quite know how things were going to progress, how quickly they would burn through storylines. Sometimes they do have to do a mid-season reset to get you to a new place. I think that’s incredibly difficult to do that level of quality for 22 or 24 episodes per season. I’m glad we’re not trying that hard to do those giant mega shows anymore.

**Craig:** I just don’t think it’s possible.

**John:** No, not with the expectations we have, both in terms of what has to happen narrative-wise but also what production value has to be. We just can’t do it.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** Another question, Megana.

**Megana:** Citizen asks, “I’m a writer living and working outside the US. A pilot I wrote was optioned by a company based in Los Angeles with the intention of selling it to a bigger production company. After a couple years, things seem to be gaining momentum, because they recently approached me to discuss the fact that if they sell the series, then I would most likely be replaced as the writer. I’m realistic. I know most things don’t happen. I know my leverage as a new writer from another country is very little. In any case, I would like to know, what would be the best-case scenario for me or someone like me? Is it possible to even get hired as a writer? Can I get proper credit as a creator if I’m not WGA? Can I be WGA? I have no idea. I suppose it’s all up to whoever negotiates my contract, but any guidance on what’s possible or what to look out for would be immensely appreciated.”

**John:** Oh, Citizen. Let’s talk about the good news. Apparently, you wrote something that was so good that they feel like they can get this set up, and they were optimistic, and they’re trying to warm you up to the idea of being replaced, which is shitty, but also it means that there could be some interest in you going forward, this project going forward. What is your contract with these people? They’ve optioned this thing, but in what way did they option it? Is there anything in there about keeping you on as a writer? It feels like there should be. It’s not clear that there is. At the very least, if this project gets set up someplace and might have a different showrunner or something, you created the underlying material, and that is always going to be there. Your name is always going to be on it in some way. Craig, what’s your thinking for Citizen?

**Craig:** There’s a term in the feature side of the Writers Guild minimum basic agreement that says that if a writer sells literary material, meaning you’ve written it, you’re not employed to write it, but rather you’ve already written it, and then you sell that like a spec, and copyright then gets transferred over to sign, the purchasing company is obliged to hire you to do the next rewrite of that material. They can’t just buy it and then kick you off. They buy it, then they employ you, and you write the next draft. I don’t know if there’s a similar version of that for the television side of things. There should be. I wish there were, if there isn’t.

**John:** Citizen, you definitely can become a WGA member. There are people all over the world who are WGA members. The fact that you’re living outside of the US is not going to prohibit you from doing that. Ultimately, the work you’re doing for this company, if they’re [inaudible 00:39:43] this will be US work, so it will still count. You can become a WGA member.

**Craig:** Yes, if you are employed by a signatory, then yes, you will be a WGA member. If they’re saying you will most likely be replaced as a writer, the thing you need to be aware of is that the people that optioned your pilot may have optioned it because they love the idea, they like a character, but they may not love the writing. It seems a little odd that they’re immediately saying this now. It may be that they’re also thinking, “Oh, nobody’s going to want to develop the show with you, because what have you done?” to which I would say, “The thing that you optioned, and the thing that they would be buying.”

Hard to say without more details, other than yes, it is possible to get hired as a writer. In fact, it may be mandatory. I would have to take a look at the MBA on that. Getting proper credit as a creator if you’re not WGA, I’m not sure. Can you be WGA? Yes. You need a lawyer. You should probably have one already, since you’ve signed an option agreement.

**John:** It would be a great idea to have, either if you’re in the UK, a UK lawyer who’s used to working with Hollywood companies, if you’re not in the UK, I would say just see if you can find an LA-based lawyer who has some experience in this field, just because I just worry that a French lawyer coming into this is not going to have the expertise that would be useful for this situation. You can do it.

The general case for Citizen, let’s say you were an American writer, you wrote this thing, and you get the call like, “We would need to bring in another writer.” The idea like this is going to be a TV show, this is going to need a showrunner, so we’re going to bring in a showrunner, that’s really common for some writers, for a new showrunner to come on board. That can be a good experience. It’s also possible that that was the conversation they meant to have with you, that they weren’t going to just toss you aside. We’ll see.

**Craig:** Hard to say.

**John:** Hard to say. Craig, should we do our One Cool Things? I feel like jumping ahead to that.

**Craig:** I have no problem with that.

**John:** I have two One Cool Things. First off, this article by Dino Grandoni, which I’m sure you read, for the Washington Post, about how many ants there are in the world. Craig, do you know how many ants there are in the world?

**Craig:** You’re talking about the sisters of your mom?

**John:** The sisters of your mom, no. I’m actually talking about the small insects who ruin picnics.

**Craig:** Oh my god. It’s got to be like a trillion.

**John:** 20 quadrillion.

**Craig:** There we go.

**John:** It’s an unbelievably massive number.

**Craig:** That’s too many ants.

**John:** There’s more ants than there are all other birds and mammals on Earth combined.

**Craig:** Combined.

**John:** The mass of it is immense. For every person on Earth, there are 2.5 million ants.

**Craig:** That’s awesome. That’s so great. I want mine. Where are mine?

**John:** All of my ants. Sometimes during these hot days, it does feel like I can feel all 2.5 million of them in my house, because Megana will testify we have ants certain times.

**Craig:** You have an ant problem.

**John:** We have some ant problems. The little bait things do work, but it takes two days for it to work. That kills off the colony.

**Craig:** I hear you. Ants.

**John:** How do you feel about ants?

**Craig:** I have no strong feelings about ants. I know this is probably shocking. It’s just not a thing I think about. I don’t think about ants, although I did enjoy that, I don’t know if it was one time they did it or multiple times, where they pumped an abandoned ant colony… They put a bunch of concrete in there, and they just kept pouring concrete in, and then they excavated it. It’s insane.

**John:** It’s like tree roots everywhere.

**Craig:** It’s huge. It’s huge. It’s quite beautiful.

**John:** I’m sure it is. Ants versus spiders, which do you prefer?

**Craig:** I like spiders.

**John:** You like spiders?

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** I think Megana must love spiders, because she’s now decorated her desk area with spiderwebs for spooky season.

**Megana:** No, I hate spiders. I decorated with that because it’s spooky and scary.

**Craig:** Spooky season is upon us.

**Megana:** It is upon us. Why do you like spiders?

**Craig:** They’re brilliant. They can weave webs. Look at the webs alone.

**John:** Webs are cool.

**Craig:** They’re incredible. They’re predators, which is cool. They wrap you up, and they drain your blood and such. They eat annoying bugs that no one likes.

**John:** Whenever I see spiders in the house, I always remind myself, “Oh, that’s right, they’re here to eat some other bugs that I’m glad don’t exist.”

**Craig:** When they are combined with other creatures, they become like the driders, the drow spider creatures.

**John:** Or they become Spider-Man.

**Craig:** Or they become Spider-Man, exactly. Now, there is an Ant-Man, but he’s just big. He’s big.

**John:** He’s just big. He really has nothing to do with ants. They try to retcon into some ant-

**Craig:** Ish.

**John:** It’s not the same.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** I have a second One Cool Thing, which is a question for you. In English, our question words start with W-H, generally, so when, which, where, why, what.

**Craig:** Who, whom.

**John:** Who. Why is that?

**Craig:** John, I don’t know.

**John:** It actually goes back to proto-Indo-European, the root of all our European and Indian languages. A thing I just learned this last week, [inaudible 00:45:17] a podcast, but I found a good article about it, is it’s actually the same system that gives us, in Spanish, quien, quando, all the Q words, and same in Italian and same in Latin, because it’s just how English drifted and changed. The W-H used to be a hard H-W. That hard H was more of a K. It would be quich, quen, quere. That was the thing.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** With spelling reform, they switched the W and the H, but W-H is really the same thing as Q-U. Isn’t that cool?

**Craig:** Quow?

**John:** Wow, quow.

**Craig:** Quow.

**John:** I just like the fact that in every set of languages, it’s so tempting to look at the letters that are written down, but it’s generally the sounds are how you figure out how things are related, because spelling has just drifted so much over the years.

**Craig:** Here’s a person who’s drifted so much over the years. Bo Shim.

**John:** Tell me.

**Craig:** I don’t have a One Cool Thing this week, so I said, “Bo, can you help me out and give me a One Cool Thing?” What resulted was a cascade of restaurant recommendations, which if you know Bo-

**John:** Bo is a foodie. Am I correct to say she’s a foodie?

**Craig:** She’s both a gourmet and a gourmand. No one eats more than her. No one. She is the tiniest person. This isn’t like a, “Oh, you little thing, you ate a lot.” No, I mean I have seen her eat food that would make me barf in quantity terms. It’s amazing.

**John:** Give us some recommendations, because Mike will add them to our shared note of all the restaurants we want to go to.

**Craig:** These are all going to be for local folks who listen to us here in the Southern California area. Her favorite K-Town noodle spot is MDK Noodles.

**John:** I’ve been to MDK Noodles. I completely back that up.

**Craig:** Her favorite hole-in-the-wall spot is Western Doma Noodles. Western Doma. Her favorite fried chicken is KyoChon, honey wings she says. KyoChon honey wings. Zzamong for Jjajangmyeon. Jjajangmyeon is my favorite Korean food. Have you ever had Jjajangmyeon?

**John:** I don’t know what it is, no.

**Craig:** It’s Korean comfort food. It’s noodles in a fermented black bean sauce. It’s ramen-like but not soup. It’s more spaghetti-ish, but with this delicious, salty black bean sauce, and with little bits of tofu and flakes and things. It’s so good. It’s so good. It’s bad for you, but it’s really good. Now I have to go there [inaudible 00:47:55]. She said she recently went to Mandarin Noodle House in Monterey Park and it was three fire emojis. Finally, also incredibly beautiful, but also delicious, lava mooncakes that she got Mid-Autumn Festival a couple weeks ago from Aliya Lavaland in Monterey Parks. She showed some pictures, including a mooncake that is in the shape and design of an orange. It looks amazing.

**John:** I love it.

**Craig:** Lots of recommendations for people.

**John:** For our listeners outside of Los Angeles, some geography to help you understand where things are. What Bo’s describing, the Korean places are in Koreatown, which is the edge of where I live and where Craig is going to be living soon. Koreatown’s great. I love Korean food, but it’s hard for me to eat a lot of Korean places, because beef and pork tend to be in everything, and I don’t eat beef and pork. I have to find the vegetarian options there at those places. I love Korean food. Monterey Park has a big Chinese population and a lot of really amazing Chinese restaurants. Those are places you want to check out if you’re in Los Angeles and want that kind of cuisine.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Love it.

**Craig:** Thank you, Bo.

**John:** That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Nico Mansy. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin, I’m @johnaugust. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts and sign up for our weekly-ish newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. You can sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and Bonus Segments like the one we’re about to record on the future. Craig and Megana, thank you for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

[Bonus Segment]

**John:** Craig, the future.

**Craig:** Future.

**John:** The future and what we owe it. I guess this got put in my head because on the New York Times podcast, The Daily, they’ve been hyping this book called The Future and What We Owe It by some person. I should remember it as often as they’ve said it. I’ve also been reading articles about long-termism and this notion of thinking about how much we should be making policy choices or taking actions that affect the short-term versus the long-term and how we find the balance between what we want to do in the world right now versus what’s going to be important for people living a hundred years from now, 300 years from now, our children versus our grandchildren. What’s your general thinking about how much we should value a person’s life 50 years from now versus today?

**Craig:** It’s a fairly privileged question, because I think that people that are struggling can’t really afford to worry about the rest of us 50 years from now. They’re just trying to take care of themselves and their kids. This is a legacy question that I think is certainly something that people of means ought to be thinking about.

There are people who are very wealthy who just think about transferring the wealth generationally to their children and their children’s children, which is the way it’s generally always been, but perhaps not for the best, in fact almost certainly not for the best. Then there are other people who are very, very wealthy, and they do think about legacy. They create endowments. Endowments, from a financial point of view, are an interesting way to blindly but eternally give to the future. They grow. As they grow, they kick off funds. Those funds go out to support things and so on and so forth for eternity.

Then there are these other choices that we have to make that are based on guesses. We don’t have to guess that money would be helpful to people in the future. We do have to guess whether or not stopping A versus B will have a better impact on things for the future, because sometimes we guess wrong.

I think we collectively should be thinking about the future. We tend to define it entirely in terms of our children. If you listen to politicians, they’re always talking about a better world for your children. I think people who don’t have children are also interested in a better world for the people that are coming. Seems reasonable. The more we can disconnect it from our immediate children, probably the better. Let’s just try and help as many people as we can with the choices we make. We think about these things, and we work on these things, but it’s very difficult to disentangle them from our current situation if our current situation is lacking.

**John:** I find myself alternating between pessimism and optimism about the future and the future being 10 years from now, 50 years from now, 100 years from now. Compared to some of my friends, who believe that the world won’t exist in 100 years, I’m certainly much, much more optimistic. I think I always go back to, I’ve mentioned this on the show many, many times, The Big Book of Horrible Things, which lists the 100 greatest atrocities in history. You realize the world has been through some terrible shit many, many, many times. Stuff gets really, really bad, and then we come out of it. If you look at how bad things could get, they can get really bad. You look at how things could bet better, they could actually get a lot better. I totally understand why some people would say, “I don’t want to have kids.” Great. To say, “I don’t want to have kids because I think the world is going to be on fire and terrible,” I don’t vibe with that, because I don’t think that’s accurate.

**Craig:** No, it’s defeatist. I think it’s selfish, actually, in a weird way, selfish and indulgent to go, “Oh my god, everything’s so bad. We don’t have to do anything. What’s the point?”

**John:** Weirdly, sometimes the most pessimistic and the most optimistic make the same choices. You see some of these [inaudible 00:54:00] saying, “We have to think about where humanity’s going to be 1,000 years from now and plan for that.” They’re using that to skip over worrying about the people who actually need the help right now. That’s incredibly frustrating.

**Craig:** Yes. As always, even though everyone hates the middle, the mushy moderate, that’s where the truth generally is. You’re absolutely right that things have been horrible in the past and I think in many ways are improving. Obviously, there are areas where things are getting worse. Climate is the big one. I think that sticks out for everyone. Here we are. It is 2022. We are about 80 years separated from World War Two, which is not a long time. There are people obviously who were alive during World War Two who are still alive now. John, do you know how many people died during World War Two?

**John:** God, I knew that number at some point. Is it 40 million?

**Craig:** Depends. There’s a range. 40 million is the bottom estimate. Top estimate, about 85 million.

**John:** I know that people always under-count Russia. Russia took the huge brunt of losses there.

**Craig:** Soviet Union took an insane amount of losses, probably about 20 to 30 million people. Then there are these associated deaths that aren’t necessarily attributed to World War Two but were almost certainly exacerbated by World War Two. Bengal Famine comes to mind. Things were so horrible all the time, and that time still was somehow better than all the times before, when things were even worse. We don’t get how great it is. We don’t get it. We don’t get it. All the complaining and whining that we do, I think… We’re allowed to complain. Don’t get me wrong. I’m Jewish. It’s part of our religion. You can’t excuse then trying to figure things out.

I think it’s important to think ahead. I’ve always been a think-aheader and a planner. We think about the future. Like I said, endowments I think are wonderful things. I’m a big fan of the concept of the endowment.

**John:** I used to be a bigger fan of the endowment. Give me your pitch for why endowments versus just pay the money to the government and get rid of the generational wealth.

**Craig:** An endowment isn’t really about generational wealth. A trust is about generational wealth, where you’re saying, “I’m going to put this money into a trust. It is going to accrue, to the benefit of my children and their children,” and so on and so forth. An endowment is ideally a charity that supports some cause or segment of society that is not about your blood relations. It grows in time with the marketplace and continually puts money and funds out to that end, and in theory would do so in perpetuity, and is not subject to the whims of various governments.

The federal government is not a particularly brilliant manager of funds. We know that. Simply just take a walk down Defense Department budget road, and you will see some shocking things. Also, government has a lot to do.

Let’s say your passion was female reproductive health. Creating an endowment might be really valuable. It could kick out money. The endowments don’t have to just send money off to individuals. The endowments can also, as part of their charter, send money to other charitable organizations. An endowment can make an annual donation every year to Planned Parenthood.

We have an endowment that supports our public schools in La Cañada. Every year, that endowment makes a gift to exactly one organization, which is the annual charitable fund that supports the public schools in La Cañada. This is a good thing, I think.

**John:** I think people can [inaudible 00:58:18] better con case. To me, they can be a way of sheltering money that should be the public’s money, that ultimately was generated through the possibilities made possible by government and other things to specific causes. While it’s great to think here’s this endowment that is supporting this noble cause that we want to believe in, like education or reproductive health, endowments can also be used for less noble purposes and can have salaries to pay certain people to do certain things that are not maybe good for the function of society. Basically, it’s a way for wealthy people to maintain their power and control after their deaths. That’d be the case against endowments.

**Craig:** I think if there is a, and this is a big if, if there is a fair taxation system, then the money the people are earning is fairly taxed, and the taxes go to the government, and that’s the government’s share. Then what’s remaining behind is up to people to do with as the would. Whatever it is, we can choose to leave what remains just to our children. We can choose to light it on fire. We can choose to leave it to our cat.

**John:** The Patagonia CEO who created basically a charity that now owns the company.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** Which I guess is really a form of trust or form of endowment.

**Craig:** Exactly. If you want to eliminate the concept of the endowment, you have to essentially presume that government will always be the better manager and distributor of funds. I have not seen strong evidence for that.

**John:** Megana, how far away do you think of as the future? Is your notion of the future 10 years from now or is it 50 years from now? What is the future to you?

**Megana:** That’s interesting. I guess it’s 10 years down the line.

**Craig:** You’re young.

**Megana:** Also, I don’t know, tomorrow feels like the future. I feel like as I’m getting older, I see more immediate consequences to the decisions I’m making, mostly in terms of candy I’m eating or how much I’m sleeping or drinking.

**John:** The present and the near future do muddle in a way. I feel like the near future comes quicker and quicker and quicker in terms of like, “Oh, this thing that seemed like it was going to be five years away, that happened just now.” That speed does seem to be increasing. There’s the distant, more murky future, where it could be one of a thousand possibilities. It’s harder to ascertain and unavoidably vague. We can have some broad prognostications about what is possible, but we don’t really know. Just for a little humility, you look back and look at what everyone thought 2020 would be like, and they were not correct.

**Craig:** No. We’re actually quite terrible at it. That’s probably not going to change. I think the best we can do is have a little care in our hearts for the people that are going to be here after we are. That’s about all we can do.

**John:** Just to leave it on a more hopeful not, the UN Secretary General was talking about extreme poverty in the world and how we need to continue the progress we’ve made. In that, the number of people in the world living in extreme poverty has dropped hugely since our childhood. That’s real, meaningful progress. It’s always confusing to look at things from our privileged Western perspective. When I went to visit Malawi, it was tough, and yet it was better than it had ever been before. Recognizing that you’re coming from a place and you want everyone to keep moving up that ladder, but at least in most parts of the world, there are ladders, which is progress.

**Craig:** Megana?

**Megana:** Mm-hmm?

**Craig:** I was thinking about what you were just saying about looking ahead to tomorrow and the candy you eat and drinking. I was thinking about how it’s spooky season. I thought I would just Google this, and it paid off.

**Megana:** Oh, no.

**Craig:** Would you like a recipe for candy corn-infused vodka?

**Megana:** Yeah, sure. Those are both things that I enjoy.

**Craig:** They might as well call this the Megana.

**Megana:** I really love candy corn. I can’t get enough of that sweet, sweet wax.

**Craig:** What is it? What is it? It’s corn starch, I assume.

**Megana:** I don’t know. It shouldn’t be edible, but it is.

**Craig:** It shouldn’t be. I’m with you. I like candy corn. I’ve always liked it.

**John:** I liked it as a kid. I can’t take something that sweet anymore. As a kid, I really loved candy corn.

**Craig:** What is the flavor of candy corn, actually? What is that flavor?

**John:** I don’t know. I associate it with a color, but that’s of course not what it actually is.

**Megana:** It’s white, orange, and yellow.

**Craig:** Somebody asked The Jelly Belly Company, because they’re obviously amazing with candy flavors. This is what they said. “Candy corn is meant to be a blend of creamy fondant, rich marshmallow, and warm vanilla notes.”

**John:** That feels right. Wikipedia has it as a waxy texture and a flavor based on honey, sugar, butter, and vanilla.

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** Those are all there.

**Craig:** That’s about right. I think it’s delicious.

**John:** Megana’s future is going to involve some candy corn vodka.

**Craig:** They’re going to find her facedown on her carpet.

**John:** It’s going to be the new Nyquil chicken. That’s what killed her.

**Craig:** Candy corn vodka and Nyquil chicken, what a night.

**Megana:** This is what my future has in store for me.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** Thank you both.

**Craig:** Thanks.

**Megana:** Thank you.

**John:** Bye.

**Megana:** Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [Writer Emergency Pack XL](https://writeremergency.com/) is funded! Support [here on Kickstarter!](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnaugust/writer-emergency-pack-xl)
* [Green Burial Council](https://www.greenburialcouncil.org/) and [Is California ready for ‘human composting’ as an alternative to casket burial, cremation?](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-06-30/is-california-ready-for-human-composting-as-alternative-to-casket-burial-cremation) by Anabel Sosa for the LA Times
* [John’s Blogpost on Fake Tears](https://johnaugust.com/2010/fake-tears)
* [Scriptnotes Episode 76: How screenwriters find their voice](https://johnaugust.com/2013/how-screenwriters-find-their-voice)
* [Scriptnotes Episode 403: How to Write A Movie](https://johnaugust.com/2019/how-to-write-a-movie)
* [Patton Oswalt on King of Queens](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA90rOwmkJ4)
* [Cut A Character Save A Scene](https://johnaugust.com/2010/cut-a-character-save-a-scene) on John’s Blog
* [Ants Outnumber Everything](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/19/ants-population-20-quadrillion/) by Dino Grandoni for the Washington Post
* [Why Question Words Start with Wh](https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/61ijtu/why_do_question_words_why_who_where_when_etc_all/) on Reddit
* [Bo Shim’s](https://twitter.com/byshim?lang=en) LA Food Guide: [Western Doma Noodles](https://www.yelp.com/biz/western-doma-noodles-los-angeles) hole-in-the-wall treasure, [MDK Noodles](https://www.yelp.com/biz/mdk-noodles-los-angeles?osq=mdk+noodles) in K-town, [Zzamong](https://zzamongrestaurant.com/) for Jjjangmyun, [KyoChon](https://kyochonus.iorderfoods.com/users/login) for fried chicken–especially the honey wings, [Aliya Lavaland](https://www.toasttab.com/aliya-lavaland-141-n-atlantic-blvd-ste-103/v3/?mode=fulfillment) for (lava) mooncakes, [Mandarin Noodle House](https://www.mandarinnoodlehouseca.com/) in Monterey Park
* [What We Owe the Future](https://whatweowethefuture.com/) by William Macaskill
* [Candy Corn Infused Vodka](https://www.kitchentreaty.com/candy-corn-infused-vodka/)
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [Check out the Inneresting Newsletter](https://inneresting.substack.com/)
* [Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/gifts) or [treat yourself to a premium subscription!](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Nico Mansy ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/568standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2022/20522).

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

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

**John:** This is Episode 567 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, when do you want to cast a recognizable star, and when do you not? We’ll talk about how much fame you want and need in a given role. We’ll also talk about cutting characters, juggling multiple projects, and staying nimble.

**Craig:** Oh, nimble.

**John:** Nimble. In our Bonus Segment for Premium Members, Megana says I’m too good of a liar. We’ll see whether she’s right when we play Two Truths and a Lie.

**Craig:** That’s worth the $5 subscription right there. You know why you’re too good of a liar. You know why.

**John:** Why is that? Why is that?

**Craig:** It’s because you’re synthetic.

**John:** No, it’s because I prepare. We prepare the outline overall, but I will say that I spent at least 45 minutes yesterday thinking through some options for Two Truths and a Lie.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** It’s going to be a barn burner, because usually you play Two Truths and a Lie with strangers. It’s an icebreaker. We all know each other pretty well, so I have to really think about what you would know and expect.

**Craig:** Oh, boy. Megana.

**John:** Oh, boy.

**Craig:** Megana, why do I feel like the two of us have just been set up? We’ve just been set up.

**Megana Rao:** He just admitted it.

**Craig:** He admitted that. He said it exactly. He laid it out how he set us up. Listen, if you’re not a Premium subscriber now-

**John:** This is my magic trick really, because a magician sets up your expectations, like, “I’m going to perform a trick for you,” and then you have to see if you can identify when he’s performing the trick.

**Megana:** I still feel good about our odds, Craig.

**Craig:** I love your optimism, but I think we’re dealing with a criminal sociopath. If you’re not subscribing to the show by now, I don’t know what you’re waiting for. Don’t you want to see John just pick us apart like the budding Hannibal Lecter that he is?

**John:** That’s what it is. A reminder about our live show, October 19th in Los Angeles at the Dynasty Typewriter.

**Craig:** Hey, can I get tickets to that?

**John:** No, you cannot.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** It is sold out.

**Craig:** Of course it is.

**John:** You cannot get in-person tickets, but for the first time ever, we are going to have a livestream of the show, so you can watch it. No matter where you are in the world, you can watch it live. The streaming tickets are $25. You can find them at dynastytypewriter.com.

**Craig:** Here’s the thing. It doesn’t go to us. It goes to charity.

**John:** What is the charity that we’re doing this with?

**Craig:** Hollywood Heart.

**John:** Tell us about Hollywood Heart, Craig.

**Craig:** Hollywood Heart is I think our, I don’t know, seventh or eighth benefit show for Hollywood Heart. They’re a wonderful organization here, based here in Los Angeles, that we were introduced to by a friend of the show, John Gatins. They run a summer camp for underprivileged kids. It is centered around arts, I believe. They just do terrific work. Everybody deserves a chance to get outside, have some fun in the summer, learn, be safe, and get exposed to arts and culture, which are not frivolous, but rather really the only thing that keeps our humanity intact.

**John:** Agreed. If you would like to support that but also see us live on stage, you can go follow the link in the show notes or just go to dynastytypewriter.com and click a little thing there for live show tickets.

**Craig:** Hey John, what did you think the odds were that I was going to say I have no idea what the charity is and I don’t know what Hollywood Heart is? Come on. Be honest. What’d you think? 50/50?

**John:** No, I think you definitely knew what Hollywood Heart was, but I thought there was maybe a small chance you didn’t know that there was a Hollywood Heart benefit rather than a Writers Guild Foundation, which we’ve also done events for.

**Craig:** Megana, just to point out, that’s the second time John has attempted a setup. We know what the theme is. If this episode isn’t called John Sets Craig Up, I don’t know why it should be called anything else. That’s what this episode is.

**Megana:** I wonder if I can get a little tally to ding every time it happens.

**Craig:** A little setup chart, ding. So far we’ve got two setups.

**John:** We’ve got a third setup here, because Megana put this follow-up question in from a listener. Megana, do you want to read this?

**Craig:** Megana setup.

**Megana:** Craig from Sydney wrote in and said, “I would like Craig to clarify something. In Episode 564, Craig says editing is a puzzle. Yet in previous episodes, Craig says a jigsaw is not a puzzle.”

**Craig:** That’s right.

**Megana:** “Both involve taking small fragments of an overall image and arranging them to make a complete image. Can Craig please explain his nuanced view and bias against jigsaws?”

**Craig:** Craig from Sydney, first of all, I see you. What are you, some sort of industry lobbyist for the jigsaw factories, for Big Jigsaw? Let’s absolutely demolish your premise. You say that editing, like jigsaw puzzles, involves “taking small fragments of an overall image and arranging them to make a complete image.” Hey, Craig from Sydney, when you get a jigsaw puzzle, the image is on the box, is it not? You know exactly what you’re supposed to put together. In editing, you don’t. In fact, you can put it together any way you want. You are creating something ultimately that will be an image, a moving image with Kuleshov effect positioning and contrast. It’s just simply not the same at all. I can make anything I want out of editing. I cannot make anything I want out of a jigsaw. In fact, if I try and put this piece with that piece, and the box is like, “No, that’s not where we wanted you to put the old mill piece,” then I can’t, because jigsaws are crap. I reject your premise. I reject you. I may not ever visit Sydney now. Actually, I would love to go to Sydney. It looks beautiful.

**John:** Sydney’s great. We like Sydney.

**Craig:** It would be incredible. Also, I don’t reject you, Craig. You’re a Craig. I love you, Craig. You’re a Craig, which is different than Craig, but still, you’re a Craig from Sydney, and I love you.

**John:** While I greatly enjoy jigsaw puzzles, I will agree with Craig in that I don’t think the analogy really holds, because editing is not merely a visual puzzle. It’s really a narrative puzzle. It’s like, “How do I get this meaning to come across as a series of images and sounds that I can put together? How do I make this make sense?” Editing is much more like writing, which is just how to make these thoughts to actually cohere correctly in the receiver’s brain. I don’t think it’s a great analogy, honestly.

**Craig:** No, it’s not. Craig, I need you to work on your analogies, because you’re representing me in the land down under, unless you’re from Sydney, Ohio, in which case I don’t know what to say.

**John:** There’s a lot of Ohioans. Let’s talk about our main topic here, which is about stars. We’re going to title this episode No Stars, Please, but I want to make it clear that I’m not anti-actor, I’m not anti-celebrity, I’m not anti-star. We love movie stars. Movie stars are great. If it sounds like I’m crapping on anybody individually or collectively, certainly that is not my intention.

**Craig:** This feels setup-ish right here.

**John:** I want to talk about the fit of an actor and a role and why sometimes you don’t want a big star in certain roles.

**Craig:** That’s fair.

**John:** I think that is a thing you run into. I remember having a conversation with a casting director early on, maybe even for Go. We were trying to put the right people in the right spots. For international financing, we needed a big male star between 30 and 50 in the movie. There wasn’t a role for that person. It was going to break everything to try to do that. The casting director said, “Yeah, it’s so frustrating that people want to wedge somebody into a part which is going to actually be wrong for the movie.” Let’s talk about star, actor, role fit.

**Craig:** First question is not do we need a star, but should we have one. Everybody I think probably defaults to the belief that everybody wants a star, but there are certain situations where you really don’t. That in and of itself if a strange kind of alchemy where you ask yourself, given the nature of the work I’m doing here, whether it’s a television show or a movie, and the characters and the tone, would having a star in this role swamp everything? Would that person draw so much attention and focus to themselves that the souffle will collapse, and worse, will it puncture the tone we’re going for? Will it puncture the reality of what we’re trying to do?

There are levels of stars. There’s Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, which they are luminous to the point of swamping everything around them. Brad Pitt was just in a movie where he… Bullet Train. Bullet Train! Great title. He’s on a train. He’s killing people. It’s like John Wick on a train. That’s great, but really if you had asked anybody, “Do you know that train movie?” they’d be like, “Oh, the Brad Pitt train movie,” not the anyone else train movie and not what the story of the train movie is, because he just… Honestly, you needed him for that. Otherwise, what was the point? What was the point of making that? You can’t make that movie with just a guy. Then there are things where you really have to avoid that phenomenon or it’s going to sink everything.

**John:** Let’s talk about the situations where you do want the star, where you do want the Brad Pitt in the role. How does having a star help? A lot of cases, it’s easier to get made because those stars attract money. You could make the movie Bullet Train at the budget you want with Brad Pitt in that role because everyone’s just like, “Oh, there’s a safety of having Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt will be able to open that movie. Brad Pitt can do the marketing for it,” and just what you said, “Let’s go see that Brad Pitt movie.” The title of the movie’s important, the concept of the movie’s important, the trailer’s important, but also that star is the anchor that you’re centering everything around. That’s a great reason to put that star in a role.

The other reason, maybe because they’re a terrific actor, because they are uniquely talented at being able to do that one thing. That’s why you want that star. It’s not just that they’re bringing their luminance, but what they’re good at is exactly what you need in that movie. That’s a great situation when you have both things happening at the same time.

**Craig:** There are also situations where… Let me stipulate, the number one reason you’ve mentioned, people are like, “Hey, we’re not making this unless we have a star,” because that’s the economics involved, but there are also times where you have a kind of story that requires a star, because you’re asking the audience to focus on and care about an individual for a long time.

When we were casting The Last of Us, we felt quite strongly that, unlike when we were casting Chernobyl, where we didn’t feel like we needed what we would call a star star, that we did need one for The Last of Us, because we were going to ask people to focus for so long on one man, and whereas with Chernobyl I felt like I wanted great actors, but there wasn’t a need for what they would call these bankable movie stars or anything like that, because that person would probably puncture the reality of being in Ukraine in 1986. That tonal thing is important.

This is another reason why you want to try and work with people that get it and have taste, because sometimes they do jam these things in, and it’s actually dead before it begins, because of miscasting, essentially.

**John:** Craig, before you brought up there’s levels of movie stars, let’s talk in a very rough sense about what we’d mean by those levels of movie stars. There’s these mega stars. There’s the Tom Cruises, the Will Smiths. There’s The Rock. They’re just these gigantic presences independent of the movie. You know who they are independent of all the roles they play.

**Craig:** They’re brands.

**John:** They’re brands. Weirdly, Leonardo DiCaprio, I would say, is that too, even though we don’t know a lot about Leonardo DiCaprio outside of his movie roles, because he doesn’t do a ton.

**Craig:** He’s iconic.

**John:** Iconic.

**Craig:** He’s an iconic actor. There are actors that are perfectly global. Everybody knows their name. We’re talking about billions of people. Billions of people now who Brad Pitt is. There aren’t that many of those people left, men and women, very few of them, because of the way we make things now. It’s just different.

**John:** For Aladdin, Will Smith was important. Could you have done Aladdin without Will Smith? Sure, you could’ve found somebody else who was great in that part, but Will Smith’s personality and his star presence was incredibly important to making Aladdin possible.

**Craig:** At that time.

**John:** At that time. At the time that we made Aladdin, you absolutely wanted Will Smith in that role. There’s another tier of actor, and I don’t mean tier in terms of quality, but that you recognize that person, but you’re not going to see that movie or see that series specifically for that person in most cases, so Ed Harris, Michelle Yeoh, Fantastic, Michael B. Jordan, any of the Chrises, like the Chris Pratts, the Hemsworths, the Chris Pines. They can be big stars, but they’re not iconic. They’re not going to drive everything.

**Craig:** I think I would make an argument that Hemsworth is now in that zone.

**John:** In a certain kind of role. Paul Rudd in a certain kind of role, yes, but Paul Rudd in a dramatic role, not so much.

**Craig:** It does depend on which thing you put them in. There are actors that are known for being brilliant and wonderful actors, but they don’t necessarily sell tickets. Selling tickets is not necessarily an indication of quality. It’s rare. When there’s this overlap of talent and selling tickets, that’s the holy grail. I think about Denzel Washington or Tom Hanks or Meryl Streep, where they sell tickets and they’re also great. That’s an even smaller subsection of huge stars.

There are incredible actors that are known, that do great work. That was actually kind of the fun when we were casting Chernobyl was just I had my dream cast. We got the dream cast. The dream cast was made up of three actors that were extraordinarily good. People did know their faces and their names, but they weren’t necessarily movie stars or anything like that. They needed to be able to be subsumed by the context, as opposed to overpowering it. There are incredible people like that.

It’s a really important thing to think about when you’re putting your movie together, you’re writing your script. Is this the kind of thing where you do in fact need that big wattage mega star, or will you be better off looking at people that aren’t about the wattage, but rather about, say, the quality?

**John:** We’ve been talking about movies and people who can open on opening day weekend, but TV is also a factor. Sometimes you want a recognizable person, and sometimes you don’t. I thought that casting Pedro Pascal in The Last of Us was really smart, because the people who want to like that show are going to know who Pedro Pascal is. A lot of other people who are going to watch that show really don’t know who Pedro Pascal is, because they’re not that familiar with Game of Thrones, they didn’t see him in Wonder Woman. He’s just the right size of star for that part. I’m sure that went into your consideration for him.

**Craig:** Yeah, and I think he’s about to be in a much bigger one because of the work he does in the show. He is a star. He has the star thing, which is you have to stare at him. He does that thing. He is widely known. It’s interesting, Mandalorian is such a strange show for him, because he doesn’t show his face for 98% of it. Having made a show now with Pedro, the thought of making a show with that face and not showing it just seems crazy, because it’s the best face.

You’re right, he was exactly the right thing. He was the right guy for us. I don’t think we could’ve done better for all sorts of reasons. We knew that we needed somebody that was a real star. Just the center of this thing had to have that in it, not only to hold your attention across many episodes about a man, but also to signify to people that this was quality.

That’s the other thing is when stars do things, there is a kind of imprimatur. There’s a stamp, because they get sent everything. Pedro Pascal is asked to be in 4,000 things, and Brad Pitt’s asked to be in 12,000 things and da da da. When they make a choice finally, you think, “Brad Pitt agreed to be in Bullet Train. This is probably pretty good.” That actually matters.

**John:** Agreed. A bit of a sidebar here, because you’re talking about Pedro and having star quality. A question for you. Who is the most attractive celebrity, famous person you’ve ever seen in person? Megana, you can answer this question too if you have an answer.

**Craig:** That’s a really good one.

**Megana:** Craig can’t choose me.

**John:** You’re radio famous, Megana, so it’s really not going to be fair for the audience.

**Craig:** I like that Megana just hurdles between wildly shy and self-hatred and then just crazy confidence.

**John:** Love it.

**Craig:** There’s nothing in between.

**Megana:** The extremes.

**Craig:** Just the wild extremes. There’s somebody in my mind that I remember thinking was astonishingly beautiful in person, just hard to wrap my mind around how beautiful they were.

**John:** I have a very distinct answer to that.

**Craig:** Who’s your answer?

**John:** I was in London. This was doing notes on Aladdin. I was staying in a hotel. I was leaving the hotel. I walked past this woman, and I actually audibly gasped. She was so beautiful. I was just dumbstruck for a moment. I left, and then I realized, oh, that was Lupita Nyong’o. Lupita Nyong’o was in London to do press for Queen of Katwe. I’d seen many photos of her before, but seeing her in person… I guess she was probably also made up for the press junket. She was actually just an unearthly beauty. She was radiant in a way that I’ve not ever experienced before. Lupita Nyong’o is the person. Her beauty does translate to screen. I’ve seen her in a lot of other things, but wow, in person, she just knocks you down. I’ve heard the same thing about Julia Roberts in the day too. People would say that with her. In her presence, you’d be like, “Oh my god, this person.”

**Craig:** Here’s my answer. I saw both of these people in person for the first and last time the same night. It was at the premier of Huntsman: Winter’s sequel. Charlize Theron-

**John:** I’ve heard that.

**Craig:** … and Chris Hemsworth individually are so beautiful, it’s hard to understand how they’re here. How does that happen? It’s hard to not feel like, “Oh wow, if I looked like that… ” I know I’m not supposed to beat myself up or anything. I’m not Chris Hemsworth. If I did the Chris Hemsworth workout, I would still be so far from Chris Hemsworth. That’s kind of crazy. Charlize, jeez, man.

**John:** I’ve definitely heard that about her.

**Craig:** Tall. She’s all Charlize-y.

**John:** Megana, have you encountered any celebrities in person that you’re like, “Oh my god, that person.”

**Craig:** Yeah, but other than me.

**Megana:** I haven’t run into that many celebrities, but I did pass Andrew Garfield on the street outside 101 Coffee Shop in Hollywood. I was like, “Whoa, that guy had a really cool vibe.” Then I realized it was Andrew Garfield.

**Craig:** Nice. Well spotted. That guy has an interesting quality about him. It’s amazing.

**John:** Now that we’ve talked about what star quality is, let’s talk about the kinds of roles you might slot these people into, because that’s really where things break down. Roughly, I’ll say there’s three levels of roles. There’s your principals, so that’s your hero, your villain, the people who are going to have a lot of screen time. They’re going to be driving the action. You have your supporting roles. You have the spouse, the friend, the boss, the commander, people who have multiple scenes, but they’re not so crucial to everything.

Then you have barely-theres. You have your waiters, your assistants, cashiers, your neighbors. Where I find I can take it out of the movie is when you have somebody who has that star quality wattage or is just legitimately famous, and they’re in one of those supporting roles, your barely-theres. You’re like, “Why is this person here? What is that person doing in that role?” It does throw everything out of whack.

**Craig:** There is a reasonable and warranted technique of putting a very high wattage star in a small cameo part, because whatever it is that they’re playing needs instant gravitas. When somebody finally shows up, everybody’s been talking about the boss, and then the boss shows up, and you’re like, “Oh my god, it’s Tom Hanks. We get it. No wonder they’re all worked up about him.” If some guy shows up, then you don’t feel as anchored in. Generally speaking, actors of that quality and wattage, they’re not going to show up unless it’s something like that. They sense as well as anyone what their value is. That in and of itself feels like it would be exhausting to just be aware of your own value and think about it all the time. At least as writers, we can just come and write stuff and then go home. Nobody sees our face.

**John:** Craig, I want to try to distinguish between two different things you’re describing there, because there’s a cameo, which I feel like is a self-limiting scene, where it’s clearly like, oh, this character’s going to show up and do their little bit, and we’re not expecting them to ever come back. It feels self-closing. Matt Damon shows up in the Thor movies playing a pudgy version of Thor. That feels deliberately self-limiting. Or Melissa McCarthy also shows up in Love and Thunder. You know that is a cameo.

**Craig:** Fun.

**John:** It has an entry point, an exit point. It’s fun. The other thing you’re describing reminds me of Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross, where they’re talking about he’s going to show up, and then Alec Baldwin shows up and does one scene, does incredibly well, just knocks it out of the park, and leaves. You needed somebody with that stature in that part. It was crucial.

**Craig:** Alec Baldwin was not actually a huge star at that time.

**John:** I guess you’re right.

**Craig:** What he had was star power. They needed somebody to essentially start that movie as a human manifestation of an angry Old Testament God to lay down the law, establish the tone, and then leave. All the wreckage in his wake is where the drama is, and you needed somebody to just hold the center of it. This was an actor who had to intimidate Ed Harris, had to intimidate Jack Lemmon, had to intimidate Alan Arkin, these great actors, put them in their place, knock them down. You need somebody who can hold that position. If they don’t, you won’t buy it. Again, it’s all a souffle. Everything is so delicate. There are a hundred ways for it to go wrong and really generally one or two ways for it to go right. That is the terrifying part of casting. Every time you cast somebody, you might be ruining things. That’s the scary part.

**John:** It also plays into audience expectations. There’s a well-known story, which may be apocryphal. Ed O’Neill, between Married with Children and Modern Family, he’s a very good actor. He’d be cast in non-comedic roles. Everyone would be like, “I don’t believe him at all,” or they’d laugh when they see him, because it’s like, “Oh, he’s Al Bundy. He’s supposed to be funny.” When he’s not being funny, that’s a problem. That’s a limitation for an actor. It’s frustrating for them, but also, you as the person who has to make the movie, you got to know what those expectations are going to be of the audience.

It’s one thing if you’re casting Melissa McCarthy in Can You Ever Forgive Me, because she is the center of that movie. Everyone that sits down to watch the movie knows that it’s not a funny part and that she’s playing something different than what you’d usually see. If Ed O’Neill shows up as a judge in a drama, it’s going to throw you for a bit.

**Craig:** I think that that has changed somewhat. It used to be much worse. Typecasting was a real thing. Now I feel like people actually look forward to these switch-ups. Ed O’Neill is a terrific actor. He’s older. As actors age, sometimes they just get less interested in doing a lot of stuff, and they just do fewer things. The great Gene Hackman just retired. He didn’t want to do it anymore. A few years ago, he was like, “I’m done.”

Tom Hanks was always the example of the guy that somehow magically was able to start his career on a sitcom where he was cross-dressing to get into farcical situations. Then a few years later he’s in Philadelphia, and you’re like, “How the hell did this even happen?” because he was just that good. Also, there was just a humanity there that crossed back and forth. Again, some people have it. I think nowadays, it’s a little easier. I think people kind of like it. I think they like watching people go back and forth. There’s something exciting about it.

I would say to anybody that’s making a drama to heed well the words of the great Vince Gilligan, who said that he just makes a practice of casting funny people in not funny parts, because funny people are the best. They just have this remarkable sense of drama and humanity. That’s why Vince Gilligan, a genius, truly a genius, I don’t use the word often, cast Bryan Cranston, the dad-

**John:** From Malcolm in the Middle.

**Craig:** … from Malcolm in the Middle, a sitcom, an Ed O’Neill part, in the most wonderful, dramatic part in Breaking Bad. It’s why he then took Bob Odenkirk, and he elevated him. It’s just what he does. He’s so smart about that. It is remarkable. Funny people are the best people, I will say.

**John:** The last example I’ll put up is just casting somebody who the minute they show up, you’re expecting them to be more important to it. Heartstopper is a Netflix show that I thought was delightful. Olivia Colman plays one of the boys’ moms. She’s great. She’s lovely, a flawless performance, but it throws you a bit, because you’re just like, “Wait, that’s Olivia Colman. She can do more than that. Why is she only doing this stock mom role?” We did interviews where she talks about why she wanted to do it. I totally get it. I do wonder if casting somebody else in that part would’ve actually been a better choice, because I cannot watch the scenes with her and not think, “Oh, that’s Olivia Colman.” I wonder if a better choice might’ve been to put somebody else in there who did not have that stature.

**Craig:** That’s the weird math you have to do, where you go, “Okay, this person puts out this much light and heat. This role requires this much light and heat.” If there’s too much, then it’s going to break things. It’s tricky. It’s hard, because when you’re putting things together, if someone says, “You’re not going to believe this, but Olivia Colman read the script, and she wants to play the mom,” who’s going to be like, “No.”

**John:** That’s exactly the point. No one’s going to say no. Of course. It’s great.

**Craig:** That’s the tricky part.

**John:** Let’s wrap this up by saying a reminder. There’s a reason why stars are stars sometimes. They actually have these magical abilities to just inspire us to look at them and pay attention to them. That’s why you want them in those principal roles a lot of times, because they’re just so good. Sometimes we’ll identify folks who are not even famous yet, but like, “Oh, you’re going to be famous.”

I think I’ve said this on the podcast before. Josh Holloway came in to audition. He played Sawyer on Lost. He came in to audition pre-Lost for this one show I was doing. He was completely wrong for the part, but I said in the room, “This is not the role for you, but Jesus, you are a star. I can absolutely tell you’re going to be a thing who’s going to break out.” He was really nice about that and said thanks and left the room. I was right.

Some people just have that ability. You want those people in those principal roles or smaller roles where they can actually expand and maybe they can steal some stuff. Once they’re famous, you don’t want to stick them in places where even though they might have the skills to play that role, they’re just going to break your movie or your show.

**Craig:** They’re going to break your thing. What it comes down to, since everybody listening has access to all the stars, just be careful about which stars you choose.

**John:** We have all these listener questions that say like, “Hey, so this megastar wants to be in movie. Should I let him be in the movie?”

**Craig:** No.

**John:** The answer is yes.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No, absolutely not. You’re not allowed in this movie.

**Craig:** Brad Pitt for that? I don’t know. I didn’t meet Brad Pitt. Once I stood next to Brad Pitt. Have you ever met Brad Pitt?

**John:** I think I shook his hand.

**Craig:** I never shook his hand. I was at the AFI Television, whatever the hell it was. I don’t know. It’s called the AFI Celebrates. It’s the best event. It’s better than all the awards shows, because nobody wins anything. It’s just like, “Here’s 10 things we liked. We love all of you.” You feel great. Brad Pitt was there. I was standing near him while he was talking to somebody, and I was so aware of my proximity to Brad Pitt. I had a para-social relationship with Brad Pitt.

**John:** How can you not?

**Craig:** How can you not?

**John:** The women he’s been with and the career he’s had and the stars, it’s a lot.

**Craig:** It’s a whole thing.

**John:** Our next topic is a Megana suggestion. Megana, help set us up here. You want to talk about committing to an idea and its execution by staying flexible. What are you thinking here?

**Megana:** Yes, I did. Craig, do you watch The Bachelorette?

**Craig:** You know. That’s a setup. Now you set me up. You know I don’t watch that.

**Megana:** You’re watching this season, right?

**Craig:** You know I don’t watch The Bachelorette. You know that. Is it a television show?

**Megana:** It is a television show.

**Craig:** Then you know I don’t watch it.

**Megana:** It’s a reality dating show. It starts off with a lead, the single woman, and she has 30 contestants.

**Craig:** Of course.

**Megana:** By the end, she whittles them down to one, and they propose to her.

**Craig:** Then they abuse the institution of marriage, yeah.

**Megana:** Exactly. We’re in the later weeks of this season. The Bachelorette has several contestants. She’s like, “Maybe I’ll marry Jason, or maybe I’ll marry Eric, or I’m also in love with Johnny.”

**Craig:** She sounds terrible. Go on.

**Megana:** I’m on my couch, locked in, committed to one of these men and devastated when they go.

**Craig:** Aw.

**Megana:** I was watching it, and I was like, “Maybe I’m over-committing.” Then I was reading a notes email, and I was like, “I think this also shows up in my writing, perhaps, the impulse to take an idea and just death grip onto it.” I was hoping that you guys could talk about staying nimble, being open, but also, I don’t know, moving forward.

**Craig:** I get it.

**John:** I get that too. Let’s put it in the context of notes, because a lot of times when you get notes, an instinct will be to seize up and protect and defend, rather than say, “Okay, I get what they’re saying. This is another way I could go. This is another way I could go.” If you are too flexible and too nimble, you will not actually have the drive to finish a thing and not be able to complete it, because you would take every note. Over-flexibility can be a problem, but rigidity is not good for a writer either. Craig, how do we balance this?

**Craig:** I think haphazardly and clumsily and with great potential for error. This one goes actually to the heart of what is most miserable I think about what we do, Megana. There was a talk I gave years ago. I can’t even remember to whom it was. They were asking me to talk about creativity. I brought up this example that I think about all the time. I’ve been thinking about it since I was a kid. You guys I assume have read The Little Prince.

**John:** Oh yeah, of course.

**Craig:** Classic.

**John:** Saint-Exupery.

**Craig:** Saint-Exupery, classic children’s book. The Little Prince begins with this foreword where he is talking about his own childhood, the author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery. He is talking about how he drew a picture as a young person. The picture was the snake that had eaten an elephant. When he would show it to the adults, the adults would look at it and say, “That’s a hat,” because the snake was roughly hat-shaped, because the elephant was inside of it, if you can imagine. He was like, “No, you idiots. It’s an elephant inside a snake. Why can’t they see?” Then he meets the Little Prince, this Jesus-like child figure from the stars above. He shows the Little Prince the picture that he drew. The Little Prince says, “Oh, that’s an elephant inside of a snake.” He goes, “Aha, you see, children can see these things.”

I was a child, and I was like, “No, MF-er, that’s a hat. You cannot put that on people. It’s a hat. It’s a hat. It’s not their fault. You cannot blame the audience because they didn’t Jesus their way into your head and see the beauty of the elephant inside the snake. It’s not their fault.”

What he was putting forth was something that I do admire in people, which is this artistic confidence and self-assurance. “I’m not the problem. You’re the problem. I am committed to this elephant inside the snake. I will meet somebody that gets it. Then that person and I will go on to make great things,” or in the case of the Little Prince, the Little Prince will die. Then Saint-Exupery will also die. Regardless, I have always had the opposite issue, which is I’m so panicked that people will think it’s a hat, and then the first person says it’s a hat, I’m like, “Oh god, it’s no good.”

It’s unfortunately one of those things that is a dichotomy you have to navigate. The only advice I can give you or anybody is to just be aware if you feel like you’ve gone too far in one direction. That’s all I can say. You don’t want to be the person that just changes everything all the time. It’s impossible to write things if you’re not committed to them. As John says, if you’re too rigid and you get stuck, you just are incapable of either improving it or recognizing that everybody will look at it and say, “That’s a hat.”

**John:** Megana will know that there’s a project that I’m in discussions to write that is very complicated and has a lot of moving parts and pieces and people involved. A thing I’m reminding myself at all times is that I need to be flexible and not over-commit to one way of doing a thing because of all the different people involved.

What I can do is commit to a vibe, like, “This is the feeling of the movie that I wish to make here. This is what I want. This is the vision for what I have that’s going to happen.” I cannot be, at this point, too specific about which elements will make it through, what is the actual plot, story, beats, how does it all fit together, because of just the people involved. I need to be able to be incredibly open and embracing all these different things, and at some point synthesize this down to a place where I can say, “Let’s do this,” and we will all hopefully agree on what this is. Even in that, even as I deliver them a draft, I will have to say, “Now if that is not going to meet the needs of everybody else here, I’m going to have to be flexible to do the next thing.” At every point, I need to be true to the vision for the overall movie that I want to do rather than this plot sequence is how I want to get there.

My most frustrating moments as a writer over the course of my career have been those times where I held on too strongly to one thing I wanted to defend in my project and lost sight of the overall goal of getting this to be a movie that got made in a certain way or had a certain kind of feel. At every stage, you have to be both committed to the overall vision, but flexible in how you’re going to get there.

**Craig:** That’s absolutely true. That’s the scariest part, because you describe the nightmare scenario is you cling too hard to a thing, you lose sight of the big picture, and the whole thing dies. I think it was the line that they put on the poster for Pet Sematary, “Sometimes dead is better.” There are certain circumstances where the things you would have to do to bring it all to life would not be worth bringing it to live, because once it’s alive, everybody will look at it and be repelled in horror, because people don’t know what they want. They think they know what they want, but they don’t know what they want.

I always felt like when you do test screenings for movies and such, you should get all of your data, ask all the questions, have them fill out the forms, but then also a week later, do it again, not the viewing, but just come back to all those people and just say, “Do the forms again,” because sometimes it takes people time to figure out that they either love or hate something. You won’t know unless you check. You may put something out there that in its horrible form presses enough for an hour, but then everybody settles in and hates it. Sometimes dead is better.

I guess, Megana, the difficult answer is that there is no answer other than to say if you feel yourself drifting hard right or hard left, head towards the center. Don’t give up the notion of committing to something. It’s really important. I don’t know how you write something without it. You have to be able to commit and then divorce yourself and then remarry and divorce and remarry and divorce and remarry, just like you do in your real life.

**John:** To bring it back to The Bachelorette, maybe the overall vision would be this young woman sees herself married to a fantastic man and having a life ahead, and she’s not committing to which of these men it’s going to be quite yet, but she wants to make sure she stays true to that vision. She’s not going to pick a guy who’s not going to be able to get her there. Is that a fair way of thinking through the decision process?

**Megana:** I think that that’s right. Right now, we’re at the point where it’s like whoever wants to propose to them, they’re going to pick, because that is what the vision is.

**Craig:** So weird.

**John:** So weird.

**Craig:** I swear to God, these shows. John, as a gay man living in a country where there was not gay marriage, when you watch these shows, are you just like, “You sons of bitches. I’m over here in a water shortage, and you people are just having water balloon fights all day long on this show called Let’s Waste Water.”

**John:** Yeah, it was largely frustrating. That’s part of the reason we were involved in the lawsuits we were involved in to try to get marriage equality to happen. I think we’ve talked about this on the show before. They’ve tried to make the gay Bachelor, and it just doesn’t work, because everyone can just hook up with everybody else. It just doesn’t work.

**Craig:** That’s going against the best part of being gay, as far as I can see from the outside. That’s the part I yearn for the most and will never have.

**John:** Megana, we have a question from Joe in Rancho Cucamonga. Anybody from Rancho Cucamonga moves to the top of the queue.

**Craig:** Rancho Cucamonga.

**Megana:** Joe says, “I just got hired to rewrite a script for an indie thriller. It’s technically my first paid gig, and I’m really excited for the opportunity.”

**John:** Hooray, Joe.

**Craig:** Nice job.

**Megana:** “Meanwhile, I have two scripts in development with a big producer and two other projects that my manager is trying to set up at different companies. My question is, in the unlikely but totally awesome scenario that I sell all of these in the immediate future, how should I go about managing my time to actually write them? Two are currently outlines, while the other two would be rewrites. How do I prioritize which scripts get written first? Is it common to tell people that I’m already working on a script and you have to wait? Would I be in danger of not selling them because I’m too busy? Or could I just block out certain periods of time and say these eight weeks are for this script, and these next eight weeks are for that script? These are First World problems to have, for sure, but in the case I’m confronted with this reality, I’d love some guidance on how to navigate these awesome waters.”

**Craig:** Awesome waters.

**John:** Awesome waters.

**Craig:** That’s a good name for a water park.

**John:** That is one of my favorite theme parks.

**Craig:** Awesome Waters in Rancho Cucamonga. Thursdays, water slide free.

**John:** Joe has an imaginary problem. I’m guilty of this a lot. I’ll catastrophize ahead and think, “Oh, what if all this stuff happens.”

**Craig:** What if the Oscars and the Nobel Prize ceremony are in the same night?

**John:** There are real situations where I’ve been on two things at the same time. It’s challenging. I have to level with people. I was working with Spielberg on a thing, and I was working on a Charlie’s Angels thing. There was too much stuff that was happening simultaneously.

It’s actually rare. The reason why it’s rare is that you can set up to do a rewrite, you could do this other thing, but the way the deals come out and how the timing happens, it’s rare that you’re going to be stuck on two things, and Joe, in your situation, that you’re going to be stuck on two things at the same time, and where you’re going to have to schedule your time so carefully. Your overall plan of, “This eight weeks will be this, and that eight weeks will be this,” it’s going to work out for you in most cases. Craig, what do you think?

**Craig:** I had something lined up that needed to be written after the thing that I was writing for 27 years now. I have had moments where I was a little panicky and saying to my representatives, “Oh god, yes, I want to do that, but this and that.” They’ve always said the same thing, which was, “It’ll work out.” It always works out. It always does.

There was one time where I got yelled at by a producer who was angry that he had to wait four weeks for something. I called the studio, and I said, “Look, I just got yelled at by this guy. I thought I was clear about how this works and all the rest of it. I’m trying to do a good job. I want to do a good job. The people that I’m working for right now would be very upset, just as you would be upset, if I suddenly just stopped working on their thing.” The studio said, “Don’t worry about that guy,” because I guess he was an idiot. Other than that, everybody just understands.

I would say, Joe, it’s not a problem to be in demand. If you say to people… Rather, your representatives. Hopefully you are well represented. You say your manager, so I’m annoyed, but fine. Your manager can just say, “Yeah, you got to wait. He’s in demand.” That just makes people want you more, generally. No one is going to say, “Oh my god, I want to buy this script, but oh god, I got to wait seven weeks for you to be able to rewrite it? No, then I don’t want to buy it.” Of course not. You know how long it takes to just buy things anyway? It will work out. Stuff will work out.

As you go on in your career, if it develops and you are doing well, you will end up in places where sometimes you do have to say no because of your own schedule. That’s annoying, but what you don’t want to be is somebody that says yes to something that you know you just are not able to responsibly do in a reasonable amount of time. Don’t do that. Other than that, it’ll all work out.

**John:** The only situations where the time really matters is production or very close to production, where they absolutely need this thing next week, or else everything’s going to fall apart. In those situations, I’ve had things where on a given day, I’ve had to work on three different projects. That is tough. That context switching is tough. You can do it. It’s really rare. It’s such a high-class problem to have, because you’re generally being paid really well for those situations. Don’t worry about it, Joe.

**Craig:** Don’t worry about it.

**John:** You’ll be fine.

**Craig:** You’ll be fine. Nobel Prize, Oscar, same night.

**John:** Megana, another question.

**Megana:** Haley wrote in and said, “I have a pitch to a production company coming up. I’m one of four writers pitching on the project. The pitch to the head of the company will be via Zoom. The creative executives have asked if it’s all right to record it. I’m reading the pitch off a detailed written document. If it’s recorded, doesn’t that function effectively as a leave-behind of the unpaid work I’ve done? Can I say, ‘No, sorry, that’s against the Guild’s No Writing Left Behind policy?’ or am I at a disadvantage against the other writers if I decline?”

**Craig:** This is actually a very interesting copyright discussion that involves the difference between a recorded performance and writing. First of all, Haley, I’m a little concerned that you’re reading a pitch off a detailed written document. That just sounds like the most boring way to pitch something ever. Side note, you didn’t ask me for my advice on that, but don’t do that. Don’t do that. Don’t read the pitch off the detailed written document. Pitch it. Pitch it like you know it. Pitch it like you care pitch your passion. That’s what we always say here, pitch your passion.

That said, no, if it is recorded, if you did in fact read the pitch off a detailed written document, what they have is a recording of a performance of something you’ve written. That does not give them the rights to the thing you’ve written. Writing is a literary material in fixed form. It is not a performance. If I go to Hamilton and I film it on my phone, which I should not be allowed to do, I don’t own that recording, nor do I own Hamilton. No, it’s not writing. Writing is literary material as the Guild defines it. That said, I just wouldn’t do it, because it sounds boring.

**John:** Megana will testify that-

**Craig:** Testify.

**John:** I went out with a pitch. We pitched to a bunch of different places. During the Zoom, I keep my notes up to the top of the screen, and so I’m keeping eye contact. It feels really spontaneous. As Megana was the person who had to advance the slides in the Zoom, she will-

**Craig:** Testify.

**Megana:** John is a very good actor. It always felt very spontaneous. I felt very betrayed when I saw the actual document.

**John:** She saw the actual document, but she also recognized that I was giving the exact same performance on every one of these things. Really, I should’ve just recorded it once and hit play for that, because it was exactly the same thing. Then of course the Q and A’s and all the other stuff like that were all unique discussions and vibrant. I get what Haley’s describing, because you end up giving a performance that is kind of scripted to these people, which always was the case in pitches also. It’s just that now on Zoom, you can actually look at your document and it doesn’t feel like cheating.

**Craig:** Looking at a document, notes, and all the rest of it, this is a separate thing about what’s an interesting way to pitch something, totally fine to do. Zoom allows you to do that, whereas once when you were in rooms, they could tell. That’s perfectly fine. Straight reading off of a detailed written document just sounds terrible.

**John:** Don’t do it.

**Craig:** Either way, whether they record your performance, however you perform it, no, that’s not writing. That is not writing at all.

**John:** Let’s do our One Cool Things. Craig, I see you have a One Cool Thing who is an actor.

**Craig:** Yes, my One Cool Thing is one cool person. We had the Emmy’s, John. Did you watch the Emmy’s or were you watching Monday night football?

**John:** I watched one frame of the Emmy’s.

**Craig:** Oh, because you were watching Monday night football, of course.

**John:** I’m 100% about all that American football.

**Craig:** You called it American football.

**John:** I did. For our international listeners, I called it American football.

**Craig:** It’s amazing how you can do that even when you’re not trying to do it. It’s incredible. Lots of wonderful stuff went on at the Emmy’s in terms of the shows. Lots of good choices were made. White Lotus, big winner. Mike White, big winner. Also winning for White Lotus for Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series, the great Murray Bartlett.

**John:** Terrific Australian actor.

**Craig:** Wonderful Australian actor. He’s been around for a long time doing wonderful work in Looking and Tales of the City. He was amazing in White Lotus as Armond the hotel manager who, if you have not seen the show, I won’t tell you how it all ends for him, because it’s remarkable. His fellow countrymen of course refer to him as Murray Bartlett. He’s also wonderful as Frank in the upcoming HBO series The Last of Us. He’s the nicest guy in the world, by the way, and a terrific actor.

**John:** Seems like he should be.

**Craig:** He’s wonderful. Seeing wonderful, lovely people win, especially in Hollywood, is just so gratifying. He’s so lovely. I was just thrilled for him. I was also thrilled for Melanie Lynskey. Even though she did not win, she was nominated for Best Actress in a Dramatic Series, I believe. She is also a terrific human being.

**John:** Agreed.

**Craig:** She’s from New Zealand, so really, this is about that whole area.

**John:** I’m going to keep the tradition going, because my One Cool Thing also involves an Australian.

**Craig:** Oh, good.

**John:** An Australian megastar. Yeah, big star. Nicole Kidman. My One Cool Thing is actually the David Mack article for Buzzfeed that goes into the backstory of how the AMC Nicole Kidman ad came to be. Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this, Craig.

**Craig:** Can I just confess something? I saw this, and I was like, “This seems reasonable.” I thought it was pretty cool. It was a nice ad for returning to the movie theaters. Was it eager? Yes.

**John:** Was it a little earnest? Yeah.

**Craig:** It was earnest and eager.

**John:** As a person who’s often eager and earnest, I can completely appreciate that. Through repetition, it became a meme. If it had just been out there for a week, it would’ve vanished, but the fact that it kept playing and kept playing, it became a cultural meme. This David Mack article digs into the history of that, including the involvement of Billy Ray, one of our previous Scriptnotes guests, who’s one of the writers on that advertisement.

**Craig:** Was he really? I didn’t know that.

**John:** Yes. I thought he directed it. Apparently, he did not direct it, but he did some of the writing on that. Now that I know that, it feels some Billy Ray-ness to it, in the sense of just it is earnest in a way that I sometimes associate with Billy Ray.

**Craig:** I thought it was very nice. I thought it was very sweet, very nice. Nicole Kidman is remarkable. That’s another megastar, by the way. So much wattage there. I guess it seems like this world around the Nicole Kidman thing has been somewhat with it. It’s not making fun of it as much as enjoying it with it. Any time I feel like drag queens are doing parody versions, it means that it’s beloved.

**John:** It’s like the boy who loves corn.

**Craig:** I love the boy who loves corn. It’s corn.

**John:** It’s corn. It’s specific, and it just feels like a great moment of public performance. Anyway, check out this David Mack article, which I thought did a nice job of explaining the phenomenon of it.

**Craig:** I think it’s great. I think it’s great. Sometimes just lack of cynicism is a lovely thing.

**John:** I agree 100%. Finally on the show, if you’re listening to this on Tuesday, October 20th, when this came out, we are now deep enough into the podcast that the Kickstarter for Writer Emergency Pack XL should now be live.

**Craig:** Live!

**John:** Craig can click through the little link there to see. Longtime listeners will know that back in 2015, my little company did the original Writer Emergency Pack. It was a deck of cards designed to help get your story unstuck. Back then, we hoped to print 100 of them. We ended up printing 8,000 of them to ship them to backers-

**Craig:** That’s a lot.

**John:** … and 8,000 to classrooms across the country. I think, Craig, you described it as the Toms shoes strategy of give one, get one. For every pack we sent out to backers, we sent one to a classroom. They’re now in classrooms all over the country, which has been great, but we want to do a bigger, better version of them. This is the version that Aline always wanted us to do, which is putting all the information for the cards on one side, so it’s a physically bigger deck. It’s a tarot-sized card deck.

**Craig:** That’s nice.

**John:** It’s good. We got brand new artwork, a new hard box that will last longer. If you would like one of these, and you live in the US or Canada, back us on Kickstarter, because we will be sending them out to you soon. I think they turned out really, really well.

**Craig:** What is the material that you use for the cards? Is it a plastic, or is it a paper?

**John:** It is a paper. One of our goals in this version of the project is to really lower our environmental footprint, our carbon footprint. We are using certified paper. The box is proudly cardboard, shipboard. Even our packaging materials are 100% recyclable and compostable. We want to make sure this thing is durable and lasts, but when you’re done with it, it’s not going to stick around for a thousand years.

**Craig:** Put it in your compost pile.

**John:** That’s what you can do. I can’t promise you that it’s compostable, but I think it probably will be.

**Craig:** That’s not a great slogan for a new product. “You can throw it out.”

**John:** “Probably compostable.”

**Craig:** “You can rot this.”

**John:** “This will eventually rot. Like all things, this will disintegrate.”

**Craig:** I think that actually is a great slogan for this. “This is garbage.”

**John:** “One day, this too, like you, will rot.”

**Craig:** Will just be a loam, just a loamy soil.

**John:** This could be another Bonus topic, but let’s talk about burial at some point, because I am really opposed to corpse burial and casket burial.

**Craig:** So am I. It’s so stupid. I can’t believe we’re doing it. I can’t believe we put people in boxes and then put the box in the ground.

**John:** No, we don’t put the box in the ground. We put the box in a concrete vault in the ground.

**Craig:** Really? I thought it was just dirt.

**Megana:** What?

**John:** You cannot put a casket in the ground. You have to put a concrete vault in.

**Craig:** Wait, what?

**John:** Then the casket goes in the concrete vault.

**Craig:** No, but I’ve seen… What?

**John:** No, Craig, they’re lowering the casket down into a concrete vault they’ve already put there.

**Craig:** Wait, but why do I see dirt then?

**John:** Because they’re throwing dirt on top of it, but then they’re putting a lid on top of that before they throw all the other dirt in.

**Craig:** Really?

**John:** Yeah. In almost every jurisdiction in the US, you’re not allowed to just put the box.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** You have to put a vault.

**Craig:** Because you don’t want rotting bodies in the water table?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That makes sense. Everybody should be burned. Everybody. Burned instantly, by the way.

**John:** If you are as opposed to casket burial as I am, please back us on Kickstarter. The Kickstarter will be running for 30 days. We only need to hit $26,000 to send these things to people. I think we’ll hit that. I’m just really happy with them. We’ve been working on them for a long time.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** It’s good to finally get them out there in the world.

**Craig:** Congratulations. Hopefully, people do back that. Does this Kickstarter require this many people do it before it activates?

**John:** We have 30 days to hit our goal of $26,000.

**Craig:** Please.

**John:** I think we’ll hit that.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** We have to hit our goal. Beyond that, we can do stretch goals and things. We decided to limit it to only the US and Canada, because international shipping is not only financially expensive, but also the carbon footprint of that is a lot. If you are an international backer who wants one, hold still, because we will find partners to make them in other places so we’re not having to ship these things across oceans.

**Craig:** That makes total sense. Do you know what I would love?

**John:** Tell me what you’d love.

**Craig:** I would love for you to read some boilerplate.

**John:** Oh my god, I’m going to do it. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao.

**Craig:** Yay!

**John:** It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli.

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

**John:** Our outro is by Adam Pineless. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin, I’m @johnaugust. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com, which is where you’ll find transcripts and sign up for our weekly-ish newsletter called Inneresting.

**Craig:** Inneresting.

**John:** Which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts.

**Craig:** Yay.

**John:** They’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. You could get the brand new Scriptnotes double S T-shirt up there now. We’re about to print a new batch of those. You can sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and Bonus Segments, like the one we’re about to record on Two Truths-

**Craig:** Two Truths-

**John:** … and a Lie.

**Craig:** … and a Lie.

**John:** Craig and Megana, thank you so much for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thank you.

[Bonus Segment]

**John:** I’ve got a couple of these. I’ve got a couple different categories here.

**Craig:** Oh my god. So set up.

**John:** Megana, are you also going to do Two Truths and a Lie yourself?

**Megana:** I have some prepared, but I don’t need to do them, because I’m a terrible liar.

**Craig:** Come on.

**John:** I think you absolutely have to do them.

**Craig:** John, you’re saying you have four truths and two lies?

**John:** No, I’m saying I have three different categories. I have nine truths and lies.

**Craig:** Oh, god.

**John:** I broke them into categories. We’ll start with in high school.

**Craig:** So set up.

**John:** You have to think back to high school John.

**Craig:** High school John.

**John:** In high school, I was first chair clarinet in the Colorado All State Orchestra. In high school, I was bitten by a black widow spider. In high school, I competed in the World Championships in Future Problem Solving in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Two truths, one lie.

**Craig:** I have my choice.

**Megana:** I think I have mine too. You don’t want to discuss, Craig?

**Craig:** I’m happy to discuss. Let’s workshop this. My instinct is that the clarinet is a lie.

**Megana:** Yeah, mine too, because I feel like otherwise you would’ve been hearing him play the clarinet. First chair?

**Craig:** Also, I was the first chair clarinet in the, I should’ve used this as one of my things, the Staten Island All Borough Junior Orchestra when I was 12.

**Megana:** Do you recognize John as being first chair?

**Craig:** Don’t recognize clarinet. That’s right. I played the clarinet, and I played it well. It’s a part of my life that honestly I’ve almost forgotten, but it was there. I don’t recognize that. I don’t believe that. I think the black widow sounds like a lie, and therefore I believe it’s true. Also, he was scouting a lot.

**Megana:** Also, according to office lore, Nima tells a story about how John picked up a black widow spider by the hands and just waved it off.

**Craig:** That does sound like something a robot would do in defiance of nature and God.

**Megana:** Or that he’s already experienced and knows it’s not that bad.

**Craig:** It’s not good. Yes, I hear what you’re saying, that maybe he’s like, “Look, I’ve survived it once. I can survive it again.” Then the Ann Arbor thing, there are so many words. It’s so specific and weird.

**Megana:** I believe it.

**Craig:** It sounds like something he would do, a future problem solving conference.

**Megana:** We’re locked into clarinet?

**Craig:** I think we’re locked into clarinet.

**John:** You’re touching that card?

**Craig:** We’re touching it.

**John:** You are correct. Fascinatingly, you’re correct for the wrong reasons. This is a thing I just learned about you, Craig. I was first chair of the middle school, the junior high, first chair clarinet middle school, junior high All County, which is All Borough, Orchestra.

**Craig:** We were the same. Wow.

**John:** You and I both, we’re going to have a clarinet duo, clearly.

**Craig:** No, we’re not.

**Megana:** Wow.

**Craig:** That’s beautiful.

**John:** Here’s the thing.

**Craig:** Actually, let’s just take a moment and just recognize the beauty of life.

**John:** Weirdly, like you, I was really good at clarinet, and I realized at a certain point, I don’t care about being really good at clarinet. It is pointless to be good at clarinet.

**Craig:** I can’t believe anyone cares about being good at clarinet. I saw the LA Philharmonic. They ran Back to the Future at the Hollywood Bowl. The Philharmonic played the score along with it. It was fantastic. There are clarinetists in there, and they’re amazing.

**John:** They’re incredibly good.

**Craig:** How did that happen? At some point, did they not go, “What am I doing? Why am I playing this?” Clarinetists have a chip on their shoulder, because everyone’s like, “Oh my god, the oboe. The oboe, it’s so hard.”

**John:** By the way, the clarinet though is the heart of most of the sound you’re hearing.

**Craig:** Clarinet, it really is the unheard glue of everything. It really is. It’s the alto in the chorus.

**John:** We’re tuning the whole band to us, so yeah.

**Craig:** That’s right. The oboe is typically the one doing that.

**John:** If there’s an oboe, then you’ll take the oboe.

**Craig:** That’s the thing about oboists is that they’re dicks.

**John:** Because they have all that pressure in their head, because they’re having to squeeze through such a narrow thing.

**Craig:** Because they’re like, “I have two reeds. You only have one reed.” Oh, shut up. Shut up, oboists, with your two reeds.

**John:** Megana, when you come into the office later, I will play you a clarinet solo.

**Megana:** I look forward to it.

**Craig:** Playing the clarinet was… I don’t know, I was good at it. I don’t know why I was good at it, but I was.

**John:** I was good at it, because I practiced.

**Craig:** You know what, John? We had excellent embouchure.

**John:** We did. Craig, tell some truths and some lies.

**Craig:** They’re all about my childhood. I’m going to go back to early childhood. All of these things took place between the ages of 8 and 11. The first thing, I was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder related to hemophilia. The second thing was that I escaped a minor house fire. I define minor house fire as the house was not completely engulfed in flames. Third, I was hit by an automobile, a moving automobile I mean. I guess it would have to be moving if you were hit by it. I was hit by a car.

**John:** Megana, let’s talk through these. The blood disorder feels like, huh, that’s a strange thing for us to have never heard about.

**Megana:** Hear about, yeah.

**John:** Yet at the same time, it’s like, oh, but that feels-

**Megana:** It’s so specific.

**John:** I want to believe it. Hit by a car feels like it could happen a lot. People get hit by cars, and they’re all right. The house fire feels… Again, the specificity of it makes it tempting.

**Megana:** I think I’m going to go with the car. I bet that he was hit by a car later in his life.

**John:** I’m going to back you on car. Craig, we are touching the car story.

**Craig:** Guess who’s a better liar than you, John?

**John:** Is it Craig Mazin?

**Craig:** I was hit by a car, John.

**John:** Which was the lie?

**Craig:** The lie was house fire. I did not escape a minor house fire. There was no minor house fire. There was no house fire at all.

**John:** I think minor house fire is a really… That minor does a lot of work there. It’s so smart. Well done.

**Craig:** Thank you. I was diagnosed with this very strange blood disorder that they said I would eventually outgrow, and they were right. Basically, if you’re a hemophiliac, you’re missing this key blood factor. I think there’s 14 clotting factors or something. I was missing one of them that wasn’t the hemophilia one. For a while, when my teeth would fall out, it would just bleed and bleed and bleed.

**John:** Wow.

**Craig:** I needed to get my tonsils out, and they were like, “No, you can’t. You’ll die.” It didn’t really stop until I was in high school, and then it was okay.

**John:** Nice. I’m glad you’re okay.

**Craig:** Me too.

**John:** Megana.

**Craig:** Here we go.

**John:** Tell us some truths and some lies.

**Megana:** Do we have to categorize them?

**John:** No, you don’t have to.

**Megana:** One, the CIA tried to recruit me out of Harvard. Two, I have my doubts about the moon landing. Three, I ran the Boston Marathon when I was 19.

**Craig:** Let’s discuss, John, because there’s something I’m drifting toward, but maybe I’m being suckered here.

**John:** Being recruited by the CIA overall makes sense but also feels like everyone in Harvard probably is, and she could be taking a story from a friend who was recruited.

**Craig:** The CIA was certainly on the Princeton campus. Yes, you’re right. It’s the kind of thing that feels incredibly believable, and yet they may have just passed her by.

**John:** She has her doubts about the moon landing. She also kind of believes in some astrology things, so maybe.

**Craig:** I think the fact that she said some doubts is her Get Out of Jail Free card on that one.

**John:** Agreed.

**Craig:** Because I think if she said, “I don’t believe in the moon landing,” we’d all point our fingers and say, “That’s a lie, and also you can’t produce the show anymore.” If she has some sort of Megana-like doubts, because Megana slightly believes in ghosts… I think that one is actually believable. It’s distressing, but it’s believable.

**John:** Remind us of your third.

**Craig:** The marathon.

**John:** The marathon. She is a distance runner. She has run distance before. Boston Marathon I feel like is a hard one to get into.

**Craig:** She said she ran it or completed it?

**Megana:** I said I ran it when I was 19.

**Craig:** That implies complete. I think she might’ve been able to do that.

**John:** I think she might’ve been able to do that too. I’m going to say CIA is my-

**Craig:** I’m touching CIA card.

**John:** CIA.

**Megana:** Oh god, you guys are right. I so want it to be true though.

**Craig:** Of course you did.

**John:** You definitely had friends who were recruited by CIA.

**Megana:** Yeah, they were not at all interested in me.

**Craig:** Yeah, because you just seem so nice. You’re like, “I don’t want this misuse of intelligence.”

**Megana:** I have a lot of notes for them.

**Craig:** That’s weird that you wouldn’t want to support the CIA, Megana. Wow. Also, doubting the moon landing? Megana.

**Megana:** I said doubt. If you’re going to make me bet my life on a fact, I’m not going to choose that fact.

**Craig:** There are so many facts to choose from. I’m just saying, what are your doubts about the moon landing?

**Megana:** I have some YouTube videos I’m going to send you.

**Craig:** No, you don’t. You have them, but you’re not sending them.

**Megana:** I think the JFK speech like, “We’re going to go to the moon at the end of this decade,” incredible piece of rhetoric.

**Craig:** Yes, and also, they did it. They did it. Megana. Oh god, Megana, no. No.

**Megana:** We just had an amazing episode about visual effects. That’s all I’m going to say.

**Craig:** You know what? 1969, those visual effects were not there. No. Megana, for God’s sake, no. No. No. No.

**Megana:** No?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Thank you for Two Truths and a Lie.

**Craig:** Yay.

**John:** I think generally it’s used as an icebreaker to learn facts about strangers, but I learned something fundamental about Craig Mazin in this conversation. I can’t believe all these years, all these podcasts-

**Craig:** Same.

**John:** … that clarinet has never come up. I still have my clarinet.

**Craig:** Wow. You do?

**John:** I do. It’s a good old wooden clarinet.

**Craig:** Oh my god. Does it smell like that weird reed grease?

**John:** 100%.

**Craig:** Or the cork grease.

**John:** Cork grease, yeah.

**Craig:** Cork grease.

**John:** It looks like ChapStick.

**Craig:** It’s that smell. I can still smell it.

**John:** Oh, 100%. Love it. When you suck up the spit through the reed and-

**Craig:** Gross.

**Megana:** You guys have been popular for a really long time.

**Craig:** Nothing is as popular-

**John:** As a male clarinetist?

**Craig:** … as a male clarinetist. You’re right. Male clarinetists, so sexy.

**John:** Yeah, the best.

**Craig:** Oh, god.

**John:** Craig and Megana, thank you so much.

**Craig:** The shame of it all.

**Megana:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

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* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Adam Pineless ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

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