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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/unless-they-pay-you-the-answer-is-no).

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

**Craig Mazin:** Je m’appelle Craig Mazin.

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

**Craig:** I’m good. How are you doing, man?

**John:** We should explain why you’re speaking French.

**Craig:** Ouais. [laughs] In French, by the way, if you’re cool you say, “Ouais,” which is like our “yes, yeah, yup, uh-huh.”

I was just en vacances en Quebec and got to polish off my French which I hadn’t used in a long time. Amazing how much you can remember once you’re there in the middle of it, you know.

But, I’ll talk more about that when we get to our One Cool Thing. I guess it’s kind of a spoiler.

**John:** Well, that sort of a spoiler there.

**Craig:** That’s okay. It’s not that much of big hoo-ha. And where were you over la vacances?

**John:** Upon la vacances, I went skiing in Colorado, which was really quite fun. And so my daughter, this is her second year going skiing. And she’s actually now good enough that she can go down the mountain with us and have a good time. And we had a very good time skiing. Very cold to start. First time we encountered the frost inside the windshield, which is not good.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** But, it was all really good. And we had the rest of Christmas with my mother-in-law in Ohio, and that was all nice. We had a big giant snow, but it was one of those snows where you’re like, “Oh, great, let’s go sledding,” and you go out and you can move two inches in the sled. But it ended up being great snowman snow. And so we could build a snowman in like five minutes.

**Craig:** We kind of had weird parallel vacations, because I was also with my mother-in-law for a bit of time in Florida. And my poor wife had to figure out how to pack for Florida and Quebec. [laughs] It was pretty fascinating.

**John:** So, Craig, we had a podcast last week — that was just a clip show. It was a New Year’s Day clip show. This is our first real one of the New Year, so I thought we’d start off by talking about some resolutions and things we plan to do differently this year, or want to explore this year.

Then we’re going to talk about the WGA awards, and we’re going to answer some listener questions. Sound good?

**Craig:** That sounds fantastic. Oh my god! Yes! [laughs]

**John:** Now, previously on the podcast I talked about resolutions, and I don’t really have resolutions like I’m going to do that this year, or I’m not going to do something this year. Rather I declared areas of interest. So, previously you may recall I was interested in Austrian white wines, or archery. And this year I didn’t have any sort of affectation like that. I couldn’t think of one as December drew to a close.

But, as I was doing an interview yesterday for Big Fish — we’re doing long lead press for Big Fish for the Chicago run — the reporter was talking about how long it took to get up to this point. And I realized that I first read the book to Big Fish in 2003. I’m sorry, in 1998 is when I read the book for Big Fish, the manuscript.

2003, five years later, I finally got the movie made. And now it’s ten years after that that we’re finally doing the musical version. And I realized that, wow, I’m going to actually probably be making some version of Big Fish for the rest of my life. It’s one of those things that I will never actually finish it, because god-willing everything goes well in Chicago, and we go to New York, and we do a run there — the musical is never really finished.

It’s like a TV show, you’re done at a certain point. And a movie, you’re done at a certain point. A musical — I probably will never actually be done with it because there will always be other stagings of it. And even if it’s not all that successful, someone will want to do it somewhere. And there will always be revisions. There will always be a new cast. There will always be a new something.

So, I think my resolution is to sort of come to terms with the time of it all, and sort of the unfinishability of it, because it’s a strange thing for me that for 15 years I’ve been dealing with this one project, this little book that Daniel Wallace wrote.

**Craig:** Well, and if it’s really successful then perhaps they’ll make a movie of the musical, and then you’ll have to write the movie.

**John:** It was interesting. When we were dealing with Sony it was one of the things that came up is we had to address that ahead of time, sort of like who would have the rights to make the movie, and that gets complicated because Sony owns the rights to my screenplay, so we had to buy the rights back for my screenplay. But it’s all complicated.

And I don’t honestly even know who has the right to make the movie if it becomes that kind of thing, if it becomes the next Les Mis.

**Craig:** That probably turns on your contract with them.

**John:** Yeah. Probably.

**Craig:** But, you know, why count that chicken?

**John:** Maybe that’s a better thing I should resolve for this year is to not count chickens.

**Craig:** Don’t count them. Just let them breed.

**John:** How about you? Any resolutions for the New Year?

**Craig:** You know, I’ve never been a resolution guy. Resolutions for me are a bit like gifts. When I feel like I should have something — and it doesn’t happen often, I’m not a big consumer of goods — but when I want something I just get it. And when I feel resolved to do something, I do it.

I’ve never looked at the turning of the calendar as an excuse or as an inspiration to resolve anything. But, I think my resolutions — really what happens is then you’re left with the things you never, ever do. And your eternal resolutions. Maybe my resolution should be to just let those go.

**John:** That’s fair enough. Very Zen.

**Craig:** I think at this point, we are who we are.

**John:** Yeah, we are who we are.

So, one of the things that happened during our absence is the WGA Awards were announced, or the WGA nominations were announced. And so I want to talk through this because many of our friends are nominated for things, which is fantastic.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** For Original Screenplay, the nominees: Flight, written by a guy named John Gatins.

**Craig:** Woo!

**John:** Woo-hoo! Who we both know very well. We actually threw a little party for John to celebrate an earlier nomination. And so we’re happy that he got this.

**Craig:** Well, you threw that party very generously.

**John:** Yes. And so I’m including you in it because you were there. But you were really just a guest rather than a host. Yeah.

**Craig:** You know what was great about that party was I met a guy there…the end. [laughs] No, I met a guy there who is very good friends with John’s awesome wife, Ling, and you know I’m a big musical nerd. And he played Marius on the stage on Broadway. So, we got to talk about musicals quite a bit. That was great.

And I caught up with some people I hadn’t seen in a long time, but all of it in celebration of our excellent friend — and well deserving friend — John Gatins. One of those guys who does it right. You know, I feel, it’s funny… — I was talking to Roger Kumble and to you, I think, about this, how there are so few of us left from when we started in the mid ’90s.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And those of us who are, I feel like on some level we’ve done something right. And there’s a badge of honor for just persisting. And John has persisted over the years through thick and thin, up and down, and here he is with an amazing award for a movie that has persisted. Because the screenplay was written many years ago and he…

**John:** Yeah. I read it at least five years ago. And you probably read the draft that was sitting in the drawer, too. It’s been around for quite a long time. And I always say, “At some point the right combination of all of this is going to come together; you’ll be able to make that screenplay into a movie,” and it did. Hooray!

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly.

**John:** Another person who I’m very, very excited to see on this list is Rian Johnson for Looper. I loved Looper. And I’m so glad that the WGA voters singled that out as being an awesome screenplay, because it was great.

**Craig:** Very well deserved. Another very good friend of mine. One of my favorite Swedes, and that really means something because my wife is Swedish, and one of my best friends, Alec Berg, is Swedish, so there’s a lot of competition there. He is one of my favorite Swedes.

Yes, excellent movie. I was very lucky to see an extremely early cut of the film. He was showing it to about four or five people just to get feedback early on. And I could tell that he had done something special there. A remarkable accomplishment considering the budget. And, also, Rian really is a true author of his films. He writes and directs them. They are always original. They are always original to him. It feels like they are very purely an extension of his intension and he’s just now, I think — I think now starting to be accepted by the major studio machine, whereas before he was a little more indie.

Great guy. Wonderful person. And very original piece that he did. And so it’s terrific to see him… — Well, it’s a tough one because I’m rooting for them both. The easiest thing I guess for me to do in a situation like that is just root against all the people they’re against.

**John:** [laughs] The people they’re against are also very talented people. Paul Thomas Anderson for The Master.

**Craig:** Boo. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Moonrise Kingdom by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola.

**Craig:** Eh…

**John:** And Zero Dark Thirty by Mark Boal.

**Craig:** Ah! Three idiots! No, they’re amazing writers. Incredible filmmakers, all three of them. And it’s tough. All I can say is I’m pulling for John and I’m pulling for Rian, but it doesn’t matter. I think at this point it’s… — You know, maybe it’s because I have a unique perspective. I’ll never be nominated for anything. No one nominates the movies I write, ever. They haven’t nominated the specific ones I’ve written, and they really haven’t nominated the good versions of the specific ones I’ve written.

And so I never think about awards. I don’t have to worry about it. And I just feel like writing a good movie that is honest to what you meant, and having that audience find an audience is the only reward that matters. And John and Rian both did that, in a big way, and obviously the other three did as well, and have done in the past. They’re all great.

So, everyone’s a winner.

**John:** Everyone’s a winner! Just to complete the list, for Adapted Screenplay we have: Argo by Chris Terrio; Life of Pi by David Magee; Lincoln by Tony Kushner; Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, based on his book; and Silver Linings Playbook by David O. Russell.

And of those, the only comedy-comedy is Silver Linings Playbook, and that’s a dramatic comedy, but really more of a comedy when you actually watch it.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s definitely a comedy. And I have to pull for that one, of course, because my buddy — I should say my wrestling buddy Bradley Cooper is in it. Because weirdly, and I don’t why, [laughs], but I would say two or three times a week Bradley will just come up to me and start wrestling with me. And I’ve got to tell you: I would lose dramatically. One day he hurt me, because he’s really big, he’s really strong. And just a tough guy — a man’s man — who likes wrestling with…

**John:** Craig. I’m just going to let you talk and talk yourself deeper into this hole.

**Craig:** It’s fun. I like it. I’m just losing myself in his eyes, again, in my memory. I pull for Bradley. I think he did an amazing job, by the way.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** Great performance. But yeah, I mean, look, you could say that’s a comedy, it’s kind of a comedy. But it’s the sort of comedy that gets nominated for awards because it’s David O. Russell and it’s quirky and interesting. It’s so rare that a broad, mainstream — not even broad, but just a mainstream comedy gets nominated.

Did I mention that I like to wrestle with Bradley Cooper?

**John:** Maybe once or twice.

One thing we should point out because people always ask the question like, “Oh, there are some strange omissions. There are things that you would think would be on here that aren’t on there.” The WGA Awards are only for things that are covered by the WGA contracts or by affiliated guild contracts. There are weird… — Sometimes other things can make it onto that list but not other things.

So, animated movies aren’t covered by the WGA. So, animated movies will not generally show up in these awards. Some British movies won’t show up in these awards. So, it tends to be American movies that you would see on this list.

**Craig:** Yeah. And also notably you won’t see Quentin Tarantino’s name because he withdrew as a member from the Guild, reportedly, by him.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** [laughs] So, I think it’s accurate to say that he withdrew his membership from the WGA. I’m not exactly sure why. I suspect it had to do with credits or something. And these things happen.

I mean, some people get very angry about this. They say, “What is the point or value of awards if they don’t honor the best, but rather the best of people that fit the political specificities of the union that’s giving out the award?” And all I can say is, “Who cares?” I mean, it’s the Writers Guild. That’s what the Writers Guild Awards are for, it’s for Writers Guild movies, which happens to be most of them.

You don’t like it? Who cares? Nobody cares what… — I hate to say this. Because, you know, we just talked about Rian and we just talked about John, and I love them, and I want them to win an award, but nobody cares about the Writers Guild Awards anyway.

I mean, to be fair and accurate, the only awards people care about are the Oscars, of course; the Golden Globes, to a lesser extent, but only really as a predictor of the Oscars; the BAFTAs, from overseas, or perhaps as a consolation if you did not win an Oscar. But, really when you boil it down, the only award anyone really cares about is the Oscar. So, who cares?

People need to relax about this award stuff.

**John:** Yeah. It’s interesting that you go into umbrage and to pull it out saying that everyone should relax.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s right! I’m upset and exerting myself in the expectation that everyone should relax.

**John:** You’re basically shouting at people to calm down.

**Craig:** I’m shouting! I’m saying, “You have to calm down! Just do it!” Oh, god, you know what’s so great? It’s 2013. Here’s my resolution: Get crazier on the podcast.

**John:** Oh, yeah. That’s what we need.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s what you need.

**John:** I want to see the little gauges spiking there. We’re going into the red and Stuart has to knob you down so that you’re not so…

**Craig:** No…I never clip. I will say this: In a couple of years when they do an in-depth profile of this podcast and the two of us, they’re going to refer to you as “long-suffering co-host John August.” [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] It very well might happen. Although, I don’t think it’s going to be like a retrospective as much as it’s going to be evidence that’s going to be submitted in some trial.

**Craig:** Yeah. Fair enough. Whatever!

Hey, everybody needs to relax!

**John:** First question comes from Kevin in Atwater Village.

**Craig:** Relax, Kevin!

**John:** “Hi guys. I’ve been hearing recently about how movies are getting more expensive and harder to make. I was recently reading an interview where the director said, ‘They cost so much to make, you have to have a monster hit to pay it off. They’re pricing themselves out of production. Three pictures a year make enough to pay off. They’re making it so it’s impossible to make a film.’

“This was Paddy Chayefsky from an interview in 1981. So, my question is: have complaints about the cost and difficulty of movies always been around, or are we living in a time where making films has never been harder or more expensive? What’s your opinion?

“– Kevin.”

**Craig:** Ah, what do you think?

**John:** I like that he snuck in the Paddy Chayefsky quote, because it does seem to be one of those evergreen things. You’re always going to complain about how it’s never been harder. And you’re always going to say it used to be easier back then. There’s always the golden age that existed sometime in your youth when everything was wonderful and perfect. It tends to be like the 1970s for movies, or whatever. But now everything is terrible, and everything is too expensive, and everything is rough.

Although, if you were actually to talk to people in the time they would have said it was the worst time ever because they’re having a hard time making their individual movies.

I do think there are some things that are more difficult now than have probably been there before. Part of it we talked about on the podcast — it’s not just the actual negative cost of making a movie, although some movies are really expensive. It’s that it’s become so expensive to market these big giant tent pole movies. Even if your movie only costs $20 million, or $30 million, if you’re spending $50 million to market it, you’ve spent $80 million on your movie. And that’s a hard nut to earn back.

And it does feel like marketing has become more expensive every year, and that’s a genuine concern.

**Craig:** No question. That’s essentially where I’m at on this, too. Marketing is worse. I mean, marketing is very good, but the expense of marketing has gone up, I suspect, far beyond the relative costs of production. And because marketing is so expensive, it in a weird way starts to drive up production costs. Because if you know you’re going to be spending $80 million to market a movie, you want to make sure you can deliver the goods.

So, in a weird way the whole thing becomes upside down. You look at a movie like Identity Thief. I think it cost $32 million, or something like that, relatively inexpensive for today’s films. They’ll certainly spend more than that on marketing. I hope they do. [laughs] I think they’re going to.

**John:** I hope.

**Craig:** But I do agree with you that there has always been a rosy-hued, I should say, view of the past. Writers, and directors, and artists have always complained. They have always found something about their time to complain about. And that’s never going to change. I don’t think that much has changed in that regard other than if you are trying to make dramas for adults, it is unquestionably harder to do so now than it was even ten years ago.

That feels very true to me. But, other than that, I think it’s really the marketing stuff. And the cost of marketing, and the effort of marketing is entirely about the change that has occurred in our world around us. We live in a fragmented world. There are not three networks; there are 300 channels. There’s the Internet. It’s just very difficult to reach people.

**John:** I would also say that the cost of making movies, it hasn’t necessarily gone up. If you look at Steven Soderbergh’s movies, you look at Magic Mike, that’s not an expensive movie at all. And there are ways to make those movies for not a lot of money. And nobody noticed that that was an inexpensive movie.

Yes, that movie probably cost ten times as much to market as it did to make, but it was successful. And they were able to make that movie and they’re able to make more movies kind of like it on that business plan. I think it’s unfair to say that all movies are too expensive to make.

The challenge and frustration that I think is real is that the studios are only making the very expensive movies because they feel like that’s the only movie that they can justify spending the huge marketing budget on that they know how to do. Will something shift and we’ll find a way to sort of make cheaper movies that don’t have to be marketed the same way and can find an audience? Yes, probably. It will be the next generation of moviemakers will figure out how to do that and that will be great.

**Craig:** And we’ll be dead.

**John:** We’ll be dead.

**Craig:** Next question! [laughs]

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** I’m so loopy because I woke up at 2am LA time to get on a plane. So, you got me at my loopiest.

**John:** That’s nice. I’ve had two beers. I’ve had a beer and a half.

**Craig:** Oh boy! You’ve blown through half your beer budget for 2013.

**John:** It’s nice. A question from Raven. It’s talking about sort of how much you can fit into a scene header. “Okay, so at the beginning of the script I’m writing there’s a dream sequence in which a Vietnam war vet is reliving a traumatic experience, fighting as a tunnel rat in the Cu Chi tunnels of Vietnam in 1967.

“The very first scene begins in a tunnel in 1967. So, right now my scene header reads as follows:

Is that a fair thing to write in a scene heading or is that too much?”

**Craig:** It doesn’t seem like too much. I mean, I suppose you can just say… — If you wanted to be a little impressionistic about it you could say INT. TUNNEL. I mean. The audience is going to, unless there’s a big sign on the tunnel wall that announces the name of the tunnel or the kind of tunnel, they’re just going to see a man in a dirt tunnel. So, you might want to leave that out. Maybe just indicate it in the description. Or, if you’re going to subtitle it, indicate that there’s going to be a subtitle. But that seems reasonable to me.

**John:** Yes. It looks reasonable. You’re not seeing this in front of you on screen, but it looks reasonable.

Here’s what I would say is that always be mindful of, like, what are you telling the reader versus what are you actually telling the viewer. And if it’s something that the viewer needs to know, then you need to actually break that out as something you’re going to put on the screen as a title over to show 1967, or Vietnam. If it’s important that the viewer immediately know specifically where it is, and you’re going to print that on the screen, then give it to us in a title over.

If it’s just important for our understanding of where we are at this moment, or if we’re going back and forth between time periods and you need us to know that, “Okay, now we’re 1967 versus being the present day,” sticking that extra bit of information at the end of the scene header — totally valid — because we’ll get it.

I will say at the very start of your screenplay it tends to be helpful to be, what Craig said, is more impressionistic, where you’re just actually describing what the space is rather than trying to get a lot of specific historical detail or give things a specific name, the Cu Chi tunnel. Because if I don’t know what that is it might stop me if it’s the very first page, because, like, I don’t know what that is. Is that a description of a tunnel? Is that a kind of tunnel? Is that a specific tunnel?

So, being a manmade tunnel might be a better way to describe at the very start of your screenplay.

**Craig:** And it could indicate an interesting way to reveal something. For instance, INT. TUNNEL. That’s it. Just

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:**

Or, “He emerges outside and it’s a firefight.” You know, you can kind of lead the audience to where you want them to go, but if you’re just in a tunnel, that’s all they’re ever going to see is tunnel, so just call it a tunnel.

**John:** Agreed. And what Craig is describing there is, like, really letting the script be the camera throughout your scene and stuff. So, give us the information the way that we would experience it in the theater.

So, if we’re just with this guy running though this dark space, we can be in this dark space. We don’t need to know all the details before the audience would know the details.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Next question comes from Devin in Toronto, Canada. He asks, “What is the industry standard font for outlines, treatments, for series bibles, series documents? Is it okay to use a different font to punch up the headers in these documents?” Devin asks, in Toronto.

**Craig:** It’s Comic Sans.

**John:** Everything should be in Comic Sans from top to bottom.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Bold is great. But I really find, like, bold italics in outline, that’s how you really sell it.

**Craig:** No, I like to use shadow. [laughs]

**John:** Oh, shadow is always good. Oh my god. If you can find an old laser jet printer, or an old Apple LaserWriter, LaserWriter 2 maybe even, if you can get some Zapf Chancery. That’s how to sell it.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know what?

**John:** Sort of calligraphy.

**Craig:** Pull out your Banner Maker Pro…

**John:** That’s good. Some Banner Maker Pro. That’s great.

Here’s what I’ll say, because I’ve actually had to do it this season, and I’ve found that people don’t really care. So, a lot of times these things will be in Courier, which is fine. A lot of times they’ll be in Helvetica or something normal. I, being a former font nerd, and still kind of a font nerd, I used Chaparral Pro which is a great text serif face that people really like a lot. So, I use that for the outlines for Chosen.

No one commented negatively. People seemed to like it. But, whatever you like that’s a good, reasonable choice for a font is fine. And I found that there’s a wide variety of sort of formatting choices for what these documents look like. Sometimes they really do look sort of like scriptments, like sort of the James Cameron scriptments, where it feels like a script is slug lines and scene headers but just no dialogue.

Other times I’ve seen things that are just paragraphs, and paragraphs, and paragraphs.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s entirely up to you. This is the way I tend to do it. Basically if I’m writing up a treatment or an outline, I’ll have sort of a brief summary of the plot, like really brief, a tiny paragraph. Because I’m always thinking, “Okay, I’m going to give you this document. It’s for use. The document is not to be enjoyed, it is to be used. And ideally you, the producer or studio person, is going to use this to help me do my job. So, you’re going to either describe what’s in it to somebody you work with or work for, or you’re going to hand it to them.” So, I give them a little summary that they can use, and then I break out the main characters and do a description of each of the main characters along with a basic concept of what’s wrong with them and maybe what they need.

And then I start a new page of act one. And I do the scenes of act one and I number, sort of not scene by scene, but sort of sequence by sequence. And I like to break them into numbers. So, just number one, and then indent, and a whole paragraph there. Because this way people when they’re talking to you it’s much easier for like, “Okay, on four of act two,” so I’ll start renumbering for act two and I’ll start renumbering for act 3.

Personally, I like Baskerville.

**John:** Yeah. Baskerville is a good font. It’s a good book font.

**Craig:** It’s my font of choice. It’s very Holmesian.

**John:** Yeah. We should actually say here that handing in these documents, it’s controversial, and there’s reasons why it’s controversial. If these are for you own personal use, you’re welcome to make them — you’re welcome to sort of do whatever. But, if someone is asking you to turn this in and they’re not actually paying you to turn those in, that can be a problem. That can be something to be mindful of. And that’s a much bigger topic to get into. But, if you’re being paid to write that document, that’s great.

But if you’re being paid to write the screenplay and you’re writing this extra document before you’re writing a screenplay — or, worse than that, if you’re being asked to write this document before they’re paying you any money, before they’re making a deal for you to write a movie, that’s a real concern. Because you’re doing work for somebody without…you’re creating written material for somebody without payment, which is not good.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, real fast, my feeling on this is if you’re hired to write a screenplay there’s nothing wrong with writing that document, even if specifically you haven’t been paid for a “treatment step” or “outline step,” because in the end it helps everybody get on the same page, so that when you turn in — if you choose to do this. So, when you turn in the script nobody can say, “Whoa, huh?”

“Okay, well, no, here’s the document. We all read it. Now, it’s our problem; it’s not my problem, or your problem.”

If you have not yet been hired to write a screenplay, you may not turn this material in. It is against Writers Guild rules. You are violating our working rules. And the company if they should ask for material like this is violating the MBA. And that is a no-no. We hear it about it more and more. We hear egregious cases where these things are required in order to get employment. That is an absolute violation of our rules. And the more people who do it, the harder they make our job for the rest of us.

**John:** And the good/bad thing which will inevitably happen — and I’m giving it two to three years at the very most — is one of these studio situations will occur where someone has turned in this material for which they were not paid and it will become a copyright trial. And it will be a huge big deal because they submitted a document that was about a movie and the studio went off and made that movie with a different writer, with a different script, and that person will have a copyright claim that will be very awful for everybody involved.

And, hopefully, we can change that business practice before it happens. But I think that trial is going to have to happen.

**Craig:** No question. You know, like you I have been attending a couple of these sort of — they’re formal meetings between some guild members and the studios under the auspices of the Writers Guild meeting with the studios to say, “Look, here are some things that are not going well and we need to fix these.”

And, when it comes to this issue — I have raised this a number of times. And you can see on the other side of the table an absolute real concern. I think that people who run these studios are well aware that this is a time bomb. And they don’t need much convincing at all.

I think that part of what goes on is that this stuff happens away from them, from the people who run the studios. A lot of times it’s the producers who maybe are willing to play a little more fast and loose because, frankly, they need to get it right, at least what they think in their head means right.

But, there is a real fear. The whole business, all of Hollywood, all it is is an intellectual property business. And when you look at our contracts, the companies and their business affairs people are so thorough about making sure that when they pay us they’re buying everything for everywhere for always. That the thought that there’s bits and pieces of material that they don’t control at all, well that’s just horrifying.

So, this is an area where I think we are one of those magical “we’re all in alignment” areas and hopefully it will work out and this will go away, this problem.

**John:** Yes. But, Devin, whatever font you choose, you’re fine.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And I will say that if people want to look at some sample outlines, at johnaugust.com in the library I have the pitch documents and other sort of stuff for several of my movies, for TV shows, so you can see sort of what I did. And if it’s helpful you’re welcome to look through those.

Next question comes from Lori in Jerusalem. A question from Jerusalem.

**Craig:** Jerusalem! Shalom!

**John:** She writes, “My script, Whiplash, received a 9 out 10 on the Black List. And the reviewer said it had four-quadrant appeal.” So, I’m going to stop here. So, this is where, you know, I love Franklin. I’m happy that the Black List exists. This is what gets confusing. So, she’s talking about the Black List, but she’s talking about the service that she submitted to for the Black List. She’s not talking about the annual list of like the best screenplays of all time.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, she submitted her script to this Black List site. It got a 9 out of 10. And it said it had four-quadrant appeal.

“According to Franklin, only 3.8% of uploaded scripts rate a 9 or a 10. And those include some pro scripts. There’s a widespread belief you simply need to write a really good script and the world will beat a path to your door. So, is it true, and can the Black List make it happen? If the Black List can’t make it happen for a 9-rated script, then why not? Is the issue the writer? The Black List? The script? Or the market?

“I thought it might be an interesting case study for the podcast to talk about.”

**Craig:** Well, I don’t know. I think that service that the Black List provides is too new for us to really draw conclusions about its ability to pick winners. There is a difference between a script that generates a lot of positive feedback and a script that anyone wants to buy. It’s just a different deal, because you can really enjoy a script but think to yourself, “No one will go see this.”

You can really enjoy a script and think, “Well, it’s got four-quadrant appeal but I think it’s too expensive to make,” or, “It can only be made with one star, and she’s not doing this sort of thing.” Who knows? There are all sorts of factors involved.

I tend to hue on the side of things that says write a great script and the world will beat a path to your door. If people really like your script then I would presume somebody would reach out at some point and say, “Hey, we either want to option this or buy it, or we have something else that we would like you to write and we’ll pay you for it.”

That seems likely to me, but I want to caution all of you to remember that the only “yes” that exists in Hollywood is money. That’s it. If no one gives you money, it is “no.” So, no matter what people say, no matter what number you aggregate, no matter what nice comments you pull in, if no one gives you money the answer is no.

**John:** Yup. To me the Black List in its new incarnation, and what Franklin is doing here, it’s analogous to sort of what happens with screenwriting competitions. And so the big screenwriting competitions like the Nicholl or the Austin, the ones that actually seem to have some merit to them, winning one of those is great, it’s fantastic, and it will get you some attention. And it could get you started. But most Nicholl scripts don’t sell. Most Austin winners don’t sell.

And a lot of times people win those awards and never really go on to write other things. So, being rated really highly on the Black List, in the paid site Black List, will probably benefit you, but it’s certainly no guarantee of any success. So, we can continue to watch you. We can continue to watch — I’m sure Franklin is running a lot of metrics on sort of what happens the next year of those well-rated and well-reviewed scripts to see how many of them actually payoff for the writers involved.

**Craig:** Yeah. And just to be clear for those of you who are wondering and don’t know what four-quadrant means, the business tends to divide the audience up into male and female, over the age of 25, under the age of 25.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** So, those are the four quadrants.

**John:** There’s a movie I have over at Fox. And someone asked, “Oh, so what kind of movie is this?” And I was like, “It’s a six-quadrant.” [laughs] “I want to make sure this is for everybody. This is for the undead. Everyone who could possibly…like, bring your dog to this movie because it is very much to be that very big broad thing,” because again, this movie I’m trying to make at Fox is not inexpensive.

**Craig:** I heard that your script was only six sextants.

**John:** Oh, that wouldn’t be good.

**Craig:** Sorry. You’re missing one sextant.

**John:** That’s not good at all. So, we need to find how to get that last little seventh sliver in there.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** James Stubenrauch writes…

**Craig:** I’m sorry, James Stupid Hawk?

**John:** Stubenrauch. I’m over German pronouncing it. I bet he pronounces it Stuben-Rauch, or Stuben-Rock, but Stubenrauch sounds better to me.

**Craig:** It shouldn’t be Stoiben-Raw?

**John:** There’s not a “eeh” over the “u,” so I think it’s just a simple “u.”

James writes, “My question is about how to get quality feedback on my work.” I think it dovetails well with this last thing. “Sure, I think my latest script is pretty good, and my mom thinks it’s simply amazing. My little screenwriting interest group in my small town gave it a good review. However, I want professional critiques. It seems there are couple ways to get real feedback.”

So, he has five, and I’ll list them and I want to sort of talk through these. “Number one, move to LA or visit for awhile and try to make contacts with readers.”

**Craig:** Good.

**John:** “Two, pay those people on the Internet who pose as script consultants.”

**Craig:** No! [laughs] He already knows no. He said “posed.” Go ahead.

**John:** Yeah. It has “Umbrage” with like seven exclamation points afterwards. “Number three, enter writing contests, especially ones that provide written feedback, like Blue Cat.”

**Craig:** No.

**John:** “On average these contests charge $30 to $50 per entry, so for $150 I could get five real reviews.”

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No. “Pay the Black List $125 to $175 to get two or three of Franklin Leonard’s readers to review my stuff.”

**Craig:** Possibly.

**John:** Maybe. “Do the Three Page Challenge on that nice Scriptnotes podcast.”

**Craig:** Ah, now you’re talking.

**John:** Now you’re talking. He needs some feedback, but I thought we’d talk through his five things here first. We’ll start with the Three Page Challenge thing. I think it’s lovely that people think it’s going to help them. I think we can offer some general suggestions, but I don’t think anyone is going to sort of get broken out or noticed by this. And we can give you real feedback on those first Three Pages, but that’s about what your writing is like on those first three pages. It’s not really about the quality of your whole script.

And so I want to be realistic about that. I think we could say if you had a great first three pages, you have reason to be really, really excited. If we read your first three pages and we had real concerns, you have some reasons to have real concerns. But we can’t tell you what your script is like or if it’s going to work. We’re just looking at a little photo of you; we’re not seeing the whole person.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s not really the function of it anyway. I mean, I hate to say “you get what you pay for,” but in this case you do.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Really it’s just a gut check to see if you’re on the green or on the fairway or in the rough or still in your car, you know. That’s really all we provide. It’s not going to tell you if your script is any good.

**John:** Yeah. And so the Three Page Challenge is really kind of for everybody else. And so you’re very, very brave to submit it to us, and maybe we’ll love it and that could be great, but it’s really to kind of help everybody else who listens to the podcast and reads along.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, backing up the Black List. $125 to $175. Maybe? I don’t know. I think probably that’s money better spent than one of those paid script consultants.

**Craig:** Yeah, for sure. I mean, of all the things out there, that’s really the only one that I can kind of swallow, you know? I mean, you are — it is being monitored by actual people in the business. So, for instance, our friend from Jerusalem, her script has a 9 out of 10 and a lot of positive feedback. It means that people are noticing and they will be taking a look at it at some point, in some form, whether they read it entirely or they have their assistant read it or somebody.

So, it seems like there’s potential value there at the very least, which is more than I can say for the millions of shysters out there looking to take your money under the heading of “script consultant.”

**John:** Yeah. Quickly, the writing contests like Blue Cat that charge: Look, I think the ones that are worth even the postage for me would be Austin and Nicholl. I don’t know if the other ones are worth anything. Maybe they are and maybe I’m just wrong and people have tremendous success coming out of those. I just don’t think they’re worth the emotional investment, not to mention the money, to submit them.

Obviously not the people who want to be your script consultants. Don’t do that.

And, the last option is move to LA for awhile and try to make contacts with readers. And that’s probably the most difficult of all these for most people, but it’s honestly the way you’re going to get the most real feedback. And my experience has been, personally and also watching all of my assistants who’ve gone through this, is you just — once you’re in a culture of people who are doing this, you’re reading their scripts and they’re reading your scripts. And, you know, your reading their scripts and you’re like, “Oh, wow, this is actually a really good writer; I really like this script.”

And if they’re reading your script and you think it’s good too, you can exchange notes, or help each other out on stuff. Or, if you read their script and it’s just terrible you’re like, “Well, I’m going to really take his or her notes with a grain of salt because I don’t think this person knows what they’re talking about.”

When you’re surrounded by a culture of screenplays, you are going to get better feedback and you’re going to get a better sense of what really is going on and where you sort of fit in this pecking order here.

**Craig:** Yeah. Remember, your job here, your goal, is not to write a script that people like and say nice things about. Your job, and your goal, is to write a movie and to get a movie made. So, all this feedback stuff to me is really over-reinforcing the fetishizing of the document.

And I understand why we fetishize the document. It’s an incredibly hard document to produce. But, it is not the end of the line. At some point you need to start thinking about writing movies. And you’re not going to write movies from your house in your small town. It’s just not going to happen.

We keep saying it over and over, and people keep saying, “Well, what if I just send in $200 and then Blue Cat will give me an award?” Who cares? Remember the last guy who won that Blue Cat award? Do you remember his name?

**John:** [laughs] No.

**Craig:** No. No you don’t. No, nobody knows his name, and nobody cares. That’s the truth. Sorry Blue Cat. Blue Cat! Come on!

**John:** Yeah. Blue. So, there probably are scenarios… — Because we’re writing a transitional document, we’re writing a document that is hopefully going to become a movie, our goal has to always be fixated on trying to make that movie.

If you were really writing a short story that you wanted to win awards with, or you’re trying to write a book, even if you’re writing a book the game is to get the agent, or the editor, or the publisher to say yes to it. So, I think the title of the podcast is like, “Unless there’s money, the answer is no.”

**Craig:** Unless there’s money, the answer is no. Isn’t that terrible? And it’s so unfortunate because there’s thousands and thousands — so many wonderful, creative ways for people to say no to you. And so many of them sound like yes, which is horrifying really to contemplate, but it’s human nature. Nobody really likes saying no to somebody. Nobody wants to be mean. No one wants to see that look reflected back to them.

Certainly any of us who have been asked for feedback and who have said, “I just don’t like this,” have gotten weird — people get angry sometimes. And suddenly you’re in a fight. So, everybody wants to just be polite. But there is really only one yes. And it’s money.

**John:** Yeah.

Our last question of the day comes from Andrew in Philadelphia who writes, “In May of 2012 I graduated from film school in my hometown with a concentration in screenwriting in an undergraduate program. Every day since then I’ve been doing what I’ve done the past four years in school: write. Not wanting to sound arrogant, I know I’m a good writer. I’m good at it because I love it, I’m dedicated; because I’ve been studying and practicing even before college.

“However, because of family and financial obligations I am unable to move to LA right now. This is very frustrating for me because I know I need to be there. There are interesting job opportunities in NYC for which I could commute, but that silver lining gives me some anxiety. But I want some additional advice. What can I do from Philly, aside from writing, to feel like I’m accomplishing something?

“Is it best to continue my day job and write at night? Is it better to get an industry job in New York?”

So, a young graduate in Philadelphia. Craig, your recommendation?

**Craig:** Well, look, if you have financial issues and you need to be working and you need to be where you are, then you need to be working and you need to be where you are and that’s that.

You should write at night, always, if you can. And it sounds like you want to, so that shouldn’t be an issue. Maybe one thing to consider is making a little movie. Easier to do now than ever before.

One thing there are lots of are actors. Philadelphia, by the way — you know a fine actor from Philadelphia: Bradley Cooper.

**John:** Ah-ha. And I hear he’s also a terrific wrestler as someone might say.

**Craig:** [laughs] There was one day Bradley had his arm tightly around me…

**John:** What color were his eyes that day?

**Craig:** Oh, boy, they were blue. God, they were blue! And as I went swimming in his limpid ocean eyes it occurred to me that he was a fine actor from Philadelphia.

Actors are always looking for things to act in. And actors are in the same boat as you are. Most of them aren’t working, and aren’t being asked to act. Forget being paid to act; they aren’t even being allowed to act.

You’re always allowed to write. They’re not even allowed to act. That is very frustrating. So, if you hook up with some programs, and Philadelphia is a big city and they have some great universities and institutions, I suspect…

**John:** Well, and Andrew went to film school in Philadelphia, so he says, so he must know people who he went to film school with.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, get yourself some actors together. Write something that you know you can direct. So, write something that is achievable and small. And make it. Make it with your iPhone, for the love of god. It’s HD.

Make it with whatever you want. Make a little movie. Make a short.

Somehow Rian Johnson managed to make Brick. And, you know, the funny thing is, I don’t even thing he was in LA at the time.

**John:** He was in LA, actually. He went to USC for film school, so I think he did.

**Craig:** Oh, he was, okay. But you don’t need to be. The point is really if you are as good as you say, and you’ve got the goods, and you can make ten, or 20 minutes, or 30 minutes, or who knows, even a full feature, a little small movie, and it’s good, you’re done. You’re good. You win. Do it.

**John:** One of the things, this sort of goes back to my New Year’s resolution. I was talking about sprinting versus marathons. And so this TV pilot, I was actually able to sort of sprint in that I could write it so fast, I could sort of sprint through it. It never sort of got to be a slog because it’s only 60 pages. I’m just sort of zooming through it. It was very quick and easy to do. And TV pilots, at least you can write them in a sprint, and they’re very quick and simple.

A movie is a marathon. A movie is, you know, just a very long process. It’s a long process to write it. Like you always feel like it’s stuck sort of halfway in the middle of it and you’re fighting your way through it, but you get it done. And this musical like doesn’t even compare. It’s like a migration. You’re just traveling across the country in it and you sort of setup camp and setup villages.

What Andrew right now needs to do, and why I think the idea of making a little movie or making a short is crucial, is he needs to sprint. He needs to do some quick little sprints to make sure he’s got his skills up and sort of keep going while he’s earning some money in Philadelphia.

But what he shouldn’t try to do is bog down in the marathon of trying to make — he shouldn’t go on a four-year odyssey to make this movie in Philadelphia. He needs to make some small things and then save up enough money that he can get out to Los Angeles if that’s really where he wants to be. Because my evergreen advice is that the luxury of being 22 years old is that you are great at being broke. You are great at sleeping on floors, and eating Top Ramen three meals a day, and being poor.

And LA is just as good of a city to be poor in as anywhere else. So, you may think like, “Oh, I don’t have enough money to come to LA,” but it may be easier to do it now then to do it five years from now. And if you need to save — if it’s a year you need to save up some money to get out here. Great. Let’s spend that year earning your money, making some little short things, writing as much as you can, but do get out here because otherwise you’re going to find it hard once you get other obligations.

**Craig:** Yeah, man, you’re 22. The one thing you have is energy. Put it to good use. You’re unstoppable and you’re immortal, and unlike me and unlike John you don’t have children, as we’ve said before, devouring your soul on a daily basis. Just sapping your energy and reminding you that you’ve been genetically replaced.

**John:** They’re beautiful little anchors tying you down.

**Craig:** That’s right. And basically just slowly burying you.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Craig, it’s come to that time, but I think we kind of already know what your One Cool Thing is so why don’t you just start.

**Craig:** Ouais. It’s Quebec. So, I was thinking maybe over the holidays I would go to Europe because my kids are old enough now, they’re 11 and 8, and I thought, “Well, you know, they could appreciate now if we went to Paris, or London.”

But, you know, the time change and the getting them back in school, it’s sort of a nightmare. And if we had had the whole time of the vacation to do it, it would have been fine, but we didn’t. We only really had just a week.

And so my wife very smartly zeroed in on Montreal and Quebec City. And, you know, Quebec City in particular really is Europe in North America. It’s great. Beautiful, beautiful place. We had a great time. The people were wonderful.

I got to use my French, which is broken and limited, but still was enough to get by. And most people — in Montreal practically everyone is bilingual. In Quebec, you know, some people are bilingual. Some people sort of speak English the way I speak French.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But it was great. And it was cold. [laughs] And it was really awesome.

**John:** You had about two hours of daylight, didn’t you? Darkness fell really early, didn’t it?

**Craig:** Yeah, it definitely got dark early. But, you know, I like cold places. The whole world — Quebec City just looked like a snow globe. The streets were almost impossibly picturesque. And we ate poutine. I guess that’s specifically my One Cool Thing. You know, poutine is sort of the national snack food of French Canada, and it is French fries with gravy and cheese curds.

And everybody goes, “Oh, gross,” and I think it’s because of the word “curd,” which is a disgusting word. Curd. Not the people, Kurd. Those are lovely people. I mean C-U-R-D. Just something about it sounds nasty.

But really all cheese curds are, they’re just string cheese, you know. When we call it string cheese it’s totally cool. That’s how I got my son to try it. I’m like, “It’s just string cheese in tinier bits.”

But, you know, cheese on fries is a good thing. And then gravy with cheese and fries is spectacular. Obviously not very good for you; don’t eat a lot of it. But, it’s really, really good, particular on a negative 18 degree day.

**John:** I have good friends, Leanne and Matt, who live up in Montreal. And I would highly recommend it to anybody, particularly if you’re in the Northeast anyway; like why are you not going up there for just a lurk? Because it is the quickest European trip you can take, just across the border.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, if you’re in New York or Boston you can drive to Quebec City if you want. It’s great. And we took — to get back and forth between Montreal and Quebec we did the train, which was also awesome. It was great. Everything about it was great. Rave review. I love you, French Canada. And if you’re a fan of maple, then you should go there also, [laughs], because they’ve figured out how to make all foods out of maple.

**John:** Yes. So, my One Cool Thing this week is a tool I found myself having to use a lot this week just sort of randomly called Coffeescript. And Coffeescript is a programming language, kind of. It’s a scripting language but you can actually use it to write a little bit more sophisticated programs.

In my case I had these text documents that I needed to process in a very specific way. And I needed to write routines that could sort of go through there and filter the words and do specific things to them. And what I like about Coffeescript as opposed to other languages, like normal JavaScript, or Perl, or Ruby, or any of these other very talented and good languages, like I’m not going to knock any of those languages… — Coffeescript is so simple and so straightforward; it fits my brain so well that I can go six months without using it and like reteach it to myself in about five minutes.

And there’s something really great to be said about something that is so straightforward that I can willingly just forget it, and forget how to do it, and figure out how to use it again when I need to use it.

So, Coffeescript is available, just Coffeescript.org. And you’ll see sort of how it works. It’s actually a subset of JavaScript that’s just better and uses white space in a different way. And I would highly recommend it to anybody who needs to do a little bit of programming. Or, if you loved programming BASIC on your computer that you grew up with…

**Craig:** I loved that.

**John:** And it’s just the better version of that. It’s like if we’d started making computers and we’d all just taken a big step back and said, “What would be better than BASIC? Oh, we can do this thing called Coffeescript.” And it’s just lovely.

Or, if you loved HyperCard on the Macintosh, you know, the HyperTalk, the programming language. It’s like that in ways that are rewarding. And you can just read it in a very natural way. So, even if you’ve never experienced it before, you just look at the program and go, “Oh, yeah, I get what that does.”

**Craig:** And what are the specific applications that you would want to use Coffeescript for?

**John:** You’d use Coffeescript for things where you needed to process something through. Anything where you might want to use JavaScript. So, you can use it in web pages, and some people do use it in web pages.

It actually converts out one-to-one to JavaScript, so a lot of times if I’m mocking something up for the website or for something else I will write it in Coffeescript and it will pop it out as JavaScript and I can just paste that into something.

**Craig:** That’s actually a coding language in Quebec that is very popular there, and it’s made entirely of maple.

**John:** I bet it’s delicious.

**Craig:** You can eat it! You can eat it. You can put it on your poutine. It doesn’t do anything, [laughs], but it’s really good.

**John:** Yeah, it’s good stuff.

**Craig:** Yes. The word for maple in French is l’érable. What a great word. Well, érable is maple. L’érable is THE maple. I’m on maple again. It’s really, really delicious. Somebody should make a… — You — You! — should make a new programming language.

**John:** Called Maple.

**Craig:** Called Maple.

**John:** There already is one called Maple. I don’t even remember what it is, but it’s like Maple 5. There’s some big computer thing called Maple. And I’ll have Stuart look it up and put a link to it in the show notes.

Which is why we should say, anything talked about today in Scriptnotes including, I don’t know, maybe we’ll put a link to Quebec City and Montreal, and certainly Coffeescript, all of these things will be at the bottom of the podcast. If you listen to it in iTunes, they will be at johnaugust.com/podcast which is where we store the show notes for all of our episodes.

And thank you again for listening everybody.

**Craig:** Thanks everyone. Welcome to 2013. Hey, John, let’s have a great year.

**John:** Let’s have a fantastic year. And one last resolution if I can ask people to do. If you’re a person who listens to the podcast on the website, that’s great, we love you. Thank you for doing that.

If you have iTunes, can you just click “Subscribe” in iTunes so it actually comes through to your thing, because it’s hard for us to keep track of how many people are really listening and sort of what our ratings are if you are just listening to it on the site.

So, if you are listening to this in a browser right now and you have iTunes nearby, just hit “Subscribe” right there in iTunes so it will show up right as we are tracking the metrics for things.

**Craig:** Yeah, because we don’t know if we have — we have somewhere between two and fourteen-billion listeners.

**John:** Roughly in that territory.

**Craig:** Yeah. We finally zeroed into that range.

**John:** Craig, thank you so much. Have a good week.

**Craig:** Thank you, John. See you next week.

**John:** Bye.

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2012/one-step-deals-and-how-to-read-a-script).

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

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

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes, Episode 66, it’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

So, Craig, are you writing right now or are you just doing work on The Hangover? What are you doing during your days?

**Craig:** Right now I’m just, yeah, right now I’m just on The Hangover. So, I am writing, but it’s sort of revising as we go, you know, so every day we start our day with the guys and we put the scene up on its feet and then we make adjustments and changes as we need.

So, I’m sort of doing on-the-set writing these days. But I don’t expect I’m going to do any writing-writing until the end of the year. How about you?

**John:** I’m good. I’m in the middle of doing my pilot for ABC. And it’s been good. It’s nice to sort of be able to buckle down and really get going on something. One thing I hadn’t anticipated, because it’s been a couple years since I’ve done television, is outlines are a lot more extensive now than they used to be.

So, for a one-hour drama they’re asking for an outline that’s like ten or 12 pages long, and it’s really pretty detailed. Like it’s really scene by scene what’s-going-on-in-each-scene, complete with suggestion of what dialogue is. And it’s kind of a pain in the ass to write those things.

But, I will say when you’re actually writing the script, it’s really, really easy, because so much of that thinking has already happened. So you know kind of what the structure of that scene is before you get to it. And so it’s just a matter of fleshing it out and making it really be a scene rather than be suggestions. So, that’s been kind of cool.

**Craig:** Yeah. I put myself through that torture on movies because I find that the feeling of not knowing where you’re going or not knowing what a scene should be is so distressing to me that I would rather the pain of a very thorough outline. So, when I’m outlining feature scripts usually I’ll get up to 25 pages of outlining, scene by scene. I just need to know it. That’s my thing.

**John:** With TV I had anticipated that there would be so much discussion and feedback on the outline stage, and I get why they do it because it’s a lot easier to talk about things as an outline. It’s a lot faster to read the outline. But ultimately on those phone calls at some point you do end up saying, “Well, this will be really good when it’s actually a scene and we’re not talking about one sentence in this paragraph.”

So, you have to balance that out. But on the whole it’s been kind of fun to try it this way.

The other new thing I’m trying this time is I’m writing the whole thing in Fountain. So rather than using Final Draft I’m using this unannounced Fountain screen editor thing that’s really good. It’s not something that we internally are developing — someone else is developing — that’s really good. And just today I was printing out pages for Stuart and I printed it out of Highland. And so it looked great. I made a PDF and printed it.

And so it’s been fun to try new tools for it and see sort of how that all works.

**Craig:** Yeah, I promised myself that the next draft that I write of something that’s on my own, that’s not collaborating with somebody else, I’m going to use Fade In, because I feel the need to branch out, shake things up a little bit.

**John:** Here’s my worry about Fade In, or some other brand new screenwriting software, is that what’s so good about this new app that I’m using is — it has been really stable so far — but if it were to crash and completely die, the file itself is just plain text. Like any text editor can open it. I can open in Highland or whatever. So, I’m less dependent.

I would worry that Fade In or any of these other applications might be using something with a format where if it just completely goes kerplunk, I can’t get the script out of there anymore.

**Craig:** Well, I feel a little safer in as much as I know the guy who created it, so I feel like I could just call up Kent and say, “You have to save this for me.” But, also I have the option of routinely exporting the file to Final Draft, it does that, or to any kind of — it’s a very importable/exportable system.

**John:** Cool.

**Craig:** I’m not too frightened. I’m a little frightened now.

**John:** I wish you good luck with it. Please report back as you get started on it.

**Craig:** I will.

**John:** Yesterday I was listening to a podcast called Systematic with Brett Terpstra and his guest on it was David Wain, the writer from The State and many movies, who also does Childrens Hospital, which is brilliant, which you should check out.

And so I’d heard this before from Rob Corddry when he was talking about Childrens Hospital is the writer/producers, they live on different coasts and they do all of their writing collaboratively in Google Docs. And so they just have a big Google Doc open and they all are typing out simultaneously. And because Google Docs can’t really handle screenplay formatted stuff it’s just sort of a rough jumble. They sort of want to use Fountain but they can’t quite use Fountain yet.

But, as each of them is typing, each of them types in a different color so they can see who is doing what revisions at a time. It’s clever.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, Final Draft and Movie Magic have this fake version of that. One is called CollaboWriter and the other is called, I don’t know, something or another, but they don’t work because basically any normal network setup sort of disallows this kind of back and forth because of firewalls and stuff like that.

Sooner or later someone, I think what will happen is ultimately Final Draft or Movie Magic will offer a cloud-based version of what they do, or you should offer a cloud-based version of what you do. That would then allow full and free collaboration in the screenplay format. That would be awesome.

**John:** Yeah. Brett Terpstra, who runs that podcast but was also a helpful person early on in the development of Fountain, promises that he’s working on something for Google Docs which I think would be fantastic.

**Craig:** Excellent.

**John:** Would be very, very helpful.

**Craig:** Good.

**John:** So, today I thought we would talk about three different things, sort of a hodgepodge. We’d talk about reading scripts, because we’ve talked a lot about writing scripts, but let’s talk about how you read scripts and sort of technology but also best practices for sort of going through and reading scripts.

I thought we’d talk about one-step deals and what a one-step deal means for screenwriters, why studios love them, why screenwriters don’t like them.

And then we would talk about Skyfall and probably get stuck singing the Adele song to each other for a few…

**Craig:** [sings] Skyfall, when it crumbles.

**John:** Such an amazing song. You said it was the third best Bond song.

**Craig:** You’re saying it is the third best?

**John:** I think you said on Twitter that it’s the third best.

**Craig:** I did. I think it is the third best Bond song, yes.

**John:** Okay, well we can discuss and argue that. Let’s get started with reading scripts, because when I first started out in the industry I read a zillion scripts and the first scripts I read were at USC. And USC had a script library. You could go and you could check out two scripts at a time. And scripts at that time were literally physically printed scripts. They were 120 pages. They had card stock covers.

The USC scripts, instead of having brads in them, they had those cool sort of screw together binder things, like there were little posts that went through the thing and held them together really nicely and strong. And it was just such an amazing resource, like, “Wow, we can check out these scripts.” And so I would check out Aliens, and I would check out all of these amazing scripts of movies that I loved. And that was just remarkable.

And now anyone with a computer anywhere in the world has access to many more scripts than they do before. But, people will often tweet me and say, “Oh, what do you use to read scripts?” And I’ll answer, I’ll answer “my iPad” or whatever. But the fact is I don’t read nearly as many scripts now as I used to. And I’m curious whether you still read scripts?

**Craig:** I do. But I, [laughs] — so I read scripts when I’m sent scripts to read. You know, “Would you like to rewrite this?” I’ll read that. Or, “Would you like to work on this?” I’ll read that.

And I will occasionally also read scripts for friends. So, Scott Frank sent me his script for A Walk Among the Tombstones which he is currently prepping to shoot, I think, in the spring.

Then, beyond that, occasionally I’ll read a script from somebody that says, “Hey, can you help me out and tell me what I should do?” But, I don’t read them recreationally because I hate reading screenplays.

**John:** Why is that? Why do you think that is?

**Craig:** Because screenplays aren’t supposed to be read. They’re supposed to be shot. [laughs] So, the problem is, it’s a weird thing: the screenplay is a literary tool to make a non-literary thing. An audio visual work. And so it’s kind of a bummer to read them. And it requires more mental exercise than reading a novel because prose is designed to help paint the picture for you. There is no expectation that there is going to be a movie afterwards. So, it’s more fun to read prose.

Reading scripts is a bit of a slog. And then, of course, the other issue is because so many of the scripts I read I’m reading with a purpose, you know, “What would you do?” “How would you fix this?” that it’s work. And I guess maybe the last thing I would say is because I spend so much time writing them — you know, you spend all day long cooking steak, you don’t want to eat steak for dinner.

**John:** I would agree with you. It’s like I know editors who will spend all day staring at screens cutting a movie and they go home and watch TV. I’m like, “How can you do that? How can you keep staring at screens?”

For me it’s that I can’t turn off that part of my brain that wants to fix what I’m reading. And so if I’m reading a screenplay, unless it’s absolutely perfect, I will be noticing all the things that I would want to change in it. I’ll be making the movie in my head and rewriting the script as I’m reading it which generally isn’t that helpful, or that good.

So, even if I’m reading a script that’s on the Black List that’s really, really good, it’s very hard for me to go into that and not find all the things that I would do differently. It’s just the nature of being in here. The same way I think many professional athletes have a hard time watching sports on TV. You’re used to playing the game, not watching the game.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, when you do read scripts though, Craig, how are you reading them? Are you printing them out? Are you reading them on an iPad? How do you read scripts usually?

**Craig:** Lately I’ve been doing a lot of iPad reading. The bummer about reading the scripts on the iPad — and this is going to sound like such a lame-o complaint, you know. Louis C.K. does this great bit about people complaining that they can’t get internet on their plane. He’s like, “You’re in a chair in the sky.” And so, you know, I feel embarrassed about this, but the iPad is a little heavy, frankly, to read a script on. It starts to be annoying for me.

Now, I ordered the iPad Mini and that thing is awesome. So, maybe it will be more comfortable to read scripts there. But I’ve been doing most of the reading on the iPad. I will read a little bit on my laptop. I don’t print scripts out ever anymore.

**John:** Yeah. I do most of reading — script reading — on the iPad now. I got my mom an iPad Mini for Christmas, and so when she was here for Thanksgiving I gave her the iPad Mini. I gave her the whole tour and talked her through everything. And I hid all the apps on the third page that she would never need to touch and I sort of simplified it as much as I could.

I loaded it full of photos of my daughter so she would have a reason to turn it on, even if she never used it again. But while I had the iPad Mini in the house I did pull up some scripts as PDFs and looked at them, and it’s actually a really good size for reading screenplays. It’s sort of everything I hoped that the Kindle would be able to do, in that it’s just a right good size, except it’s fast and you can look at PDFs and everything looks really good.

And it’s the luxury of screenplays that are 12-point Courier that they’re actually big enough that you can read them nicely and naturally in their normal size. So, I think you’ll enjoy the iPad Mini.

But which application are you using to read them in? Are you just opening them up in mail? Are you going to GoodReader? What are you using for that?

**Craig:** Well, it depends on the format. If I get it in Final Draft then I read it in — I have both your app and the official Final Draft app. I’m not sure which one I’m pointing to right now. If it’s a PDF I usually read it in, usually it’s in GoodReader.

**John:** Yeah, I’ve been sticking with GoodReader. Stu Maschwitz, who also helped develop Fountain, strongly recommends PDF Expert, which I’ve also tried. And it’s been sitting on my iPad for a long time. It just had such a generic icon that I never thought to actually use it. It’s a little bit better for annotations I found.

GoodReader actually works really pretty well, it’s just that it’s really ugly. To me it’s like the Movie Magic screenwriter of PDF readers in that like there are just so many things crammed into every little nook and cranny. It’s like, “Oh, we can add this feature. Let’s put a big button here.” It’s a little bit frustrating to use. So, PDF Expert seems to be a cleaner version of that same kind of thing.

**Craig:** Yeah, I agree. It is ugly. And, in fact, sometimes I’ve sent the script PDFs over to iBooks because that’s actually a nice interface. It’s very clean.

**John:** It is. Yeah. iBooks doesn’t let you annotate the way you might want to annotate, but if you’re just reading a script it’s really good for that.

**Craig:** Yeah, I never annotate.

**John:** Yeah, I don’t really annotate either. I know people who love to do that. I’m just not a big annotator. If I do feel like I need to make changes on a script I do like to print. I like to print my own scripts once before I send something in just so that I can catch the mistakes on paper that I never catch on screen.

I’m a big fan of printing two up on a page. And so you print smaller size, so it’s two — it’s a horizontal page and you’re printing two pages side-by-side. It’s just a way of saving some paper.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s interesting. Oh, by the way, I do the same thing. The only time I print a script out is if it’s my script before I send it in, because you’re right, there’s something about visually looking at each page that you catch errors that you wouldn’t catch on your screen. But when you do the sort of side-by-side version do you also double side print?

**John:** I don’t. I don’t believe in double side print. If I get a script sent from the agency and it’s already bound that way I’m fine with it, but otherwise I won’t double side print. I’ve just never found that useful or helpful.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t do it when I’m printing for editing and corrections, but I don’t mind reading a double… — When I first saw them I was like, “Oh god,” mostly because I just get annoyed by these pointless —

Here comes the umbrage. Umbrage Alert! We should have like a signal, a siren, like drive-time DJs for umbrage.

— I get so frustrated by pointless gestures towards greenness. You know, like, “Oh, we send everything out on double-sided paper now.” Well, you know, paper isn’t really a problem anyway and you sent a guy here in a car. You had a guy drive in his un-smog-checked ’98 Tercel to drop your double-sided script off at my house. Just email it.

It just makes me… — The sanctimony of pointless gestures makes me nuts.

**John:** I agree with you

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. I think the better reason for doing the two-sided is that if you’re carrying a bunch of scripts with you they’re a lot thinner, and so it saves space when you’re shoving ten scripts in your bag. And that is a big advantage to double-sided for me.

**Craig:** True.

**John:** Now, the actual process of reading a script, because most of the scripts I end up reading tend to be for I’m going to be sitting down with this person and I need to be able to tell them what I thought. And so for instance at the Sundance Labs I’m sitting down with these filmmakers, and so I’ve read their scripts and I need to be able to talk with them about sort of the movie they’re trying to make.

And usually in that situation I’m meeting with five filmmakers over the course of a couple different days. And I’ll have read all the scripts like maybe a week ahead of time. And so I find like, well, I need to be able to remember what it is. And so as I first start reading the script, as characters are introduced I will flip back to the title page and I’ll write the character’s names down. And I’ll write the relationships to who they are just so that when I go back to the script I can actually remember “this is who is in the script.” And as I pick up the script again I can feel, “Okay, I can talk myself through this.”

If I have major notes that are about the script overall I tend to write those on the title page. If I have notes of things that come up along the way I fold down the pages and sort of scribble them on the page so I can talk to them about specific things that are happening in scenes.

So, that’s just some guidelines for reading scripts for your friends and reading scripts for people you’re going to need to give notes to.

**Craig:** I have a question for you.

**John:** Please.

**Craig:** And it’s off the beaten path entirely of what you’re saying, but it’s not, it’s related. Have you ever done the Myers-Briggs personality inventory thing?

**John:** Of course I’ve done the Myers-Briggs. Come on! A test that shows me why I am the way that I am? Yes.

**Craig:** [laughs] Now, what did you come out as?

**John:** I think I was an ENTJ.

**Craig:** ENTJ?

**John:** Which at the time I wouldn’t have guessed I was an extrovert, but the last 20 years I’ve become much more extroverted.

**Craig:** Yeah, I wouldn’t, I mean, it’s a funny thing, like, introvert/extrovert. I know this is a side topic. Because I used to qualify myself as an introvert but I think that was really a pose. Frankly, I’m incredibly extroverted. You know, the definition of introvert and extrovert is like: where do you get more jazzed from, interacting with people or being alone? And while I love being along and I enjoy being alone, I definitely get more jazzed being with people.

And the only reason I ask is because you have such a very specific… — Your approach to the world is very process-oriented. You have a specificity of process that is remarkable. Because most people just don’t have, [laughs], they don’t have such a — like the fact that you’ve got literally your folds and everything. And I was just wondering, like, where does that fit into that whole matrix?

**John:** Yeah. I think there is some process in there that comes up. It’s also just a matter, though, an experience of being in the meetings where I didn’t have those kind of notes and stumbling, like, “Argh.” And then you look over and you see Susan Shilliday who has all of these pages folded down and she’s having these great conversations. It’s like, “Oh, I’m going to do what she’s doing.”

So, really it’s observation and copying more than anything else. So, I picked up the meme of how you do those kinds of things. And a lot of what we do as screenwriters, I think, is observing, figuring out how it works, why it works, and then copying it in a way that is useful.

**Craig:** Oh, absolutely. In fact, I was talking about this with Todd Phillips the other day because the two of us are so, I mean, frankly we’re OCD, I think, about screenwriting. And because when we’re making changes on the set, you know, the guys who just come in, we block the scene out, we talk through some dialogue, we want to make some changes. When we make those changes we also change the action lines.

And that’s silly on one level because the guys have already come in and done it. There’s really no point to that. It really is about the dialogue at that point because they’ve already gone through the motions. They know what the motions are. They know where to stand, when to move, when to pick things up, and when to shoot a gun.

But we still fix it because we are obsessive and I actually feel like that level of obsession is important. I feel like if you don’t have it, I don’t know if you can be a good screenwriter. It seems part of the fabric of what we do.

**John:** Yeah. I do understand your point because really once you know what you’re going to do, you’re going to shoot it on film and the script is basically irrelevant at that point.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Like, yes, the editor may see it, but no one is ever really going to notice or care about that, but you will notice and care about that and you want the script to accurately reflect what you shot.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, to the point where we’re fudging things so we don’t spill over onto an A page, because we hate that. It’s just so weird.

**John:** [laughs] Yeah, but I get that, too.

So, for people who aren’t screenwriters who’ve gone through production, when you’re shooting a script you lock the pages. And by locking the pages that means if you need to change stuff you can just print out the new pages and they will slide in. And so page 88 will always be page 88.

But if you add too much to page 88 that it would spill over to page 89, instead of going to page 89 it goes to page 88A. And Craig and Todd do not want that to happen if they can possibly help it. And I completely understand.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s annoying.

**John:** So, you will slightly cheat the margins on some dialogue blocks so that it won’t pop that next eighth of a page.

**Craig:** Oh, and see, and the funny thing is we also, [laughs], part of our obsession is that we refuse to do that. So, then we start, I mean, there have been times where the two of us have looked at each other and said, “You realize we’re now making the script worse because we don’t want an eighth of a page.”

**John:** That’s where you start removing the participle endings on verbs, so that things will shrink back down.

**Craig:** Or you start looking at your writing partner and you say things like, “Do we need this line? You know what, yeah, let’s not make the page break that makes us get rid of a line.” But, I don’t know, anyway, I’m sorry; I’ve taken us off into a crazy direction, but there’s something about the specificity of the way you were describing that just made me think — I’m loopy today, anyway. So, there you are.

**John:** Yeah, on Big Fish it really is actually important because we’re continually updating the script, and so if we do change something in staging I have to immediately change it in the script, and we have to change it in the score because it has to always match exactly because we are doing it again night, after night, after night, and with completely different people. And so theoretically we are creating these two documents, a script and a score, that anyone should be able to take and mount the musical.

And so it has been really strange where, you know, I’m like, “Well, I like the page the way it is, but I do need to change it now because it doesn’t accurately reflect what Edward is doing at that moment.” It’s been really interesting and strange to see how that works.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** And so when we were going through the workshop I was printing new pages all the time and every day we were having to put out revisions for things that were really trivial, like most people in the ensemble would have no idea why we were changing it, but we were changing it because it more accurately reflects what we’re actually doing.

**Craig:** Exactly. Yeah, OCD.

**John:** OCD.

The next thing I want to talk about is sort of an industry thing, which is one-step deals. And so, I can describe one-step deals, do you want to describe one-step deals? I mean, I feel like…

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a short — a quickie description — when we get hired by a studio to write a script they basically hire you to write a draft. And you’re commenced on the draft, you write the draft, you turn the draft in, and that’s called a step.

When I started working, when John started working, traditionally you were hired to do two steps, so that’s two guaranteed steps. You write a draft, you turn it in. They give you notes, you write another draft, you turn it in. And they must pay you for those two drafts.

Then there are optional steps where after those two drafts if they still want you to work on stuff there is pre-negotiated fees and each one of those options is essentially the studio can or cannot engage them. And they are also pending your availability.

What happened about, I would say six years ago it really started to crop up in a big way, was that the studios started doing away with the second guaranteed step. Suddenly they were doing one-step deals where you were hired and you only had one guaranteed step. So, after you turn your first draft in they can say, “Bye. And we’re not paying you for…,” and the second step became optional suddenly.

And the Writers Guild Collective Bargaining Agreement doesn’t guarantee you anything more than a minimum of one step. And so the studios went from this over-scale two-step guarantee down largely to a one-step thing. And that’s where we are today.

**John:** So, I will pretend to be the studio person who is defending or arguing for why one-step deals are a good thing, which is not my actual belief, but I will try to express it.

So, one-step deals are good because if a writer delivers a terrible draft we’re not stuck with that writer for a second draft. And we can move onto a new writer. Or, sometimes we just decide, “You know what, we don’t really want to make this movie so we’re not wasting any more of our money or our time on this project that we don’t even want anymore.” And so it’s a way for us to maximize our development budget by not spending any more for a script than we really want to spend. And maximizing our development time by focusing on projects we really want to make and not the projects that we’ve now lost interest in.

**Craig:** And, you know, that’s a perfectly good argument and I think it actually applies fairly well to writers who make a lot of money. I understand it. Where my rebuttal to you, studio executive guy, would turn on newer writers who are not making a lot of money. By limiting these newer writers to one-step, first of all, you’re not saving that much money because they don’t make that much money, and the second step is less than the first step normally. And also, I should add, that agencies typically add a little extra onto the one-step because it’s only one-step.

So, the amount of money you’re saving is trivial to you and your development budget is $100,000 for the first step and $60,000 for the second step. The $60,000 is not going to change your life. That’s about as cheap as a draft can be in this world.

The bigger problem for you when you limit everything to one-step is this, Mr. Studio Executive: You have ceded all control to your producers. The producer — knowing now that they only have one shot because there’s only one draft that’s going to be turned in and they don’t make money unless the movie gets made — will grind that writer down to a nub. They won’t just write one script. They’ll have to probably write three or four drafts for this producer who is obsessive about polishing this thing to a shine before they turn it in, because they only get one shot.

And while you may say, “Who cares? Not my problem. That’s the writer’s problem,” it is your problem. Because the producer is now overdeveloping this material, likely in a way you wouldn’t even like. So, what you’re getting is an overworked, committee-ized piece of crap. That’s problem number one for you.

Problem number two — and now Mr. Studio Executive I’m going to ask you to do something that you don’t like doing. I’m going to ask you to look into the future and I’m going to ask you to think long term now, not about today or tomorrow even though you’re worried you might not be in your job in a year, think about five or ten years from now. Part of the job of screenwriting is learning how to deal with studio notes. We write a draft, we turn it in. We get studio notes from people like you, sir, and then we engage in a dialogue and hopefully come up with a synthesis that results in a second draft that everybody likes.

If you take that away as a routine part of our job, no one is going to really learn how to do that part of the job very well. There are writers out there who are suffering because your method of employing them doesn’t let them learn how to do the job properly. Who will be the people writing your movies five or ten years from now if all you do is burn through a succession of people, giving them one step and yanking it away?

My argument to you is: stick with one-step deals on people who are making a lot of money per step. I get it. But if you’re dealing with people who are making close to scale, it’s frankly unconscionable. They end up working on so many drafts that they’re far below scale per draft when all is said and done. And they don’t even get a chance to do anything new.

Oh my gosh, I just came up with another problem for you, Mr. Studio Executive. All the writers that are doing one-step deals, because it’s only one step, you know what they’re doing while they’re writing your script? Looking for their next job. So, now you have an employee with divided attention. And you know how you guys have made it really, really hard to get jobs? So while they’re writing your one draft they’re also doing pre-writes for their next potential job.

It’s a big mess.

**John:** So, again, I’m still a studio executive guy. So, here’s what I like about one-step deals. I know that writer is going to work his ass off because he only gets the one shot. I’m sick of writers who are not delivering on the first draft. Well, you know what? They better deliver because otherwise they’re not going to get their second step. So, when I gave these writers second steps, do you know what they would do? They would sort of lollygag. They would take their time because they knew there was more money coming.

Now they don’t know there is more money coming. They know that this is their one shot and they better write a damn good draft or else, tough, hit the road.

Now, listen, there are times where I am going to, you know, we’re going to read the script and like the script may be close — it might not be exactly what we want but we can see what the movie is, and then we’ll obviously go onto the writer’s second step. We do that all the time.

So, for you to say like, “Oh, the producer is grinding him down,” well maybe that’s good, and maybe the person is learning a lot from all that experience of working on the script.

But what you’re talking about, like the writers are going to be looking for their next job? They’re doing that anyway. I get so sick of when I find out writers are reading books for other people, or going to other pitches on stuff, when I know that I have them. They should be writing my movie. So, that’s already happening, Craig.

**Craig:** That’s happening, but not quite under the compressed time scale. I mean, you can’t have it both ways, Mr. Studio Executive. I mean, either writers are working hard on your stuff in a compressed one-step manner, or they’re doing it in the same lollygagging pace as two steps. And if it’s compressed and they’re working really, really hard, then yeah, I do think then going out to find other things is going to impact their lives.

I should also point out that when you say they’re going to work really, really hard to give you a script that you like, what they’re going to do is work really, really hard to give you a script you like. They’re going to deliver the safest, most expected thing possible because they only have one shot.

What I guarantee you they won’t do is surprise you. They certainly won’t exceed your expectations because they can’t afford to. They’re going to have to deliver the safest possible thing. And if that’s what you want, that’s what you want. But I got to tell you: you look at the movies that do well, you’ll never be surprised by anything. You’ll never get that new franchise; you’ll just get the expected old same old, same old.

**John:** You know who I like to work with? I like to work with writer-producers. I like to work with the guys who, some of them came out of TV, they’re people who write but they also produce, because I can talk to them, and they have professionalism. And I can tell them what I need and they will tell me when they’re going to hand it in and it’s going to work.

Those are the people I like to work with. And I don’t know why there aren’t more people like that.

**Craig:** I don’t know why there aren’t more people like that either. I’d like to be that way myself. That’s how I view myself. It’s possible — I’m just thinking about some of the writer-producers I know, that all of them came of age in the era of two-step deals, when they learned how to deal with things. [laughs] And they learned what was real. And they were allowed to fall, and stumble a little bit and get up, because they were trusted. It’s hard to give trust when you don’t have trust.

It’s hard to work in an environment where you’re told ahead of time, “We don’t think that you’re going to make it.” So, if you want to engender trust, and you want to have people that understand how the process works, perhaps let them engage in the process past the point of one mistake, or one failure, or one trip or stumble. Certainly they won’t come back to you.

And when they do succeed other people will be knocking on their door. Why would they answer you and your call when somebody else who has trusted them is saying, “Yeah, we always trusted you. Come stay here.”

**John:** So, I’m going to resume being John August here again. My experience with one-step deals has not been great. I’ve done very, very few of them. And when I took my first one I had sort of heard all the standard warnings. And I was like, “Oh no, it will be fine because I like the people involved; it’s all going to work out great.”

And it didn’t work out great. And what ended up happening, which is I think what happens under most one-step deals, is it’s not really one step. You’re essentially writing, and you’re writing, and you’re writing, and you’re writing to please the person who you’re directly dealing with. And at a certain point you’re like, “Okay, you know, it’s done.”

And they would say, “No, no, but remember, we only get one crack to go into the studio, so let’s just keep working on it, let’s keep working on it.” Like, “Okay, I’ll do a little bit more, I’ll keep working, we’ve got this one step. I want to make you happy.” Because writers, we want to make people happy.

But eventually it comes to this point where it’s like it’s been six months and so I’m saying, and now my agent is on the phone with the producers, and we’re saying, “We have to turn this in.” It essentially becomes a situation where you just never deliver. And you’re pretty confident that the studio has actually kind of already seen it and they’re really sort of getting extra work out of you.

And what’s happened is you have poisoned this relationship that you had with these producers who you liked otherwise, but all your enthusiasm for the project has died because you’re writing to please this phantom studio who you don’t even know what they actually really want.

If I’d been able to hand in that script when I was supposed to hand in that script we could have said like, “You know what, is this the movie that we all want to make? If it’s not, let’s have a conversation and see if there’s another movie that we all want to make.” But because we never actually turn it in, it becomes this mess.

And so that’s my experience as an A-list writer. But it’s that way, I think, kind of for everyone working on these projects. You never deliver.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s the point. I mean, that’s why they do it. They’re trying to game the system. And even in your very accurate impression of a studio executive you’re cutting right to what they’re saying, “We trying to game the system. We’re figuring out a way where we can save money in the expectation of failure,” which is very corporate and classic risk management. And, you know, I don’t begrudge them their risk management, except for this: They’re in the wrong business if they think they can game risk. This is Hollywood. We’re not here to grind out 4% return on investment.

It’s show business and we’re gambling. And we’re gambling to try and find those breakout hits that cost $30 million to make $500 million. Or even we’re gambling on the big budget that’s $200 million that we think is going to make $500 million. This isn’t safe stuff where you’re, I don’t know, you’re pre-selling foreign so you cover your negative costs and the rest is gravy.

Get out of the business if you can’t handle a little bit of risk. And what they do is they try and eliminate risk by saying, “We presume you’ll fail. We don’t like writers anyway. We don’t trust any of you. You’re all lazy, so one step, and we’ll yank it from you. But we won’t really yank it from you because we know that the producer, who we may or may not even like, doesn’t get paid a dime unless this thing gets produced, so they’re going to work you. And we’ll see what we get. And if we like it we like it, and if we don’t we don’t. Really all we’re doing is trying to get a star to sign on, and then a director, and then we have a movie, and then we’ll hire a real writer to do it.”

**John:** Yup. And that rewriter…

**Craig:** It’s a recipe for disaster as far as I’m concerned.

**John:** Yeah, and that rewriter might be the writer-producer or someone else who comes in, like the finisher. And when I hear that discussion I really do think TV showrunners, that that person that the studio trusts to be able to deliver them the thing that they need to deliver. And that’s why I keep coming back, I think we’ve talked about this before: It’s frustrating that there’s not a feature equivalent of like the showrunner training program that the WGA has that teaches TV writers who are about to take over and run their own show sort of how to run your own show, which is this uniquely weird thing.

And I feel like the feature screenwriters who are getting movies into production who are doing that big giant tent pole work, that is a unique special thing, and I think we need to find a way to sort of teach people how to do that job and how to do the best version of that.

**Craig:** Well, this is where I have to kind of be guilty because, you know, Todd Amorde, who is one of our excellent Member Services people at the Writers Guild, has talked to me and to Billy Ray about creating that very thing. And I’ve been sort of after it for years.

And just the past few months I’ve been incredibly busy and I just haven’t had the time, I don’t know. And it’s been a little bit of a struggle to try and figure out how to structure it. So, maybe you and I can do this as a little side task and figure out how to structure a proper screenwriting training program, because I know it’s something the Guild wants to do.

And what I do do is every year…

**John:** You said “dodo.”

**Craig:** I said “dodo?” Yeah, I know. What I [laughs] — You know, this is one of the most human moments from you. It’s so unexpected when you’re immature. I love it. It makes me happy, it does. Because I always feel like I’m the goof, you know.

So, what I do do is once a year I do a basically two-hour seminar on surviving and thriving in development and production as a screenwriter. And it’s really about strategies. It’s not about the writing at all. It’s about dealing with people, notes, process, doing it in such a way that you actually — that your position as the writer improves through the process rather than when it normally degrades.

And that’s been very successful. I’m going to do it again, I think, in March. But you and I should talk about how to do a screenwriting training program.

**John:** It occurs to me that the different thing about the TV showrunners program is it’s really clear, like, “is this person going to be running a show?” and therefore like, “Okay, well then they’re in.” And the litmus test for sort of who-do-you-actually-pick-to-be-as-part-of-this-program is a little bit trickier.

My first thought, and I may reject this thought, is that you should actually just ask the studios, like, “Who do you want to see go through this program?” Because in a weird way they kind of know who they feel like is going to be those writers who they want to sort of go through there. And those are the people they may want — they may already have their eye on, like, “These are the young women and men who we feel are going to be the next batch of writers we’re going to be going to for this production work. And we want these people to go through it.” I don’t know.

**Craig:** It’s not a bad thought. I think that…

**John:** If you got studio buy-in I think it would be helpful.

**Craig:** The other challenge beyond the criteria for who participates is the television showrunner program has certain nuts and bolt stuff that really can be taught. How to hire a staff. How to deal with the fact that writers are now your employees. How do you fire them. How do you deal with assigning tasks to a room. How do you work as a go between. How do you deal with actor deals and casting.

There is so much going on. And for screenwriting there’s a bit less, but sometimes I feel like it’s almost trickier because we don’t have that producing title, typically. And yet I believe that if a screenwriter does her job correct she could be as powerful as, if not more powerful than, the actual producer.

**John:** Yeah. Yeah. The topics are, you know, they are different, because you’re not going through casting. You’re not going through some of the other things that you would normally be going through. But it’s very much — it tends to be more anecdotal. I think you’d have to be bringing in a bunch of other screenwriters to talk through, “These are the scenarios I’ve commonly found. This is how you deal with the situation where the big, the A-list actor has brought you in on the project but the director really doesn’t want you there, and how do you negotiate that?”

Or, “There’s a conflict between the studio and the director and you are supposed to somehow bridge this impossible divide.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s the kind of stuff that you need to know how to deal. And while it can’t be taught I think it can be shared.

**Craig:** Well, you know, that’s a great idea right off the bat for a portion of this training would be “man in the middle.” How do you deal with being — because you are so right. And frankly being able to triangulate yourself is a very powerful thing to do. You become incredibly useful beyond the work that you’re doing. And frankly, I hate to say it, but it’s important. It’s not enough to write well; you need to be indispensable beyond that.

Because a lot of times nobody really knows what good writing is. Not always, but a lot of times. A lot of times what keeps you around, and what keeps you engaged in your primary mission which is to write the best movie you can, is to be indispensable in other ways as well. So, that’s a good idea for a class.

**John:** Great. Well, let’s move on and talk about a very big movie that John Logan wrote called Skyfall, which you just recently saw, and I saw like two weeks ago.

**Craig:** [sings] Let the Skyfall, when it crumbles…

**John:** [sings] Let the Skyfall.

So, I really enjoyed the movie. Sam Mendes directed it. Sam Mendes was supposed to direct Preacher and then he left Preacher to do the Bond movie. I’m like, “Well that’s a giant mistake because the Preacher movie is going to be awesome.” But you know what? The Bond movie was really, really good. I really enjoyed it. Did you enjoy the movie, Craig?

**Craig:** I did enjoy it. I guess I should ask first before I go into it: Are you a — I’m a big Bond fan. I love Bond movies. What about you?

**John:** I’m a big Bond fan, too. And I grew up with, especially the — for whatever reason the Sunday night before school started in the fall there was always a Bond movie on ABC. And so that was really my exposure to Bond was watching the ABC cuts of them.

So, the Spy Who Loved Me is sort of my entryway to it. So, my first Bond movies were the Roger Moore’s but then I did go back through and got all my Sean Connery’s and Lazenby’s. And so I think I’ve seen all of them.

**Craig:** Yeah. As have I. And very typical for guys our age to have started with the Roger Moore and then go backwards to Sean Connery.

I thought that it was a very successful Bond movie. I’ll talk about what I didn’t like, because it’s a smaller portion, and then I’m going to talk about what I really liked.

**John:** And let’s just put a spoiler warning here.

**Craig:** Oh spoilers. Yes.

**John:** We’re going to have some general spoilers here. So, don’t — you can skip ahead if you’ve not seen the movie.

**Craig:** Yeah, I won’t give away too much. I’m just going to say I really enjoyed the character of the villain. It was a bit reminiscent of Sean Bean’s character from GoldenEye, the sort of disgraced former agent come back as a baddie. I did not like his plot. Even for Bond plots it was nonsensical.

I understood his goal. I understood his motivation. I just didn’t understand his method. It was bizarre and it existed solely to service set pieces, which were very good set pieces.

**John:** Yeah. It was the problem of, like, somebody who has a nuclear device and they’re using it to rob a bank. It just doesn’t — the scale of what he was able to do didn’t make sense with what he was actually trying to do. And, granted, that’s actually kind of a trope of the Bond movies overall, but I felt like if he had this personal vendetta he had many better ways to enact his personal vendetta. And we didn’t need — all the set pieces were kind of irrelevant for that.

That said, it was a Bond movie, so you cut it this giant bit of slack because that’s how these movies work.

**Craig:** I agree. I agree. There’s an element of camp to it and you forgive some of the Rube Goldbergian nonsense.

Here’s what I loved about this Bond movie. First, I loved — and maybe primarily — I loved the theme. And actually Bond movies typically are theme-less. This is something that I’ve got to tip my hat to Nolan, because I feel like Christopher Nolan has revived an interest in proper theme in big action movies. And the theme here is articulated by Albert Finney towards the end when he says, “Sometimes the old ways are best.”

And this movie was very much about the old ways and about the old Bond, and the notion that while we could sort of go on and chase the people that exist because of us, like say the Bourne franchise, which is sort of hyper-realistic, we’re not going to. You know what? We’re going to go be ridiculous Bond because that’s what we are. And ridiculous Bond is old school. He himself is dealing with aging issues. M is dealing with aging issues. The entire spirit of MI6 is called is called into question as being antiquated.

You have this new Q who is essentially putting down the entire thing as ridiculous and something that he could do from his bedroom. And so thematically the whole movie held together on a thematic level better than practically any Bond I’ve ever seen.

There were some great retro set pieces. The Komodo Dragon fight was like right out of the ’60s. I loved it. And the last scene where he walks into that classic office with the leather door and Ralph Fiennes now as M — boy, really into spoilers here — and Moneypenny.

And you know what I have to say, [laughs], and again I always feel like I get in trouble by being sexist, I just somehow, I was, like, how brave of them oddly to just embrace and not worry about people going, “Oh, it’s sexist.” Yes, of course, Bond is sexist. It’s a sexist franchise. It’s porn for men without boobies. Sometimes it has boobies.

But, there’s a female secretary that’s hot for him. And there’s a man in stuffy leather office who gives him assignments. And he goes and does it. And I love that. I just thought it was great and I’m very excited for the next one because of that.

**John:** I think the Christopher Nolan Batman movies is a good reference for it, because I think what it did, like the Nolan movies, is it took the irreducible elements of what James Bond is and rearranged them in a way that could make a new movie. And you’re not really aware of it through a lot of it. It just seemed like a really good, like a much better, more competent Bond movie. And then you get to that bizarre fourth act, which really is a fourth act.

The movie kind of should have stopped at London when the villain’s plot was foiled, and then we go onto Scotland and to all this new stuff, and all this back story which doesn’t really exist, in the film canon at least.

And we have this completely different movie that’s happening there and yet it feels kind of right. And we’re burning down the right things. We’ve already destroyed MI6. Now we’re destroying his history. We’re destroying his car. We’re destroying his mother, or his mother figure. We’re introducing Albert Finney who is just some other person who is sort of representing Sean Connery, I think, from the original franchise.

**Craig:** They even thought about casting Sean Connery.

**John:** Yeah, so I just really enjoyed what they were able to do. And it was one of those rare situations where you leave a movie excited for where it puts you next.

**Craig:** Exactly. Exactly. In the way that — by the way, Casino Royale excited me. Because I thought Daniel Craig did such a great job, and that movie was really good. It was a really good Bond movie and I loved the physicality of it and the way that it updated it without losing its connection to old Bond-ness.

And then because of the issues involving MGM, they just weren’t able to capitalize on that wonderful start that Casino Royale had. And I feel like with this one they’re back on track and they’re set up for a great next movie.

And by the way, one other thing I should mention about the canonical issues, there was an interesting essay — and this is total Bond nerd stuff — but there had been this kind of debate. The question is: Is James Bond actually James Bond’s name? Or is that a code name that agents use, and in part would explain why there continually are new James Bonds?

And this movie sort of says, no, no, his name is James Bond. And you just are meant to understand that there are different people playing him.

**John:** Yeah. It’s almost the “no one recognized Bruce Wayne is Batman.”

**Craig:** Right. You just go with it and that’s that.

**John:** That’s part of the premise.

**Craig:** Yeah. I really liked it. And I do think that Skyfall, the theme song, is a really good song. It’s really good. And, you know, the wonderful tradition of great Bond theme songs, and we’d lost it. You know, we had lost it for so long. Bond songs were hits. And this is the first one in forever that’s a real hit.

**John:** So, I taught myself to play it on the piano. And it’s actually very simple, and it goes through the classic sort of it’s in A-minor, it goes through the classic sort of Bond chords in a very smart way to use it. But I did find it actually mashes in really well with For Your Eyes Only. Because For Your Eyes Only goes down to a single note, and if you transpose it so that single note is the [sings] “da-da-da-da,” and you can guild it back out to this.

So, it’s a really great song and it just made me happy for Bond themes again.

**Craig:** Yeah, it was great also in that moment where they pull the Aston Martin out to go back to the classic — or actually I think it was the moment where they blew up the car where you had the classic, [sings classic Bond theme], which I love, you know. And I love the way that Skyfall worked that theme in of the [sings classic Bond theme], that little chromatic thing that they do.

And it’s a great song. And even the lyrics are terrific.

**John:** Yeah. Adele’s, sort of marbles-in-her-mouth sometimes bugs me a little bit, more so than many other songs I sort of felt that, and yet I did kind of love it all the same.

**Craig:** I don’t recognize that she has marble mouth. Give me an example of marble mouth.

**John:** Marble mouth is just so weird. There are some words where it’s like if you didn’t really kind of know what she was saying, it’s like, “What word are you making there?”

**Craig:** Eh, yeah. Well, you know, singers sometimes change vowels to make it sound prettier. But, you know, I just like that Skyfall is where it starts. “Skyfall is where we start. A thousand miles and poles apart.” And just the whole idea of the crumbling down and Skyfall is where we…

**John:** Yeah. It’s the romance of apocalypse, which is great.

So, from that exciting news, we should get to our One Cool Things. I know your One Cool Thing is not actually cool at all, but it’s…

**Craig:** Well, there’s a cool part to it.

**John:** All right, so you go first.

**Craig:** Okay. Well, it’s One Tragic Thing. Don Rhymer died this morning at 3:30am. You know, when you guys listen to the podcast it will be probably a week later.

Don was a screenwriter and television writer. He worked from pretty much the second he landed foot in Los Angeles all up until maybe two months ago when he was just too sick to go on. He’s written — everything he wrote on, sitcoms like Evening Shade; he wrote big huge hit movies like Rio. And he was my friend, he was neighbor, he was my officemate. We shared an office for awhile and then I got the office next to his.

So, even now his office is next to me. Obviously the lights are out and he’s not coming back. And he battled cancer for years. And I’m saying this in part because he was my friend and I loved him and I miss him, and you want to talk about that when somebody that you care for dies. But there’s something instructive about it, too, and something good. And that is that Don lived a great screenwriting life, and if that sounds a little odd all I can say is he took the worst this town can dole out, and it doles out some tough stuff.

I mean, he was knocked around by some of the meanest and most ridiculous in this business, and he never fell down and he kept on coming. And he was the same way when he got cancer. Just indomitable and wouldn’t back down and wouldn’t quit. Nose to the grindstone. A true professional.

And we sometimes feel as if we feel we have the right to be precious about what we do. And I guess we do have that right, but when you have a family, and when you have kids, and a wife, and you need to provide for their future, you also have an obligation to them. And Don never forgot that. And he was a professional — a professional’s professional. And I’d like to think that I could have the kind of career and continue the way he did.

Never once did Don ever say, “This job is beneath me.” Never once did he ever say, “I’m too good to work.” Never once did he question anything. You got the feeling that they couldn’t get rid of Don if they tried. And not that they ever did.

I will miss him greatly, and once I hear from his family I’m sure there will be a charity that they’re going to ask donations to go to in lieu of flowers and that sort of thing. And once I have that information I will get it to you and you can put it online.

And I know he listened to the podcast, too. So, goodbye Don. I’ll miss you.

**John:** I never had a chance to — I think the only time I really had a chance to talk with him was at Christmas parties, and sort of like other sort of social gatherings of screenwriters. And when I found he had cancer, Don started a blog about his cancer treatments called Let’s Radiate Don. And so I’ll put a link up to that because it’s really funny. And you wouldn’t think that going through lots of chemotherapy and different surgeries would be funny, but he managed to make it really funny.

And so over the time he was getting treatment we had several emails back and forth and I just talked about how much I dug what he was doing. And I kept wishing him the best.

**Craig:** Yeah. That blog is sort of an example. I mean, the guy was a writer. And when you’re a writer you will write through anything. It’s your way of processing the world and your way of understanding what’s even happening to you. And I guarantee you that there were days when Don was in pain or nauseated or in despair and he was taking his time in his OCD way, the way you and I are, to edit those posts before sending them out, just to polish them off.

**John:** To find the funny and make sure…

**Craig:** Yeah. And that to me, that’s so honorable. It’s just there’s an honor, I think, in doing this kind of work if you do the work. And he lived that way. And so my hat’s off to him.

**John:** Well, Craig, thank you very much for a good podcast. Sorry to end it on a sad but also kind of hopeful note.

**Craig:** Yeah. And hopefully no one else will die within the next week.

**John:** Yes, that would be a very good thing. So, thanks so much and I will talk to you next week. Bye.

**Craig:** See you next time. Bye.

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2012/the-next-117-pages).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 65 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. This is our post-Thanksgiving episode. Craig, how was your Thanksgiving?

**Craig:** You know, it was great. I had Thanksgiving with my family over at Derek Haas’s house.

**John:** You were right up the street.

**Craig:** Yeah. I was very close to you. Thought about walking over to your house and handing you some turkey, but then I thought, “You know what? No. No. Give the man his privacy.”

**John:** Just this one day you’re not going to come by and harass me.

**Craig:** Just this one time.

**John:** So you had a good group of writers there because you had you and Derek. Any other screenwriters?

**Craig:** Nope. No, it was just us and the kids going crazy. How about over by you?

**John:** We had the Creaseys come over, also screenwriters, and Amy Higgins and Matt Watts, also writers. So, it was a good group. We had a total of 14. I made a turkey and all the trimmings. It was fun.

**Craig:** Excellent!

**John:** It was a good, fun time.

So, Craig, today I thought we would talk about, we’ve done a lot of work the last year on the First Three Pages and talking about sort of what should be in those first three pages, and people have been sending in those things and that’s been terrific. But I kind of want to talk about the next 117 pages, if we can do that, sort of all the stuff we might talk about if we were reading people’s full scripts and sort of the things we would be looking for if we were looking at everything beyond those first three pages, if you’re game for doing that.

**Craig:** Always.

**John:** Always. But first we have a bunch of little questions that have stacked up, so I thought we might burn through those and just do a bit of a sprint. Okay?

**Craig:** Sounds good.

**John:** All right. First, Mike in New Jersey asks, “I was wondering what the protocol for spacing in between sentences is. I’ve been told to use two spaces after each period, but I’ve also been told this doesn’t matter. I was just wondering what you guys would suggest.”

This has come up on Twitter also. It’s a simple answer.

**Craig:** It’s a thing. Well, you know, the whole two space thing came from old typewriters because it looked weird if things weren’t double spaced after the period. It looked like the sentence never ended. But I think, you know, you’re a font nerd. This problem went away with computers, didn’t it?

**John:** This problem went away with proportional-spaced fonts. So, the problem is that mono-spaced fonts, because every character is exactly the same width, the two spaces were helpful in readability when you were typing on a typewriter, it had like every character the exact same width. So, double spacing after the period was a standard thing you would do.

My belief is that if you’re still typing in a mono-spaced font for a screenplay, like Courier, it’s nice to do the two spaces. But I don’t think it’s a must in the mono-spaced font anymore. So, if you choose to use two spaces in a mono-spaced font, great, like Courier. But if you’re using any other font, any other sort of normal font, stop doing the two spaces.

**Craig:** Yeah, I grew up on two spaces because I learned to type on actual typewriters, which obviously don’t exist anymore. However, somewhere I would say about six years ago I made the jump to one space because I started reading a lot of scripts that were in one space, obviously still in Courier, and they just looked better to me. And I wasn’t having a problem following where the sentence breaks were.

It was a very difficult thing to break myself of because I had become so used to the double space after the period. But, I did it. And now I am a single space aficionado.

**John:** One thing which is interesting that’s happened with the advent of the web is HTML by default sort of sucks white space down to a single space, so if you double space on a web page it is going to break that down to a single space regardless. So, I think people are a little bit less mindful of it, because when you’re typing into some web forms and things like that it all just does kind of go away, and you don’t really notice the difference anymore.

If you are doing a script and like maybe you started writing with a period and two spaces, and like your writing partner does space/one period, it’s worth it to go through and fix all of those things because it’s going to be weird if you’re flipping back and forth. Your friend there is to do a find and replace. So, don’t just search for a space, search for a period-space and go through and swap all those out. Or search for a period-space-space, and substitute those in for a period-space. There are ways to do it so you can get back to sanity.

**Craig:** Yeah. I remember going though this. The issue with the period-space is that if you had something like Mr. Smith it would become Mr. space-space Smith.

**John:** Yeah. So what you can do in those situations, if you really want to geek out on it, is search for R-period-space, and change that to something different. Like change that to like four asterisks in a row or something. And then do all of your other things, and then remember at the end switch four asterisks back to R-period-space.

**Craig:** Oh, nice. Love it. You know, it seems like the sort of thing that you would write an app for. [laughs]

**John:** There is actually some talk of some script cleaning apps down in the future, because what we do in Fountain which is the plain text screenwriting language, it’s very easy to build those kind of utilities because you’re just dealing with plain text. And so it’s very simple for us to go through and clean up that kind of stuff.

**Craig:** I love it. Great.

**John:** Question number two. Joseph in LA asks, “With all the contests and sites that technology has made accessible, like the Black List, or tracking boards, do you see yourself shifting your views in whether living in LA and working in the industry is really that vital to an aspiring screenwriter’s career? There have been some tangible results with Kremer signing to CAA off the Black List, Ashleigh Powell who sold a script to Warner and recently gained reps off the TrackingB Contest,” a site I never heard of.

Joseph asks, “I live here in LA, I grew up here, went to college here, but I’m considering moving just to live somewhere else for awhile. But I’m fearful that doing so would mean giving up on Hollywood. What do you guys think?”

So, there’s some valid points to this in that there certainly are people who are getting attention from Hollywood not living here, so like through the Black List or through other places they’re getting noticed to some degree here and they’re getting stuff started.

I’d be curious if you followed up on these people and sort of how they’re going in their careers, are they ultimately moving here? I kind of think a lot of them probably are, for a couple reasons. You are going to be taking a zillion meetings starting off. And all those meetings with people are a lot easier to schedule and easier to manage if you’re living here in town.

I would also say you are looking at the results of these — the two people you’ve cited here — people who signed based on success on these boards or these sites, but most people who have success didn’t go through these sites. They went through sort of more conventional ways in which they were interning at places and they swapped scripts with other assistants and they did all the normal stuff.

You’re not hearing those things, you’re not noticing those breakout stories because they’re just so common. You’re hearing these stories because they’re so uncommon I would also say.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** A third point that Joseph actually brings up in his question which I’m going to summarize out is: you don’t see this happening in TV. And I think the reason you don’t see it happening in TV is that TV is staffed by going into rooms, and meeting with people, and TV is written by people in rooms.

Many feature writers now have both TV lives as well. That’s very hard to start or run from any place other than Los Angeles. Rob Thomas, who is starting to do it now from Austin, which is great, but Rob Thomas has run a lot of TV shows. Starting out, you’re never going to be able to do that.

**Craig:** All good points, yes. Certainly if you do manage to succeed with one of these gateway services you’re going to end up here anyway no matter what.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, the real question is: Do I have to move to LA if I haven’t yet made it? Because we, you and I, always say that part of making it, part of the process of making it, is being where it’s made. So, we’re suggesting to people, yeah, you should be in Los Angeles if you want to be a screenwriter, a professional screenwriter, but aren’t yet one.

And even in the case that he cited, I think the guy who got his script going off of the Black List I think was here anyway. He was working as an intern for the Black List at some point even. But, you know, these things have happened before without these services. Diablo Cody managed to get her start from afar and then came here. There have been people who have done it. Andrew Kevin Walker was in New York. But, yeah, I mean, they’re kind of few and far between. And, frankly, I don’t think the business is particularly interested in these kind of aggregators as their quality control.

I think they’re pretty happy with the quality control they have. Sometimes these things do pop through, but look at Amazon, frankly. If you want to talk about probability and odds and all the rest of it, god knows how many scripts have gone through Amazon. Well how many have come out? Any?

**John:** Zero.

**Craig:** One?

**John:** Not that we know of; not one has gotten made.

**Craig:** I think that what happens is people — people keep asking this question because they don’t like the answer we give. But that answer remains. We are humans. This is a human business like all businesses. If you want to work in technology you should be in Silicon Valley. It’s technology, the stuff that makes it possible to live anywhere and work from anywhere, and yet still they want you in Silicon Valley. What does that tell you?

Ultimately these things are managed face-to-face through human contact. Even having meetings on the telephone is deleterious to the quality of the meeting. So, yeah, sorry; move to LA.

**John:** Yeah. Sometimes, every once and awhile, like lightning will strike somebody sort of out of the clear blue sky, and that’s why it’s a phrase, “out of the clear blue sky.” Well, lightning struck that person and it’s just remarkable that lightning struck them because it wasn’t even like a big thunderstorm happening.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But most of the time people who are struck by lightning, it’s because they were out in a thunderstorm. And so if you want to get struck by lightning I would say go to where there are a lot of thunderstorms, and that tends to be Los Angeles. To a smaller degree, New York. And to a much smaller degree, Austin.

That’s just sort of how it’s working these days.

**Craig:** Yeah, if the phrase “the exception that proved the rule” meant what everybody thinks it meant, then this is where we would use it. [laughs] Because, you know, everyone thinks “the exception that proves the rule” means that…

**John:** No, the exception tests the rule.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes. You should put a link up to what “the exception that proves the rule” actually means.

**John:** Stuart, find a link.

All right, Mark Andre in Victoriaville, Canada writes, and he writes in sort of the kind of English that is clearly a person whose first language is not English, so I’m going to sort of translate it from English-to-English so it’s more clear. He writes, “You talk about writing out numbers on your website, but I didn’t find my answer. My question is, say there’s an address on a door. Can I just use the numerals, like 1, 2, 3, or do I need to write out One Hundred and Twenty Three?”

**Craig:** Oh, god, no. 123 is fine for addressees. Sure. Even if it’s 2 Elm Street I would put the number for an address.

**John:** Yeah. So, let’s talk about numbers in writing and the special case of numbers in dialogue. So, generally numbers in writing, most of the sort of journalistic guide for it and what you’ll often really find in books, too, is numbers less than ten you write out the word. Numbers greater than ten you’re more likely to use the numbers for it. And that also applies for scene description and action that you write in your screenplays.

I’ve often said though in dialogue in screenplays I strongly suggest you consider writing out the whole number, because you just don’t know how an actor is going to say some words. And sometimes you really want them to say something a certain way. You want them to say “one-twelve” rather than “one-hundred and twelve.” And there’s a real reason why you may want them to do that. So, write it all out if it’s in dialogue, most cases.

**Craig:** I totally agree. I remember — it’s a great rule of thumb — writing things out in dialogue the way you want them to be said. And I learned that lesson on my very first script. We did a table reading, and at table readings they will bring the actors they’ve cast, but usually they haven’t cast all the parts, typically the little ones. And so they just get actors to fill in that day.

**John:** The day players.

**Craig:** And there was a line in it and it was — the character I think was supposed to be the head of NASA. And he was saying something like, “You’re going to be through space at 900 miles per hour.” And what we had written in the script was “900 mph.” And the actor got to that line and said, “You’re going to be rocketing through space at 900 mmph.”

**John:** Ha ha.

**Craig:** And I sat back and I thought, “Oh god, he’s so stupid, and yet it’s kind of my fault.” [laughs] It’s kind of my fault. So, a good rule of thumb: When you are writing dialogue write out everything, unless it’s like some crazy long number. Write it out.

**John:** So, in your example, did you mean for him to say “M-P-H,” or did you mean for him to say “miles per hour?”

**Craig:** I meant for him to say “miles per hour.” Or, I mean, even if he had said, “MPH,” that would have been so weird because nobody ever says, like, “60 M-P-H.” So, I just assumed that it would say, when he would get to “60 mph” he would say, “60 miles per hour.” Totally wrong assumption, the kind of assumption that an idiot makes when he hasn’t written a screenplay before.

And it was a good — I never could have seen “mmph” coming. That’s just dumb. But then again, you know, it happens and the more specific you write things out the better. Because you’re right, “124,” “one hundred twenty four,” “one twenty four,” all different ways.

Plus, frankly, it’s cheating on length.

**John:** It’s going to take longer to say it.

**Craig:** You know, every extra word is length.

**John:** All right. Our next question comes from Adam who writes, “I’m an editor by day, cutting short interviews with stars, directors, and writers for new movies for a cable network. In the last two weeks I’ve done this for two very high profile studio movies which were based on novels. In both cases the author of the novel says in his interview that he was brought on to rewrite the screenplay before production, but was not given credit as a screenwriter because of the WGA.

“Also in both cases the author implied that he felt he deserved credit. This seems unfair for two reasons. One, the novelist did some amount of screenwriting and he’s not getting any credit for it. But more importantly, two, the credited screenwriter’s potential future employers are led to believe that he wrote this movie all by himself, which he did not.” Our thoughts?

This is one of those frustrating things where you don’t know what the specific circumstances were. You don’t know sort of how much this author really did. Whether this author had it in his contract that he or she got to go back and tweak things because of the nature of it. And I’m not trying to slam on Nicholas Sparks, but this feels sort of Nicholas Sparks-y.

You don’t know what the actual situation was. I can talk to you about, Craig can even talk more knowledgeably about it, is that the credits on a movie are determined by the WGA based on who really wrote the movie. And there’s a whole process for that. And so it’s not about excluding the author. It’s about who really wrote the movie and wrote the majority of the movie that we see up on screen.

**Craig:** Yeah. First thing to point out is authors always have their name on the movie. They get a “Based on the novel by.” So, that’s a source material credit and that’s something that the WGA has agreed to with the studios — that’s within the studio’s discretion. And I cannot think of any case where, I mean, even the worst deal that a novelist makes for the movie rights to his or her novel will include the right to be acknowledged for the source material.

So, their name is on the movie. Their book exists in the world. It’s no secret that the movie was based on a novel.

What is important to understand is that all “Screenplay by” or “Written by” in terms of the screenplay means is the screenplay was written by somebody. So, if I come along and I write a screenplay of say The Shining, “Written by Craig Mazin” just means the screenplay of The Shining was written by Craig Mazin. It’s not casting any aspersions on the author of The Shining who will, of course, get credit, “Based on the novel by Stephen King.”

If Stephen King should come on after me and rewrite me, the Guild asks the question, “Did the amount of work they did on the screenplay rise to the test of authorship?” We don’t always get it right. I have to tell you, I think that given the evolution of the rules that has occurred over the last few years we’re getting it right more often than we used to.

But, frankly, it is not at all unfair. Sometimes people come in and do some rewriting and frankly they simply don’t do the kind of substantial rewriting that would rise to the test of authorship. Our credits are unique; they are not employment credits.

Some people say, “Well every writer should have a credit on the movie because, you know, the craft service guy has his name on the movie.” Yes, that’s true, but the craft service guy’s credit just means that he was employed as a craft service guy. Our credits as “Written by,” it implies authorship and it’s different. It’s simply in a different category. That’s why our credit confers things like residuals and separated rights. And the credit for craft services does not.

So, that part, I think, I can see why maybe it would rub you wrong. I mean, the fact that the authors are complaining just means that they’re authors because everyone thinks that they deserve credit on everything, of course. That’s part of our birthright as writers.

Your second point is not valid…

**John:** No.

**Craig:** …and here’s why. You are concerned that the industry won’t know who did what. They always know. It’s the funniest thing. The studios and the agencies know who did work on the movie. They know who impacted the movie. And when the credits don’t reflect that, they don’t forget, in fact, they seem to know it even more in a weird way.

You will hear phrases like, “Well, they weren’t credited but they did a ton of work.” Nothing escapes anyone. I hear this all the time. I hear it from studio executives who will — sometimes studio executives will say the credits were just wrong. This person did it. And they all talk to each other. And every time a writer goes in for a job the studio will call other studios where they worked to hear how it went. There are lists of writers who have recently succeeded and writers who have recently failed. And success and failure in the studio context has nothing to do with who actually got credit.

It has everything to do with who made them happy.

**John:** Yup. Definitely. One last point about the original authors and determining credit is if these situations did go to an arbitration, those arbitrations are done anonymously. They’re anonymously in two different ways. That is, the people who are the arbiters who are figuring out who deserves credits, none of them know each other’s names. None of the people who are submitted material know who those arbiters are.

And, likewise, we don’t get the names of who the writers were on the project.

**Craig:** Well, that is true, however, the writer does submit a statement, and in that statement they can identify themselves as… — Well, I don’t know. It’s an interesting question. Can you identify yourself as the author of the source material? They’ll probably disallow that because it would make you not anonymous.

**John:** The only reason why I know why it can happen, the author can identify himself, is that I went through a really strange arbitration where I was an arbiter. And so I’m going to talk about this in such a general way that no one will ever know which one I’m talking about. This isn’t a movie I worked on; this was where I was just volunteering to serve as an arbiter. And the original person who wrote the book was Writer B and was able to explain that he was Writer B.

**Craig:** Mm, there you go.

**John:** And the only reason it came up was there were notes — in addition to the actual book that he or she had written, there were additional notes that became material; it became a whole issue about sort of when he was actually employed as a writer in the movie. It was a mess like these things often can be.

But, being the original novelist doesn’t give you extra bonus super powers in this thing. It’s about who wrote the screenplay and who wrote the bulk of the screenplay that we’re seeing. And Craig’s original point of like, you wrote the book, that book has your name on it. And because you wrote the book you have a credit saying, “Based on this book,” and that’s a large part of it.

So, those are some quick questions. I thought we would spend the rest of the time talking about sort of what we’ve learned from the Three Page Challenge up to this point. So, we’ve gotten more than 500 entries to the Three Page Challenge which is just crazy. And those are like actual real ones that people put in the right boilerplate and they submitted stuff properly. And Stuart has read all of those which is nuts.

Craig and I, we’ve done maybe 30 on the show, but Stuart has read about 500 of them. So, Stuart did a great post on the blog this week. I don’t know if you saw it, Craig, but where he sort of went though and talked about the things he’s learned from reading these 500 scripts.

**Craig:** I didn’t see that. I’m going to read it.

**John:** You can read it right now. I’m going to give a little summary here, but you can take a look at it if you want to.

**Craig:** Calling it up.

**John:** So, some common trends he noticed was floweriness, which is — what we often talk about when we read the samples — the sort of more novel writing than screenwriting, where people will use poetic language to describe things which makes you think — it’s ambiguous sometimes. And ambiguity is wonderful for poems; it’s not a good choice for screenplays.

He talked about clumping, and clumping is the word he was using to describe when you’re reading down the page and suddenly you can see like, “Oh my god, that’s a really big block of text there and I don’t know if I want to read it.” And so, you know, make the page feel like you want the movie to feel and don’t give us those giant chunks of text that we’re going to be scared to read, because you know what? We might skip them.

He found most of the formatting was actually pretty good, and actually I would agree; most of the ones we’ve read have been properly formatted in a general sense. One thing he notices that I hadn’t noticed is that a lot of people are uppercasing names every time that character appears rather than just the first time they appear in the script. So, that’s no good.

The reason why in feature screenplays you use uppercase on the first time you mention a character’s name is that it makes it really simple to flip through the script and figure out which scene a character first appears in. If you do it every time, or every scene the character appears it just becomes soup; we can’t tell when a character started appearing. So, that’s a useful thing. It lets us know that this is the moment where the character is first appearing in the script.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** The other things which should get uppercased — sounds, like important sounds; really important elements that you really need to draw the reader’s attention to them. And, so, you use uppercase judiciously when you really need to attract the reader’s attention to something.

People have different personal styles. Some people use a lot more uppercase than I like to use. Some people will also use bold, and italics, and five asterisks, and a lot of explanation points. That’s not my style, but this doesn’t mean — there are some very successful writers who do that kind of thing. But uppercasing is pretty consistent, so do that.

One thing Stuart pointed out which I hadn’t noticed but I think is a good thing to notice, the first time you mention a character on the first character introduction, give us their age. Do those little parentheses and give us their age, because sometimes it can be ambiguous when you say someone has salt-and-pepper hair. It’s like, “Well, does that mean he’s like a prematurely gray twenty-something or is he a 60-year-old who is looking really good?”

An age is helpful. And you don’t have to give us an exact age. It’s fine to give us, like, “50s.” But it just gives us a sense of who this person is.

Vary your character names. And this I did notice in one of the scripts that we went through on the Three Page Challenge.

**Craig:** I remember that one, yeah.

**John:** And there were two characters with almost exactly the same name. So, every time you saw a dialogue header, a character dialogue header for them, like, “Which one is this? Which one is this?” Don’t do that to us.

You know, you have 26 letters in the alphabet. You’re not going to have 26 major characters in your script, so why don’t you just pick one letter for each character and try not to duplicate if you can possibly help it?

Use descriptive names for minor characters rather than Guard #1. Guard #1 doesn’t help you at all. It doesn’t help you as a reader. It doesn’t help you as a director who’s thinking about how to cast this role. So, if you say like, Lanky Guard or Chubby Guard or pretty much any adjective Guard is going to be more helpful than Guard #1. So, those were things Stuart pointed out.

**Craig:** Really good observations. Yeah.

**John:** The rest of the post we’ll put a link to it. He also, along with our friend Nima, did sort of a meta analysis of all the pages. So, they put it through a little processor and they’re going to have more results on some other stuff they discovered.

One of his first hypotheses was that people weren’t using enough white space on the page. That’s probably not actually true. His metric for it was he was comparing the first three pages of what got sent through to us versus the first three pages of the Black List winners of the last couple years. And the white space is actually more on our samples than it was on the Black List.

**Craig:** Interesting.

**John:** So, his hypothesis is flawed.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, you don’t want to hammer people with big chunks, but it’s funny — good writing solves almost everything.

**John:** It does, yeah.

**Craig:** Good writing will solve all of your formatting issues and mislabeled uppercase things. But, these were all really good tips. Really simple things. You know me, I’m not big on rules and things, but there are some simple rules that we all follow, like capitalizing a character the first time we see them and stuff like this. I think these are all very good simple, practical things to consider as we go through, makes it easier for you guys to get past Stuart.

Although, I have to say, he spelled “legalese” like “beagle.” It’s L-E-A…hmm.

**John:** Oh, did he do that? Oh, Stuart.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s actually kind of adorable. [laughs]

**John:** Aw.

**Craig:** Well, because it does remind me of a beagle. I’m sorry, I’m so ADD.

**John:** You’re picturing a beagle with a law degree and briefcase, aren’t you?

**Craig:** I really liked it. This is a very well-written article that he did here. This is a very well-written sort of discussion. This should be sort of almost required reading.

God, it’s amazing. Honestly, John, I feel like… — I’m going to tell you something. I went and I lectured at UNLV when I was in Las Vegas shooting on The Hangover. And the professor asked me upfront, “Where did you go to film school?” And I said I didn’t. And he was like, “Oh.” [laughs]

And, you know, I just feel like if we do this right, and by “we” I mean just in general, people in the business who give back through these kinds of things — podcasts, and blogs, and essays. I just feel like eventually these film schools are going to be in real trouble.

Because I look at a thing like this and I think this is a free lecture that people currently pay a lot of money for except now they don’t have to because it’s right here. I mean, Stuart kind of just did a little master class on very simple presentational guidelines.

**John:** I think we could be a very good substitute for seminar, or for sort of one of those little three-week intensives. What we can’t do that a film school can do is give you a class full of other people aspiring to do exactly what you’re aspiring to do.

**Craig:** True. That we cannot.

**John:** And that’s what I got out of film school more than anything. Like, you know, I’ve talked about it before. The Stark Program that I went through, there’s only 25 people a year. And those people, like, I fought with them and saw movies with them and shot their movies. It was crazy, and horrible, and wonderful, but I owe them my career. And so that’s the thing you get out of a film program or being in NASA or wherever else, you’re surrounded by a bunch of people who are trying to do what you’re trying to do.

And that’s the best of film school.

**Craig:** Hmm. We’ve got to figure out how to do that.

**John:** Yeah. That’s tough though.

Moving on with sort of what we learned from the Three Page Challenge, we had a question from Matt Price who wrote, “I’ve noticed one more than one occasion you guys have said, in regards to Three Page Challenge script, ‘I know where this script is going,’ as if this was a compliment. Other times you’ve criticized a script with, ‘I don’t know what this script is about.’ But, three pages in, isn’t it a good thing that we don’t know where this script is going? Shouldn’t the story be surprising? I’m sure I’ve misunderstood what you guys mean when you say these things. Can you clarify that critique?”

**Craig:** Huh. Well, I’m trying to remember my frame of mind when I said it. I think there are times where you know where a story is going and it’s not a compliment at all because it just seems like a very predictable road story we’ve seen before, and that’s no good.

Sometimes I know where a story is going but I’m okay with it because I can tell that it’s the kind of story where the plot is less important than the characters and their journey, and the theme, and the details. Some wonderful movies are centered around incredibly cliché plots. But that’s okay because it’s not about the plot, you know?

I mean, look, let’s take As Good as It Gets. Guy meets girl; guy loses girl; guy gets girl. I mean, it ends with the two of them together and he is the most improbable character for that. It’s kind of a cliché romantic comedy in that regard plot-wise. They go on a road trip in the middle for god’s sakes.

But, it’s how they got there and the details along the way that were wonderful, so frankly the answer is sometimes it’s an insult, and sometimes it’s not a compliment, it’s just an okay thing.

**John:** I think when I say that phrase — and I’m sure I have said it on multiple occasions — I generally mean I don’t know what kind of movie this is. Like, I’m not clear quite what the genre of this movie is. I’m not clear of who the characters are or how I’m supposed to feel about this movie. I’m not clear if this is a comedy or a drama. I’m not sure what your world of this movie is.

Think back to my movies. Like Go is a movie that goes in a thousand different places. It should be very surprising sort of what happens, but I think in those first three pages you sort of know where the world of this movie is and that grocery store, which is not where we’re going to center most of the action, you realize like, “Okay, it’s about these kinds of characters, these young people who say these kinds of things, who are ambitious in this sort of narrow and weird kind of way.” So, it’s like you get what kind of movie this is and how it’s going to feel.

And when I’ve said that about three page scripts, that I don’t know where this movie is going, it’s because I’m not sure what to expect when I flip the page again. And that’s not the right kind of feeling.

**Craig:** I agree with you on that. And it’s funny — I was watching Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels last night. It was on and I really like that movie. And that movie is designed in such a way specifically to prevent you from seeing what comes next. It’s a puzzle box of a movie that plays tricks constantly because it’s part of its charm, it’s part of its intention is to continually confuse the plot and send it weird ways.

But there’s no question about what kind of movie it is. And if you were to read the first three pages you would get it. It’s a stylized kind of criminal/heisty movie in the general Tarantino vein. And you’d say, “Okay, I’d like to see where this is going. It seems like it’s going to turn into kind of a criminal farce,” which is what it is.

Sometimes we read pages and we think not so much “we don’t know where this is going” but rather “it can’t go anywhere that’s interesting.” Because we’re looking at the seed and we’re saying, “Based on this seed the plant is going to be a weird looking plant that isn’t a plant.”

**John:** Yeah. If we read those first three pages and they’re just really flat, and it’s generic, and there’s nothing that sparks us about those first three pages, when we say, like, “I don’t know where this is going,” it’s like it’s really a nice shorthand for like “I don’t really kind of care where this goes next because I’m not interested in it, or I’m not intrigued by anything I’ve seen so far.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, let’s talk about the “what happens next” and let’s talk about the next 117 pages frankly of these scripts. I think we picked the Three Page Challenges because you had actually done something like that on Done Deal Pro before, hadn’t you?

**Craig:** Yeah. I started doing, I think I called them Four Pages or Five Pages. I can’t remember how many. But I just had people start to post these things. And they didn’t have to be the first. They could be anywhere; I was allowing them to even take them from the middle of the movie if they felt like it. And then I would just sort of go through.

And I did it in part because I wanted people to believe that much could be gleaned from that. I think that there is a natural writerly narcissism that says, “Well you can’t know if I can write or not based on two or three pages.” Yeah I can. For sure I can. I think anyone can, frankly; any reader really can.

And I wanted to be able to encourage people that deserved encouragement. And also sort of just reality-check people that deserve reality checking. And, in fact, there was one guy — only one — who put up three pages that I thought were so good that I wanted to read the rest of the script. And I read it and it was really good and I got him a manager. And I think he’s actually working now.

**John:** That’s really nice.

**Craig:** Look what I did! His name is Adam Barker. Really, really good…

**John:** His name is David Benioff.

**Craig:** …it was a really interesting few pages and it was just evident from those pages that he knew how to write. And when I read the script I talked with him at length about it because the script wasn’t — it needed work, it needed help, it needed love, but it was also — it needed the kind of work, help, and love that I see from anybody. When Scott Frank gives me a script and says, “What’s wrong with this scene?” It’s the same thing.

The difference between a writer giving you something and saying, “Why isn’t this working?” and a not writer giving you something and saying, “Why isn’t this working?” Well, one of these is a cake that you baked a little bit too long and one of these is just a bowl full of ingredients that are poorly mixed together.

**John:** I want to talk about why we do the Three Page Challenge rather than reading like 120 pages. There’s a couple reasons. First off, you and I just theoretically wouldn’t have the time to read 120 pages. And it’s just a giant commitment. And it really is a commitment in the way that like dating someone is a commitment versus having a little, you know, kiss in the hallway. And these three pages are just like that kiss in the hallway. And so it’s like, “Ah, yeah, there’s something promising there,” but you’re not sort of going out and doing the full romance.

If we were to somehow do those full things I want to talk about sort of the kinds of things we would be looking for and some of the things we would notice, sort of the way that Stuart noticed in his post about all the 500 pages. What are some common themes we probably would be talking about if this podcast were to be about reading the whole script for these things?

And so I’ll start with just some things I thought of, but you chime in with things you often say when you read scripts.

**Craig:** Go for it.

**John:** First, it always comes to: Are the right characters in charge of the plot? And this is something I see time and time again when reading newer writer’s screenplays is that they have this hero who is perfectly nice and likable, but the rest of the characters completely run away with the script. And so everything that is important that needs to be done gets done by one of the other characters. Anything really funny that needs to be said gets said by one of the other characters.

And the other characters tend to become much more interesting and much more important than your actual hero because they can be. So often the hero just becomes this little pawn that sort of gets pushed or pulled through the screenplay, and sort of this hapless victim of the screenplay rather than a person being in charge of the screenplay.

And so I feel like if I was reading a whole 120-page script in one of these cases I would be finding those problems again and again where your hero is just the guy who happens to be in this story rather than the person who is in charge of this story.

**Craig:** That’s a good one. One of the first things I will look for and notice missing is philosophical meat. What is this movie about beyond the motions of the characters and the circumstances? Let’s say you’re writing a movie about two cops — is it just about that? Is it just about them solving the case? Who cares? That’s an episode of a TV show. Who cares? What is this movie really about?

And it’s amazing how many scripts I read where it’s frankly about nothing at all, and that’s always a bummer.

The other thing I look for is layered writing. I find that sometimes I read scripts where the scenes are just about action. Then there’s a scene that’s just about character. Then there’s a scene that’s just about relationship. Then there’s a scene just about theme. Well, really, the plot should serve the character which should serve the theme, which should serve the plot, which should serve the relationship.

It should all be layered and harmonic.

**John:** Another question I would probably ask with these scripts is: Why is this story happening now? Why are we choosing to make a movie about this character and this situation right here and right now versus six months earlier or six months later? What is unique about this situation?

And I think it’s one of the things that distinguishes a movie idea from a TV show idea is that is this a story that wants to be told in two hours? And this is this character’s main story in their life. Like this is a great use of this person and our time to focus on this story, versus a TV series which is like, “Well, here’s a whole bunch of promising things, and here’s a good universe and a good world, and we can spin a thousand stories out of it.”

This should be like, “Well this unique set of circumstances created this one story that we’re going to follow.” And so often I’ll read scripts where it’s like, “This is all lovely, and I believe these characters basically,” but when I say this doesn’t feel like a movie I’m saying it doesn’t feel like it has to be a movie. It feels like it can be almost anything else and therefore it really isn’t a movie.

**Craig:** Right. That’s a good one, for sure.

The other thing I notice probably more in comedy scripts is an unsupported premise. And if you can’t get the audience completely onboard with the premise tightly and logically then the whole thing just feels like an exercise in wankery.

I was working on something a couple months ago where just the premise wasn’t there. The whole movie was sitting on nothing. It was just a short little two week thing. And, by the way, everybody acknowledged it. The other writers, they were like, “Yeah, we tried to do that but there was an issue.” And the studio — everybody sort of said, “Yeah, this thing is kind of leaning on air.”

Well, you can’t build a house on air. And it was a nice house. [laughs] But there was no foundation. And I’m pretty adamant about these things. I get very serious about it and I just say, “Look, you’re going to spend all of this money to make a movie and the problem is you will lose them on minute ten. And never get them back. They will never stop thinking about it.”

**John:** Yeah. What you’re describing is really the logic that you approach the movie with. It’s like, “Wait, does this even make sense for why this is a movie?” And a related concern that I always comes up with is the internal logic. Is there consistent internal logic in your story? Are the characters behaving in a way that’s both emotionally believable, like the characters are acting consistently? The way they would behave on page 20, that same kind of character would act the same kind of way on page 80? Do I believe that the same characters are still in the same story? Or are they just saying that thing, or doing that thing because you need them to move the plot along?

They’re not acting in a way that’s consistent. Have you established rules in your story and then are you following those rules? Or you’re just breaking those rules whenever you feel like breaking those rules because it’s more expeditious?

**Craig:** And usually when you see characters behaving inconsistently, violating rules, violating the basic tenets of their character, it’s because the characters are not distinct enough. And the characters aren’t real. And so that’s the other thing you see a lot are characters that all sound a lot like each other, or characters that feel pre-fab, borrowed from other movies, retooled and dropped in. And that’s a sign that you’re in for a bad ride.

Really in the end people go to movies for characters more than anything else.

**John:** Another question I would tend to ask about the full script is: Have you actually served me a meal? And by a meal I’m saying did you start at a certain place? Did you start at appetizers, move to the salad course, move through the entrée, and then gotten us to cheese plate and dessert? Have you gotten through the whole thing?

Or, did you just serve me a bunch of appetizers? Because some of these scripts, they just sort of like throw things at you, like, “Oh here, you can try this, you can try this, you can try this.” And it’s a whole bunch of different appetizers served back, to back, to back, but it never actually gets into the meat of what it’s trying to be. What we describe as second act problems are really kind of entrée problems. It’s like there’s just not enough there as your main — there’s not meat there. And you’ve never really gotten into it. You just kept throwing appetizers at us.

And that’s especially noticeable in action movies where it’s just like there are a bunch of action sequences that happen, and it’s like, “Well, a bunch of stuff happened but I’m not sure we really got any place.” The most recent Bourne movie to me felt like tapas, where it was just like a bunch of really good small plates, but they didn’t actually relate to each other in any useful way.

**Craig:** Yeah. You do see a lot of endings that seem far away from the beginnings in terms of space and stuff, but not far away from them enough in terms of character and emotion. I want the character to be almost the opposite of who they were in the beginning, in a big way, in some real way. I want something big to have happened so that they would be disgusted or not recognize who they were in the start.

And a lot of times these movies make these — scripts rather that I read — make banal movements. You know, “I will start dating again.” Well who cares? You know? [laughs]

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** The tricky thing about these scripts is that you want to find ways to pull audiences into universal truths set in very not universal situations, because I don’t want to see somebody go through my day. It’s boring. I want to see them jump off a building, and go through explosions, and deal with whatever they’re going to deal with, but ultimately I want them to be doing it because of something that I do recognize as important in me, and we all recognize is important in us.

And I feel like sometimes people forget that part. The motivations become rather specific to that character, not universal, and therefore sort of tawdry.

**John:** Yeah. What you’re talking about, like, “I will start dating again,” like if that’s the realization at the end of this two-hour movie, “I guess I’ll start dating again.” What?! That’s a realization for like the end of a half-hour sitcom. That’s not a movie. That’s not a movie journey.

And I think what you’re talking about is really: Was the character tested hard enough so they can actually prove and get to someplace in the end? And so often I read these scripts, and I understand the sympathies — you love your main character, so you don’t want to hurt your main character, but you need to hurt your main character. You need to make things as difficult as possible for your main character.

Too often I’ll see these situations where, “Wow, that seems impossible — you have to break into that building, and do this, and that,” and like, “Oh, and now these people come and help me do that.” It’s like, why are you adding these people in to helping you do that? The character should have to do it themselves. And they should get caught. And it should get like much, much worse for the character. And you don’t ever make things bad for the character.

I mean, I think you should, you know, I’ve never read a script where I said like, “Oh, I thought they were too hard on their hero.” I want characters to lose their hands. You want bad things to happen to them. And if it’s not that kind of movie then in a comedy you want them to be as humiliated as possible. If it’s a love story you want them to be ripped apart from the person they love for as long as possible to make their reunion meaningful.

And too often I read scripts that aren’t anywhere in the ballpark of how difficult they should make things for the characters.

**Craig:** I feel like comedies should be the most tortuous for the main characters because that’s where so much of the comedy comes from anyway. But, yeah, I mean, that’s the point. You’re God and the character is Job. Trial by fire. This is the worst thing that could happen to them but it’s the thing that must happen to them. And it must happen today. It can’t happen yesterday, it won’t happen tomorrow. It has to happen right now.

And if they fail, we hear this from executives plenty, “Make sure the stakes are high.” It doesn’t have to be the world exploding, but I have to care if they fail.

**John:** Yeah. And here is the danger: So when we say like we have to make it as difficult as possible for them, that sounds like an externality applied to them. It’s true, like something else is probably making things difficult for them, but they also have to choose to run into that burning building. You have to make sure that your character is still in charge of making the choices that are making things more difficult for themselves.

And so sometimes they’ll make a bad choice and they’ll suffer the consequences from it. Sometimes they’ll make the right heroic bold choice, but that is going to make things more difficult for them. And so it’s not just about planes falling from the sky or some sort of external calamity. It has to be something that they’re doing that’s making the situation more difficult for themselves.

**Craig:** Yeah. And sometimes it’s the smallest thing. But whether you’re writing a drama or a comedy you must be writing drama. Always. You have to find drama and you have to understand what drama is. Sophie’s Choice is the smallest thing. It will not change the world.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** She has to pick one kid or another in a moment and then live with that decision her whole life. And the world didn’t change. Nothing changed. But it was dramatic. It was so dramatic because as humans — and this is why it’s a great story — we connect with it immediately and emotionally and we’re there. And we’re in it and we can feel it inside of us. It feels awful. And if you can’t find drama, whether it’s big or small, in a goofy comedy or in a weepy movie, you’re dead.

**John:** And because Sophie’s Choice has become sort of a cliché of a Sophie’s Choice, but it’s an irrevocable choice. And that’s the other thing that you see so often in scripts that aren’t working is that characters make a choice but they can easily just undo that choice and there’s no consequence for them to sort of go back to their previous behavior, their previous lives.

That’s why I always like “burn down the house.” Make sure they can’t go back to that safe place they were at in the start of the movie. They have to keep pushing forward and they have to keep pushing on. And every time they make a choice, never let them unmake that choice.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s sometimes, yes, that is you as the writer creating a situation and building a choice that is irrevocable — that’s good. That’s your job as the writer.

**Craig:** It’s dramatic. All of this is drama. All of it.

**John:** Yeah. So, these are some of the things I would have said of this hypothetical script if we had read it. Anything more you want to add?

**Craig:** Oh, just that the writer of this hypothetical script is the worst.

**John:** Just the worst. Brave, first off, so brave for sending in his script and letting us read the script.

**Craig:** [laughs] So brave and so delusional.

**John:** [laughs] And thank you, Stuart, for reading 500 screenplays so we could pick this one to talk to.

**Craig:** Seriously. I owe this guy a beer.

**John:** Yeah. But, that was fun.

Now, Craig, this week I did actually email you to say, like, hey don’t forget your One Cool Thing. “Did you remember your One Cool Thing?”

**Craig:** I did. I totally did.

**John:** Hooray.

**Craig:** Should I go first?

**John:** You can go first or I can go first. Your choice? Mine is a little Christmassy.

**Craig:** Oh, so is mine.

**John:** Great. You go first.

**Craig:** Okay, well mine is sort of inspired by Thanksgiving but then I realized it applies for Christmas as well. And my Cool Thing is brining. Now, did you make your turkey?

**John:** I did make my turkey.

**Craig:** Did you brine your turkey?

**John:** I did not brine my turkey. But I’m fascinated to hear this discussion because I want to know.

**Craig:** Brining is the key to turkey. So, here’s the issue with turkey: There are multiple problems cooking a turkey and you can see that when you eat it and it’s dry and gross.

So, one problem with turkey is that it’s huge, so it takes a long time to cook. The longer you cook meat, the drier it gets. The second problem is that the breast meat cooks much faster than the dark meat, so in order to get the dark meat at a temperature that won’t kill you, you end up desecrating the breast meat, and so you end up with the syndrome of like, “Oh, this is pretty good dark meat, although I’m not really a big fan of dark meat. I really like white meat and this white meat is just saw dust. What happened?”

Enter brining. Brining is brilliant. So, here’s what you do: You take a turkey — and you can do this with chicken, or pretty much anything — take a turkey and you put it in a solution that is roughly 5% salt water. And you can use Kosher salt — most people use Kosher salt because it doesn’t have a lot of the anti-caking agents and things that they put in regular table salt. And it comes in big boxes and it’s easy to dump in water.

And you can put some other things in there. You can put some sugar or spices in if you want. And you take your turkey and you put it in this solution. And imagine you’ve got one of those five gallon coolers. So, you put enough water in to submerge the turkey completely. You put in enough salt to hit about 5%. And there are guides online to show you how many cups of salt per how many liters of water. And then you put in a bunch of ice to keep the whole thing refrigerated.

You seal it up and you leave it in there for anywhere from they say 12 to 24 hours. Here’s the magic of science. What happens? The salt water penetrates into the muscle tissue and saline does two things. The first thing, the most important thing, is that it begins to slowly denature the proteins. Proteins are complicated molecules. Have you ever seen pictures of proteins, like the molecule structures online?

**John:** I have.

**Craig:** Yeah. So they’re like really big and they’re like all clumpy and turned around and that’s why protein is really good at making muscles and hair that’s curly and stuff like that. So, the saline gets inside and starts to slowly unravel them and loosen them up. And by loosening them up, and even partially dissolving them, they begin to create more space between the proteins. They essentially — it’s like taking a tightly knotted rope and slowly working it so it gets nice and loose.

So, now, what do loose fibers taste like as opposed to dense fibers? They taste tender. We translate that in our mouths as tender. So, that’s the first thing it’s doing: it’s tenderizing the meat. The second thing it does is by creating all this space, and because the turkey is at a lower saline level than the salt water, it allows all this moisture to go into the turkey, so the turkey starts to act like a sponge and increase in moisture.

Now you think, “Oh, I don’t want to eat a sponge.” You won’t. Because what happens is the turkey will gain maybe 20% water volume through the brining process. But the cooking process, which is so drying, will cause it to lose about that much. So, what you end up getting is the moisture that you should have had from the turkey in the first place, plus this nice, tender meat that has a little bit of saltiness to it, just a little bit, which you like — people like a little bit of saltiness to their food anyway.

Brining is the key. I’m telling you, it’s the most amazing thing. So, you leave it in there for 24 hours, take it out, rinse it off, get all that salt off the outside, pat it dry. Good to go.

**John:** So, I do not brine my turkeys, but I’m familiar with some of your techniques and I think they’re fascinating. A few footnotes and observations. What kind of turkey were you using? Were you using a normal store-bought turkey? Were you using an organic turkey? Which turkey were you using for this?

**Craig:** I didn’t make the turkey for this Thanksgiving because I was over at Derek’s, but in the past I have used — I try and use a Kosher turkey because they tend to not have a bunch of — you know, sometimes when you get the store-bought turkeys they’ve already kind of put weird stuff in there.

**John:** Because what I was going to say is some of the store-bought turkeys, I don’t want to say Butterball is a bad brand, but part of the reason — they kind of already do the brining for it because they can sell it as a more expensive turkey because they’ve increased the water weight of it.

**Craig:** They’ve kind of done it, but they haven’t done it well.

**John:** They haven’t done it well, which is true. But I think if you were to try to brine again a Butterball, a kind of crappy Butterball turkey, you might have mixed results. The second point is that you bring up like all that time in the oven is what dries out the breast meat, and that brings me to sort of how I have cooked turkey these past few years and it worked well last night, was you don’t do it low and slow in an oven. You do it in an incredibly hot oven.

And we cooked a 21-pound bird in about two hours and fifteen minutes. So, it’s a 500-degree oven, which sounds ridiculously hot, and it is really, really hot; you have to be careful you don’t burn yourself. But you put the bird in, incredibly hot. The bird is at room temperature, you put it in, incredibly hot, keep the oven door sealed so no heat gets out. 45 minutes, you need to tent it over or else it’s going to get too dark. It’s a really nice pretty golden color.

And then it’s out of the oven so soon, the breast meat doesn’t have a chance to dry out the way it otherwise would. And it worked and it got nice and hot. You need to let it rest so that all the juices can sort of get back to where they need to be anyway.

That’s one of the classic problems of turkey anyway is people are waiting so long for the bird that the minute they pull it out of the oven they try to carve it and all the juices have been sort of circulating, they just fall out on the board. And that’s why it dries out, too.

**Craig:** That is absolutely true. And I’ve read about the high heat cooking method, and that is a good method. And a lot of people will sort of interrupt that sort of three-quarters of the way through and tent the breast with foil so that the legs and the thighs can cook while the breast sort of doesn’t get pelted as much.

The other thing I’ve done is the whole deep friend turkey thing, which is dangerous, and crazy, and awesome. [laughs] But, because you’re a man of science, and because I know how left brain you are, I strongly recommend to you and to all of our listeners, Cook’s Illustrated…

**John:** Fantastic.

**Craig:** …and their associated cookbook, The Best Recipe, in which they approach everything from a scientific way and sort of say, “We have decided after cooking 4,000 turkeys this is the best way.”

**John:** So, what’s great about Cook’s Illustrated is every article about, like, how to cook everything is all about the technique. It’s like, “So, I went through this thing, I had these frustrations.” I went back though these recipe books and I kind of think it’s all made up. I think that they sort of create a narrative after the fact for like, “Here’s a really good recipe, let’s make up a story about how we got to this recipe.” But it is fun. And like, you know, “Confused, I went to our science editor who talked me through sort of how this protein reaction was working, or why adding sugar at this stage did stuff.”

Still, it’s great fun. It’s really well-illustrated. It’s called Cook’s Illustrated. There are no pictures; it’s all drawings. You should check it out if you get a chance.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s awesome.

**John:** So, my thing is also a cool illustrated thing. It’s called Ticket to Ride. Craig, have you played Ticket to Ride?

**Craig:** I have not, but it sounds like another game that I should try.

**John:** You will love…

**Craig:** I’ve had mixed results. I did great on Ski Safari. You repeatedly kicked my ass in Letterpress, so I guess maybe this one. Maybe this will be the trick.

**John:** Ticket to Ride began its life as a board game. It came out in 2004. And it’s a German-style game, which doesn’t mean it’s in German. It means that it’s one of those games where it’s more about strategy than open conflict. So, it’s not like Risk where it’s a zero sum game, or Monopoly. It’s sometimes you’re actually kind of cooperating with the other players in order to get what you want out of it. And there’s some resource management involved.

It’s not as difficult or sort of strategically challenging as Settlers of Catan, but it’s sort of in that universe. If you like Settlers of Catan you’ll love this game.

**Craig:** Yeah, that one frustrated me a little bit.

**John:** So, the idea behind this is, in the basic game you have a map of America and it’s like 1910 or so. And you have all the cities. And there are these rail lines connecting these. And basically you’re trying to build rail lines between the different cities. And so these cards show which two cities you’re trying to connect, and then you have to — you’re drawing these other cards in order to build the trains from place to place.

And so you’re trying to get these routes before other people get these routes. But you don’t know what they’re actually trying to connect and you get different points for different things you do. It’s really ingeniously set up and incredibly well-designed.

And so I’d seen it in a bunch of game blogs and everybody would talk about how amazing it was. And so I bought it on Amazon just on a whim and I stuck it on a high shelf figuring whenever my daughter was old enough we could play as a family.

And she’s seven and she’s really good at games so we broke it out last month. And we’ve been playing it a lot. It’s really, really well done. And so if you have a kid who’s seven and into games they can play it.

It takes about 45 minutes. It’s not too involved. And, there is an iPad version which is not surprisingly addictive in that you can play by yourself, against computer opponents, or you can play it one on one against people on the internet or in the same room. You can just play it off of Bluetooth or WiFi. And so, you know, at bed time Mike and I will be each on our iPad playing a game of this. And it goes super fast because all the physical stuff gets taken out of it and you can just go — pure strategy.

So, I highly recommend it. The reason why I say Christmas, it’s a really good gift for Christmas, like if you know somebody who likes board games who hasn’t played this yet, they will probably love it. And so I feel like it would be a really good thing to get for Christmas with your family if they like board games and haven’t played this — they’d probably dig it a lot and it’s a good fun time.

It’s for two to five players for the physical game, and the iPad version is either solo or you can pass and play and do other stuff, too.

**Craig:** So, because Settlers of Catan, I wouldn’t play with say my seven-year-old, or almost eight-year-old daughter, or my 11-year-old son. It seems a little…

**John:** I wouldn’t be surprised. I think your 11-year-old might be able to handle it at this point. Like Settlers of Catan is overwhelming when you first try to do it, but then you actually realize, “Okay, it’s strategy.” So, the rules are really simple; figuring out how to actually get through it, how to optimize can be tough.

**Craig:** And is that the case with this as well?

**John:** It is. Similar kind of game. And what I like about the German-style board games is that if you’re really good at it you’re more likely to win. But if you’re not actually all that good at it you’re not likely to get squashed. They’re sort of set up in a way that being ahead actually has a bit of a penalty to it. When everyone can see that you’re ahead they’re going to try to block you or stop you from doing things.

And so no one sort of clears the board. No one takes over everything. And it doesn’t have that punishing aspect of Risk or Monopoly where one person is completely dominant and the other person is worse. Here, the person who wins might get 120 points and the second place person might get like 105. It doesn’t feel like you got killed.

**Craig:** I like that. Risk or Monopoly are sort of drain-circling games where once you start losing it’s just a slow spiral to death.

You know, my kids play Mario Party on the Nintendo and it’s kind of brilliant how you truly cannot predict who is going to win that game until maybe the last two minutes of it. Because they’ll give you points for being in last place. [laughs] They’re so good about it. They’re so smart. So, I like that idea of sort of not knowing… — Sorry, by the way, which I play with my kids, you know, a classic board game. Sorry is so good at that.

You think you’re winning and then you’re not.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s cool.

**John:** Sorry though is ultimately up to chance. Like, did you get a bunch of good rolls?

**Craig:** Yeah, there’s no strategy whatsoever.

**John:** There’s no strategy.

**Craig:** Frankly, it sounds like this game would be a good use of the Simplex Algorithm.

**John:** I’m sure the Simplex Algorithm could be used to maximum effect.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Yeah. So, Craig, thank you so much.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** A fun podcast and we’ll be back at this next week.

**Craig:** Woo! And remember, folks, brine those turkeys.

**John:** Brine those turkeys. Take care.

**Craig:** Bye.