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

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

**Craig Mazin:** My name’s Craig Mazin.

**John:** This is Episode 541 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, which trades are the most important when it comes to a career in screenwriting? We’ll wade into the discourse to help you maximize your stats.

**Craig:** Awesome. It’s like the Elden Ring of screenwriting. I love it.

**John:** 100%. We’re going to min-max the heck out of you.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** Then it’s a new round of the Three-Page Challenge, where we take a look at entries from our listeners and tell them it doesn’t really matter because it’s all a social game anyway.

**Craig:** Wait, what does that mean, it’s all a social game anyway? What does that mean?

**John:** We’ll get into that. In our Bonus Segment for Premium Members, you know who doesn’t do a lot of their own writing?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Composers. We’ll take a look at film and TV scores and how they’re written and ghostwritten.

**Craig:** I want a ghostwriter.

**John:** I want a ghostwriter.

**Craig:** [Cross-talk 00:00:47].

**John:** A ghostwriter feels pretty good right now. Craig, mixed news on the labor front this past week. Gizmodo, which is represented by WG East, reached a new contract with Kotaku and the other websites that they write for. That’s great news. They went on strike. They were picketing around. They got a new contract. Congratulations to them.

**Craig:** Very good.

**John:** We like when writers get contracts, union contracts. Meanwhile, we still don’t have a deal for the Animation Guild, which represents folks in animation, including animation writers. There’s still ongoing efforts to try to get a new deal there. I recorded a video in support of animation writing, reminding everybody that animation writing is writing. I’m frustrated. I really hope that we can get a better deal for the folks who need to work under the Animation Guild contract. I will remind everybody that writing under a WGA contract is a good way to improve your life as a person who is writing for features and television.

**Craig:** This is going to be a tough one, for all the reasons we said before. In case people are just checking in now, the Writers Guild does represent some animation writing, notably primetime television animation box. The Animation Guild represents most animation writers, story artists who do narrative work, who are unionized at all. The Animation Guild is part of IATSE. There are also a lot of people writing in animation without unique contracts at all. Pixar, for instance, non-union. It’s a tricky fight for the Animation Guild, because they very much are a small Rebel force facing up against a fairly large Death Star, but as you know, there is one exhaust port that leads directly to the reactor.

**John:** A thing I just want to remind our listeners is that if you are creating a new animation project, you got a choice. You got a choice whether you are going to sell that project to a place that will force you to take an Animation Guild deal or a non-union deal, or you can say, you know what, I’m going to take a Writers Guild deal or bust. I think you’re going to find more writers who have the leverage to say that just say that.

**Craig:** You’ll also find a lot of people getting bust. They’re going to be tough about this. I don’t want to make it rosier than it is. I was able to do this once. I was successful in doing it, because what they do is they just can create a company.

**John:** That’s all they have to do.

**Craig:** That is a signatory to the Writers Guild. They create companies all day long, the way that we all generate laundry for ourselves. They can do it, but it’s a precedential issue for them. It’s a big fight. You just have to be aware that when we say… You might have to go in there and say it’s WGA or bust. That bust is a real option.

**John:** Bust is a real option.

**Craig:** They may just say, “Okay, then we’re not doing it.”

**John:** That’s always a choice. Craig, did you follow any of this story? This is a screenwriter who is suing their management company for breach of contract. We’ll put a link from the show notes to this. This is really interesting. This is a writer who had created a project, and his management company said, “Oh, you should sell it to this company. Here’s the deal you’re going to be able to make,” and had not apparently fully disclosed that they were actually a producer and an investor in this company. It feels very breach of contracty to me. It feels like people were not doing their fiduciary duties as managers, to me. Not a lawyer, not a lawyer, reminding everyone, but I can see what the arguments are here.

**Craig:** The problem is, managers don’t hide what they are. I’m not sure it is a breach of contract of fiduciary duty, because they are literally telling you, “We’re not talent agents. We can’t procure you employment,” although they do that all the time, and also we do produce things that our clients do. There is an inherent conflict of interest in that. It’s wide open and blatant for everyone to see, which is why I get so frustrated when anyone recommends managers as the solution for whatever problems we may have with agents. They’re not.

I think management as a whole is a deeply problematic profession in our business, particularly as it relates to writers, for this very reason. They tell you up front that it’ll work out great for you if they produce the work you do, because you won’t have to pay any commission on the money you make. The problem is, once they’re producers, they’re management. They are deeply incentivized to have you be paid as little as possible. You never want to decouple your income from your representative’s income.

I just find all of management, the entire thing to be problematic, and so I am entirely on Kurt McLeod’s side. He’s the writer who’s suing here. I am concerned that a court may look at this and say, “Oh, you went to murderers and then they murdered.” That’s what they do. I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know how to clean up the management business. It’s inherently troubled.

**John:** We can’t clean up the industry as a whole, but what we could do for a writer in this situation is to say, you need somebody else looking at your deal in your contract. That person who actually has by law, clear fiduciary duties to you would be a lawyer. I do feel that if a lawyer had looked through these contracts and really examined them, would have been in a better position to say, “Listen, this does not feel right, and the cap they’re trying to put on this does not make sense. This does not track with my own experience with what these budgets are going to be. I think there’s a problem here.” I would just urge any writer who’s dealing with a manager who may be involved in these productions to get an outside opinion on this from a lawyer who actually knows what there doing.

**Craig:** Just caveat scriptor. We’ve said it many times. They’ve told you what they are. Believe them. I am extraordinary wary of managers. I had one once.

**John:** Yeah, you did.

**Craig:** I fired him.

**John:** You like to fire managers. That’s a thing Craig likes to do.

**Craig:** Did it once, felt great.

**John:** Let’s have some happier follow-up. We had Jack Thorne on the podcast. He was talking about the need for accessibility coordinators on sets on productions to make sure that folks who need things on set or things in production to let them do their best job would have someone that they could go to for this. It looks like in the UK, ScreenSkills is stepping up to help fund this for productions of a certain size.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Accessibility coordinators will be a thing happening at least in the UK, soonish, the same way that we have intimacy coordinators to make sure that sex scenes and sexual material is handled in ways that are appropriate to the performers and everyone else on the set. We have COVID coordinators who are there to make sure that the sets are safe for COVID protocols. Having an accessibility coordinator feels like a right, smart step for everyone involved in production to make sure that we are thinking ahead about really just fundamental things like where are the bathrooms and are the bathrooms accessible for everybody.

**Craig:** That’s great. We are currently shooting an episode with a deaf actor, the child. We have all sorts of folks that have come and joined us so that we can do this right, including a director of ASL and translator. It’s shocking to me that people wouldn’t have done this already in the first place with anyone who has a disability. Now, with unseen disabilities, we talked about invisible disabilities with Jack, and those are tougher, because sometimes you just don’t know.

When you think of how much money productions spend on things that are just a bit wasteful, honestly, weird decisions, bad decisions, confusion, “Oh, you only wanted one car? We got you 80 cars,” all things like this, the expenses for people to help other people feel welcome and capable and cared for and thought of is nothing. It’s negligible. We should always be doing it. Jack is a terrific person. He’s a saint and he’s done the saint’s work here. I think it’s great that UK has stepped up to fund the training, because that’s the most important thing. We can’t just send people in there who have a title. They need to actually know something, because everyone’s going to be relying on them.

**John:** It’s making sure that these coordinators are actually trained, you’re hiring a person who really knows what the heck they’re doing.

**Craig:** Otherwise you’re just handing somebody an extra $500 a week to pretend to do something.

**John:** Jack is a person we spoke to on the show, but of there’s a bunch of other people behind the scenes doing this. We’ll link after the article that really highlights the work that they’ve been doing too.

**Craig:** I only give credit to Jack. [Cross-talk 00:08:56].

**John:** Craig, this last week my daughter was working on a rewrite for an essay she was doing for school. She was doing an essay on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It was a pretty good essay. She’d done a rough draft that she turned in, and then she had to do a rewrite. She had to do revisions on it. I was talking through with her what my process would be on revisions, and she rolled her eyes, because that’s what a teenager should do. She was rolling her eyes.

As I was thinking about this, I came across this article that Jeffrey Lieber had written about his rewrite map. It’s basically when he gets notes on doing the next pass on something, he tries to avoid that paralysis of just not doing anything by actually really thinking systematically about, this is the work I need to do, creating a separate document that’s like, here’s the checklist of what I have to do. Here are the scenes. Here’s how it’s going to affect every scene. I thought we might spend a few minutes thinking about that in terms of how you approach a rewrite, how you approach a significant revision, so that you are actually doing what you need to do and not moving commas around.

**Craig:** It is its own organizational task. I can see here from what we’re looking at that lists are important, a list of tasks, to-do lists. Those are very good for what I would call the more easily or focused notes to achieve, having to go through this list, ah, in this scene I need to make sure that so-and-so appears, in this scene I need to change that line from this to this. Then there’s just a conceptual rewrite kind of thing which I think comes first. We have your big things and we have your little things. The little things go into lists gorgeously. The big things don’t. The big things just need to take the same kind of time and thought that initial preparation does.

**John:** In some cases, what you may need to do for those bigger rewrites is really think about, okay, what is this episode, this movie, this series, what does it want to become, where is it trying to go to, and really think about where are the big strokes things that I need to do. Once you have this overall plan for this is what the movie’s going to become, then you will be able to make some sort of task list things for the new stuff that needs to happen, new stuff that will change.

I do often find that, and I’ve said this on the show many times, is that it’s going to be most helpful to really think about this from a new document point of view, and what are you going to bring from the current document into this new document versus trying to just make the changes in that original document, because so often then you will find yourself saving too much. You’ll be so concerned about this perfect sentence that you had, that you won’t be looking at what the overall goals are of this brand new thing that you’re creating. It’s really an adaptation of your previous work into the next work.

**Craig:** I think sometimes all it needs, and I feel for Amy, because I suspect she didn’t get this, is time. You just need time to let the other one go a bit, the way that sometimes if you’re working on a puzzle and you get stuck, you come back the next day and you just see stuff.

**John:** You see where all the jigsaw puzzle pieces really want to go.

**Craig:** No, I was talking about a puzzle, John, a puzzle that you solve.

**John:** Yeah, exactly, a jigsaw puzzle.

**Craig:** No. Sorry.

**John:** With all the pieces that go in. Sometimes you get like, oh here’s the bumps and here’s the connects.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** You’re like, oh does that row actually fit into that row?

**Craig:** It would never happen.

**John:** [Cross-talk 00:12:00] similar?

**Craig:** Literally would never happen, because it’s just this rote task of just pushing pieces of cardboard into each other. It’s not a puzzle, and time won’t help you. Nothing will help you. Nothing. It’s not a puzzle. It’s a smashed picture.

**John:** Here’s what did help Amy with rewriting her essay is that she came up with her new thesis statement and she went and talked to her teacher about like, “This is what I think my new thesis statement is.” That was a five-minute meeting. She’s like, “Yeah, that’s great. I can see how your essay’s going to revolve around that.” She picked a new thesis that could actually find evidence that was supported in the text and could bring in the stuff that was useful in what she’d already written. Many times really what you’re doing with a rewrite is going back to what is the thesis for this new thing that I’m trying to write.

**Craig:** Yeah, going back to basics. You are writing a new thing, but you get a huge head start. You’ve learned a lot of lessons from the first thing. It’s important to also not forget the good stuff. You don’t want to leave the good stuff behind. There are things that people connected to. It’s fair to want to try and preserve things as you go.

Rewriting is, like everything in writing, a product of experience. The more you do it, the better off you get at it. You get faster. You get smarter about what to keep and what to not keep. You get I think more efficient about not having to go backwards and forwards quite so much. With all the stuff, just doing it… I know we do a podcast, and I know that the point of the podcast, in part, is to help people, but there’s only so much we can do. Really, if you listen to all these podcasts, I think we might save you 1 year out of 20 years of experiencing, which is a lot, by the way, I think.

**John:** Which is a lot.

**Craig:** I think a year is an enormous amount.

**John:** It’s a good amount. I’ve been thinking about, listen, if she could tolerate listening to any podcast, she hates podcasts, but if she could listen to any podcast that was about writing essays for high school, she’d have listened to the podcast and listened to a whole bunch. She could listen to 541 episodes of that, but it wouldn’t get her all that much closer to actually writing her thesis, because you just actually have to learn how to like, okay, how am I going to get these thoughts to stick together, how am I going to make transitions between stuff?

As a person who reads all the stuff she writes, I do see her progressing tremendously in terms of just fluency of sentences and ability to get thoughts to connect right and link this paragraph to that paragraph. It’s still hard work for her in a way that’s just not hard work for you and me, because we have craft. We just have the ability to make these little pieces fit together like a jigsaw puzzle that she just doesn’t have yet.

**Craig:** Again, just to be clear, that’s not what’s happening. What’s happening is far more complicated than a jigsaw puzzle, which is just moron’s work. What’s happening is her mind is growing. Her brain is growing. Neural pathways are forming, that we have reinforced over and over and over, over many years. Think of all the things that our daughters have to study in school. We don’t. We’re in one class. Everything else we do is an extracurricular, but we’re in one class.

**John:** I have forgotten everything I knew about chemistry, and that’s okay.

**Craig:** It’s okay.

**John:** It’s okay.

**Craig:** We’re in one class, and that class is screenwriting and deadlines. Her brain’s still growing. Part of parenting is having the humility to say, actually, I’m not doing much here really, which is, again, waiting, and waiting for their brains to finish. Then we’ll see what we got. She’s got a good one. I like the fact that she rolled her eyes at you. I think that’s great. It’s appropriate.

**John:** That’s her job and her function.

**Craig:** It’s appropriate.

**John:** Let’s get to one of our marquee topics here, because this was part of a Twitter discourse. We actually had a good listener question. I think it sets up a lot of this. It’s a long one, but Megana, if you could start us off with what Patrick wrote in to say.

**Megana Rao:** Patrick writes, “Your conversation last week got me thinking about the recent online vitriol about peer writing versus networking as competing imperatives for advancement in this competitive industry. In my own view, these two capacities constitute the inalienable double-helix structure of any viable screenwriting career. It’s fundamentally a false choice. We’ve all known either A, an incredibly talented writer whose command of prose and story craft is undeniable, but simple can’t wrangle a useful meeting or make a constructive social connection to save their life, or B, an average or underwhelming writer possessed with such charisma, social gravitas, and yes, just occasionally connections. They’re able to effortlessly secure prized business opportunities that stubbornly allude most.

“It all got me thinking, what if one applied the timeless RPG character leveling framework to the enterprise of screenwriting. Screenwriter A above, for example, might be a chiseled level 65 tyrant on dexterity, but a paltry level 2 on charisma. I’m curious how seasoned nerds of our distinguished hosts pedigree would rank themselves and what their dream allocation of attributes would be in crafting the ideal questing screenwriter.”

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** I think Craig and I are going to fall back to what we know best, which is the six attributes which you use in Dungeons and Dragons.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** There are three physical attributes, which are strength, dexterity, and constitution.

**Craig:** We don’t need those right now.

**John:** Those are pretty self-explanatory. Strength is how much you can lift and move. Dexterity is how nimble you are. Constitution is your just overall fortitude, your ability to take a blow, keep going, your workhorse-ness. Those are the physical ones. The mental ones would be intelligence, which is your overall genius, wisdom, which is your ability to recognize patterns, to see things as they truly are. Charisma, which has probably been the most retconned in the DnD world, which is your force of personality, your personability, your ability to inspire either admiration or fear among those around you. Safe description of what those six stats are?

**Craig:** Yeah, I think that’s about right.

**John:** I think we could all agree that charisma is what we’re talking about in terms of a person who’s really good at networking and playing that social game.

**Craig:** That’s right. That will be charisma. I suppose we could argue that pure talent would go under intelligence, which is a dump stat for most classes in DnD, but if you’re a wizard or a screenwriter, it’s the one that directly influences your magic.

**John:** Intelligence, it’s not a perfect thing, because you could be… Stephen Hawking is probably not a very good screenwriter. You can be very smart but not a good screenwriter. We’re really talking about verbal dexterity. It’s the ability to string words together. Intelligence is about as close as I guess we’re going to have for that, even though it’s not a writing skill.

**Craig:** It’s not a perfect fit, because intelligence as an attribute doesn’t mean pure IQ per se. Then there’s this wisdom thing, which is the third thing that I think everybody left out in this whole debate, which look, the debate basically boiled down to what’s more important or do you need both. Look, I will go down with this ship. You don’t have to be good in the room. You don’t have to be good at networking. You could have a charisma of zero as far as I’m concerned. You could have a charisma of negative two. It doesn’t matter. If you’ve written a great script, that document, which is completely detached from you as a human being, is going to circulate around and someone’s going to buy it.

Now, if you are a weirdo, that may limit you to some extent, but it won’t limit you completely. We’ve all known let’s say an incredibly talented writer whose command of prose and story craft is undeniable but simply can’t wrangle a useful meeting or making constructive social connection. I know people like that who are very rich from screenwriting, because they’ve written excellent screenplays. Everybody just knows, okay, that’s the way they are. They have their function, and then at some point somebody else may need to come in to help. Yes, there are also people who can, for a while, surf entirely on charisma, but eventually they cost someone money and that’s the end. It’s wisdom that I think has been left out of this debate.

**John:** Wisdom is a tough attribute to say, because you could start your career with a certain amount of wisdom, but really that wisdom will grow as a function of your experience. Experience is that level 65 of it all. You and I have leveled up enough times that we could just see how things work in ways that it’s very hard to at the start of your career. We got hit by the sword more times and have a sense of when to dodge and when to duck and when to parry, in ways that a brand new screenwriter may not recognize. We should also know, oh, let’s maybe listen at that door before we open that door, because there could be monsters inside.

**Craig:** That’s right. Wisdom helps people decide what should I write. What would be a good thing to write right now? Whose advice should I listen to, and whose advice should I ignore, which is a huge one. A lot of young writers, new writers have low wisdom. Because they have low wisdom, they can be easily charmed by agents who tell them this is what you ought to be writing, and they believe them. Agents don’t know what you should be writing, at all. At all. No one actually knows what anyone should be writing. The only thing they know is that when they read something exciting that’s awesome, they want it. Simple as that. Wisdom.

**John:** What I think we’re saying is all three of these, the mental aspects of DnD, do play very important roles. Intelligence, wisdom, and charisma are all factors there. You could maximize one of them and maybe have some success. People who have maximized their intelligence and are really good at writing that script can be great, but if they don’t have the wisdom to see what they should even be writing, that’s a problem. If they don’t have any social skills at all, that can hold them back to some degree. Trying to maximize for one of those stats is not great.

What I don’t see in this discourse is that, as we know in any adventuring party, it’s good to complement each other’s strengths. That’s why sometimes you’ll see people who, our writing teams, where one person is a really fricking good writer, and the other person’s really good at chatting people up and doing that stuff, and together they are a real force of nature. That may be a situation where if you recognize that you are really not great at one aspect of this, that’s an opportunity for you to partner up with somebody.

**Craig:** Even if you are writing solo, a good agent is serving that role and a good producer is serving that role for you, usually. They can help. That’s why they are there. The original that kicked this all off was someone said, “The screenwriting advice that, quote, you just need a good sample, quote, to, quote, cut through the noise, quote, really isn’t true. At least half of the business is about relationships and it’s better to recognize that and plan accordingly. Lots of people have good samples.” Then David Iserson, a fine writer–

**John:** Who’s been on the show.

**Craig:** He has been on the show, and also a fellow graduate of Freehold High School system–

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** Said, “With respect to the stranger on the internet, no. Write a great script. Everything else is secondary.” I agree with David Iserson. I think that is correct. I think everything else is secondary. I think that the notion that half of the business, or as this person said, at least half of the business about relationships, is not correct. I think when we start off, we don’t have any relationships. I didn’t. In fact, writing a good sample that cuts through the noise is true. It’s just incredibly rare. I know that what people want is to believe that if you have enough wisdom and charisma, you can make it. Intelligence is your key stat. Every class has one key stat.

The key stat for screenwriters is screenwriting talent. That is your key stat. Load as much of your upgrades into that as you can. The next two, which are secondary, but important, are wisdom and charisma. I would probably load as much into charisma if you can, because it does help. Wisdom you can accrue along the way. Hard to be pre-wise, although some people I suppose are. You will not go long and last without that key, which is being able to write a good script. That is the rarest thing there is in Hollywood, the ability to write a good script. Lots of people have good samples. Wrong. They do not. I wish that were true.

**John:** I stayed out of this discourse pretty much entirely, but I did see [unclear 00:24:03] tweeting along the way. I think Franklin Leonard was one who pointed out that people overestimate how many great samples there are out there, how many great scripts there really are. I think people see, oh, there’s The Black List, there must be a zillion good scripts. Those scripts never touched the light of day because of some other problem, because that screenwriter has some other deficiency. No, there’s actually fewer of those than you believe they are. They do get passed around when [unclear 00:24:28] is really good. I had that experience with Go. Go got passed around a lot because it was a good script. That helped make my career. Don’t think that you’ll write something that’s pretty good and then your charm will make it happen. That’s not been our experience.

**Craig:** No. What are you supposed to do about it anyway? You’re supposed to sit there and start making relationships or forcing this terrible calculated networking? Honestly, how many people on the internet giving advice about screenwriting are professional screenwriters? Of those, how many have actually been consistently produced and have lasted? I think you and me, and I don’t know, there are probably six others, maybe.

**John:** There are some others. There are some people who are genuinely trying to help, and there’s also producers who are weighing with their experience. That’s great. That’s fantastic.

**Craig:** There’s just a lot of people who, they just want something to be true, and they also just like the sound of themselves giving advice.

**John:** Let’s give some of our own advice to–

**Craig:** Segue them in.

**John:** Folks who have written in with their Three Page Challenges. For folks who are new to the podcast, welcome. Every once in a while we do a thing called a Three Page Challenge, which is where we take a look at the first three pages of people’s scripts, sometimes their pilots, sometimes their spec screenplays. We offer our unfiltered advice on what they’ve written and what could be improved and what we’re loving and what maybe they should take another look at. These are all volunteers. These are folks who went to–

**Craig:** They wanted this.

**John:** They wanted this. They went to johnaugust.com/threepage, all spelled out. They filled out a little form. They said it’s okay for us to talk about their scripts on the air.

**Craig:** We’re going to.

**John:** It’s all in the spirit of fun and sporting. These are brave folks who have written in. Megana, how many samples did we read this week, did you read this week? I’m sorry. As if I did any of this work.

**Craig:** No, we didn’t do any of it.

**Megana:** I read through about 150 submissions.

**Craig:** Good god. Whoa. 450 screenplay pages.

**Megana:** Correct.

**Craig:** That’s just too much.

**John:** That’s a lot. That’s a lot.

**Craig:** You could probably read through half of those but tell John you read through all of those. He doesn’t even know. In fact, that’s probably what you did. You read through five.

**Megana:** Yeah, I actually only read five.

**Craig:** You read 5, and you were like, “I’ll just tell him I read 900.” We won’t know.

**John:** She made a sampling of these. Remind us, Megana, what is your filtering mechanism? What are you looking for in things that you want to discuss on the air with us?

**Megana:** I’m looking at things that I personally would not be embarrassed if they were out there, so things without typos, things that I think are formatted correctly and promising. I’m reading through a lot of these submissions, and so things that I think are exciting and I’m into the premise, I’m into the world. Sometimes the pages aren’t quite doing it, but I feel like with a few fixes or advice from you guys, you might be able to really help improve the work.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** Let’s see how we do.

**John:** We should remind everybody that if you would like to read these pages, we’ll have links to them in the show notes. Also, if you’re on an app listening to this podcast, you can probably just click through and get to the pdf. If you want to read through these with us, you’re welcome to. Megana, if you can give us a quick summary of this first one.

**Megana:** The Man Who Could Be Macbeth, by Daniel Bracy. We open on a call center in the middle of the workday, while Bill Wangley’s coworkers chat and answer phones around him. Bill is haunted by a witch. Bill seems to be the only one who can see or hear her. Bill’s about to confront the witch in the break room when he’s startled by his boss instead. Bill’s boss remarks that Bill’s after-work activities seem to be affecting his performance in the office, and advises Bill to cut back. On Bill’s drive that evening, he tries to play the radio in his car, but instead hears the witch’s voice again. We see a script for Macbeth open on the seat next to him, with Bill cast as the character Lennox.

**John:** Great. Anyone who’s [unclear 00:28:10] is going to quickly realize, oh, it’s like the witch from the start of Macbeth. That’s the witch that we’re hearing. It’s one of those haunting witches that’s setting up the premise of Macbeth. Here’s a plug for the new Macbeth with Denzel Washington, which I thought was terrific. That is not the script that we’re reading right now. Megana, there were more typos in this than I would normally expect. That said, there was something that was interesting, that I think it’s good for us to talk through, because I think there’s also examples of we hears and we sees that I would probably trim out. Craig, what is your first take on The Man Who Could Be Macbeth?

**Craig:** I really enjoyed the concept of this. This is an interesting concept. I think I know where it’s going. There were so many awkward descriptions where there could’ve been elegant, simple descriptions, that it was hard to get any rhythm as I read. I can walk through a few of these. Right off the bat, the very first words, “Heads of hair.”

**John:** I circled “of hair.” What is this?

**Craig:** What is a head of hair? Now, I understand where he was going. He said, “Heads of hair,” I stopped and went, what? “Stick out over the walls of a cubicle asylum.” Now, what he means is we see a bunch of office cubicles, an open office space, and we see all those little cubicles, and we see people’s heads sticking up. One of them is balding, but instead we get, “Heads of hair stick out over the walls of a cubicle asylum.” Asylum is not the right word. “One balding round head,” which I think we need a comma there, “One balding, round head stands out from the rest.” By the way, the odds that only one person is balding… Is two bald guys just a lot? “Phones ringing and light chatter is heard among the workers.” There’s this passive voice that happens, “is heard.”

**John:** Take out the “is heard” and it’s fine. That’s a case where I’m happy with a sentence fragment, “Phones ringing and light chatter.”

**Craig:** Then the next line is, “Over the cluster of office noise.” That’s not the right word again, cluster. Just, “Over the noise.” Then it says, “The deep gravelly.” That should be deep, comma, gravelly, “Voice of a woman is heard.” Again, passive.

**John:** “Of a woman,” not “a women.”

**Craig:** “Of a women is heard.” My brain fixed that typo before me. Well spotted. “The deep gravelly voice of a… “ Also, if you are describing the voice of a woman, and it’s deep and gravelly, you need that to come second. You say, “We hear,” and that would be a perfect thing, “We hear the voice of a woman. Oddly, it’s deep and gravelly,” or, “We hear the voice of a woman–“

**John:** “Oddly deep and gravelly.”

**Craig:** Yeah, just something that sets apart deep and gravelly as interesting, as opposed to the average deep and gravelly voice of a woman. Then we do have a formatting disaster here. You and I are pretty good about formatting disasters. Look, nothing is ever going to kill you, but “witch” and then in parentheticals below the character name is says “V.O.,” then it says the dialog. We just never do that.

**John:** No. V.O., continues, O.S., O.C., we stick this up with the character name, just because they’re not a true parenthetical.

**Craig:** Also, it’s V period O period. It’s not V period O. If V gets an abbreviation, so too does the O. Anyway, this goes on. There are comma issues. There’s a lot of just overwrought, clumsy action description here. Hard to see what was going on, and yet eventually I did see it, and this is a testament to the concept, because I wanted to keep figuring it out, because Daniel had me interested, which is the most important thing.

**John:** Here is the premise to me. It’s like what if Office Space but Macbeth, basically where this guy is cast as a minor role in Macbeth and wants the major role in Macbeth, and so he’s obsessed that there’s a witch haunting him throughout this. Sure, I get that. The office was too generic. I’m happy with the cubicle form. That’s great, but I need some specificity about what it is this company does that makes it not just Dunder Mifflin or whatever the business was in Office Space. I need something there, a little bit more. I was also frustrated that we never got a proper introduction to Bill. Bill’s our main guy. He never gets his name put out in upper case, so we can see this is Bill. What’s his deal?

**Craig:** He’s bald. That’s it.

**John:** He’s bald.

**Craig:** That’s all we know. He’s bald.

**John:** That’s all we know. Craig, you and I are identical, because we’re both–

**Craig:** We’re both bald.

**John:** Two bald white guys.

**Craig:** We don’t even know if he’s white.

**John:** That’s true.

**Craig:** All we know about him is that he’s bald. He could be 80 or 12.

**John:** It’d be fascinating if he was 12 years old.

**Craig:** I know. It’d be cool.

**John:** A 12-year-old bald guy working in an office.

**Craig:** Alopecia.

**John:** That would be specific.

**Craig:** Alopecia.

**John:** Alopecia. It’s a real thing.

**Craig:** Child labor law violations. Also, he’s in a call center. No one’s talking. There was no action in the call center. When it says light chatter is heard, the people are going to be like, “What should we say?”

**John:** Everyone, light chatter amongst yourselves. Both Bill and his boss, they need actual proper introductions and they need specificity, because right now the boss just appears in a line of dialog. These are all problems. The other thing which I would say is an overall thing for our writer to work on is recognizing run-on sentences and when to chop sentences into two bits or when to use the gerund to continue the idea. “He’s an older man with large-framed glasses, his eyes scan over his cubicle wall.” “His eyes scanning over his cubicle wall.” You can’t just stick two independent clauses together and join it by a comma.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** It reads weirdly. If we were to read this aloud, I think you would recognize, oh yeah, there’s something wrong there.

**Craig:** That was one of the common problems. I apologize, he is an older man, so he cannot be a 12-year-old boy. The boss is named Boss. That’s pretty bad. There’s a moment, a cool moment where the witch appears, but we see her, then we see her make a cool motion that makes her neck crack, and then it says, “Bill suddenly stands upright in response. A shiver rolls down his spine as his eyes widen, the witch still behind him.” Shouldn’t we flip that around? Also, “suddenly stands upright,” I think “stands upright in response” implies suddenly. It would be better for us to be with Bill, to hear a sound, for him to stand, for him to turn, for us to see the witch when he sees the witch. This is a little backwards. Boss, his first line is, “Hey Bill, how’s it going?!” What? Why is there, “How’s it going?!” What’s happening? Why?

**John:** It’s fun that Bill screams in response and drops his water. Great, but is that the out of the scene? Probably not. You need some beat to react to that. What does the boss do? What is that next moment?

**Craig:** He screams back.

**John:** Yeah, because then we’re going to stay in that break room, which is fine. We could stay in that break room. We’re jumping ahead in time. It’s just a weird out on that moment. The other thing I want to point out is, we see, we hear. Craig and I are big fans of we see and hear when the time’s appropriate.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** At the top of page two, “We turn slowly to see, in the opposite corner of the room, a witch staring at Bill from behind a chair.” We turn slowly to reveal? I’m just a fan of more specific words than “see” when it’s helpful, and revealing is a good choice for this.

**Craig:** It is. Also, we don’t really turn. We can hear things. We can see things. We can notice things.

**John:** Slowly reveal.

**Craig:** Or pan slowly to see something like this. It’s very, very hard, by the way, as you guys walk through these things, to have a scene in a break room and then to cut to a scene in the break room later is extraordinarily difficult to do production-wise without looking bad. How do we know time passed? You need to very carefully describe something. Look back at the episode we did on transitions and think of one, because you’re going to need one. That’s hard enough to do that I try as much as I can to avoid it.

**John:** You try to avoid it. An example would be, if in that being startled, he drops his water and water goes everywhere, and then we cut to he’s on his hands and knees, cleaning up the water with paper towels. That’s an example. We jumped forward to time to do that. That can work. You got to be specific about what it is, because just staying in the same place and jumping forward in time is a real beast there. A lot here to work on. It was actually nice to start with one that actually had some stuff on the page that was a problem, because I feel like our next three, we’re not going to be so focused on mistakes on the page and we can really talk about what we’re getting out of them.

**Craig:** Take a look as you go through, Daniel, these sort of things that may not get through your spell check. Top of page three, “This isn’t the first time its.” Wrong, “it’s.” “Effected,” wrong. “Affected.”

**John:** “Affected.”

**Craig:** Also, Bill’s in his car and he’s listening to the radio. It appears to be FM. He’s pushing the buttons to the presets. What year is this?

**John:** I don’t know.

**Craig:** Megana wouldn’t even know what that is. She would not know what that is.

**John:** Not a bit.

**Craig:** Very end, below the title, is a list of the actors’ names. That should be “actors’,” S then apostrophe, as it is a possessive plural. Anyway, lots to do there. I think get simpler, get clearer. There’s certainly an interesting premise here, so well done.

**John:** I’m looking at the log line that was provided. It says, “Bill, an unsuccessful local theater actor working in a call center, is pushed by a mysterious Shakespearean presence into stealing the titular role in a production of Macbeth by whatever means necessary.” We did get the setup. We understood what the premise of the story was.

**Craig:** That’s really smart. Macbeth is a bad ambition. This makes sense. Hopefully he has a girlfriend who convinces him to stab someone. Anyway, so onwards we go to Pizza Boy written by Mick Jones.

**John:** Pizza Boy. Talk us through, Megana.

**Megana:** Dimitri and Clara flirt over dinner at a Beverly Hills restaurant. Their banter slowly turns to dirty talk. Suddenly, Claire’s voice warps into a man’s voice, asking Dimitri to confirm. We cut to Dimitri’s car outside the restaurant, where Dimitri sits in the driver’s seat. He’s picking up a brown takeout bag of food. The waiter has interrupted his fantasy to confirm that Dimitri has picked up the order.

**John:** Great. This is an example of a surprise situation where it’s not a Stuart Special. What we just saw was a fantasy and now we’re coming to the reality of it all. Are we going to name this for Megana? Does Megana get to claim this trope?

**Craig:** We need something that implies… A Megana Mirage.

**John:** A Megana Mirage, of course. It’s all a Megana Mirage.

**Craig:** This was all a Megana Mirage.

**John:** Spoiler, we’re going to have another Megana Mirage in a future three-page challenge here, our next one. Let’s talk about what Mick Jones did here in Pizza Boy and where we’re at in the course of these three pages. The idea of a guy picking up food at a restaurant and fantasizing that he’s at the restaurant, sure, I get that. I was a little bit frustrated that I didn’t feel like his flirtation with Clara was being paid off really, because Clara’s not in our scene. Clara does not appear to be the waiter who he’s talking with or the person who’s coming to confirm the order. I just got a little frustrated by the end of page three, that everything I’d been through wasn’t… I didn’t have an immediate payoff. There didn’t seem to be a pattern that was being fulfilled here.

**Craig:** This is the danger of the Megana Mirage is that the mirage has to, in and of itself, fascinate you and interest you and work for you, without you knowing it’s a mirage, because if you know it’s a mirage, it’s boring and it doesn’t matter and the stakes are irrelevant. If you don’t know it’s a mirage, but it’s not working on its own, the reveal that it’s a mirage just makes you go, oh, okay, that’s why that was that way. That’s not what you want from people. You don’t want them going, “Oh, okay. Okay, I guess that makes sense now.” Making sense isn’t the same as good.

The issue here is that the flirtation between Dimitri and Clara, it’s very arch. It feels very written. You could argue, Dimitri is writing it in his mind, which is fine. When people have fantasies in this way, I tend to find that it’s most interesting when one of them seems very grounded and real, and the other one is exciting, smart, interesting. In this case they’re both doing this thing that it’s sort of like bad porn writing, where everyone’s clever and everything is a double entendre and all the answers are witty. There’s some difficult description that happens early on.

**John:** “Manner born.”

**Craig:** Manner born is correct.

**John:** It’d be M-A-N-O-R.

**Craig:** Actually, the first use was… Manner born, M-A-N-N-E-R, is how it started.

**John:** Oh, wow.

**Craig:** Yeah, in Shakespeare I think, but then manor born, it may have even been a pun. I was reading about this actually the other day. It’s the weirdest thing that the manner born thing happened in this thing. Manner born may have been a pun on manor born. I tend to use manor born. They are both fine.

**John:** Is that appropriate for a Beverly Hills crowd?

**Craig:** No, it’s not. If it were, you would still want a dash in there. You wouldn’t want “manner born crowd.” “Dimitri is aloof, feigning interest,” but he also grins and “never breaks eye contact with Clara.” Now, how do you do that? You never break eye contact, but you’re aloof and feigning interest. That’s just impossible. Basically, I was annoyed by the conversation. I didn’t like either of them, because I didn’t believe either of them. It all felt fake. She said that he’s funny. He hasn’t done anything funny. There’s an example of a good Megana Mirage in, I believe it’s the first… I think it was the pilot episode of Ozark, yeah, maybe the second episode, where we see Jason Bateman’s character having a Megana Mirage with a woman in his car and she’s saying all these things to him. You believe it. He’s a wreck, and she’s telling him these things that he needs to hear. It’s lovely and then you realize that she’s a prostitute and it’s not working like that. You need to believe in the scene itself. I think that was the biggest issue I had here with this particular, I’m just going to keep saying it, Megana Mirage.

**John:** A thing I noticed on the page here, on the bottom of page one, Clara says, “Why don’t you just imagine that I’m not?” The “imagine” is not underlined, but it has asterisks around it. Sure. In Highland or other apps, the asterisks would actually create an italic.

**Craig:** A markup thing.

**John:** A markup thing, yeah. That’s fine, but also people do speak with little asterisks around them, so it didn’t bug me. It’s another way of creating a sensation of like there’s a spin on that word. Great, I’m happy to see that. I think English is constantly evolving, so using things like that is absolutely fine. The joke at the bottom of page two, which goes into page three, Dimitri says, “And what do you find attractive?” He says, “Confidence, red, curly hair, a beautiful smile.” She says, “Do you want to F me or Carrot Top?” Carrot Top, the visual works, but also Carrot Top is not a person you refer to in 2022. It felt like a clam.

**Craig:** It is a clam. Also, weirdly, there is that… I had no problem with the asterisks as well, but then suddenly he is emphasizing words not with asterisks, but with italics and underlines at the same time, which is a very strong emphasis. I think a simple italic there would be fine. I tend to find those underlines seem a bit yelly to me, whereas italics feel like stress. I think, “What do you find attractive?” just could’ve taken an italic, and simply later then when it says, “Then I’m going to pull your panties off with my teeth.” Oh, Dimitri. Which actually just is awkward. No need for the underline there.

Here’s my advice. Let’s be positive and constructive for a minute here, Mick. I think my advice is this. Clara can be this person. She can be tricky and she can be mean and negging him and she can be beautiful and she can suddenly be seductive. She can be all these things, as long as Dimitri is as confused and low power status as I am when I’m reading it. Do you know what I mean? She scares me and I want him to be scared and I want him to be confused and I want him to not be able to follow her. Then I want her to take a little pity on him or decide that he’s adorable enough for her to take home. That’s what I want. I want something that feels real and will help me learn something about Dimitri, since he’s our character.

**John:** Let’s take a look at the log line that Mick provided, which is, “To pursue his dreams of becoming a comedian, a young man must endure untold humiliation as a delivery driver in Los Angeles.” We got delivery driver in Los Angeles in these first three pages. That’s great. I wouldn’t have known that he’s a comedian. I think there’s an opportunity for this. If we see him trying jokes in this, I think there’s… I could imagine a version of this scene where we see that he’s trying to make her laugh and he’s trying material on her. There’s something you could do in this that would get us to that he’s actually a comedian, because I think that’s important information for us to get out in these first three pages, and I don’t see that happening.

**Craig:** No. The first few pages tell us what’s important to somebody. I think we’re starting with our I want song, in a way. What this tells me is that he wants a girlfriend.

**John:** Clara, yeah.

**Craig:** He wants a girlfriend. He wants to be a Romeo. He wants to be that guy that all the women want to date. What it’s not telling me is that he wants to be a comedian. If you did the same exact concept and it was a party and we’re in a backyard of this beautiful mansion and Dimitri is the center of a group of people, he’s telling a really funny story and he’s really good at telling it. He’s confident, and everyone’s laughing. Then you cut to or reveal that he’s actually standing there on the edge watching somebody else doing this who’s an actual comedian.

**John:** He’s going to hand the bag of food to take somewhere else.

**Craig:** He’s just there to deliver something for the party. That guy is the guy whose life he wants. Then I would understand what this movie is. I would get it.

**John:** Let’s go to our next Three Page Challenge. Can you talk us through Evergreen by Heather Kennedy?

**Megana:** Great. Frank Harrell, 80s, white, swims in the pool of the Evergreen Estate, a 1950s Bel Air mansion. A member of the staff, Joel Garner, 50s, Black, reminds Frank that he’s not supposed to swim alone. A woman’s cry calls him inside, where they find Margaret, 80s, white, has just discovered the dead body of Joe Johnson. Joel calls the police and tells them a guest has been shot dead. We pull back from the estate as an ambulance appears, revealing that we’re actually in modern Los Angeles.

**John:** That’s the Megana Mirage. We thought we were in a period movie, but it’s actually modern day Los Angeles.

**Craig:** I don’t know if that’s a mirage. This could be something else, because it’s not a fantasy where the bubble gets burst.

**John:** It’s a Rao Reveal is what it is.

**Craig:** It could be a Rao Reveal. That’s exactly right. This could be a Rao Reveal.

**John:** A Raoveal.

**Craig:** A Raoveal. This may have been a Raoveal. Just a quick disclosure, I’m friends with Heather.

**John:** Oh, nice.

**Craig:** She and I are both puzzle solvers.

**John:** You’re puzzlers.

**Craig:** We’re solvers, John.

**John:** When you’re putting pieces together.

**Craig:** She lives in Austin.

**John:** Shaking that puzzle dust out of that little box.

**Craig:** Never. We’ve done some escape rooms and we frequently talk to each other about puzzles. Lovely person. There’s something that could be excellent here. There’s a Pleasantville possibility I think is what’s going on. We have trouble in these first two lines. This is where I think so much could be solved, because I’m not sure what I’m actually seeing. Okay, some possibilities. One, that when these people are walking around, they’re delusional and they think they’re in a 1950s black-and-white movie, because they’re old.

**John:** Some sort of memory care thing.

**Craig:** Yeah, or this is a weird bubble of reality, where once you cross the line you are in 1950s black-and-white Hollywood, or this is just a funny opening to introduce us to what will be a story about a regular old age home. I’m not sure. I would love to know better somehow. The first few lines say, “As the first light flickers onto the screen, we discover this is an old Hollywood black-and-white film.” There’s not much discovery there. You could just say, “This is a black-and-white film.” Black-and-white. Or you could just say, “Black-and-white.”

There is an interesting tonal issue that occurs, because on the second page we meet Margaret. “Margaret speaks in that mid-century, mid-Atlantic movie accent prevalent at the time. Oh Joel, it’s awful, just awful.” She’s great. She also says, “Oh Gwennie. Please. You mustn’t,” which made me laugh out loud, because that’s just so funny.

In the prior page, which is in the same black-and-white universe, Frank, who is floating in a pool, says, “I can’t be blamed if Joe didn’t see fit to join me this morning. Asshole’s afraid he’ll lose.” No one said “asshole” in these 1950s black-and-white movies. That was just simply not available to them, and it wouldn’t fit.

Also, he says, “Did I ever tell you that Johnny Weissmuller taught me how to swim?” “Yes, sir, once or twice.” Now, that makes me think, okay, so that was a long time ago, but Johnny Weissmuller was… “Johnny Weissmuller’s teaching me how to swim,” might help, because then I would think, okay, I’m in that… It was hard to pin down exactly what the concept was here. I know what I want the concept to be here. I just don’t know if it is.

**John:** Like you, I enjoyed the things that felt like ‘50s period and I enjoyed the mid-Atlantic accent. I enjoyed that kind of voice of it all and recognizing that race was a factor here as well. Starting as a black-and-white movie just felt kind of like cheating. Am I watching The Artist? I just didn’t know what I was actually experiencing and how seriously to take it. I didn’t know when I was going to transition to full color to show that we are in present-day time. Just remember, Sunset Boulevard, which you’re also referencing here at the very start, you don’t need to shoot things black-and-white to make them look old. You could actually just shoot them in present-day things and if the production design feels like 1950s, we’re going to believe it’s 1950s until you break that illusion. That’s going to be a better solution for you for most things.

**Craig:** I couldn’t agree more. To me, costume and hair and makeup and speech patterns, dialog patterns, furniture, all these things can absolutely convince me that I’m in period Los Angeles. The reveal is not from black-and-white to color. The reveal is period Los Angeles to 2022 Los Angeles, which is not at all like that. Once you get past the gates of this place, you realize, oh, we’re in the middle of now. Again, the question will remain, is this just a memory care type facility, where people just think it’s in the ‘50s, or is this some weird time bubble? It’s hard to say.

I love the fact that there’s a murder mystery in the offing here, because those are always wonderful. I thought things were fairly well described. I could see things. I saw, for instance, the bottom of page one, “A woman’s scream startles them. They pick up their speed.” That’s great. That’s a nice transition. “Interior Evergreen Estate. Joel and Frank follow the commotion.” I thought, okay, I’m going to go to the next page, but what is this living room, and boom, there it is, the interior of the mansion. She lets you know. Then there’s a very funny line. Then I could see exactly the body. I could see what the body looked like. I could see how he was shot. I love that there were feathers everywhere from the pillow. All that stuff felt great. It’s just conceptually we need to know what we’re supposed to understand, because kind of don’t.

**John:** It gets back to our confusion versus misdirection, and I just got a little confused. Don’t name a character Joel and a character Joe. We’re going to get those names confused.

**Craig:** I wouldn’t even name a character Joe and a character John. We got to watch that. Also, there is an errant I-T-apostrophe-S when we should have an I-T-S at the bottom of page three. I know that Heather will be kicking herself at that. I know her well enough.

**John:** As a puzzler.

**Craig:** Yes, solver.

**John:** Fortunately, we do have an answer about whether this is a time-space bubble. Her log line that she submitted says, “When LAPD homicide detective Keiko Sanjiko [ph] discovers the bigoted elderly residents in a home for the stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age won’t answer her questions, she hires the spitting image son of their beloved TV private investigator to be her proxy. The two uncover a decades-old feud and love affairs, but will that help them solve this locked-room mystery with a surprising emotional twist?”

**Craig:** That’s a really fun concept. I think that concept is terribly served by beginning this in black-and-white. In no way, shape, or form should that be what you do there. You just start it, we think we’re in the ‘50s, and then we realize, oh, these people, it’s just a memory care thing. I think there’s an opportunity to actually have a secondary reveal, which is Interior Evergreen Estate Office Day. This is Joel, who’s looking after them. “He walks into his office, closes the door behind him. Now that he is alone, he is visibly shaken.” He would be visibly shaken also seeing a dead body prior. He’s not an actor. “He walks to a nearby desk and dials 911 on the rotary phone. Someone on the other end answers. Yes, I’m… My resident, a resident has been shot. He’s dead.” To me, if he walked into that office and we were like, “Oh, whoa, this office has a computer,” that’s [cross-talk 00:53:15].

**John:** He’s pulling out his iPhone, yeah.

**Craig:** Then he just picks up the phone, dials it, and he’s like, “Yeah,” and he just speaks without any kind of mannering and 1950s nature. He’s a more interesting reveal than the city. Then you can show the city, which is perfectly fine. A human and his mundane things. He could pull out his iPhone. He doesn’t need a rotary phone.

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** He could be like, “I’m going to go get you your tonic.”

**John:** Bloop bloop bloop.

**Craig:** He goes to the room and goes into another room, and in that second room he unlocks the door and that goes into just a regular office and he pulls out his iPhone and dials 911. I think that would be more interesting.

**John:** I agree with you there. Let’s get to our final Three Page Challenge. Megana, will you talk us through Scavenger.

**Megana:** Great. Scavenger by Phil Saunders. A boyfriend records his girlfriend opening her birthday present from him, when the entire building is suddenly rocked by an earthquake. The footage cuts to black as we hear the room collapse. The handheld footage picks back up with quick shots of the couple running through the Santa Monica Pier as the earthquake wreaks havoc. The Ferris wheel falls and crushes the girlfriend. An office tower collapses. We pull back to reveal Edgar Corman in his 50s in a private jet watching the footage under the caption “10 years later, the quake through the eyes of its victims.” He video chats with Thania Redrick. They’re surprised that the footage was recovered. Thania tells him a scavenger found it. We cut to Fin Lorca in her 20s diving through underwater ruins. She swims past a barrier and discovers a sunken carousel.

**John:** Great. Craig, a thing I like about these pages is that it can be so hard to show a bunch of chaos happening. A bunch of chaos happens, and people just basically track what’s going on. I see this is all found footage. I’m getting a sense from these glimpses about what this must be. I felt like it was live and present in ways that did make me want to… It kept me actually reading through the stuff. Even if I didn’t have to read exactly, I didn’t need to look at each bit of time code, I got a sense of what was happening. That can be tricky to do on the page. I did like that about how these pages started.

**Craig:** It’s an interesting thing. I really enjoy the first page. I really enjoy the third page. I struggled mightily with the second.

**John:** I did as well. Let’s talk about why, because it’s when we get to this reveal, like, oh, here’s the person on the private plane watching, it’s like, wait, I don’t get why this footage is so important here. I just wanted that scene to go away and get ride to my scavenger having found a thing or jumping ahead to this is what the sunken city of Los Angeles is like.

**Craig:** I agree. There’s something very smart and very poetic about the way Phil has laid out his first page here. A young woman wakes up, stretches like a cat. 23, bedhead and bleary eyes.” Thank you. Wardrobe, hair, makeup. “Smiles at us as we get closer. The mirror behind her catches her boyfriend’s reflection.” I can see this. He says, “Happy birthday, lazybones,” capturing it on his phone. It’s “Corrupted like a bad copy.” I know something’s going on already. I like that it’s corrupted like a bad copy. “His hand reaches out with a wrapped gift. The size and shape scream jewelry. Lazybones, tired smile, wakes up.” That was really interesting, because he decided to name her Lazybones, even though her name is Young Woman, which I think is correct. It’s smart.

There’s this little banter back and forth with them that is very mild but believable, didn’t bore me. She says something that feels like the kind of thing people say. It’s not too clever. It’s not too boring. It’s just fine. The way the disaster happens is really interesting. It felt real. Then I had no idea what the hell was going on. To start with, it says, “Interior Aircraft Cabin.” It took me a while to understand that this was a private jet. It doesn’t say private jet. It just says, “The jet’s only passenger.” I’m assuming that he’s in a 747 when I see “Interior Aircraft Cabin.” The first action line is, “10 years later, the quake through the eyes of its victims.”

**John:** Where am I seeing that line?

**Craig:** Then it says underneath, “A tabloid website streaming on a screen in the hands of… “ When we say screen, do we mean tablet? What is that?

**John:** I don’t know.

**Craig:** Tabloid websites streaming? What does streaming mean? Do you just mean that that’s the headline of a tabloid website? What tabloid website? Then we have this guy, who we’ve heard prior. There’s this prelap of people talking. By the way, it’s not V.O. In that case it’s probably something else, off screen. I don’t know if it’s V.O. Voiceover is when people are narrating things.

**John:** People are talking directly to the audience.

**Craig:** I think this is something else. Also, he has to figure out what to do here, because one of them is talking in a scene and the other one, her voice is coming over this feed. I have no idea what is going on. I don’t know what any of this means. I know I’ll find out later. Sometimes jargon as mystery makes me crazy, like, “You had to pull me out for this.” Pull you out, what does that mean, pull you out?

Then, “Someone made it in. How far? Far enough to recover that footage. Christ, this could save us. Who?” No one says, “Christ, this could save us.” No one, ever. I don’t know what they’re talking about, but John, if you and I know that if we had something that could save us, and we watched a video, and it seemed that somebody might have that thing, I would go, “Oh my god. They might have it.” I wouldn’t say, “John, that is the very thing that we have discussed a thousand times that could save us.”

**John:** “Christ.”

**Craig:** “Christ.”

**John:** “That could save us.”

**Craig:** “Goddammit.” No. I completely agree that I want to be in the next page. I just want to skip page two. I just want to go from this crazy moment of Los Angeles being destroyed to underwater, and then seeing this woman come through and having her scavenging. We get it. It’s many years later, because everyone’s a skeleton now.

**John:** Yeah, so cool. There’s something in this footage that is the McGuffin. There’s something that they are seeing in this footage that is important. I would say maybe spend that top of page two focusing in on that thing that is important, and that let us as an audience know that that thing is important. We don’t need to go to the guy to say that thing is important, because you’ve told us as an audience that thing is important. Great, we’ll be getting back to that. As long as you held on that, we’ll know there’s a reason why we held on that.

**Craig:** When we meet Aleta, who is scavenge diving, there’s all this really cool imagery and stuff. She’s looking at a driver’s license. “She pulls a driver’s license from a rotted walls, compares the faded image of a woman to a skeleton, as if trying to imagine it in life.” That’s wonderful. Such a great visual. “It’s one of many littering the ruins.” I can see it now. “Aleta traces a cross over the corpse and begins to rob it.” What a great sentence. Love that sentence. Then there’s this science-fiction thing happening. “A liquid electric fence known as the Barrier stretches sea floor to surface between high-tech pylons, emitting a deep bass thrum you can feel in your gut. It sparks and flashes warnings, restricted, keep out.”

Now I know it’s not actually saying those things, and I know that there’s no way for us to know it’s called the Barrier, but I get it, because I know when I watch it, that will be clear. A fish swims through it and dies. She sees something on the other side and takes the pain of reaching through that thing to reveal that there’s a carousel horse buried there, and that means something to her. In fact, it means so much that she forgets her arm is in this thing and she pays for it with some burns. She’s found something. She goes up to the surface. She’s going to tell somebody she’s found something.

This is all good mystery. It’s very beautiful and it’s visual and no one’s talking to each other with this stuff. I’m nervous, Phil. I’m nervous, because I think you’re a good writer. I’m just worried about your dialog, which is its own kind of writing, because the dialog was not strong here.

**John:** That’s a thing he could work on.

**Craig:** That is a thing that he can work on. It may be that his dialog is fine. It’s just that he’s trying too hard with these guys to be clever, mysterious, provocative, confusing. If you want to keep it this way, Phil, I would suggest making it clearer and just doing a little bit less. Do less here.

**John:** Actually, the dialog on the first page was appropriately less. I believe those moments as authentic. Here’s the log line we got sent for this. “In the sunken ruins of post-quake Los Angeles, a cursed salvage diver finds redemption when she goes up against a military epidemiologist to save her refugee community from a deadly outbreak.”

**Craig:** Whoa, that is a lot of stuff.

**John:** That’s a lot of stuff.

**Craig:** That’s a lot.

**John:** Deadly outbreak is a surprise to me. I like the universe that we’re playing in. I would certainly have kept reading to see what was going to happen next, because we haven’t heard Fin speak yet.

**Craig:** We haven’t. I think no matter how this turns out, Phil clearly has a way with words. He can do this. He can make pictures with words. That’s a huge part of this. He also understands the interesting contrasts of things. I’m hopeful.

**John:** I’m hopeful too. Thank you to everyone who submitted, all 150 people who submitted, especially these four who we talked about on the air today. Three out of four of these were written in Courier Prime, which is why the italics look so nice. Thank you for using some Courier Prime. This was a good exercise. Thank you, Megana, for going through all of these entries.

**Craig:** Thank you, Megana.

**John:** It’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is The One, which was built as the most expensive house in the United States. I do not recommend anybody buy this house. It was originally sold for $295 million. I will recommend that people take a look at this video of the touring of it, because it’s a half-hour long, and I’ve never seen such an impressive building that I wanted to live in less. It is essentially, at a certain point you build what is like a museum, that is not an actual house. The primary bedroom is bigger than any normal person’s house would ever want to be. It looks so uncomfortable to live in this space. After you watch this video, I’d also recommend, I think this is a previous One Cool Thing, Lauren Greenfield’s documentary The Queen of Versailles.

**Craig:** So good.

**John:** Is so amazing. It’s about this woman’s quest to build this giant house in Florida. You see her current already giant house and how hard it is to live in a giant house and how her husband just wants to live in this one little small room, because big spaces are not comfortable. I just wish people would understand that no one wants that kind of space and rooms of that scale. It was so fascinating and so uncomfortable to watch.

**Craig:** Obviously, John, if you do buy the house for 295 million, you know you’re going to spend another 30 or 40 million just fixing up the little things.

**John:** The small things, yeah, because I’ll be honest, the little golf course on the roof, it’s fine. It could be better.

**Craig:** Obviously.

**John:** The indoor saltwater pool, it’s fine.

**Craig:** It’s fine.

**John:** It’s not the best.

**Craig:** Because it’s Los Angeles, if you do buy it, and then you bring an interior designer or architect over, they will just explain to you why it’s all wrong and needs to be redone. Doesn’t matter what you buy, all wrong.

**John:** There’s four bowling lanes, but really, you’re going to have to split lanes, you’re going to have to share. Come on.

**Craig:** Just do it right or don’t do it at all.

**John:** I see what you have here and I have the same recommendation.

**Craig:** I can’t even get it out. My One Cool Thing this week is Elden Ring.

**John:** After we ranted about it last week. I switched classes and you switched classes. I think we made the right choice to do that.

**Craig:** Yeah, we did. I was really struggling, obviously. We could hear it last week. I was just so confused.

**John:** It is confusing.

**Craig:** It’s outrageous how they just don’t care about you in this game. It is undeniably gorgeous and massive. I was just feeling like, oh my god, everyone’s just saying it does get better. I did a little research, because mostly, I understand that even though the game requires dying, I don’t like dying. I am a coward. I’ve always been more of a ranged fighter than an up-close guy. I did a little research and finally understood that if you are a ranged fighter, there’s one class. There’s really one class to take, and it is curiously the best caster. Even though you could be a bandit and shoot arrows, not as powerful or as good as the astrologer, which is their name for wizard, essentially.

**John:** A wizard, a spell caster. I also switched and made myself an astrologer character.

**Craig:** So much better.

**John:** It’s so much easier to fire equivalent of [unclear 01:06:02] fireballs from a distance. You eventually run out of mana, whatever that mana is, but it’s just easier.

**Craig:** Some recommendations if you’re starting, choose the astrologer. The next screen will come up. You get to pick a name. There’s also a little starting gift you can have. Always pick golden seed. Always, because that gives you an extra jar of mana restoration.

**John:** Yeah, a little extra flask. Then you can set your flask so you regenerate two mana flasks and two life flasks [cross-talk 01:06:32].

**Craig:** I would actually go for three and one. I don’t think you need health much, because you’re not going to get close to anybody. Battles that were incredibly difficult for me became trivialized. I did even, in my first try at the big first boss, Margit the Fell, I did kill Margit the first try.

**John:** Congratulations. I’ve not tried to do that yet. I think it is the right overall approach. You’re spamming from a distance, but that’s fine too.

**Craig:** Look, I’m not playing this game to be humiliated, because mostly, here’s the thing. I am a story mode guy. I like the stories, which granted in this thing I don’t think are going to be particularly compelling, but still fine. I mostly like discovery. I like to go to new places and see new things. It’s hard to do that when you can get one-shotted by almost anything. It’s become way more enjoyable. I can tell I’m going to be into it. Astrologer. Take a little bit of time to level up.

**John:** [Cross-talk 01:07:35].

**Craig:** Get your intelligence to 20 as fast as you can. Get your mind to 20 as fast as you can. Intelligence increases the damage you do with your staff, and mind increases the amount of mana you have to cast, so you just cast and cast and cast.

**John:** The other recommendation I’ve seen is that dexterity is also helpful too, because that helps you just avoid getting hit. That could be another [cross-talk 01:07:55].

**Craig:** You hopefully aren’t so close that you’re getting hit. Once you get Torrent the horse, you can ride around to really avoid getting hit. Dexterity does impact how fast you can cast. After you hit, you send one glint, pebble, shard, whatever it is, how quickly can you send another one. Even with your dexterity being fairly low to start, you can cast pretty quickly. Vigor will help boost your HP a bit, which is nice, keeps you from dying too quickly. Again, you don’t want to get near anybody. You want to stay far away and just blast from a distance. Astrologer in Elden Ring if you are a baby like me or John.

**John:** In Elden Ring we are recommending that you maximize your intelligence, your dexterity, and perhaps your vigor. As a screenwriter we recommend that you maximize your intelligence, your wisdom, and your charisma.

**Craig:** Yeah, intelligence first.

**John:** Intelligence first.

**Craig:** Just like the astrologer.

**John:** Astrologer.

**Craig:** Then for screenwriting, you’re going to want to then go for charisma and then wisdom.

**John:** Wisdom, yeah. We love it. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Joe Palen. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin, I’m @johnaugust. I will not get involved in the screenwriter discourse, but Craig might. We have T-shirts and they’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. We also have hoodies that are wonderful. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts and sign up for our weeklyish newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. You can sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and Bonus Segments, like the one we’re supposed to record about composers. Craig, thank you for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

[Bonus Segment]

**John:** Craig, that was an example of music being composed really unspecced, just for fun, by Joe Palen in that circumstance. I want to point you to an article that’s talking through the way in which film and TV music is written, because so often you’ll see this is the named composer, but there’s actually a whole stable of sub-composers who are working for that person who are doing the actual work of coming up with all the cues. Is this something you’re familiar with coming into this conversation?

**Craig:** Yes. The composer can’t do everything. Some composers also are not particularly good, for instance, at taking the music that they’re composing, which they often do on one instrument, and transposing it, or I’m sorry, I should say transcribing it into notation for an orchestra, nor are they expert in arranging it for an orchestra. Arrangement and instrumentalization and notation is a huge part of this.

Hildur Guðnadóttir, for instance, who did our score for Chernobyl and did the score for Joker, her husband is a guy named Sam Slater. He’s also a composer and a producer. He is very much this kind of partner for her to help take the musical thoughts and ideas and themes and then help her practically create tracks out of them and build them into larger things as need be and engineer them and produce them.

There are teams, certainly, of people. When you look at how much work some composers are doing, it would be impossible for them to be doing it all on their own. I could argue that if you’re John Williams and you come up with (singing), then you’ve done it. If you hummed the theme for ET or Star Wars or Jurassic Park and then told people to just spool it out for me and then listen to it and then you change some things, you’ve done the hard part. That is the genius part.

**John:** This article we’ll link to by Mark Rozzo from Vanity Fair, weirdly John Williams is apparently the person who actually does do all the stuff himself.

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** He’s the exception. Hans Zimmer is the person who’s most known for it. It sounds like over the years Zimmer’s been better at crediting and acknowledging all of the people who work for him and who are doing some of that real work in terms of putting those keys together, because you’re right, these people are sometimes working on four projects at once. They’re like those artists who become factories, that just do all the stuff. He might be coming up with the main theme, but everyone else is building out that stuff.

Where it’s become a crisis though, is that classically, the work that was done for a movie or for a premium cable show, there could be a reporting of that. There could be royalties. The other people who are credited there could get a percentage of that stuff. In the streaming age, those royalties are becoming harder and harder to access. People are really struggling. Folks who are getting some portion of that money down the road are not finding that same money in a Spotify universe.

**Craig:** This is not something that you or I tend to have any experience with. When you’re a writer, you are writing. If you’re running a room full of writers, then they’re all writing as well. On a television show, most of them almost certainly will get some kind of credit on a script, an episode. There will be residuals. There will be an acknowledgement. For this area there does seem like there’s a gray zone. One would hope that composers, particularly the most successful and well-known, would be compensating their partners fairly, treating them fairly, and if they are working significantly and adding a lot creatively, that they should be rewarded for that on an ongoing basis, not just as a buyout, which I suspect may be the case.

**John:** We as screenwriters and television writers, we are represented by a union. Composers and lyricists are not represented by a union, so they don’t have the same kind of workplace protections and workplace standards and minimums that you and I benefit from. I think we’ve talked about, with Rachel Bloom, I think on the show before, is that there’s also this weird thing where she could be hired on to write a song for an episode or for a movie, and she’s creating literary material, she’s creating story for that. She’s creating a moment. She’s creating that scene in which that thing happens. She doesn’t have the Writers Guild protection over that work. She’s not considered a credited writer for having written something that could be a really significant portion of what’s happening there in that dramatic work.

**Craig:** I think it’s a great thing for us to draw attention to, not only to acknowledge that other people are doing this work and to help people understand the way things are. There’s no shame in this. This isn’t a secret or anything. Nobody’s pretending that those people aren’t there. Hopefully they are being taken care of. I haven’t noticed any major lawsuits or things, so one would hope that everyone is being taken care of and treated appropriately. That said, wish in one hand, poop in another, and see which one fills up first.

**John:** You and I both know of a screenwriter who is notorious for having had a room of writers who were apparently doing the work for him.

**Craig:** Who knows?

**John:** I think the fact that you and I are both thinking about the same person probably means that it is really exceptional.

**Craig:** It’s rare. It’s really rare.

**John:** It just doesn’t happen.

**Craig:** It’s a very rare thing. It’s not endemic to what we do.

**John:** Agreed. Craig, thanks.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

Links:

* Follow alone with our Three Page Challenge selections [The Man Who Could be Macbeth](https://johnaugust.com/index.php?gf-download=2022%2F03%2FThe-Man-Who-Could-Be-Macbeth-first-3-pages.pdf&form-id=1&field-id=4&hash=966ed6db27560a1e5248d4684aa3146ac99d688911bdcb6a6772792247a6aebc) by Daniel Brace, [Pizza Boy](https://johnaugust.com/index.php?gf-download=2022%2F03%2FPizza-Boy.pdf&form-id=1&field-id=4&hash=b44cfadd9bbd1cd9a3eaebec7895a2df7236effe3476b09341bfcb26bbba234d) by Mick Jones, [Evergreen](https://johnaugust.com/index.php?gf-download=2022%2F03%2FEVERGREEN-by-Heather-Kennedy-3-pages.pdf&form-id=1&field-id=4&hash=04d28a15776ebee0415aa8362aad6fa04df7782a7f0ecbd58bc5f67ded5341c7) by Heather Kennedy, [Scavenger](https://johnaugust.com/index.php?gf-download=2022%2F03%2FScavenger_1st3pages.pdf&form-id=1&field-id=4&hash=f4b2401ba8d366f6414ee2f8aa5276338fc77d22672536f60f2b1e2229ed77fd) by Phil Saunders.
* [WGA East Settles Five-Day Strike Against G/O Media](https://deadline.com/2022/03/wga-east-settles-five-day-strike-against-gizmodo-media-group-1234972332/)
* [RSVP for the Animation Guild Rally](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf1nAG5CQeIl-UT2VoZB4kMXaoC7XH3EGppg4tIU9J-YVtFHg/viewform) Sunday 3/20 at 2pm in Burbank, CA
* [‘Copshop’ Screenwriter Sues Zero Gravity Management For Breach of Contract](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/copshop-screenwriter-sues-zero-gravity-management-for-breach-of-contract-1235107246/)
* [ScreenSkills To Fund Accessibility Co-Ordinators For British TV](https://deadline.com/2022/03/screenskills-to-fund-accessibility-co-ordinators-for-british-tv-1234975989/)
* [Behind the Tweets: “Rewrite Map”](https://www.wga.org/news-events/news/connect/3-11-22/behind-the-tweets-rewrite-map) by Jeffrey Lieber on WGAW Connect
* [Scriptnotes Episode 530: The One with Jack Thorne](https://johnaugust.com/2021/the-one-with-jack-thorne)
* [David Iserson’s Tweet on Great Scripts](https://twitter.com/davidiserson/status/1498832466575912961?s=21)
* [Touring the MOST EXPENSIVE HOUSE in the United States!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8Cd_McCdow) on Youtube and [The Queen of Versailles](https://www.magpictures.com/thequeenofversailles/)
* [The Astrologer on Elden Ring](https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Astrologer)
* [“The Minions Do the Actual Writing”: The Ugly Truth of How Movie Scores Are Made](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/02/the-ugly-truth-of-how-movie-scores-are-made) by Mark Rozzo for Vanity Fair
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/gifts) or [treat yourself to a premium subscription!](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Joe Palen ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/541standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2022/we-see-and-we-hear).

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

**Craig Mazin:** Oh, my name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 533 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting, and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, why are so many screenwriters worried about the word ‘we’?

**Craig:** Why? Why?

**John:** Craig and I will hopefully drive a stake to the heart of the “we hear/we see” prohibition, as we talk through some screenplay fundamentals, before looking at some of the scripts up for awards this season.

**Craig:** We will see some of those scripts. We will see them, we.

**John:** We will see them.

**Craig:** We see.

**John:** And if we were listening in a room, we could hear them-

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** -because we can hear and we can see. We have the sensors.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Then, we’ll get into some listener questions. And our bonus segment for premium members, we will discuss what is the screenwriting equivalent of bootcamp?

**Craig:** Ooh, that’s interesting.

**John:** We talk about soap operas being like actor bootcamp. Is there a boot camp for writing?

**Craig:** Oh, I see what you mean. Got it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Understood. Okay.

**John:** A place where you’re doing so much work that you’re really picking up your skills, you’re developing your craft.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm. All right. [crosstalk]

**John:** I like it.

**Craig:** That’s only if you pay us.

**John:** If you pay us, you can listen to us talk about that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** If you pay enough money, you could own The CW, which is apparently up for sale.

**Megana:** [chuckles]

**Craig:** [chuckles] Wait, what? [chuckles]

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** The CW is for sale?

**John:** It was announced this last week or the week before that a CW may be up on the auction block. CW in the US, for our international listeners, is the home to a lot of great programs, including where Crazy Ex-Girlfriend used to air. It was a joint partnership between Warner Brothers and CBS. So, there were some shows that were CBS shows which was Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and some things. There are a lot of Warner Brothers shows that were there. Now that Warner is more focused on HBO Max stuff, and CBS is focused on Paramount+ stuff, it’s not quite clear how The CW fits in. So, it may end up becoming a new thing, it may change. But anyway, the head of CW said, “You know what? Yeah, we’re probably up for sale.”

**Craig:** The sentence you just said there, if we had just rolled back to when we started this podcast, would have made utterly no sense to us.

**John:** No. [crosstalk]

**Craig:** The HBO Max and– What?

**John:** Paramount+.

**Craig:** Paramount– CBS with Par– what? What? Para+. But it’s remarkable how much things have changed. I guess, similarly, it’s remarkable how oddly adaptable we are as human beings. We are terrified of change, but we’re really good at absorbing it and accepting it when it happens. We’re odd little creatures, aren’t we?

**John:** Obviously, it feels everything’s accelerating, but I think at any given moment in time, we would probably feel it’s accelerating to all these new things. It’s always strange to think back to 100 years ago, cars were new, the time between the first flight at Kitty Hawk to man landing on the moon was so much shorter than you think it would be.

**Craig:** Yeah. And that’s right. We are witnessing the acceleration of things in our lifetime. But everything that happened before us just feels like history that took forever.

**John:** Yeah. We’ll see what happens to The CW. One of the discussion points is that CW airs on a bunch of local stations, obviously, and the local stations are part of bigger groups. And that group might just buy out The CW instead of [crosstalk].

**Craig:** Do you have any interest in it?

**John:** Honestly, I don’t. I feel at this point, I’m all in on streaming. The normal linear broadcast and stuff is just not so appealing to me.

**Craig:** I mean, because Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was on it, right?

**John:** It was. It was great.

**Craig:** We could own that.

**John:** Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was originally going to be a premium cable show.

**Craig:** Showtime. Yeah.

**John:** And then, they retooled that. You can go back and listen to the episode where we talked to Rachel and Aline about the show back when it was a Showtime show before it became The CW show. It was filthier. There used to be a handjob in it and then the handjob became a kiss.

**Craig:** Ultimately, you’ve summed up the difference between Showtime and The CW.

**John:** I did.

**Craig:** It’s just that whatever mathematical equation converts a handjob into a kiss, that’s it.

**John:** That’s what it is.

**Craig:** That’s it.

**John:** That’s the difference between a broadcast and premium cable.

**Craig:** You’ve got it.

**John:** Do you remember Stuart Friedel?

**Craig:** Sorry, who?

**John:** Our first Scriptnotes producer, Stuart Friedel?

**Craig:** I mean, Stuart’s a part of our lives.

**John:** He is. Stuart is the reason for a lot of how Scriptnotes used to work, and of course, the reason why Scriptnotes t-shirts are so soft is because-

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** -Stuart is so sensitive and has this Stuart’s sense of softness. Stuart talked to me last week. He said, “I just had a mentor conversation with a Nebraska kid, who is my mom’s hairdresser’s nephew,” which is classic. “This guy mentioned the movie that he wanted to write. And he described the opening as a Stuart Special. He doesn’t know why it’s called that, but that’s what it’s called on Scriptnotes,” he says.

**Craig:** [chuckles]

**John:** He has no idea that it’s called a Stuart Special because of Stuart Friedel.

**Craig:** How did he miss that?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s a kind of amazing that there’s a generation of people who are going to call that a Stuart Special. The way in lore, the last shot of your day is the Martini. But the second to last shot is called the Abby or Abby Singer, because there was a first AD named Abby singer, who would call for the martini and he was always one shot off. And so, the second the last one became the Abby. And people will call it a Stuart Special, and then every now and then somebody, “You know why it’s called that by the way?” That’ll be a bit of trivia for people.

**John:** Yeah. And, of course, it’ll be like, it’s named after Stuart Friedel, who used to be a producer on Scriptnotes before he became a titan of children’s television.

**Craig:** Before he became the CEO of The CW.

[laughter]

**John:** Before he bought out The CW and turned it into–

**Craig:** I want to know what the Megana maneuver is?

**John:** Oh, yeah. Well, it has to be a term that Megana will coin here. But, Megana, I’m curious, do you know what the Stuart Special is? How would you define it as Stuart Special? Or, is it just all alien territory for you?

**Megana:** Stuart Special, I think, it’s something I encounter a lot when I read threepage challenges, which is flash forward in a script, and then, by the end of two or three pages, it’s like one week ago or six months ago.

**John:** Right. Absolutely.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That’s the Stuart Special.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s showing the moment right before the climax. And then going back like one month earlier. Exactly.

**Megana:** Right.

**John:** Record scratch. I bet you’re wondering how this all happened, and let me talk about this.

**Craig:** [chuckles]

**John:** Flashing back to just a few weeks ago, we had Jack Thorne on the show. We had a great conversation with him. He was talking about disability and also invisible illnesses. This last week, Annie Hayes wrote in. Annie Hayes is a friend of Scriptnotes. She has helped us out at Austin Film Festival. She had such a great letter that I thought, “Oh, it’s much better as a blog post than for us to try to read it on the air.” But Annie Hayes writes about her experience. She’s a staff writer on The CW show In the Dark, and she’s had cystic fibrosis this whole time since [crosstalk] she had cystic fibrosis. And writing about sort of the challenges of living with a chronic illness and working with a chronic illness, a lot people can’t see that you’re fighting this. She started off as an assistant. I think she was assistant at Verve before she started working as a staff writer, but it’s a great overview of what her experience has been.

One of the things she really stresses is that she’s been very open about it, but she also tries to make sure she’s always presenting a solution rather than a problem, which seems good advice in general.

**Craig:** That is. It’s funny, a little bit after that show, I talked with Jack, because he was curious, because I did mention that I had been dealing with chronic pain for a long time. He was like, “What is it?” He was actually, I think, maybe the first person I’d really talked to about it, because I’m me. I’m not that guy. It’s not related to any feelings about disabilities or physical challenges as much as just my general sense that, “Just shut up, Craig,” [chuckles] is mostly what I struggle with all the time, but it is interesting that you have to make choices when you have an invisible disability or illness or challenge. Whereas you don’t have that choice when it’s visible, at all. Both things come with their own unique difficulties. So, I appreciate Annie writing in about this.

**John:** Megana, we got another question from a listener about the Jack Throne conversation.

**Megana:** Great. Alok wrote in and said, “Your recent episode with Jack Thorne was amazing. I love Jack’s Edinburgh TV festival speech. As a person with invisible disabilities, I find his advocacy work really empowering. But I’m looking for a recommendation. My disability forces me to read text documents while simultaneously listening to them using a text-to-speech software. The one I use is called Read Aloud, which is a Chrome plugin. It’s a free software with minimal options that reads documents back to me in a deathly robotic monotone.”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Megana:** “It’s not at all suited for reading scripts.”

**Craig:** No.

**Megana:** “I was wondering if anyone at Scriptnotes was familiar with text-to-voice softwares that professional writers with disabilities could use to read their scripts. Again, it is text-to-voice that I’m looking for, not voice-to-text. If there is something on the market that you recommend suitable for script reading, I don’t mind shelling out some money to purchase it.”

**Craig:** Oh, that’s an interesting thought there. John, this seems like something you would probably know, if you knew you would know. Not me.

**John:** A couple things I can point you to. I do have friends who will listen to scripts in the car with some read aloud software. I think having similar experiences where it’s a little bit awkward, because it has no idea that you’re reading a script. Some things that could be helpful. In Highland 2, we have what’s called a narrated script. And what it does is, it’s looking at the same script, but it’s changing it to rather than like:

Tom: Welcome to my house, Mary.
Mary: It’s so nice to be here.

It says, “Tom says, ‘Welcome to my house,’ Mary says this.” It’s adding in the says and things, and it actually has the sense of like int and ext become interior and exterior, that may help you. It might make it a little bit easier for you to read. So, it’d just be a matter of throwing that PDF in there and exporting it as a narrated script, that could be a little bit better solution for you.

The Weekend Read beta has text-to-speech that’s actually really good, where you can actually set voices and do things so you can set the male characters to a certain male voice, female characters to a certain female voice. That’s great. It’s still in beta. So, I can’t offer that to everybody. We’ll send a copy to Alok, who can test it. And we’re also doing some new stuff in the new Highland beta that should be a little bit better for folks who need some accessibility things. We’re working with Ryan Knighton who’s our blind friend about making sure that’s fantastic for blind writers to use.

**Craig:** Well, that’s all sounds pretty useful information there. Turns out, you had all the answers right there, John.

**John:** I don’t have all the answers though, because I feel we probably have other listeners who are in similar situations. So, if you are like Alok who needs stuff read aloud, scripts read aloud, write into us and tell Megana what you’re using, and we’ll share that on a future episode.

**Craig:** It’s good idea.

**John:** Fantastic. All right. Well, let’s talk about screenplays in general and screenplay formatting, because this feels such a giant, fundamental question that we’ve addressed many times over the years. But even just this last week, Craig-

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** -you and I were both a little bit dumbfounded by someone who wrote to us and said like, “Hey, can you explain why you’re so upset against ‘we hear’ and ‘we see’?” And you replied with a GIF of–

**Craig:** [chuckles] Not sure if serious.

**John:** Not Sure If Serious. He just had fundamentally like mis–

**Craig:** Misunderstood, yeah.

**John:** -what we’re talking about here. So, just to make sure we will reiterate this a thousand times during the podcast. It’s absolutely fine to say “we hear” and “we see” on the page in screenplays. It’s also fine to not use it. You can be a writer who chooses not to use it, that’s great. But it’s an available tool for you, and you should not feel at all bad about using it. And if anyone smacks you down for using it, they’re being dumb.

**Craig:** They’re bad.

**John:** They’re bad.

**Craig:** Yeah, I use it all the time. Like John says, it’s not that we recommend using it. It’s just if you like it, great. I find it to be a useful tool. We’ve talked quite a bit about why it does something unique, that other presentations of actions do not so that it’s not simply a stylistic choice or a bit of decoration, but it has–

**John:** It’s not lazy. No.

**Craig:** No, it has purpose. I am mystified. I wish I could go find the patient zero of no one should ever write “we see” in screenplays. I don’t know who started this terrible virus, but it’s wrong. And it is metastasized throughout all of these mediocre schools. And the mediocre schools, I mean [chuckles] they’re all mediocre when it comes to this sort of thing. Waves of human beings have just keep arriving on Reddit, like teeming onto Reddit shores to explain to other people why you can’t use “we see.” And the two of us have just been standing there trying to rescue people from this nonsense because, I guess we can’t. But let’s try one more time.

**John:** We’ll try one more time. As we get into this, we’ll answer a bunch of listener simpler questions, and that’ll hopefully stack up together to a broader understanding of what we’re trying to do here on screenplay page. Megana, if you start us off with Adrian in Dublin here.

**Megana:** He asks, “I’ve been writing for years, but I’m still puzzled by the question when to use action in the quote ‘action section’ of a script and when to use it as a parenthetical.”

**John:** Adrian’s wondering, and this is a thing that every writer still makes choices, kind of every line is like, “Okay, is this going to be better as an action or scene description on the left-hand margin? Or is just the kind of thing that it’s better tucked underneath the character, the header, in parenthetical saying a small little thing that as part of that character’s direction or as a part of the overall scene direction?” You’re always making choices? for what that’s going to be. Craig, what general guidance are you thinking through when you’re making a decision about whether to use parenthetical or an action line?

**Craig:** Almost always, I’m going to use an action line for action. Parentheticals are the orthodoxies. Parentheticals are for terms that influence the way the line is read, or are there to imply that there’s a pause. However, every now and then, if there is an action that is super tiny, and is necessary to understand the dialogue properly, and the dialogue would be best served if we didn’t chop it up into two bits, then I will use the parenthetical. If I’m running a bit of dialogue and between two lines, someone lights a match, I might put that in parentheticals (lights a match).

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** And then, they keep going. But it would have to be, we’re talking about an action that could easily be described in a couple of words, and more importantly, would feel really dumb and tiny if it were its own action line.

**John:** Agreed. It’s how short the action is both in screen time and in words, because parentheticals that go on for 6 or 7 or 10 words, that should have probably been an action line. In my whole writing career, I’ve probably written two parentheticals that were that long and it was for some very specific purpose that I needed to keep them together as a parenthetical, rather than moving them in as an action line. Parentheticals, if it’s affecting how that line is going to be read, it’s really affecting the tone, the tenor, the intention of that line, that’s great for a parenthetical. If it is something that a single character is doing that is breaking their dialogue block, like a sneeze, that can fit great in a parenthetical, but anything that’s between multiple characters, beyond offering a handshake, that becomes action.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** One of the reasons why you may mix it up occasionally or decide to make something parenthetical versus a longer line is, you and I both have a preference against long columns of just two characters talking. Therefore, we’ll both look for opportunities. It’s like okay, this is a dialogue scene, but I would love to have some moments where over on the left hand margin in an action line, just to break up visually on page and not make it feel like this is just a tunnel of text.

**Craig:** Yeah, I call it ticker tape. Ticker tape screenplay page where it’s just dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, and just run out of things down the middle. If you require that you break it up, it forces you also to start thinking about, “Well, where are they? What are they doing? How are they moving in the space? Is there anything I can do to make this visually interesting?” Otherwise, it’s just going to be bing-bong, bing-bong, bing-bong.

**John:** Great. Another question for us, Megana.

**Megana:** Nick in LA asks, “Over the last few months, I’ve been listening through all the back episodes of Scriptnotes, and there was a string of episodes in 2014 where John and Craig brainstormed ideas for a top-to-bottom reimagining of the screenplay as we know it. This new format included things like embedded music, images, more clickable links, etc. In general, a more interactive and dynamic document than the current standard. My question is, now that we’re sevenish years later, do you still feel the same way about the standard screenplay format? Has any progress been made in terms of what is permissible to include in your script, and is changing anything a fool’s errand? What you described in those episodes sounds great and made a lot of sense to me, but it seems little has changed since 2014.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Very little has changed. I do see links in screenplays more often. I have seen clickable links in PDFs of screenplays that will link out to an image or something that explains something more fully. But no. I think you and I both had a little bit more utopian idea of this is what’s going to change, and it didn’t.

**Craig:** Well, I think we thought this is what we would like to change. This is what we would hope for change. But no, it hasn’t happened, and I think it’s still a great idea. It hasn’t happened at all. Part of the problem is Final Draft. It’s just this monster that sits on top of Hollywood and keeps this entire format back. I really do believe that. No one is sitting there at HBO or Universal or Disney saying, “We really love this 100-year-old method of putting screenplays down.” They don’t. Unfortunately, Final Draft, which is now owned by a payroll company, which is perfect, has essentially cornered the market on the format of screenplays as connecting into the format for budgeting and scheduling. There’s just no appetite for it, because everyone’s just stuck using it. It’s the Windows problem.

**John:** It’s the Windows problem. I’m not going to put all the blame at Final Draft’s feet, because I do think if Final Draft were to suddenly just explode and go away, it wouldn’t change quickly, because I think everyone’s just so used to scripts looking a certain way. You’re doing your show right now, and you could do your scripts a different way. You could choose to do something different. You’re not using Final Draft, you’re using Fade In, and you could do something different. But it’s easy to keep people doing the same thing they’re doing and it’s working for you. What I do think has changed since 2014 is, and this is also, I think, because the pandemic, because of Zoom, I see screenwriters doing a lot more work in Keynote or PowerPoint. A lot of early presentation stuff is now being done as slides. I think slide decking has become a more important part of describing a project early on. It’s not like I’m turning in a script and add a deck for things. But for some stuff, I might because it would at least show this is what this is meant to look like.

There’s a big world-building project that I may or may not do. I think if I were to take on that project, my script might be accompanied by, “Here are the images that go with it,” because everything I can describe on a page, so helpful. But to me being able to show it to you, it’s going to be more instructive.

**Craig:** I would do something else. I would write my show now in a different way if the tool were available. It’s not.

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** There’s just no tool, and I don’t think there’s going to be a tool available until someone feels the amount of time, energy, and resources to create something like that would be rewarded, because it just takes a lot. If Final Draft disappeared tomorrow, there would be a period where people would have to use other things that would basically be the same thing. But there would also be a massive opening. I think you would see a lot of people trying to become the next Final Draft, and figure out how to fill that space, but do it better. If there were a tool while we were writing, there was a way to create a document that wasn’t a PDF– by the way, that’s the other issue is that PDF that format is just kind of useless. It’s useful, but useless.

**John:** Yeah, the good thing about PDF is it’s baked in and locked down. The bad thing about it is it’s baked in and locked down, and it’s hard to do anything else with it.

**Craig:** It’s a printed piece of paper, except it’s on your screen. That’s all it is. It’s static. If there were a software platform that created a document that people could open and view that was dynamic, that would be amazing, and I would use it all the time, but there isn’t.

**John:** I will tell you that for Late Night and Variety comedy writing, especially the daily shows, they are sometimes now using fully online writing software where you can– the monologue, it’s constantly updated by everybody all at once. It’s a better version of Google Docs.

**Craig:** Yeah. What’s that, Script 2.0? Ah, what’s the one–

**John:** It’s lot like WriterDuet.

**Craig:** WriterDuet, yes.

**John:** It’s like that, but very deliberately multiple users can really work on it. It’s not just you and your writing partner. Everyone can tag in. You can see who’s made what changes. And it works, but it’s very specifically set up for that kind of show to do. I think Colbert’s show does that. Some of those changes are working in places where they really need. They have very specific, very time-based needs. And so little of what we do is urgent in that way. But I will say, Craig, you’re working on a show right now that if you could update everyone live in terms of, these are the changes, it would be fantastic. But you’re probably doing some version of this just distribution lists of things go out.

**Craig:** Well, it’s Scenechronize. Scenechronize is the other big behemoth, and Scenechronize is the standard distribution software for things. Scenechronize could distribute anything. I think it’s just that there is the file format that I would love, the kind of method of creation of a screenplay document that I would love just doesn’t exist. Where when you’re talking about a song, there is a little note icon, you click it and it starts to play that song, and brings it up in a soft window, up to the right, that you can minimize or get rid of, or just click away if you chose to. There are little icons and things to say, “Okay, I want to see what this looks like.” We can’t do that, because there’s no document that we can release that other people can look at that works like that. That’s the biggest issue.

**John:** Okay. Yeah, as a person who builds the software for a living, I can see some of the solutions, but I can also see some of the issues. It’s what the shape of that container document is. Are you sending the document? Are you sending a link to something that lives on a server?

**Craig:** For privacy purposes and all the rest of it, whichever would be fine, whichever people would want. But the problem is, there isn’t the receiving thing on the other end. It’s going to be hard to create that because you’re asking people to download and they don’t want to [chuckles] and you’re asking them to try a new format, and it’s new. Change is hard. Tip of the hat to the screenplay format, as we’re talking about it, it has lasted longer than most human beings. In fact, it’s lasted longer than almost every human being.

**John:** Absolutely. I think we should also stress that what we’re describing in terms of changes to screenplay format is not the words on the page. We’re not talking about the “we hear”, “we see,” we’re not talking about the job of the writer. We’re talking about the container in which this is going out there so that your words can be accompanied by other useful material and be updated in real time in ways that aren’t so torturous. Because right now, how we handle screenplays, especially as we go into production, with star changes and such is so linked back to when we had to xerox pages and send them out, that it’s maddening.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s pretty weird.

**John:** Another question for us, Megana?

**Megana:** Scott asks, “I’ve been working on a spec script based on a true story that feels like it’s taken on the scope of a Godfather-esque crime epic. The question of whether to expand this into a longer miniseries-type structure has come up before. But my producer and I both agree this feels like a feature film. As we’ve gone back and forth on drafts, the length of the script has fluctuated from 140 pages at its longest down to 125. I’ve always been taught no one wants to read a spec from an unproven writer longer than 120 pages and I’ve tried to reach that magic number, but the notes we keep getting from colleagues is to dig deeper into the characters and to explore more, not less. So, my question is this. In our current climate with the line between film and TV forever blurring, is the 120-page rule the end-all and be-all, or 132 pages reasonable for a decade spanning crime saga? Follow-up question, why are gangster movies always so long?

[laughter]

**John:** They do seem longer as a rule. Let’s take this last part first. I think because we have expectations of the genre, that it’s going to be a bunch of characters and there’s going to be complicated family dynamics in addition to the A plot, that there’s just going to be a lot happening, and so we just allow them to be long, and also because the Godfather is long.

**Craig:** Yeah. It may have something to do with the fact that the directors who have made these things have come out of a school where length wasn’t a problem. There have been mobster movies forever, but the big ones were coming out in the 70s. But then again, you look at like Martin Scorsese’s first movie, Mean Streets, I think that was his first movie, it’s under two hours. So, it’s not necessarily always the case that they need to be super long, but I think John is right. If you’re telling the Godfather saga, then it is marked by an epic nature. They’re very Shakespearean in this regard. They are telling long family dramas, and they’re telling involved crime plots, and we seem to enjoy– otherwise, it becomes an action movie. Part of it is the opera. It’s opera. By the way, Godfather III is that– you’ve seen Godfather Part III, I assume.

**John:** I have seen it. I have seen all of them now.

**Craig:** Yeah. I love that operatic third act. It’s just lovely. Anyway, I think that’s what it is. Scott, here’s the deal, man, if the first 10 pages are awesome, people will keep reading, they really will. Especially these days, I just think the rules are not the rules anymore. They’ll be reading it wondering, “Well, maybe I could turn this into a limited series.” You never know what they’re going to be thinking.

**John:** Craig is right. Obviously, if it’s good, they’ll keep reading and you should not worry about that much. A 125-page script is a lot different than 140-page script. 140-pages, people start to go, “Oh, okay, wow. This could be a problem because it’s going to probably be longer when that one’s actually shot.” I would say that my expectations of movies are things you can watch in one sitting and we always had a sense of like it’s a story that can only happen once.

But as we look now at limited series that also feel like they’re things that can only happen once, maybe there’s nothing wrong with thinking about, does this story really work best for me sitting in a chair for two hours watching it? Or does it have natural parts in installments that build out in ways that it could fit a limited series? If the first 50 pages or 60 pages of what you wrote has a natural cliffhanger, it can be a phenomenal writing sample for you, and a phenomenal spec to take out there in the world for people to see like, “Oh, this person can write really well.” And they’re more likely to read that one-hour thing versus a two-and-a-half-hour thing, because the one-hour thing can get made because people are hungry for the one-hour thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. Also, we’re in a weird time, you could maybe make just two-hour longs or three-hour longss. You say, “Okay, it’s at 140 at its longest.” So, you’re talking about 45 pages-ish, 43 pages-ish per episode of a three-episode thing. Well, you’re probably squeezing yourself in 140 anyway. Expand a few things here and there, write some endings so that each episode has an ending and each episode is beginning. So, there you’re filling some things out. Before you know it, you’ve got three-hour long episodes.

**John:** Yeah. My one cool thing this week is going to be a six-hour thing that feels like a movie. It is cinematic and tightly focused, but it could only work a limited series, and it works really well as that. Keep that in mind.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** All right. Let’s take a look at some movie movies, like actual movies that showed up on big screens this past year.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** I saw many of these but not all of these. But the good thing about 2021-2022 is you can read the scripts for all these movies online for free because they put them out there for award season. We will have links in the show notes to all the scripts that we’re talking through. I really encourage you, if you’re a person who’s interested in screenwriting, to read through these. You don’t have to finish them, but just look at what they actually look like on the page, either before or after you see the movie because you’ll get a real good sense of, this was the intention on the page and this is how it translated.

In most of these cases, these were the writers directing. In a couple of cases, there’s different screenwriters and directors. But they’re all really good and interesting in different ways. They’re all chock full of “we hears” and “we sees.” And we’ll not just cherry pick the ones that had them. Most movies, I would say probably do use “we hear” and “we see.”

**Craig:** Yeah, because it’s incredibly useful.

**John:** It’s incredibly useful. I want to start with a young writer named Aaron Sorkin.

**Craig:** Who?

**John:** This early work, this is called Being the Ricardos. This is a story of behind the scenes of I Love Lucy. I actually really enjoyed this, I actually tweeted a little screenshot of a scene that I really liked a few weeks ago. This is all a backstage drama of an imagined week on the set of I Love Lucy and the conflict and controversies behind the scenes. The thing I tweeted about was, there’s a scene on page 5 that goes on for a long time. And it’s all OS, it’s all off screen. Basically, we are focused on a radio while Lucy is off screen and she’s listening to this thing, but having conversations with other people, and we don’t see people’s faces for a long time. It’s a deliberate choice on Sorkin’s part just to not show Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem for a long time, so we’d be invested in them as characters before we saw their faces and had to make a judgement of like, “Oh, does she look enough like Lucille Ball?”

**Craig:** Yeah. What I love about these pages, and well done, young writer Aaron Sorkin, is how much whitespace there is. Even in scenes where there’s huge blocks. For instance, on page 5, the announcers has just got this big huge– what is it nine-line bit of dialogue all because he’s reading advertisements, and he’s doing an intro to radio stuff. All fine, because then there’s just these wonderful seas of white, as Lindsay Doran would say, “Like milk.” And it’s so useful. It’s really useful. Interesting choice, by the way. This is what the Academy voters see, is that correct, John?

**John:** Mm-hmm, it is.

**Craig:** Interesting choice. When you go into production, inevitably, they’re going to be revisions that you want to do. Just as a holdover from the old days where people would have to have binders where they would insert pages into, there are A pages and B pages, and there are pages where there’s only stuff on half a page, because they get rid of the rest, but the page numbers don’t change. I would imagine that a lot of people would just do a collapsed page unlock version. But he just sent over the other one. He also does something that I don’t do, which is at the top of the page, it says “Continued:” and then the scene number, which I don’t do.

**John:** Which we don’t. This is a thing that Final Draft and Fade In can do for you. I’ve never found it especially useful. It’s never tripped me up. So, I’ve never done it. I want to get back to the scene where we have this radio announcer talking and we’re not seeing their faces. We come out of it, and the broadcast continues as we hear the front door open.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** The next minute or so, we’ll see no faces, just out of focus arms and legs and other shards of movement as they pass through the frame, which remains on the radio, the only thing in focus. We hear and we see in the same paragraph from Mr. Aaron Sorkin, who’s won many, many awards for being a good writer.

**Craig:** How else would you even do this? I’m top of page 6, “We HEAR his face being SLAPPED–” In this case, Aaron Sorkin has capitalized word ‘HEAR’ just to stick it to all of you, ding dong “professors of screenwriting,” because how else was he supposed to describe that? Someone hears his face being– the sound of a face being slapped? Like what do you say? Of course, we hear it. We hear it.

**John:** Love it. I think that Sorkin does, which another one of our writers that we’ll to talk about today, he capitalizes every character’s name, even in scene description. You can do that, that’s not common. I would say that’s maybe 5% of scripts I would see do this, but he does it. And you know what? It’s fine. But I wouldn’t leap on that as an example, but you could do it.

**Craig:** Clearly, and because the truth is I read through some of this, and I didn’t even notice it, because it just doesn’t matter.

**John:** He doesn’t use a ton of seeing description in his things. And there are ticker tape pages where it’s just all dialogue down the page. You know what? It’s really good dialogue, that helps.

**Craig:** It does help. And if you do have pages of ticker tape, for instance, page 12, the lines are short. The longest line is three lines long. Then, okay, actually, in a weird way, that’s a ticker tape conversation, snappity, snap, snap back and forth. I like it.

**John:** We were talking about A pages and B pages. An example is page 22A. At scene 24, and it’s just one line goes over the edge of this. Lucy has a single block of dialog there. It’s a good reminder that this all comes from a time when you were distributing physical pages. So, rather than having to send people a brand-new script, when there’s a tiny change, you just send in the pages that changed. But if there was too much to fit on one page, you create an A page or B page, and it would fit in between. So, his script would go page 22, 22A, a 22B if there needed to be and then there’d be a 23. That’s historically how we’ve done it. We could still do it that way. Craig, on your show, are there A, B pages, how do you do that?

**Craig:** You know what? There are. I’m starting to wonder why I’m bothering, because I have not seen anyone with a printed script on my set. Everyone used to carry binders around, but our script supervisor, the incredible Chris Roufs, he uses an iPad, as I think almost every script supervisor at this point uses an iPad or laptop. The first AD isn’t walking around with a binder with pages in it. I’m starting to wonder if I should just get rid of that. And just [crosstalk] do it anymore.

**John:** Here’s the issue. If you were to then unlock pages, you’d have to talk about what scene it is and never talk about the page numbers again, because the page numbers will keep changing.

**Craig:** But we never talk about page numbers anyway, we just talk about–

**John:** Yeah, because they’re [crosstalk] scenes.

**Craig:** And we talk scene numbers which never change. By the way, it’s so weird. It’s been a while since I’ve worked just a couple of years now on a feature script in production. Scene numbers here looks so tiny, because in television shows you start with scene 101, because that’s Episode 1, scene 1. And then, by the time you get to your 10th episode, it’s starting with scene 1001.

**John:** On these shows, do you have scripts that have more than 100 scenes?

**Craig:** No, that would be insane. I don’t even know how– [crosstalk]

**John:** Yeah. I was just thinking really complicated Game of Thrones episodes where you’re constantly cutting back and forth between a bunch of different things, but you’re not really-

**Craig:** You would just sort of–[crosstalk]

**John:** -picking those individual scenes, because they’re all a part of–[crosstalk]

**Craig:** Yeah. I’ll just pull a random script here. I’ll take episode 5. Let’s see what the number is of this particular– how many scenes I hit. 56. I have a feeling that’s probably pretty standard for me.

**John:** Yeah, that makes sense.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Last thing I want to say about Being the Ricardos, this is on bottom page 23. The scene description reads, “We’re going to start to go in and out of LUCY’s head as the reading goes on. She’s imagining what each beat will be like in its final form the way a chess master can see the board twelve moves ahead. She can also see and hear what the audience is going to laugh at.” Basically, so the idea is, we’re intercutting between the table reading of a script, and Lucy’s imagination of how it will actually be staged. It works really well in the movie, but it’s done very simply on the page. And Sorkin trusts that the reader is going to pay attention and follow what’s happening here, and you do.

**Craig:** Yeah. This is an area where– because sometimes people will say, [in mimicking tone] “Well, if you’re directing–” and that’s yes, to an extent, that is true. He can shorthand things somewhat, because what he doesn’t have to worry about is a director coming along and going, “I don’t know what the hell it is. I guess I’ll just make something up.” When you’re writing for other people directing, and I typically am, I will at least try and put things in there to make sure that the stuff that I need to happen or want to happen is there. That said, there’s always some amounts of confusion or things that can be cleared up. And that’s why we have 4000 meetings [chuckles] before we start shooting. So many meetings. Oh, my Lord.

**John:** [crosstalk] -obviously, there’s a tone meeting, which is really talking through what are we actually going for scene by scene? What does this need to feel like? But we have so many logistical production meetings to just figure out every department what do they need? What is the intention behind this? What does Craig want? What is the director need? All these things.

**Craig:** Yes. There are questions that are legitimately, “Can you explain this?” There are questions of, “Okay, we think you’re saying this, but are you saying that?” Then, there are questions that fall into the general category of, “I don’t want to be yelled at on the day.” It says here that he stabs him. Is that meant to be through the clothes, because if it’s not, then we have to build a prosthetic. And on the day, I don’t want you to show up and be like, “What the h–?”

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** They ask, and it’s reasonable. They should ask. [chuckles] Making television and movies is basically a game of how many questions can I answer today without falling apart?

**John:** Let’s move on and take a look at The Lost Daughter by Maggie Gyllenhaal. This script is based on the Elena Ferrante novel. Obviously, she has that to draw from. As I’m looking through this, especially this opening sequence, there’s not purple prose, she’s not painting every sunset, but it’s very effective, especially in terms of describing the house that the character is renting, the house that she’s moving into, and giving us a sense of the geography inside the space. I felt like, “Oh, I can see where things are.” I can feel how would I generally get from one place to another, and how this character specifically is approaching this space. I really liked what they did there.

There’s also a man who’s like a– I was in the movie, so I think it’s interesting, a supporting character man, but I liked his character description is just his white hair. From the initial description, I felt I could see him, but then he was doing very specific things along the way and saying specific stuff. That was helpful for grounding him but also the space, this [unintelligible [00:38:22] that we’re staying on.

**Craig:** Yeah. This is an example of a script that generally does things differently than I do, and I don’t care. I like to bold my scene headers. Maggie doesn’t. I like to keep my action description chunks really tiny. She will occasionally roll off one that’s 12 lines long. I don’t care. As long as it’s interesting and I can make it through it, then I’m fine. She uses CONT’Ds. When a character talks, then there’s an action description, then the same character talks. I don’t do that, don’t care.

**John:** I generally do that if it’s going to be unclear. So, I will do that.

**Craig:** Yeah, I don’t it. It just doesn’t matter. Ultimately, the point is you set yourself free, people, it’s all good. Everything works fine if the script is good. The other thing that Maggie will do, she puts up– getting back to our parenthetical question from earlier, she puts a lot of stuff in parentheticals. She’ll have two-line parentheticals, and that’s fine. There is nothing better than a good script. And there are no formatting issues that a good script can’t overcome.

**John:** One small thing that I would do if I’d had access to the script, is do a search and replace for double spaces and make them one space because there’s places where there’s one space and places where it’s two spaces, and it’s just a little bit off. That’s a personal little pet peeve of mine, that does not influence the quality of the writing.

**Craig:** Well, yeah. Look, the very title page, there’s a comma after the word ‘based on’ that shouldn’t be there. [chuckles] I would say, Maggie, John and I are available for basic stuff like that.

**John:** Punctuation consultants, that’s all we’re asking.

**Craig:** Mostly, we just want to hang out with Maggie Gyllenhaal. [crosstalk]

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** We just want to hang out. We want to be your friend.

**John:** I met Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal a zillion years ago back when they were children because they used to live down the street from me.

**Craig:** Oh, wow.

**John:** It’s nice to see that they’ve made something of themselves.

**Craig:** They’re doing all right. They’re doing all right, those crazy kids.

**John:** The other thing I’ll say it’s important about, as we’re reading through the script, is right from the very start, it sets up the rules of how this movie is going to work, and that we are going to be going back and forth in time, and that is important. It’s important to do that early enough in movie, so we get a sense of like, “Oh, this is this kind of movie where the back and forth will matter.”

Mitchells vs. the Machines is a film I’d love from this past year. It’s written by Mike Rianda and Jeff Rowe‎. I just really adored it and I was happy to see that so much of what I adored, starts on page 1 of the script. It is one of the busiest first pages I’ve encountered. And yet, I could follow it and really get a sense of what this movie was going to feel like. It was chaotic, but ultimately with a point.

**Craig:** The script on the page feels like it’s on cocaine, which is correct.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Lord and Miller as producers have a really good record of both kinds of paces and things, but this has that kind of fantastic growing up in the 70s, we ate way too much sugar cereal in the morning, and then just sat down and watch these strobe lights of terrible cartoons, and our attention spans are shortened to nothing. Obviously, here’s just this wonderful quality that Mike and Jeff have put down on the page, but it does also have that just crazy snap to it.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** It’s almost exhausting reading these pages. You can feel yourself like, “Oh, my God. Oh, yeah.” [onomatopoeia] [chuckles]

**John:** And then the movie does really trade on that. In the end, the movie eventually does settle into some quieter moments so it’s not this frenzy all the time, but it does kick off with a tremendous amount of energy. There are so many exclamation points on this first page, but none of them feel gratuitous. The word “we” is used constantly because we’re always there with them. Basically, it’s inviting us to be a part of this journey with the characters. I really dug it.

There is a shotgun introduction of all of our main characters. In one paragraph on page 2, “The VERY stoppable “warriors” are: RICK (40, Bearded, nature-loving Dad), LINDA (38, colorful, yet nervous Mom, worn out from trying to keep everyone together), AARON (8, nerdy blonde Muppet who wears exclusively dinosaur shirts), delightfully round pug, MONCHI. And KATIE (17, exploding with creative energy- nerdy now, but will be cool in college).

Generally, shotgun intros are not my favorite, and it works really well here because they boldfaced all the character names, so you see that, “This is important, pay attention here, we’re really going to see these people. This is our movie, is these four characters, plus this pug that looks like a loaf of bread. That is who we’re going to follow in the course of the story.”

**Craig:** The introductions feel they’re part of the tone. If you stop and did standard introductions, you’d be like, “Oh, what happened? Did you guys get tired?” Because, they’re just like, “Bah,” on page one, and then page two like, “Bah,” and then they’re like, “Okay, now let’s talk about dad is a–.” It’s wonderful, because they’re going to make a point of stopping this madness on page 4, when it literally says, “We go from this manic energy to,” boop, “a quiet, boring suburban neighborhood.” And that’s where they slowed down a bit, because they can.

**John:** It’s an animation script, and writing is not different than normal writing, there’s no fundamental difference here. This could be a live action script as well. So, we just reminded that animation writing is writing. The only thing you may notice is that parentheticals, here in this case, have been tucked in to the first line of dialogue, rather than having their own separate line. You see that more often in animation. Nothing would change if we were to do normal parentheticals here, you could absolutely do normal parentheticals in this case, and nothing would break or change. We’re not seeing scene numbers here. Numbering scenes and sequences in animation is its own special, unique beast. My advice is to do whatever they tell you to do.

**Craig:** Yeah, because it’s practical. There’s no magic to that. If you find yourself as you’re writing, dwelling on these issues of formatting, just make a mental note that you are trying to avoid writing.

**John:** 100%.

**Megana:** [laughs]

**John:** A film I greatly enjoyed watching was Passing. This is a film by Rebecca Hall. She adapted it from a novel by Nella Larsen. Here’s what I want to point out about Passing, is that the movie and the script have this kind of hallucinatory, too bright, kind of uncomfortable, kind of stagey artificial feel to it. That really works for the film. There are moments in in it I felt like, “Wait, is this somebody’s 16-millimeter project from the 90s?” And then, you realize like, “Oh, no, it’s actually the incredibly well-made best version of that film aesthetic.” I really dug that the film, partly for just how strange it is, and it feels strange on the page too. It radiates from the page to how they actually shot it.

**Craig:** Lots of little short bursts of things, then there’s longer stuff. There’s an interesting thing that happens on the bottom of page 1 where there’s a scene header.

**John:** Yeah, I saw that too.

**Craig:** Then the same starts in the next page, which we never really do. We always combine the scene header with at least the first line of the scene itself.

**John:** And who do we have to thank for that? Final Draft. Final Draft, honestly, one of the few things Final Draft did well early on in its incarnation is, making sure that scene headers don’t flow at the bottom of pages, so they always carry through the next page. It just automatically does that, and so is Highland and so does Fade In. Everyone does that.

**Craig:** That wasn’t something about the steno pool of Warner Brothers and– [crosstalk]

**John:** Oh, the steno pool did it, but, I think-

**Craig:** Oh, okay. Final Draft turned it into an automatic–

**John:** Automated, yeah. You and I don’t think about it because you and I never have to manually do that.

**Craig:** We don’t manually do it, which made me wonder if Rebecca had written this in Microsoft Word or something, because [crosstalk] notes, which is totally fine. Again, doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter.

**John:** It just doesn’t matter. And she’s capitalizing all the character names like you might in a play. It works fine.

**Craig:** Also, in the second paragraph of the first page, it says, “Dissolve to Light flaring in a static frame.” She’s capitalized the word ‘light.’ Not all caps, just the L. Um, okay. [chuckles] It’s fine.

**John:** Yeah. If we’re doing a three-page challenge [crosstalk] we’d then point out that’s unusual.

**Craig:** It’s unusual. It doesn’t kill anything, and maybe it’s intentional. I can’t tell if it’s intentional or just Rebecca is one of those people– because there is a whole generation of people, they don’t care about capitalization or punctuation. That’s all fungible to them.

**John:** We’ll see.

**Craig:** We’ll see.

**John:** I’ll quickly get through Belfast. This is a script by Kenneth Branagh. He’s a person who’s done some [unintelligible 00:46:40] movies, it’s not his first here. This is labeled as “Shooting Draft.” It’s also in Gill Sans rather than Courier. I strongly suspect that this is something that some studio put out and said, “Oh, it shouldn’t be in Courier.” I’d be willing to bet $100, this was a Courier script that’s somebody down the road ultimately put it to Gill Sans for us to read, because it’s weird that it’s in Gill Sans. I don’t think it’s helpful that’s in Gill Sans.

**Craig:** It is odd, only because of all the things that people can and can’t do, Courier is the one that just about everyone does, 99.9%. So, when it’s not in Courier, there’s a little bit of a, “Oh, so I guess you don’t need to get in line like the rest of us.”

[laughter]

**Craig:** Special, feel special, do we?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s a little tricky, but it also makes me yearn for a different time or a different day where we wouldn’t have to necessarily be in Courier, because actually on the page, it’s rather pretty. It’s just different.

**John:** It is. I wouldn’t have picked this typeface. I love a sans-serif typeface. This, I think it’s actually a little bit hard to read. I think Gill Sans is a great face for certain things. All uppercase doesn’t look great in Gill Sans. Some things are harder to read than they necessarily need to be. Again, character names are being uppercased through the whole thing for whatever reason. Maybe it’s a British thing. Maybe that’s why Rebecca Hall is doing this as well. A thing I really did appreciate about this though is there’s on page 3, the description, “The camera is high above and behind BUDDY as he starts to walk down the middle of the street. You can see clearly all the way down to the other end, where it meets a road going horizontally across, making a T junction.” Great. I can see that. Also, weird, we got a “you” rather than a “we?” Sure.

**Craig:** Yeah, I’m fine with it, because “you” and “we” are doing the same thing. They’re just saying in the audience, whether you feel like you’re a part of an audience, perhaps at this point in his career in life, Kenneth Branagh, when he watches movies, just buys up the entire thing. [chuckles] [crosstalk] So, he just presumes that everyone watches it alone.

**John:** Yeah. He doesn’t want to share armrest with anybody.

**Craig:** There’s no one else there, but you see the following.

**John:** It’s also important should point out that, we’re following a young boy through this, all the action is character limited to what he can see and experience until a certain point. Basically, there’s a mob that’s descending, and we’re only getting limited information from what he’s encountering until the mob is upon us. And then eventually, we break that limited POV and see everything, but that’s just good technique. It’s a technique that works on the page, that translates really well to visual medium. [crosstalk] -thinking of that.

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s another thing that happens on page 7, which is cool. He’s doing a montage really. It’s not so much a montage, it’s just a rapid sequence of things, and he uses CUT TO: for each one of them, which he doesn’t use for other scenes. It makes everything spread out really big on that page. But in a sense, that also helps me see each one of those things. I actually quite liked it. Generally, I don’t do it even in something like this, because I’m always scrambling for paged count time, but the truth is, this is probably more accurate. Again, no problems. It’s fine.

**John:** No problems. Last one I want to look at is Tick, Tick… Boom!, a film I really enjoyed. This script is by Steven Levinson. It’s based on Jonathan Larson’s musical, directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda. On page 1 and 2– the thing I think the film does really crucially, and you see this here on the script, is it has to set up, okay, this is who Jonathan Larson was, this is why he’s famous, and we’re not going to get to that stuff at all. This is all going to take place before then. And that’s a lot to do in two pages, and it does it really, really well. Basically, framing this is how much of the story we’re going to tell, and only this part of the story is really important. I thought they did a very effective job here, starting off with making sure you understood why you’re watching the movie, and what movie you’re going to watch.

**Craig:** Yeah, totally agree. Quality-wise, obviously, great. There’s an interesting choice here that I struggle with a little bit format-wise on a script that is only 104 pages. So, you have the time, meaning you have the space, to not put that extra line break before each scene header. It just makes everything– and to not bold, the scene headers, it’s harder to read. I just find it harder to read. I get confused a little bit as I’m going through or the transitions don’t feel quite as crackly or sharp because it’s just a smudge. For me, and this is really a pure readability thing, I think people should put that extra line break before the scene header or bold the scene header, but to do neither is rough. That said, doesn’t stop things from working.

**John:** It could work. Your choices are one or more of extra line space before the scene header, underlining scene header, which some people do–[crosstalk]

**Craig:** Yup, that works.

**John:** -are choices. There’s underlining here which I think it’s really important in top of page 3. “NOTE: Throughout the film, we move back and forth between Jon in 1992 performing at the show, and the events he is narrating as they occur in 1990.” This is something that is completely obvious when you’re watching the movie, but could be perplexing as you’re reading the script. What the script does, INT – LOCATION – DAY, and then will say either 1990 or 1992, because they’re two different timelines and we can see it when I watch the movie. But on the page, it could get confusing. So, it’s important to put that note out there for the reader.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Great. These are some pretty good scripts. So, congratulations to all of our writers here. I think you did a good job, I think you have promising careers ahead of you.

**Craig:** [chuckles]

**John:** But I really do strongly encourage our listeners to click through the links and take a look at the pages that we’re discussing and describing because that’s how you learn, is by reading scripts and reading good scripts is a great way to learn how some good writers’ work.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** We have time for maybe a question. I see one here from Johnny. Megana, can you ask us that one?

**Megana:** Johnny asks, “I have this question for John about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Charlie inherited the chocolate factory from Wonka because of his good nature/personality/traits, honesty, kindness, compassion, etc. However, in the beginning, he bought the chocolate using the $10 bill on the street. He didn’t try to find the owner or turn it in. Does this behavior contradict his good nature?”

**John:** Craig, I have a question for you before we get into the actual script for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. If you find $10 on the street, do you have an ethical duty to find its owner?

**Craig:** How the hell are you going to find the owner?

**John:** That’s my question.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Money is fungible. I can’t tell you whose money that is. If I find a wallet, I’m going to find-

**Craig:** Yeah, of course.

**John:** -the owner of the wallet.

**Craig:** Of course. But if you find money on the street, there’s literally no way to identify who that came from. None. If somebody came rushing back around the street was like, “Oh, my God! Did you find a $10 bill on the street?” I’d say, “You know what? I did. Here it is.” Because there’s no way they would have known that it was a 10 or on the street if they weren’t there. But otherwise, no. That’s that’s a weird question.

**John:** It’s a strange question. But I wanted to point to Johnny to say, just go to the library, go to my johnaugust.com Library, and you can just read the script, that’s not actually what happens. And I realized like, “I’d never actually posted the scripts for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” I posted the working scripts, and then a final script for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And just like our Aaron Sorkin script, I put in the change pages so people can see this was the white draft, here’s the blue pages, here’s the pink pages, and here’s the final script all together so you can see how this fit in. I also put in the memos that go out with those distributions so people can see like, “Oh, this is why these things are changed.” And this, again, back in the time of physical pages going out. I would put a list of, “This is the order of pages that you should see,” because sometimes it gets confusing. All those things are out there.

The reason why I point to the original script though is that doesn’t say like you won it because you were good. He says, “I invited five children to the factory, and the one who is least rotten would be the winner.” Charlie doesn’t have to be good, he just has to be the least rotten. It’s also important to share my version of Charlie and Chocolate Factory. Wonka is going through this existential crisis and self-doubt and all sorts of weird things are crashing down on him. He doesn’t really want to give up his factory. So, that’s the point of like, Wonka is protagonating over the course of this and really going through this crisis. He’s not even quite sure why he’s invited these kids in here. But it’s not because he wants to find a good-hearted kid, because that’s not even how Wonka is wired.

**Craig:** Other than getting everything wrong, Johnny’s question was great.

**John:** What Johnny’s question did, is it did motivate me to actually finally put up the scripts, which I’m not sure why I didn’t put up the scripts before, so people can read how Charlie and Chocolate Factory looked on the page. All right, I think it’s time for One Cool Things.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** As promised, my One Cool Thing is a limited series that I enjoyed and really loved called Vigil. This is a British show that in the US is on Peacock. I guess this is on Peacock, you don’t even have to subscribe to Peacock. Even the free Peacock would have it. It’s created by Tom Edge. Personally, I follow him on Twitter. George Northy described it as “Mare of Easttown on a nuclear submarine.” And that’s actually probably what it is. You have a female police detective investigating a murder. It’s on this British nuclear submarine, but she has family custodial drama. There’s just a lot happening in her personal life [unintelligible 00:56:11] being a claustrophobic character on a submarine. I just really dug it. I love everything that has a submarine, but I really thought it worked especially well. The twists and turns were great. There’s that classic sense of Mare of Easttown. At a certain point, you suspect that every character you’ve seen on screen somehow was involved in these murders. That’s the show, and I really, really dug it.

**Craig:** Fantastic. My one cool thing this week, is the MIT Mystery Hunt, which you cannot– Currently, it’s a week later now when you’re hearing this or five days later, and it will surely have been solved by some group of incredibly brilliant people. But I don’t know if you’re familiar with the MIT Mystery Hunt, John.

**John:** I don’t know what it is.

**Craig:** MIT Mystery Hunt has been going on for quite some time, maybe 20 years. It was always a physical hunt that took place on the MIT campus that involved solving lots and lots of puzzles, which would feed into meta puzzles. It’s like an incredibly complicated, long version of the thing that David Quang and I did at The Magic Castle that you attended.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It would take place over the course of a number of days. It would involve moving physically around the campus and finding a coin, and then you won. If you found the coin, you were the team that won. Over the years, it’s become more and more complicated. The last couple of years, it’s been virtual for obvious reasons, including this year.

One of the interesting things about the MIT Mystery Hunt is that the team that wins is responsible for creating the mystery hunt for the next year. When I tell you that this is like a full-time job, I’m not kidding. Last year, a team named Palindrome or Team Palindrome, they won, and they have won before, a couple of times, I think. Some of my friends are on it, including Dave Shukan and Mark Halpin. There’s also a guy that I’ve occasionally solved puzzles with named Eric Berlin, who I think was their captain. These folks, along with dozens of other people, this is a very large team, by all accounts created quite the hunt, and I think it legitimately took them all year to create this huge event that teams are currently working on and solving right now.

To give you a sense of how complicated it gets, the team last year, Galactic Trendsetters, they were the ones that won the year before us, they created the puzzle hunt last year, they literally created their own MMO for this event. Because you’re dealing with MIT people. They can do anything, anything. They’re coding. They created their own proprietary software for this. Anyway, it’s very exciting. I’m a decent solver. I’m just not at this level. I can solve the first tier of their puzzles, but the later tier, beyond me, definitely beyond me. It’s going on right now. I don’t think anyone’s won yet. But my guess is probably by– we’re recording on a Saturday. Probably by Sunday, there will be a winner. So, I just wanted to say one cool thing to Team Palindrome for creating all that working, so hard. It’s not a paid job. And then, congrats to everyone that solves it and participates in it. And of course, a special congratulations to the team that wins. I don’t know who they are yet.

**John:** I was going to say, I wonder why someone would do something like this when they aren’t getting paid for it, and all they could do is have some sense of satisfaction of how they made a thing, after– [crosstalk]

[laughter]

**Craig:** Well, we get to do this one hour a week. The sense I got was that this was practically a full-time job that required its own organizational structure and methods, and just review– I actually test solve quite a few puzzles for them. I think they were nice to only have me test solve the ones that I was capable of solving, but they were all really interesting. There are rafts of test solvers that are being worked on. They have this point system for evaluating. It’s incredibly com– it’s like producing a show. It’s something else. Great work on that, everyone. I’m hoping everyone’s enjoying it. I’m sure they are. Dave Shukan has told me that he will send me a collection of good ones that he thinks I [chuckles] can solve that I haven’t already solved. So, thanks, Dave. I appreciate that.

**John:** Fantastic. Also, it might be a good moment to shout out a congratulations to a friend of the show, David Kwong, who is now engaged.

**Craig:** That’s right. David Kwong is finally going to be an honest man.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** We’re incredibly happy for him.

**John:** Yeah, please don’t saw your wife in half. That’s all we’re asking.

**Craig:** Those are the people that are doing all the hard work on stage. You know that, right?

**John:** Yeah, of course. They’re the contortionists.

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly.

**John:** Yeah. And that’s our show this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by William Brink. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin, I am @johnaugust. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. It’s also where you can also find the links to some of the scripts we talked about today. You’ll find the transcripts there. And you can sign up for our weekly-ish newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have t-shirts, and they’re great. They have Stuart’s sense of softness. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. The hoodies are great. Now, Craig, did you pick up your hoodie while you’re in town or not?

**Craig:** Oh, I don’t think I did.

**John:** Okay. Well, we’ll ship it to you up in Calgary so you can keep warm.

**Craig:** Oh, thank you.

**John:** They turned out really well. You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments, like the one we’re about to record, talking about the screenwriter equivalent of bootcamp. Until then, relax, stay chill. And we’ll see you next time on Scriptnotes. Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

[music]

**John:** Hey, Megana, we got a question from Andrew. Read the question that Andrew has?

**Megana:** Andrew asks, “I’ve heard many former or current soap opera actors refer to working on the soap as a bootcamp for them, mainly because of the production schedule and the need to get everything right the first time. Soap actors who find work elsewhere are praised for their ability to memorize and always get things right quickly. Is it the same for writers? Do writers who worked on soap operas have an insane work ethic and the ability to turn out content? If not, what is the writing equivalent of a writing boot camp?”

**John:** All right. That’s an interesting question. There obviously are. There are actors who started out soap opera actors who are now some of our best actors out there. Not everyone who works on a soap opera is going to be the best actor out there. But that sense of being able to show up, do the work, get it done, get it right the first time, memorize a bunch of lines, that all feels great and crucial. Craig, can you think of examples of high pressure or writing jobs where there’s so much quantity that you actually do pick up good skills?

**Craig:** Sure. I think I went through it, and it’s called advertising. Copywriting in advertising is pretty brutal. You have to do a lot of different kinds of writing, is to do a lot of idea making, which is important obviously. You have to talk a lot about how to get into something and what the purpose of something is, so you learn about purposefulness. And then you have to write a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of versions. Versions, and versions and versions. And they all have to fit to time. You’re dealing with a very limited amount of time to get your idea across, the purpose, the point, structure, beginning, middle, end. And then, you have to do it again, but for a shorter amount of time to do multiple versions of it. When you’re cutting things together for marketing like trailers and things, you need to start asking which of this stuff is emerging as important or salient or notable. And you also learn which movies are harder to market because they don’t know what they’re about either. All of that is pretty great bootcamp. You learn audio, you learn visual, you learn how to write, purpose, revisions, rewrites.

When you come out of it, you’re pretty well set up to go on to the next thing. I’m not recommending that people go seek it out as the basis for a screenwriting career, but having gone through it, I think boot camps is a pretty darn good term for it.

**John:** My freshman year of college, I was a journalism advertising major. My J54 was the basic news writing class I had to take. It was famously difficult class, it was exhausting class, because it was 8:00 in the morning, you’d show up and the professor say, “Okay, I need each of you to find a story on campus and it needs to be delivered in the next 90 minutes.” So, you’re like, “Argh.” You’re running around, trying to find something to write about. Get introduced, get notes, get back, sit down at a computer and write the story. And then, he would hover over you as you’re writing. It really made you focus in on just getting it done, getting the words out, thinking about that pyramid style, like the most important stuff at the top and being able to cut off the story at any point, and breaking some of your preciousness are the way that you can get in your own way with stuff. So, I had to learn how to write those kinds of news stories. And yeah, I did learn a lot there.

But that kind of news writing is different than longform journalism. When I would actually have the time to actually do more work and to do more than just reporting, but actually think about synthesizing and putting stuff together, those classes were much more useful in terms of my actual screenwriting, in terms of thinking about how I’m going to go from, “Here’s a bunch of ideas,” to, “Here is the way I’m going to structure and tell these ideas in a way that is interesting.” I think we have to have both. I just stayed doing news writing, it would be like when I was working at Tristar and having to write coverage on two scripts a day. It would burn a hole in your brain and limit you from doing other kind of writing.

**Craig:** That’s one of the downsides of working as a young person in something like advertising, is that the people who have remained, you can tell that they have been scarred and changed by it.

**John:** Yeah. [chuckles]

**Craig:** It’s because there is something brutal about writing that isn’t about the writing itself. That whatever you write is in service of a purpose. You learn to write with purpose, but only purpose. Whereas when you’re writing things to entertain people, there is its own intrinsic value. The point is watch this, not watch something else, or learn about something else. When are in your 20s and you’re working at these things, you often are working for people that are maybe a little roughed up. I remember meeting some wonderful people. It’s possible also that my experience and your experience was strongly informed by the year it was. The 90s, people were meaner in the 90s.

[laughter]

**Craig:** They really were. People were mean.

**John:** Well, let’s think about things that are closer to what we are actually doing for a living. People do write soap operas obviously, and soaps are covered by the WJ. There’s WJ writers who are writing soaps. I don’t see a lot of people who are moving from writing soaps into other things. It feels almost like game show writing. It’s a very unique specialty, because you’re just having to crank out so much and there’s just not time to do the kinds of other work you could be doing. But there’s obviously people write on network one-hours that are like procedural shows, and there’s a whole way procedural shows work. There’s TV sitcoms, which have a very different vibe in how it’s all geared up towards the weekly taping of the show. Those are very differing experiences, but you are on the hook for generating a lot of material each week. And it’s going to get you out of some of your preciousness about everything having to be perfect at all times.

**Craig:** Yeah. You can pick up skills in these things. Accountability is a big one. It would have been really hard as a 21- or 22-year-old to start writing a screenplay with no sense of accountability whatsoever. When you are paying your bills because of the stuff you’re writing, you learn accountability. You also learn frustration.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** The frustration of being a writer, I don’t want to say it’s a good thing, but it’s a helpful thing that we get frustrated so frequently, because we get better and better at dealing with it. There are other categories of artists in our business that I don’t think have been exposed to the frustration we’ve been exposed to. It’s harder for them to deal with. We are weathered.

**John:** We’re talking about these early jobs as being you’re accountable for doing stuff, and you haven’t just turned stuff in. Schools can be accountability mechanisms, where basically you are having to turn stuff in and therefore having to get work done on a regular basis, and be able to show it to people and actually have a conversation with people, which could be great. But, Megana, I’m thinking about the writing groups that you’re a part of. A large part of that is accountability, where you’re getting better because you’re being forced to generate stuff for each week’s meeting.

**Megana:** Absolutely. I think the social pressure of it is really helpful too. I think you lose your preciousness really fast. One thing my writing group implemented, which has been helpful during the pandemic, is that you have to say what your goal is for the next session, and if you don’t meet that you have to contribute a certain amount into a pot that we use at the end of six months to take ourselves out. So, there’s a financial repercussion if you’re not meeting your goals.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s right.

**Megana:** That is helpful. It’s like, “Ah, okay, well, I’ll send something in that I feel unsure about because I don’t want to spend 20 bucks on missing this deadline.”

**Craig:** Hmm. You don’t want to give me that option of buying my way out of writing though.

[laughter]

**John:** Well, let’s talk about– Craig and I have been bought many times. I want to think about when we do weekly work, and I’m not doing as many weeklies as I used to, but for a time I was doing a fair number of weeklies, and it wasn’t very classically that pick two motto. Something could be fast or cheap, or good, and you’re going to pick two. They would pay me really good money. I was not cheap, but I was fast and I was good. It was my ability to recognize what they needed, to be able to deliver what they needed within this short period of time that they had. If I could write great pages but I couldn’t turn them in on time, that was not helpful to them. If I was fast and I wasn’t delivering what they needed, it wouldn’t have worked. So, I did learn a lot having to generate pages that could shoot tomorrow on that timeline.

**Craig:** Everybody has their own internal clock. If you find yourself in a situation where writing has to be done really quickly and really well in a short amount of time, it may not be for you. You may not have the ability to write well that quickly. You may not have the emotional ability to write that well that quickly. One of the things that happens when you’re working on a weekly, and it’s very similar to when you’re working on short term, impulse projects like advertising and so forth, is you’re also going to be getting the same amount of compressed reviewing and critiquing in the short amount of time. So, you work on something for a week, you’re readily expecting to be rewriting and rewriting and rewriting and hearing and talking and back and forth and back and forth for the week, it’s intense. And you need to be able to do all that, and have the emotional fortitude and the mental stamina, and your mind just has to work quickly. It’s not for everybody, it really isn’t.

I love doing weeklies because they actually don’t have the level of accountability that other things have. And I don’t mean to imply that I write a bunch of crap and walk away laughing. I care very much. But it’s focused, it’s so focused, I’m not responsible for the entire movie. I’m just trying to fix the first act. And then, I’m gone. I’m doing everything I can in that moment to help, but I am not raising this child. I’m just watching them like a grandparent for three days.

**John:** Absolutely. It’s more like you’re the emergency room doctor who’s keeping the patient alive and stabilized and getting them so they can walk out of the hospital, but you’re not responsible for like, “Oh, that other thing which we detected,” you’re not going to fix all those problems.

**Craig:** I did. There was one project I’m working on where I was like, “I’m not the emergency doctor trying to stabilize this patient. I am the undertaker just trying to get you into open casket funeral.”

[laughter]

**Craig:** That’s all I’m doing. This thing is dead. I just wanted the parents to be able to see it when you wheel it out there because right now, oh, my God.

**John:** Yeah. We’ve all been there. We’ve seen some of those movies and early things. I say yes, there are some bootcamp situations. Do you need to enroll or list yourself in a bootcamp situation? I would say to our friend who wrote in, Andrew, assess what you need. Is your problem that you’re just not getting stuff done? Is your problem accountability? Then, signing up for a class or getting into a writing group might be good interest in terms of getting you to generate more pages. If the problem’s that you’re just not generating a lot, that’s great. If you’re a person who’s generating a lot of stuff, it’s just not very good, maybe what you don’t need is a bootcamp. Maybe you just need some quality control. Maybe you need to slow down a little bit more and focus on refining some stuff, and getting some people to read you, who can really help talk you through what’s working, what’s not working, so you can actually polish rather than just generate the most you can generate.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Cool. Thanks, guys.

**Craig:** Thank you, guys.

**Megana:** Thank you.

LINKS:

* [The CW is for sale!](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/the-cw-sale-nexstar-1235073465/)
* [Annie Hayes on Writing with an Invisible Illness](https://johnaugust.com/2022/writing-with-an-invisible-illness) on John’s blog
* [Being the Ricardos](https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Being-The-Ricardos-Read-The-Screenplay.pdf) by Aaron Sorkin
* [The Lost Daughter](https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/The-Lost-Daughter-Read-The-Screenplay.pdf) by Maggie Gyllenhaal
* [The Mitchells vs. the Machines](https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/The-Mitchells-Vs-The-Machines-Read-The-Screenplay.pdf) by Mike Rianda And Jeff Rowe
* [Passing](https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Passing-Read-The-Screenplay.pdf) by Rebecca Hall
* [Belfast](https://focusfeaturesguilds2021.com/belfast/Belfast.pdf) by Kenneth Branagh
* [Tick, Tick, Boom](https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Tick-Tick-Boom-Read-The-Screenplay.pdf) by Steven Levenson
* [Willy Wonka Script](https://johnaugust.com/library) at the johnaugust.com library!
* [Vigil](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11846996/) show
* [MIT Mystery Hunt 2022](http://puzzles.mit.edu/nexthunt.html)
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/gifts) or [treat yourself to a premium subscription!](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by William Brink ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/533standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2021/the-journey-the-destination-and-movie-lego).

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

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

**John August:**
And this is Episode 529 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, how do screenwriters balance the needs of the scene versus the needs of the story? The two are of course interlinked but in practice are often at odds. We’ll wrestle with how and when to prioritize one over the other.

**John August:**
Then it’s another round of the Three-Page Challenge where we look at scenes submitted by our listeners and offer our honest feedback. And in our bonus segment, for premium members, what do you do when you get bored with what you’re writing? Is that a sign to bail or buckle down?

**Craig Mazin:**
We’re going to give excellent advice and terrific feedback. And overall, provide tremendous value to our listeners.

**John August:**
Right. Provide tremendous value to both our free listeners and our premium members who we love a little bit more.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. I just feel like you we’re a value proposition.

**John August:**
100 %.

**Craig Mazin:**
I’ve been watching Succession. So, I have all these nerdy business phrases in my head. I think sometimes they’re just making stuff up.

**John August:**
Sometimes, they probably are. But someone said all those things.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. Someone said it somewhere.

**John August:**
Someone said that I don’t love you but I love you.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah, I didn’t know what that meant. I got to be honest with you. Sometimes, they are legitimately over my head.

**John August:**
I love succession. And so, we’re going to talk just a little bit on about Succession. I love Succession. But I do feel like that which the intimacy in the tabletop and the next slide dialog will be like, “What the hell did you just say to me? Why would you say that? That was the worst thing you could possibly do.” And yet somehow, they continue on with their lives.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah, it is really interesting that they haven’t all just left. I think normally, especially if you can just be bought out of a company, why would you stay?

**John August:**
Why would you stay?

**Craig Mazin:**
If you’re any of them?

**John August:**
So, were of course having a conversation on Friday before Sunday, the finale. So, for all we know, everything’s changed.

**Craig Mazin:**
Do you all love each other now?

**John August:**
Yeah, so my theory going into it, which I can spoil now, is that I think that Tom was wearing a wire through a lot of this season. And that will hopefully be revealed on Sunday’s episode, but it might not. I may have ruined it for other people.

**Craig Mazin:**
If that is revealed, then I assume the government will have to figure out what I love you but I don’t love you.

**John August:**
That’s what it is.

**Craig Mazin:**
I said it backwards. I don’t love you but I love you. Which one was it?

**Megana Rao:**
I don’t love you but I do love you.

**John August:**
Okay. Well, now that just clarified.

**Craig Mazin:**
What?

**John August:**
Yeah. Regardless of interest.

**Craig Mazin:**
I know the difference between I’m not in love, I love you but I’m not in love with you. Is that what they mean?

**John August:**
That’s how I feel about you, Craig. I’m not in love with you. But I do love you as a friend.

**Craig Mazin:**
Sure. I don’t know. It’s a little weak. I don’t like the way you said it.

**John August:**
So, we can have this banter because we are three feet away from each other. For the first time, you’re no longer in Calgary for a brief period of time.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yep. Little hiatus over here.

**John August:**
Yeah. So, we’re here back in our Hancock Park abode. Let’s talk through some news. This is news. Craig, can you tell me what an open writing assignment is?

**Craig Mazin:**
Of course. An open writing assignment is a job that the studios have. They need a writer to write something. It’s often a rewrite. But sometimes, it’s a first draft of some property that they already own.

**John August:**
Or it could be something like how would this be a movie if there was an article they bought, that becomes-

**Craig Mazin:**
That becomes an article. And so, they go to the agencies and they say, this is… and each agency has an agent that covers that studio. And they say to that agent, “We have an open writing assignment. This is the job. This is the producer. And we’re looking roughly for this thing.” And then, the chum is in the water and everybody starts going for it.

**John August:**
Absolutely. And so, in some cases, they may be going out to certain writers, and I say like, oh, we’re out to this writer, this agency, and we’re waiting to hear back this writer. Or, it could be like, this is the thing we’re looking for. Who do you got for us? And the agents reach out to clients and say like, “Is this a thing you’d be interested in pursuing?”

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. When they have an open writing assignment, it usually means they aren’t pursuing anyone in particular. They’re looking for people to come in and impress them.

**John August:**
When an assignment is out there, there are emails exchanged back and forth, or phone calls. And this last week, the WGA introduced this thing called the Project Page, which is a one sheeter that essentially collects all that information about a future project in one handy document. It’s shaking it in front of him. So, we’ll put a link to this in the show notes. But it’s just a simple PDF you download.

**John August:**
The idea behind it is that the Product Page is for the producer, executive, to give those critical details about where the IP rights have been secured, who else has written on the project, if there’s talent attached, who are the producers, and hopefully, at some point, get to a place where you can say, “Can you send me the Project Page?” And that’s the summary of where the project is at this moment in time. Will they fill this out? We’ll see.

**Craig Mazin:**
Because you might as well have a big box on here that says, “Are you lying?” The question are the underlying rights secured. They just lie about that all the time.

**John August:**
They will. And so, I had a conversation with some agents about this, this past week. And all of them want this to happen and also feel like it may be hard to get the producers and studios to agree to do it. And yet, I think it’s very useful for writers and maybe we could talk through what’s on the sheet because I don’t think you should be considering taking a job unless you could answer these questions. So, in some ways, I want to have this by the computer to actually check all these boxes, like do I know this information? Because so many times I’ve actually had to call my agents, email my agents to get clarification on like, “Wait, tell me who the producers are because I have a feeling I know who one of the producers are and I will never work with that person again in my life.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah, it is a good checklist for stuff that would be nice to know as long as you understand that you might not… let me revise that, that you will be lied to at least to some extent. So, for instance, when it says, how long has the project been in development, they’re going to lie. The names of the previous writers, they’re going to lie. This is a rewrite, number of previous writers, that’ll be a lie. Can you briefly describe the project’s development history? This is a fresh project. We’re looking for an exciting new voice, lie. So, they’re just going to do all that because it’s Hollywood. But the part that I think is helpful is at least putting them on notice that you’re asking the question. Once an agent starts to ask, then the problem for the studio is, if they lie to that agent, and then another agent comes along, and they hear a different thing, then they have an agency problem. So, it’s a good conversation to have. This is maybe the most useful version of this is one that you put in front of your agent and say, it sure would be good if you could tell me the answer to these questions.

**John August:**
That’s what I really think we should be our first and lowest goal is basically say like, before you come to me with this project, I want to be able to know these answers because I want to know the IP rights are not all secured. Great, but what’s happening here, like is it really based on thing? You and I have a common friend. I don’t think she’s ever shared this story publicly. But she wrote something that she thought was an original that ended up being based on something and wasn’t, so she got to arbitration that she found out like, “Oh, this was actually based on a book.”

**Craig Mazin:**
Which they will do.

**John August:**
They will do that. And so, this will not preclude that. But at least you have some conversation. At some point, they said it was not based on something else.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. Once you get hired, they do have to list all the assigned material to you. So, at that point, you should know, it should be in your contract. But certainly, if they don’t have the underlying IP locked up, then not only is there risk for you, but also they’re using you to get the IP.

**John August:**
Let’s also talk about why this is important for any writer considering one of these projects. Because if you are going to go after this thing, that could be not just hours, but days or weeks of your time putting together a pitch, figuring out like is this worth your time to pursue. In many cases, you won’t know if you didn’t have the answers to these questions.

**Craig Mazin:**
Correct. Also, any open writing assignment is usually fraught with a lot of risk. The reason it’s an open writing assignment is the same reason that there’s stuff in the sale bin. It means that it’s not particularly high on the studio’s priority list. It may be something that a producer is pushing really hard that the studio isn’t particularly interested in, but, sure, make 100 people jump through hoops to bide some time before we convince you. We’re not going to ever do this.

**Craig Mazin:**
There’s all problems with open writing assignments. They are somewhat dangerous. They’re like junk bonds. Junk bonds can make you a ton of money as many criminals have proven. But there’s a lot of risk.

**John August:**
Transformers was an open writing assignment at one point. And they came to me with it, like I don’t get transformers, not for me. But it was for somebody and became a huge property. But there have been so many things that across the transom. It’s like, I don’t know.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah, the worst version of this, and this is fairly common is they’ll come to you. And they’ll say, “Yes, this is an opening writing assignment. It’s from, let’s pick a studio, Universal, and the producer is, “Let’s just call her Vanessa. And Vanessa has this property that she’s talking to the estate about. And we’re putting a pitch together. The studio is super into this and is a priority for them. And what she’s really doing is laundering things, right? The people who own the rights to the thing, which may be useless, or like, “We’re not going to give you the rights unless we see what the movie would be.”

**Craig Mazin:**
So, they’re going to you, and they’re saying, “Yeah, we can’t give you the job unless you show us what the movie is.” And then, they’re just looking across, share that stuff. And somehow they get money. But it’s all they’re just lying crosswise to everybody.

**John August:**
But I’m pretty sure his job though is just like dream about a movie that could possibly exist and convince folks that you’re building stuff out of smoke, and that’s their job, too.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. I don’t want to imply that that is completely morally treacherous. It has resulted in good things. But a lot of times, open writing assignments are a bit, they’re vaporware. And you just have to be aware of that that they can go away.

**John August:**
I think if I’d had this checklist earlier in my career, there are things that are just like, oh, hell, no, I’m not walking down that road, because I wouldn’t have pursued it. So, if it avoids somehow for some people, it’s a good thing to have them.

**Craig Mazin:**
When you’re young and you don’t have children, what else do you do? Seems like a pretty good use of your time. Practice your skills.

**John August:**
And I think you should practice your skills to the degree that you’re not actually stopping writing original stuff for yourself. And that’s, I think that’s the trap that people fall into this. They’re only pursuing open writing assignments and they’re not actually doing new stuff because they have nothing to show for a year of their writing time.

**Craig Mazin:**
There’s only one writer that’s ever going to get any internal credit from the studio. And that’s the writer that gets this thing, the green light. Everybody else is just somebody that they had to fire along the way. So, odds are that this won’t work out great. So, there’s glum. It’s almost Christmas time. I should probably pep up a little bit. We are out of spooky season, correct?

**John August:**
Yeah we’re in the holiday spirit. Megana who’s here with us, talk to us about how you’re feeling post-spooky season, like we’re still in cozy season. So, is it still a good time of year for you?

**Megana Rao:**
It’s still a good time of year. It’s a little too dark for my taste.

**John August:**
Yeah. My one cool thing is about this darkness. When I asked Siri what time the sunset was and she said 4:45, that’s not okay. A sunset-

**Craig Mazin:**
Do you guys have a little problem with the sunset down here in Los Angeles?

**John August:**
Oh, yeah, we do.

**Craig Mazin:**
Because I wake up in the darkness. And then, I go to lunch in the darkness. And then, I go to bed in the darkness In Calgary.

**John August:**
Yeah, you picked that place.

**Craig Mazin:**
It was selected for us for a number of reasons. I love Calgary. But my goodness, the first thing that happened when we got there in May was we realized that at 5:00 a.m., the laser blast of the sun was going to hit your eyeballs through anything. It penetrates through wood, concrete. And, man, now it’s dark. Oh, wow. Is it dark?

**John August:**
Yeah. People moved to Los Angeles. And I think they don’t… because it’s warmer. They seem like it won’t get dark in some way. But it feels like it gets extra dark here.

**Megana Rao:**
Yeah, because it’s extra bright during the day.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. No, it does not get extra bright no. It’s actually fairly moderate when it comes to that thing.

**John August:**
The main thing I want to talk through today is this idea of scenes versus the whole movie, scenes versus the story and the journey versus the destination. And I think one of the things that’s so fundamental that’s easy to overlook. And we’ve talked about this in various ways over the course of the 10 years of the show. But writers are both creating stories and scenes. And if the scenes are like the individual pieces of Lego, the story is what you build with all those Legos assembled.

**John August:**
But we experience books and movies linearly. So, they are assembled in front of us or watching them be assembled. And the pieces themselves are constructed. They’re little movies themselves are built of these smaller moments, bits of dialogue, visuals, conflict. And so, the tension is that we’re trying to create the most interesting little Lego blocks that are full and joyful to look at and are fantastic. But that will ultimately fit together to build that, the unit we’re trying to build. And sometimes, those are not compatible goals is that we are trying to… both have every moment be spectacular and brilliant and insightful and rewarding and have the whole experience fit together and be what we’re set out to make. And those are real tensions. And you experience it in the movies where you’re experiencing I’m sure the same writing a show right now.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. No, that’s always a challenge. And it’s why I do like to outline early on because it’s the one time where you can engage in very simple scene work like just describing what a scene will be, where is it, and what’s the point, and then look at all of it together. Because what happens when you do all this work is you begin to realize that scenes are always in the context of what came before and what’s coming after. And those things change what that scene feels like to you all the time. You’re guessing how that will work. But it doesn’t always work the way you think. And there are certain things that you… especially once you get into editing, you realize that seems so important. And now, it’s like, yeah, just get rid of it.

**John August:**
Yeah. I think it’s both a craft of making sure the individual later blocks those scenes, those moments as bits are the best possible versions. But also, do we even need that Lego block? Or, no, it’ll all fit together better. And these hold them stronger without that, that extraneous piece is actually breaking the flow of what you had originally intended.

**Craig Mazin:**
It’s so hard because you wonder, Am I giving something away that I should hold on to? Is this one of those stories, where if only I’d kept that thing there? And then, you also think, Oh, wait. Am I being precious about this? And does it not matter? You’re making these value judgments all the time. It’s very frustrating. But it does drive home the need for transitions. I do think that as you’re crafting your Lego piece, if you know how it fits with the one before it and the one after it, better chance that it sticks around.

**John August:**
So, let’s talk about planning versus pantsing. Whether you are carefully outlining and figuring out what the whole story is. So then, as you zoom in on this scene, this scene is to accomplish this thing. This is where I need to get into and this is what needs to achieve at the end. And I’ve done that on movies. There’s also been other movies where I have pants it as it’s grown organically out of like, this is what the scene feels like. This is where the energy of the scene is taking us to the next thing. And sometimes, that works, and you don’t know if it’s going to work. So, it’s probably a riskier way to start. It’s that organic, just like what wants to happen next. But some really good movies have come out of that process.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah, certainly. I try and do a bit of a hybrid thing, which I think a lot of people do. I’d like to know, just I like to know what the scene is before I write it. I think some people just start typing and then see where it goes from there, which is a bit like auto writing like using Ouija board. For me, I like to know what I’m supposed to be writing. I like to know what the beginning, middle, and end is of the whole story, of the scene.

**Craig Mazin:**
But then, once I’m in it, a little bit of auto writing is good for you. You get surprised by things. It’s fun to be surprised. And certainly, I have had moments where something just happens. And it’s the best part of the scene because it even got me. If it can get me, right, then it’s definitely going to get other people I think.

**John August:**
That’s when writing is working well. We have good writing and somehow, magically, it feels like both these individual pieces and the whole thing, we’re always in unison. They were always going to support each other. But when we experience bad writing, sometimes it really is that tension where like the writing is bad because it was trying to fit this outline, like this outline probably looks really good and you can still smell the whiteboard markers. They were like locked into this thing. And characters are doing stuff that may not feel organic, that the story is moving in ways that don’t feel like the scenes themselves are rewarding. The scenes aren’t funny. They don’t have texture. They don’t have specificity. They’re not unique moments. They’re just functional. They’re just the basic Lego bricks that are going to hold the thing together But they’re not interesting. And we’ve also seen bad writing, which is like, yeah, moment by moment, these things are interesting but it doesn’t go anywhere. And we all have these frustrations of things that just feel like they’re constantly in a loop because these characters are saying brilliant things and yet we’re not actually achieving our goals.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah, there is definitely value in occasional wastes of time, all of its precious real estate. But I’m thinking there’s a rambling bit in Shrek, where Shrek goes on about an onion, or the two of them are talking about the onion. It’s just a shaggy dog thing. Everybody remembers it. And it’s an utter waste of time, particularly in an animated film as CG animated film.

**John August:**
Is watching money burn, yeah.

**Craig Mazin:**
That conversation cost many millions of dollars. And maybe people would have been like you don’t… you can get away with saying one quick thing there. Or showing it. Show, don’t tell every dumb rule there is. But there is a value in occasionally wasting time because it is a human thing. A little bit like singers who have beautiful pitch. If they wobble a little bit on a note, keep it because that’s how everybody knows it was an auto tune.

**John August:**
That says a lot.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. So, I think that it’s good to do that. The trouble is when that’s all people have. And then, you just get one of four… I mean, Megana reads how many of these… They’re still doing for Tarantino up there, right? They’re still just blah blah blah blah blah blah. Yeah, those aren’t so much scenes as indulgences, which if you are a particular writer and filmmaker can be delicious. But for the rest of us, not particularly.

**John August:**
Well, there’s the struggle of the screenwriter who’s working on their script. And, okay, I’ve got the idea for the movie. This is how all the scenes are going to fit together. I’m writing a scene. I’m working on this. But then, there’s the whole second level of like, Okay, now, you’ve turned this in, and now you have developed, you have notes. And you have people who are trying to optimize this. And one of the ways they’ll try to optimize this is like, can’t we just do this shorter? Can we get out of the scene faster? And sometimes that instinct is correct. You and I both experienced, they’ve just squeezed all the life and joy and then that just becomes a plot machine. You’ve lost the things in those scenes to actually make those scenes worthwhile. You’ve tried to cut a scene so short, the scene barely starts, and you should just get rid of the scene. And that’s the frustration is recognizing you could have this master plan, you can have these beautiful scenes. And then, stuff will happen. And you have to find a way to make it work without those things. It’s like you’re building a bridge, and they said, “Oh, no, you have 30% less steel than you expected.” Work with it.

**Craig Mazin:**
Well, that’s pretty much always because I don’t think anyone’s ever gotten the budget they needed. So, even money-wise, this ends up happening, and that’ll impact you as well as the notes. There’s also this thing where you have to be accountable to your own notes because we just talked about sometimes surprises. So, you’ve planned something out, and then you surprise yourself. And then, you go, “Whoa, hold on a second. This now has ramifications for many things. I have to be accountable to those. I can’t just get stuck here.” And then, all of those subsequent scenes need to be considered in the Gestalt. That’s right, I said Gestalt.

**John August:**
And we’re that kind of podcast. [crosstalk]

**Craig Mazin:**
We say those things. Everything. I feel like we talk about almost one topic in so many different ways. And that is about balancing competing interests. And in storytelling, you just have to balance the whole with the parts, because the individual parts of the ones that people love, in the moment, but they will only remember the whole after.

**John August:**
Yeah, they will remember some certain little moments of that little highlights during that thing, but then they’ll have an experience like, did I like the entire thing? Or did I not like the entire thing? And then, that’s the frustration. And I think our shared frustrations also that in teaching screenwriting, there’s such an emphasis on structure, which is the whole, which is basically this roadmap of like how it’s all going to fit together, and not nearly enough emphasis on the actual writing moment to moment. How do we keep all these balls in the air? How do we keep this moment feeling alive and excited? How to make the most fascinating Lego pieces? It’s just about like, here’s how you click the Lego pieces together to build this dinosaur.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah, it’s like we make a mosaic. So, we have to have an image that we’re shooting for with all of our little tiles. But each tile has to be really cool. That’s annoying. The Romans just had the blue in the way. And it was fun. And they made a whale. And it was great. But not us. So, to me, the great majority of the work we do is actually inside of the scenes. But the most inspired work we probably do is about the whole, is understanding what is the story that people would care about, why, what tone is it, and roughly, what is the shape of it?

**John August:**
And that shape is really the journey. So, the other metaphor be the destination versus the journey, like you started here, you got there. But really, the experience of the movie is how you got from point A to point B and what route you took. If it’s a road trip, it’s like the fastest way to drive from LA to New York is not going to be the most interesting way to drive from LA to New York, is not going to be the most rewarding way to drive. But you’re going to have to make decisions about what the choices and compromises you’re going to make, like you can’t see all of America. You’ll have short amount of time. You’ll have a certain amount of gas or electric charge. You’re going to have to make some optimizations. And that’s the choices you’re making as a screenwriter.

**Craig Mazin:**
And as you go, you have to look and see how it’s going. And sometimes your beautiful route has just too man rivers in a row. And then, you have to change it. You have to be very relaxed in a weird way when you’re doing it, although I find myself very tense. Well, to me, it’s like a tense relaxed. I guess there’s the balance. Again, you just need to be able to pivot all the time in response to what’s happening.

**John August:**
Yeah, I’m working on two projects now. One of which is the scene work. And one of which is the big macros, or what is the shape of this whole thing want to be? And it’s exciting to have those two opportunities. But even in trying to figure out the whole shape of it, I need to zoom in on certain moments. I feel like, is this even going to be rewarding in those individual moments? I’m imagining myself a few months down the road, am I going to enjoy writing those scenes or not? And that’s a thing you’re always asking yourself.

**Craig Mazin:**
And eventually become accountable to the world. So much thought and energy is required. And then, people can just go, “Sucks.”

**John August:**
So, on the show, we often do a Three-Page Challenge, which is where we look at the first three pages of scenes that people have sent in. We’ve given our honest feedback. And I think that some of that’s in response to the pressure of ordinary screenwriting books and such talking about the structure as a whole thing. So, we zoom in on this really tight… We’ll focus on just three pages, like what’s happening on those pages. But maybe we should look for a way to actually talk about the shape of stories overall. I don’t know if we want to read treatments or longer things. But I felt like-

**Craig Mazin:**
I can answer that question.

**John August:**
You don’t want to read them at all.

**Craig Mazin:**
No.

**John August:**
No.

**Craig Mazin:**
No.

**John August:**
Or we could look at, I guess, when we do our deep dives on existing movies, we have a sense of the shape of the whole thing.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. And ultimately, there is not much interest for me, at least in talking about story in the abstract. Whereas doing scene work is lovely. It’s very detailed. When you’re in production, it’s the work of the day. You’re doing scene work and you can talk about all little things. For overall stories, the truth of the matter is if somebody told me the overall story for karate kid, I probably would shrug and go, “That just feels like so rocky” but like little rocky with karate, I guess. And then, you see the movie and you experience all those scenes, and they’re wonderful. And they collect up too much more than what it sounds like. So, I think we are probably doing this right. I think, in fact, it is one of the problems with… Well, there are a number of problems with screenwriting schools, not the least of which is just listen to this podcast. Honestly.

**John August:**
I do get frustrated when people ask like, “Oh, can you give us some advice on scriptwriting?” I’m like, “Yes, I have a weekly podcast you can listen to. There’s 500 episodes.”

**Craig Mazin:**
Dude. When people are like, “I just want to take you out to lunch and pick your brain, you don’t have to.

**John August:**
No. I’ve done it.

**Craig Mazin:**
It’s picked.

**John August:**
It’s been scraped clean. There’s nothing left on the inside on the scale.

**Craig Mazin:**
We are literally. Why would anyone ask us for screenwriting advice at this point?

**John August:**
No, they shouldn’t.

**Craig Mazin:**
No.

**John August:**
No, but they do. They write down the questions. Sometimes, we answer them.

**Craig Mazin:**
They do.

**John August:**
So, let’s get started on our Three-Page Challenge. We’ll start with Firebird. Now, if you want to read along with us, these PDFs are linked in the show notes. You can stop now and look at the PDF and get your sense of it before we discuss what we’re reading on the page. But Megana will give us a summary of what it is we’re about to read.

**Megana Rao:**
Great. So, Firebird by Benjamin Blattberg. The voice of father narrates an animated Russian folktale about a woodcutter who strays from the safe path when he uses his axe to free a trapped crow. As soon as the woodcutter realizes he stepped off the path, the crow opens its mouth, unleashing explosions. We then cut to Stalingrad in November 1942 where 12-year-old Mila steers out of her apartment at burning buildings and bombings. Her Aunt Anya urges Mila to pack and collect her parents’ jewelry, money, and food to help her escape from Stalingrad. Mila refuses saying her Papa told her not to. Anya slaps her across the face and keeps packing. Mila brings a book a fairy tales with an inscription from her father.

**John August:**
All right. So, that’s where we’re at the end of these first three pages. There’s things I want to talk about in this but I was intrigued. I basically got the setup. I got the situation. I was intrigued to read the next thing. It did feel JoJo Rabbit to me just because that was the most recent movie that I saw that had a similar situation happening. But there’s a lot of stuff here that I thought can work. The animated opening can work, the tie in with a fairytale book. It felt tragic and whimsical at times. These are good combinations. What was your first instinct on this?

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah, that was really well done. And in the sense of scene work, regardless of how it might unfold, I thought that there was so much here worth recommending to people who are wondering roughly how should these things feel and flow. It looks great on the page. Lovely, broken up. I was-

**John August:**
It’s Courier Prime, so it’s already off to a good start.

**Craig Mazin:**
He’s just a suck up is what he is. But where got me was, I’m following along. I love Russian folklore. So, I’m looking along here and I got a little confused when the woodcutter chops at roots and branches laughing as he frees the crow. The crow flies to his shoulder and they laugh together. I thought, well, that’s very odd.

**John August:**
I didn’t know whether I was confused or whether it hadn’t been clear on the page. What was your instinct?

**Craig Mazin:**
I think it was just tonally bizarre, but that’s okay. Because then, something is coming closer. The crow opens its mouth. But what comes out is the sound of next line, all caps, explosions. Next line, lowercase, far off, coming closer. That’s actually quite horrifying. And then, we are immediately into reality and we realize we’re with a child. She is in the middle of World War II. Her city is being bombed. Her aunt, there’s a slightly clumsy introduction to the fact that she’s the aunt, where she refers specifically to her brother, Mila’s father, she just, my brother was too soft on you. That was-

**John August:**
Well, also, Mila says, “I’m not leaving Aunt Anya.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah, we generally don’t do stuff like that. But we’ll figure it out. Eventually, there’ll be a reason to… you don’t need to shove it in right there. I don’t think you can let that develop later. And the conversation between Anya and Mila is pretty good because it’s real. This feels normal.

**John August:**
It feels heightened and rushed in the way that there’s an urgency to it, which is great. And they’re cutting off lines, things trail off when they need to trail off. They dash dash, cut off, when people are cutting each other off. We can improve a little bit here on the bottom half of page two. We run into a situation where between every line of dialogue, there’s a line of scene description. It’s a little staccatoAnd so, you could get some better flow by figuring out when to break that up and when not to break it up, which of those things that go to parenthetical, but that’s a small criticism.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. For instance, where did your father hide money? Mila looks at her blankly, effing hell, where that could just be in parentheses, no response. So, we can absolutely do a little bit of squishing down here. But I could see the space. I could hear it. There was a point of view. I understood that I was with Mila. Certainly, the general concept that her father had left to this book and the book was important that the father had imparted her with a love of fairytales and the fairy tales in theory would help her survive some of this. All that felt there and good. And so, yeah, I think Benjamin Blattberg can do this.

**John August:**
Yeah, I agree. You talk about, so that we’re from Mila’s point of view. And I think that’s crucial. And one of the ways in which we’re seeing it right in Mila’s point of view is when we get to this apartment from the next room, we hear drawers being opened and slammed. Mila just fetches with the buttons and follows code so long and heard that it’s him sweeps the floor. That tells us because we’re starting from her point of view. We’re literally only with her and we’re sitting out here and off camera sounds. We know that she’s the one to follow. If we’d seen the aunt first, it would have been the aunt’s story.

**Craig Mazin:**
Completely, and great use of sound. We talked about transitions. This is full of them. And we’re using all the palette that we are provided, directing on the page, thank God. And also, just like the… things happen with that too much of a Mila being made of them like Anya slaps Mila, that’s a sentence. That’s a perfectly good sentence. Subject, verb, object, done. Great.

**John August:**
Cool. So, let’s go on to our next Three-Page Challenge. This is The Drawing by Todd William Knack.

**Megana Rao:**
Ten-year-old Luke draws a mysterious woman on a piece of paper in his bedroom. It’s Gabrielle Lawson, 38, with a power ponytail, calls to him yelling that it’s time to go. Gabrielle speaks with Officer Raymond Carter in the front doorway. The officer shows her the stakes he’s put in the yard and explains the boundaries of the perimeter. Gabrielle asks Luke where his backpack is, but he doesn’t answer. We learned that Luke doesn’t speak. Twenty-four-year-old Scarlet enters carrying Luke’s backpack. She drops it by her feet where we see her ankle monitor and realize that the new perimeter is for her house arrest.

**John August:**
Craig, start us off here. This is again, we have a story of a young kid. You have a parent authority figure. We have some mystery about what’s going on. How did this work for you?

**Craig Mazin:**
I spent most of these pages utterly confused.

**John August:**
Yeah. I was confused too.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah, about what was going on. First of all, there’s the view of an oncoming train and then we reveal it’s actually just a toy train, but that’s a reality shift. And it’s so short. I’m not sure what we’re getting from it exactly other than it’s somewhat clever, but there’s not enough of it to make it feel like it’s a thing.

**Craig Mazin:**
Formatting notes, a ton of capitalized words here in this one paragraph where we see the things in the room. Weirdly, there’s Edward Gorey posters. Edward Gorey is not capitalized, but posters is. Most of the stuff, you don’t need to capitalize like art supplies.

**John August:**
It’s uppercasing and that doesn’t need to happen.

**Craig Mazin:**
Right. And then, we meet this kid and he’s scribbling a picture of a shadowy figure and then we hear a woman off-screen, “Luke time to go.” Who is that woman?

**John August:**
The woman is theoretically Gabrielle, but it’s weird that we don’t identify her here.

**Craig Mazin:**
But also, if she’s yelling to him, she’s also talking to a police officer at the same time. Interior front doorway, that’s not a location. You could be by the front door. You could be foyer. The police officer, here’s the description, crop dark hair in perfect unison with his short beard. Okay.

**John August:**
How are things in unison?

**Craig Mazin:**
Well tidy, I guess, weathered. Never told a joke. But if he did, it would be quality.

**John August:**
I don’t know how to play that.

**Craig Mazin:**
What is that?

**John August:**
I can’t do that. It’s not a playable thing.

**Craig Mazin:**
If you’ve never told a joke, how could it be quality?

**John August:**
So, Ashley Nicole Black, when she was on the show she was talking about, she’s also an actor, and she talks about when she’s going out for a role she reads the character description there and she gets frustrated when it’s just like, that’s not a thing I can actually do or play.

**Craig Mazin:**
No one can do that. But even if you could, you couldn’t because it’s contradictory. Never told a joke, but if he did, it would be quality. That’s like never drove, but if he did, he would nail it. But no, because you’ve never… what?

**John August:**
Yeah. So, never told a joke period. I get that. That’s a playable thing.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yes. So, the sticks in the yard, again, not really sure why they need to be there exactly. But that’s fine. And then, Luke shows up and she says in the pantry, honey, but wasn’t she just calling him telling him to go?

**John August:**
That’s what I’m confused about too.

**Craig Mazin:**
So, if she’s telling to go, but was it maybe, was it Scarlet that was saying time to go? I don’t think so. Because Gabrielle eventually says, “Ready? Where’s your backpack? So, Gabrielle yells, “Time to go.” We don’t identify her by name. And then, she does not seem to have any sense that it’s time to go. Still not a word, huh? Just more drawings. No. No.

**John August:**
You’re setting up too much that this is the fundamental thing. That’s strange about this character. We don’t know how long he’s been involved in their life, which seems strange to. So, let’s talk about the stakes because the literal stakes have been put in the ground by Officer Carter. They’re already in by the time it started. If you were putting the stakes in, that would be intriguing to me. What is he doing that? And then, I was like, “Oh, the fact that it’s about her house arrest and the perimeter, then we’re in the middle of something that’s great.” But they’re just standing having a conversation about a thing that’s already happened. I don’t know the context of it.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. And it’s putting a lot of pressure on this reveal. She’s under house arrest. But there’s probably a more interesting, casual way to drop that in there. I do struggle when characters have this openness with each other. Someone says, still not talking. Yeah, no, just drawing. Typically, a parent of a child who has any struggles will be far less forthcoming than that. Still not talking, huh? No.

**John August:**
Let’s also talk about point of view. So, in the last thing we were looking at, it was clear that we own the little girl’s point of view. I’m not sure who’s…. We’re not in the boy’s point of view.

**Craig Mazin:**
We’re no one’s point of view. So, I don’t know whose scenes belong to. If I were directing the scene between Officer Carter and Gabrielle, I’m not sure what they want. They don’t seem to want anything actually. This is a problem. So, in scenes, typically, people are trying to achieve something. Is he hitting on her? He’s not doing a particularly convincing job of it. Does she want something from him? Does she want him to leave? She doesn’t seem like she does, nor does she want him to stay. Everyone’s mild.

**John August:**
Yeah. And mild is usually not a good sign for a first scene.

**Craig Mazin:**
No.

**John August:**
So, let’s go back to our earlier conversation about the Lego pieces. And it’s like it’s entirely possible that Lego piecewise that this is actually building up, stacking up something interesting in the fact that they’re under house arrest, the stakes are going to be useful down the road, but the actual scene work that we’re seeing, the Lego pieces that we’re looking at, they’re confusing, and that’s not helping us.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah, even if this exists just to set up that there’s somebody under house arrest and there’s a kid and he’s drawing a weird picture. And maybe there’s some, who knows what’s with the picture. The problem here is the conversation between the cop and this woman. The two of them don’t seem to have any reason to be talking to each other. It’s almost like we’re watching aimless small talk, which you tend to avoid like on planes and in lines.

**John August:**
So, we actually have a logline for this one. So, we now ask for a logline. So, here’s the logline for the whole thing, which I do believe this Lego thing. After mysterious and tragic incident, artist Scarlet finds herself on house arrest at our strange aunt and silent 10-year-old cousin’s big empty house. Soon she begins to experience supernatural events, all of which she suspects is linked to her cousin’s artwork.

**Craig Mazin:**
Sure. And you get a supernaturally vibe from the description of the artwork itself.

**John August:**
But I don’t feel like she’s the central character of the story. It’s showing on the three pages you’ve given us.

**Craig Mazin:**
No. No, this would be… There’s the answer. This should be from her point of view. She’s the hero. Everything that’s happening here is boring. So, if she’s watching all this and she’s watching a cop describe the perimeter and her looking at it-

**John August:**
That’s interesting.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah, that would be interesting, yeah, perspective. I would feel like she would have feelings about that. She’s trapped. So, that’s a good thing. And she’s trapped and then she turns and there’s that little kid staring at her. That would be scary and weird. There’s a lot of ways to go. But the key is her. And we get nothing from her except this very bit at the end, which is like-

**John August:**
Her description is-

**Craig Mazin:**
Cold and distant but without angst.

**John August:**
I don’t know how to play that either. I could play cold and distant without angst.

**Craig Mazin:**
Well, angst is incompatible with cold and distant, right? So, I don’t know what the word but is doing. So, I just think cold and distant would be enough. And then, he adds detached, which I think was covered by cold and distant. And she’s-

**John August:**
But also, cold and distant is a hard thing to stick on your central character. That’s the hard first thing to give us a character who is the one we’re going to actually be following through the course of the story.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. I think it’s also something that is the thing you can get from the execution of the character in the scene with the kid. So, if the kid walks in there and he’s like, “Hey, can I… and she just says one word answer or doesn’t answer at all, but just looks away, that’s cold and distant. Better to do that probably.

**John August:**
Yeah. And use that character description line to give us some visual, some specificity about who this character is versus anybody else who could be in this movie.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. Last thing, Todd, I would say just on when you’re on mild patrol. On page three, Officer Carter chuckles and tips his hat and then at the end of the page, Scarlet chuckles. Chuckling is just for like grandpa. Yeah-

**John August:**
As Megana laughs.

**Craig Mazin:**
And then, you like to chuckle. That doesn’t count as chuckling. That was a proper laugh. I was thinking of chuckling as like [demonstrates chuckling].

**Megana Rao:**
I see. I see.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. Usually, your ruffle a little. Your grandson’s hair because he took him fishing and he said something funny and you go. Chuckling is mild.

**John August:**
Yeah, it’s very mild. All right, let’s get on to Perdition by Terry Rietta. We’ll get a summary from Megana.

**Megana Rao:**
We’re in Cullman, Alabama in the 1830s. Thirteen-year-old Duncan narrates the pastoral setting as he comes upon, strangled 16-year-old Eily’s body by the creek. His father, Loren tells him to go get Pastor Haig. As Duncan runs to the pastor’s house, he flashes back through memories with Eily. Loren and Pastor Haig discuss next steps as they look at the body.

**Megana Rao:**
The sheriff is too far away to reach that day, so they take the corpse to Eily’s home where her mother Eustace falls to pieces at the site of her daughter’s dead body.

**John August:**
Alright. So, yet again, we have young people and dark things happening around them. There were moments here that I like. I liked the idea of finding a body in an older time. We have a sense of what a modern day kid finding a body is. But I liked that it was awkward. And there wasn’t a natural thing to do. There wasn’t police to call. I liked all of that. And yet what I was actually seeing on the page didn’t feel like the best version of this scene in the sequence to me, and there are a lot of small things on there I want to talk about in terms of showing vernacular dialogue, showing accent, showing regionalisms in a way that is suggestive, but not annoying to read, and sometimes just got a little annoying to read in terms of the “gittins” and the “aint’s and the “gahs.”

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. And I don’t know, Megana, if these are all linked together by little fantasy moments perhaps because this is the third one in a row now, where there’s a slight fantasy aspect to it because he sees himself playing with the girl when they were younger, and she was choked to death, which I found confusing.

**John August:**
I am confused too. And I don’t know how…. So we’re talking about on page two as he’s running. He sees these things as like, I don’t know that as a viewer. I would get that he was seeing an earlier version of this. And also, it’s weird how the, a teenager, a young person that’s imagining a younger version of himself. That doesn’t happen.

**Craig Mazin:**
It doesn’t happen. And generally, people aren’t looking at themselves in memories. They can see other people in memories perhaps, but happy memories just seemed like we were hit with a pretty tonally shocking thing. And then, on top of that, we were hit with this gimmick. And then, writing over all that is voiceover.

**Craig Mazin:**
So, we have three competing interests. And I’m not sure where I’m supposed to look and feel, but I can tell you what I wanted. To me, what’s really cool is this, a peppercorn snail, and I don’t know what a peppercorn snail is [crosstalk]. But I loved it, a peppercorn snail.

**John August:**
Daddy, I want a peppercorn snail.

**Craig Mazin:**
I want it now. A peppercorn snail crawls up her porcelain shoulder, revealing deep purple bruises around the girl’s neck. I didn’t love it was her and then the girl’s because it sounded like two different people. But what I loved was that there was a snail on a person, and that’s how we find out they’re dead. And that’s really cool and weird. And I wanted basically the kid to shut up. Now, I don’t have anything against voiceover. Sometimes it’s brilliant. In this case, it’s turning everything rather corny.

**John August:**
It is. So, let’s read through the voiceover here. So, it’s labeled as Duncan’s voiceover. I’m confused whether this is Duncan, the 13-year-old kid or an adult. And as I read this aloud, I think you’ll be confused with me. “Cullen, Alabama, was a pretty place anytime of day. Old oaks leaning down, big moss feathered slabs of stone, soft grass will take the print of your foot and hold it. In the spring, the bubbles don’t seem to rise but rather hang like a string of beads. And Eily Jurdan looked the part of it just lying there like a girl in a tale.

**John August:**
Now, in a book, great. I love that. I actually think that’s good writing. And I really do enjoy it. I don’t believe a teenager can say that. So, it has to be an older version.

**Craig Mazin:**
It says a boy, 13, speaks with a soft southern accent.

**John August:**
Yeah. So, I guess that’s him talking but it doesn’t track for me.

**Craig Mazin:**
It doesn’t sound like what anyone would say to anyone. It does sound book-like. It is an omniscient narrator description of things. But if I were describing my town to you and I started talking like this, you would walk away. There’s something wrong with me. Soft grass, it’ll…

**John August:**
I’m going to start doing that.

**Craig Mazin:**
Take the print on your foot and hold, you’d be like, “What? What are you talk… what? Just where are you from?” Staten Island. I think that it’s a bit purple in terms of its prose, which again, in a novel can work. But coming out of someone’s mouth will sound corny. And on top of that, a 13-year-old boy who talks like this should be studied in a lab because it’s just too much.

**John August:**
A very specific on the page note here. So, in that block of dialogue I just read, this voiceover, and Eily in parenthesis, it says rhymes with highly. I like that we have that clarification here. But I was so tempted to read the parenthetical aloud. So, maybe put it in brackets, put it above this if you need to. I didn’t mind knowing how to pronounce it. We also run into problems with Eily on page three. We’re in this open cart and Duncan is in the back. Duncan sits with Eily holding her head in his lap and I had to think like, “Wait, is she dead?” So, I think Eily’s body is really what we needed to have here.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah.

**John August:**
On page three is also where we see, the first line is, outta get the sheriff. It should be an oughtta to get sheriff. That oughtta is spelled differently. Half days ride to Huntsville and it’s getting dark. Animals will get at err if we just leave her out. You don’t need the errs in that situation. I think at a certain point you have to stop dropping on all the “g”s. We get a sense of what the sound is supposed to be. But it gets to be frustrating to read that all the time.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yes, you don’t need it. And the actors will generally do that. If you give this to them, you run the risk of really getting a lot of-

**John August:**
But things like animals will get her if we just leave her out. The animals’ll, I like that.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. The animals will get at her. You can say that too. It’s just the err. It does seem a little much… I get immediately confused on page one. First of all, he’s describing things as if they were in the past. But he’s there looking at them in the present. So, I don’t understand quite how that functions.

**John August:**
I don’t know when we are in time.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. And then, Loren is this guy who is staring at her. Now we’re going to presume that unless Duncan sounds like a boy boy, that’s who it is because that’s who’s staring at this girl. And it’s the first person we see. Loren it says blends into the setting, granite face, stoic and sporting blood on his pants. Okay, a couple of things. That does not going to blend into the setting, too. You don’t really spurt blood on your pants, blood-stained pants. But when I see a dead body and then I see a guy next to it with blood-stained pants, my mind goes to weird places.

**John August:**
Pretty natural connection. They’re somehow connected that there’s blood on that. Yes.

**Craig Mazin:**
And yet after reading it over a few because I get very disturbed. And then, he said, “Oh, a few freshly caught rabbits dangle from his belt.” Okay.

**John August:**
Maybe start with rabbits.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah, maybe start with the rabbits because right now, oh, bloody pants. Nobody wants that.

**John August:**
Page one. Afternoon sun kisses the foothills of the Appalachians, dangerously purple but okay, I’ll allow it. Next slide, hills, pastures, pines, and hardwoods. You said foothills in the previous sentence. I don’t think you need to say hills twice.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yes, I agree. And when we go into this next section, there’s the promise of Eustace. Before we get to Eustace, there’s a preacher. Duncan has been told to run to get the preacher. And Duncan says, is she dot dot dot? And obviously she is. She’s dead. Clearly. He’s 13. He’s not nine, right, or eight. He should know that she’s definitely dead. She’s not breathing. She’s pretty dead-looking. Regardless. And because it’s always this fake-ish. He finally gets to the preacher’s house. He pounds on the old oak door, a weathered… this is second weathered. The other script had a weathered.

**John August:**
Everyone’s weathered.

**Craig Mazin:**
Everyone’s weathers. Kindly man opens it. A cross around his neck and round spectacles on the end of his nose. A bit central casting there for the old person. This is preacher Haig. The preacher’s face falls at the sight of Duncan standing there, tear-stained and out of breath. What happened? Duncan throws himself in the preacher’s arms. Well, this is a whole different type of movie now. What? So, I think maybe he meant collapses into.

**John August:**
Yeah. Yeah. I’m not buying that either. I’m not buying that moment. I don’t mind buying that as an out. So, what happened is a good exit line in general.

**Craig Mazin:**
You don’t need what happened. How about just uh-oh, right? He reacts to this kid standing there. And then, the two of them are chit-chatting. And then, they get to Eustace who I assume is his mom.

**John August:**
Eustace is a man. Eustace looks past the preacher and sees his little girl. So, last thing I want to talk about is there’s a dedication page. So, after the title page before the real script, definition of the word perdition in Christian theology, a state of eternal punishment and damnation into which a sinful and unpenitent person passes after death. Great. I’ll take it like, yeah, I’m fine with that. And that’s a good use of that dedication page.

**Craig Mazin:**
I did not like that perdition was printed out in syllables.

**John August:**
I’m going to allow it because I could see people pronouncing it strangely or getting tripped up on it. If it weren’t for the Road to Perdition, the Sam Mendes movie I wouldn’t know.

**Craig Mazin:**
You wouldn’t know about perdition. So, I think Terry, less novelistic here probably less than general seems like you’ve got a great eye for visuals. You can really see this place and I can see it with you. You probably are over describing in spots. When I say probably, I mean definitely. And given that you have such a good eye for visuals, don’t clutter it quite so much with extra stuff.

**John August:**
I will be fascinated to see the version of this that basically has no dialogue which is all just visuals telling the story and then fill out the scenes you need to. Here’s a logline, 1830s Alabama, after discovering that a small town’s golden girl has been strangled by in a creek and her friend Isaac, a boy 18 with down syndrome has run off with a stolen horse.

**Craig Mazin:**
What?

**John August:**
It’s a confusing logline. A posse is organized by the girl’s wealthy father to bring back the boy to account for the crime they think he committed.

**Craig Mazin:**
I see.

**John August:**
So, it sounds like there’s a posse going after the presumed killer of this girl.

**Craig Mazin:**
Sure. And that’s fine, but that’s not what this is giving me.

**John August:**
No, it’s not.

**Craig Mazin:**
And it feels a little bit, Terry, like you’re forcing To Kill A Mockingbird on us here. It just feels To Kill A Mockingbird-ish. It’s that vibe. And that’s that vibe. And honestly, it’s an old fashioned vibe.

**John August:**
Yeah, to strangle a sparrow.

**Craig Mazin:**
It’s a great book but it’s an old book. We honor the things that come before but then the fact that they get popularized and then recycled and redone a bunch, you got to move past that and I think this feels a little too Pepperidge Farm remembers.

**Megana Rao:**
Can I ask you a question?

**Craig Mazin:**
Sure, of course.

**Megana Rao:**
On page two where Duncan’s sprinting and as he passes the field, he sees himself much younger with Eily playing in the high grass .Say Terry did want to keep that, would you recommend doing another logline or like a flashback? Would that help?

**John August:**
Yes, I would recommend keeping our kid out of it and just seeing the younger version of the girl. I have a hard time imagining how that’s going to help tell the story. I don’t think it works with the Lego piece but I don’t think it’s going to actually help him and the entire thing is trying to construct is to have flashback moments.

**Craig Mazin:**
That’s also the wrong time for this information. I just saw her dead. Give me a moment or two. Let me learn a little bit about… let me at least hear what supposedly the deals with her before you start showing me things that are maybe private things like her kissing some guy behind the barn. At a church, he sees Eily kissing a man behind a barn. Maybe there’s a barn near the church, usually aren’t.

**John August:**
No, shouldn’t be.

**Craig Mazin:**
No. Regardless. It’s too soon. Oh, I see. He’s running by the church. And then, he sees Eily kissing a man behind a barn. Now, how would you do that?

**John August:**
I don’t know how you do that.

**Craig Mazin:**
I don’t know how you do it.

**John August:**
So, we’re having a hard time visualizing what we’re actually going to see on screen. And that’s a real problem, especially on page 10.

**Craig Mazin:**
Plus, why is he thinking of this at all right now. He’s got a job to do, which is to get to the preacher.

**John August:**
Do your job. Get to the preacher.

**Craig Mazin:**
Throw himself in the preacher’s arms.

**Megana Rao:**
Okay, second question. So, in the last script and maybe in this one, it feels like a thing that you guys are bumping up against is the fake reveal, like false suspense. So, do you think in this script, like with that line is she dot dot dot, if they just said is she dead, that would have been better?

**Craig Mazin:**
Yes. Yes, that actually would have been better because then you would have had an opportunity for the other character to look at him like, what do you think, idiot? And then, that kid could hang his head because that was a stupid question. It gives you an opportunity for humans to interact.

**John August:**
Yeah. And the “is she…” doesn’t… it’s false. Doesn’t feel real. You could say almost anything else would make more sense in that moment. She’s dead, right? Or what do we do? I really don’t have anything. It’s probably better than like the is she because we’re just assuming she’s dead.

**Craig Mazin:**
Is she?

**John August:**
Yeah.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yes.

**John August:**
Is it time for the next sample? Let’s take a look at Helen Sedwick’s pages for Ten Million.

**Megana Rao:**
We open on the San Francisco Bay and close in on an upscale home at Dawn where Patti Wendecker rushes down in her bathrobe to greet a SWAT team of FBI agents pounding at her door. Patti reminisces about the old days in voiceover as we watch federal agents restrain her and storm her home. Patti’s teenage daughters Abby and Monica are escorted downstairs where they’re seated next to Patti. Patti insists the agents have made a mistake until they dragon her husband, Sam, 45, an attorney, whom the agents caught trying to escape in the backyard. Sam apologizes before he’s escorted away. The dFBI asked Patti if she has any firearms in the house.

**John August:**
Great. I like these pages. And I like the situation that was being created here. I’m going to have a lot of very specific notes about things I think could be improved. But meeting this character in this situation, I think feels interesting and right and appropriate. I was a little confused about the time period and start. For some reason, I assume it’s modern day, but it feels like could also be ’80s or ’90s. So, I was a little curious about that. But I was with it moment by moment, which I think is a good sign for these pages. Craig, what was your first instinct on this?

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. There is a good reveal here, which I liked. Because she sold me on the fact that they were in the wrong house. And then, turns out they’re not in the wrong house. And that’s interesting. However, there’s a little bit of a thing that happens here early, which lost me a touch and that is Patti in voiceover says, and this is what we hear first as she’s coming downstairs. “If you ask me, the FBI should let you finish your first cup of coffee and run a brush through your hair before they pound on your door with warrants, rifles, and bulletproof vests.” Pound pound pound.

**Craig Mazin:**
Then she opens the door, shakes her head in disgust. “I told them right off you’ve got the wrong house. By noon, FBI idiots would be trending on TikTok.” Now, a couple things, one, shaking your head in disgust. Nobody shakes their head in disgust at the FBI unless they’re like a mob wife and this is the 12th time. This is new. This is weird. Second, by noon, FBI idiots would be trending on TikTok. That makes it sound like that’s exactly what happened. But it isn’t what happened. And also, I don’t see them say you’ve got the… I don’t see her say you’ve got the wrong house. They slam her to the floor. She says sometimes, “I miss those days” in voiceover which I was okay. So, something is interesting.

**Craig Mazin:**
But I was already nervous that I was disconnecting from a normal human reaction to a situation. And I got particularly nervous when the daughters were taken. And towards the end, the agent says to Patti and her girls… and how old are the girls?

**John August:**
They are 16 and 14.

**Craig Mazin:**
Sixteen and 14. Monica is 14. And Daddy has already been dragged off by the FBI and apologizes. Something’s gone terribly wrong. The agents say to Patti and her girls, “Now, don’t move.” And Monica says, “What? And missed all the fun?” Excuse me?

**Craig Mazin:**
You’re 14-year-old mouthing off to the FBI that just apparently justifiably dragged your dad out. And you guys are all on the floor and tied up. No. So, tone was a problem for me. But the layout of things was really interesting. It was a cool scene to start with.

**John August:**
Yeah, I agree. So, I think let’s talk about the daughters because this is about what we hear. Girls scream, Patti’s daughters Abby, 16, and Monica, 14, stumble down the stairs, their hands bound behind them and a behemoth in a black helmet on their tails. Patti tries to stand but with their hands tied behind her, she topples over. The behemoth sits the girls beside Patti and tips her back up.

**John August:**
So, I love Patti trying to stand up. I love the daughters coming down. I don’t know if I believe that they had their hands behind them. Maybe they do. Maybe not.

**Craig Mazin:**
No.

**John August:**
I don’t see it. They’re juveniles. But then, being freaked out is great. But I’m only seeing them as this collective unit. I don’t know anything specific about who they are because they’re not going to be the same girl. And so, give us some visual that distinguishes this. So, who they are, what are they wearing? Are they still in their pajamas? Well, just what’s happening here? Because these are supposed to be important characters I’m taking and I am just getting names for them.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. And they screamed, and they are tied up. And yet they’re sassing the FBI. It just didn’t seem to make sense. This is more where the scene ends. But there is a fairly chunky description at the end of this about what’s on the walls.

**John August:**
Let’s about that because I think there’s actually some good stuff there. And maybe it is the right time to wait and hold back where we can sit for a second where we can actually see some of the stuff. The way that their home reflects affluence, but not true wealth, a wall of glass facing the San Francisco Bay, other walls are lined with shelves holding a chaotic assortment of art and mementos, handmade pottery, Mexican alebrijes, bolga baskets, most of which has been tossed to the floor.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah, they were tossing stuff earlier. I think it probably would have been better to integrate that into the action. So, it didn’t feel like we stopped things just to get a little cataloging.

**John August:**
Let’s talk about the difference between how Patti is responding in her voiceover and what she’s doing in real life. Because that’s some of the tension that I think you hit on it at the start. She’s not actually saying, “I told them right off, you’ve got the wrong house. She’s not saying those things. And maybe it’s okay that her reporting of what actually happened is different than what we’re seeing, but maybe it needs to be more dramatically different that she actually didn’t really is freaked out and crying.

**Craig Mazin:**
Which she’s not because she’s having it both ways. It’s like, you guys don’t belong here. You have the wrong house. None of that should be happening, which normally, first of all, why is she… when she opens the door, she’s not surprised. So, I’m confused by what her context for them is.

**John August:**
If this felt like a home invasion almost from the start, which is probably what it would feel like, then her natural reaction to that is probably going to be interesting and compelling. And I can imagine there’s a version of this voiceover that is a good counterpoint to it. But I think to reveal the husband can be done better, because right now the husband’s coming in, for whatever reason. It’s morning, but he’s already dressed in a suit. I don’t understand where he was.

**Craig Mazin:**
And he was in the backyard. Right? That’s where they caught him, in the backyard.

**John August:**
Yeah. He’s trying to get out.

**Craig Mazin:**
Right. But how did he even know to get out like… Anyway, there’s a lot of logical issues here. Patti is incredibly not forthcoming with these agents. And I’m not sure why. Everything that she’s describing here sounds like she’s a mob wife, like she is…. So her husband is a criminal. And she knows it. But she’s getting sassy with the feds. This feels Carmela-like a little bit. But that’s not what she’s saying in the voiceover, really.

**John August:**
I’m going to cheat and look at the logline. Because we don’t look at the loglines before we do this. The logline is a woman’s safe suburban life has shattered when the FBI raids her home and arrest her husband, a high price attorney, for stock fraud. So, it’s not a mafia situation.

**Craig Mazin:**
Then this is not correct. Just tonally speaking. Helen, you’ve got a really interesting situation here. But what you’ve done is you’ve shoehorned in an attitude that doesn’t necessarily comport with even if Patti is just that person who’s got that cold ice water in her veins. Her freaking daughters couldn’t be like that. And plus, if your mom and your two daughters have been tied up and thrown downstairs by the FBI, you’re going to be emotional. She’s just very-

**John August:**
Yeah, so I’m going to take this moment to, again, talk about how amazing Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers is, but one of the things that Hustlers did so well is the characters comport themselves when they’re being interviewed in formal situations. And they present the story of what happened in a very different way than what we actually see in them happening. And so, I would be fascinated if the voiceover that we’re getting in that character that should present yourself at the end, we’re going to learn through how she became that thing. And it doesn’t match up with the character seen at the start. That can be really-

**Craig Mazin:**
That could be really interesting. Unreliable narrator being proven right in front of us.

**John August:**
Yeah. All right. So, as always, we want to thank our four writers who sent in their Three-Page Challenges. But also, everyone who sent us a Three-Page Challenge. Megana will read through how many for this session.

**Megana Rao:**
A bunch, yeah.

**John August:**
A bunch, a bunch. So, thank you, everyone who sent them in.

**Craig Mazin:**
Five.

**John August:**
If you have pages you would like us to look at on the show, you can go to johnaugust.com/threepage, all spelled out. And you’ll see a forum, which you can fill out the information and click to attach your script. And it goes into a magic mailbox that maybe we can look at and pick things for our next Three-Page Challenge. But, again, thank you, everyone who sent that stuff in.

**John August:**
Now, it’s gotten dark as we record it and it is time for one cool things. My one cool thing is this cool little thing that I got this last week that I found very helpful. Craig, can you describe what this is?

**Craig Mazin:**
Oh, this is one of these things. So, this is a flexible strip that you can snap onto your arm. And it lights up. That’s cool.

**John August:**
Yeah, so it’s like a slap wrist.

**Craig Mazin:**
Slap wrist bracelet.

**John August:**
This bracelet thing, but it has an LED inside of it. So, it reflects but also it glows. And so, if you’re running at night or walking your dog, I find it actually really helpful because cars can see you. It can be set to just be a steady light or it can blink and so people can see you because I just find that this time of year, both as a driver and as pedestrian or a runner, it just becomes a little bit dicey because you don’t know that people can actually see you. So, I recommend this. This is cheap. I’ll put a link to it on Amazon. This is the Nite Ize SlapLit, SlapLit.

**Craig Mazin:**
Sorry. SlapLit.

**John August:**
SlapLit, LED Slap Wrap.

**Craig Mazin:**
SlapLit.

**John August:**
Yeah, there’s other ones that-

**Craig Mazin:**
Oh, SlapLit.

**John August:**
SlapLit.

**Craig Mazin:**
I thought it was Slap Let.

**John August:**
SlapLit.

**Craig Mazin:**
Like a Slap Let like a bracelet.

**John August:**
SlapLit.

**Craig Mazin:**
So, SlapLit.

**John August:**
So, I would just recommend this if you’re going to be outside walking in a place where a car can hit you.

**Craig Mazin:**
How much does that cost?

**John August:**
It’s really cheap.

**Craig Mazin:**
I’m looking up right now. The SlapLit is currently going on Amazon for $10.59.

**John August:**
So, to not be hit by a car, I think it’s money well spent.

**Craig Mazin:**
My one cool thing is slightly more expensive than this.

**John August:**
All right, tell us.

**Craig Mazin:**
If you’re in the market for a new computer. And we are writers, it is our instrument. I don’t necessarily recommend this for everyone, of course. It’s a bit of a budget buster. However, in the sense of the technological aspect, the new MacBook Pro 16 with the Apple, this one has the Apple M1 Max, is spectacular. It said return to a chunkier MacBook Pro, which I actually like. I never needed it to be the MacBook Air. I never needed it to be slender. It’s a little heavier. They got rid of the glowy bar that was a wonderful gimmick that literally nobody wanted or liked. The screen is brilliant. But my God, the speed on this thing is remarkable. And the fan doesn’t run. It also uses way less energy so the battery lasts way longer. It’s just everything you would hope for has been put in here. I was telling Megana that the thing that I use that’s the most processor-intensive is when we play Dungeons and Dragons.

**John August:**
And so, last night when you’re playing you were using on this machine and your ability to hang on an app, which is much, much faster.

**Craig Mazin:**
Oh my god. And so, did it read faster-

**John August:**
Oh, yes. Faster, yeah.

**Craig Mazin:**
Because normally it would be like wuuuuuuuuh, and now it’s like poink, which is awesome. And my side, because I’m the DM, my side is always going to be the hardest one to run because it’s seeing everything. So, it’s rendering everything all at once all the time. And it’s also showing me all of your lines of sight. So, it’s basically doing five or six times the work that your computer’s doing. Plus we’re running Zoom. It’s great. So, just a huge thumbs up on these suckers. My favorite computer.

**John August:**
On my home office here, I have an iMac which is my main one. But of course, the MacBooks are much faster than my iMac is at this point, which is frustrating. Megana and I both have the M1 MacBook Air, which have been great. They’ve been super-fast and reliable. Again, you don’t appreciate how nice it is to not have your fan run for anything but the battery lasts forever. It’s smart and good. It’s good.

**John August:**
That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It’s edited by added by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Ryan Gerberding. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask @johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send the longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust. We have t-shirts and they’re great as well as hoodies, too. You can find my Cotton Bureau. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes @johnaugest.com. That’s also where you find the Three-Page Challenges that we talked about today. You can find transcripts and can sign up for our weekly newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. You can sign up to become a premium member at Scriptsnotes.net, where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments. And starting this week, you can also listen to us on Spotify.

**John August:**
So, if you’re a premium member and want to listen to it through the Spotify app, there are instructions for that. We emailed it to you but you could probably figure it out. It’s not that hard. But if you’re confused, we’ve sent you an email. So, search your email history because we sent you screenshots on how to sign up in Spotify, if you want to listen to the premium feed in your Spotify. Craig, Megana, thank you so much.

**Megana Rao:**
Thank you.

**Craig Mazin:**
Thank you.

**John August:**
All right. For this bonus segment, this is a question we got from Kyle in New York City.

**Megana Rao:**
I’m an amateur screenwriter who started writing during the pandemic.

**John August:**
We don’t believe the word amateur screenwriter.

**Megana Rao:**
I’m represented but hope to eventually get to the point of being paid for my work. I’ve encountered an issue where I can write really well when I’m excited about a project. But I tend to get bored easily. And once something bores me, it’s nearly impossible for me to find the energy to keep hacking at it. I could be wrong since I’m new to the craft. But I imagine one of the traits that separates amateurs from professionals is the ability to keep going even if you’re not feeling what you’re writing. We can’t all be on 100% of the time.

**Megana Rao:**
Do you have any mental tools or tricks you’d recommend for getting back to a place of energy around a project to make sure you give it its due diligence? What do you do when you need to finish a project but are sick of it?

**John August:**
Kyle, I have to embrace you. You’re the only person who’s ever felt this way. Literally from the moment I start a project to the moment I finished project, I fall more in love with it. I start out really liking it. And I realized, no, I’m deeply, deeply in love with it. This is the best thing I’ve ever written. And I cannot wait to get to it every morning.

**Craig Mazin:**
Do you have more sex with your spouse now than you did when you first met?

**John August:**
100%.

**Craig Mazin:**
Through the roof.

**John August:**
It’s crazy.

**Craig Mazin:**
There’s not enough time in the day and it gets worse year after year.

**John August:**
So, it’s the right equivalent, where I just can’t get my hands off the keyboard. I’m so eager to get back to this project and just keep writing it. I have hypergraphia is really what it is, is that compulsion to write is really this one idea that is just so good. And really everything I’ve ever touched, it’s been that experience.

**Craig Mazin:**
Well, Kyle. So, look, good and bad news. The good news is, yep, you’re like us. You’re like human beings. I don’t know if there’s necessarily anything you can do to get back to that original feeling of excitement. Nor should you need to or want to. Because the original feeling of excitement is a fresh romantic vibe. It means your brain is buzzing because something new has collided into it. The work that we do is to execute carefully and steadily. And that is sometimes rather boring. It’s certainly rigorous. But you’re not going to get that excitement. It’s gone, it’s over. And it will never come back. And like I said last week from beloved Polish poet, even success feels like failure. So, really, this is a goal-oriented process. It is a process process and that you need to learn how to sustain yourself through the process, which is not particularly exciting. But you must be driving toward the goal of finishing.

**Craig Mazin:**
The difference between professionals and amateurs is not that we have the “ability to keep going even if we’re not feeling what we’re writing.” The difference is we’re paid. That’s literally the difference between professionals and amateurs. And it turns out that when you are paid and there are lawyers and contracts, you don’t have the option. You have to do it. And this is actually quite valuable.

**John August:**
There have been times on projects where I’ve just been so frustrated that actually I calculated. This is early in my career when I wasn’t making much money, but I was like, I’m going to calculate how much I am being paid per page. And that’ll get me through this day’s work.

**Craig Mazin:**
But there’s also times where I thought, what would happen if I just gave the money back, every writers had that moment. And lately, sometimes I’ll just think to myself, if I’m in an elevator in a tall building, I’ll just turn to… if I’m with Jacq or Bo and I’ll just say, “Well, if the elevator just plummets, I won’t have to write these episodes,” just get out of some writing, which should be nice. This is the deal.

**Craig Mazin:**
But then, you have moments where you do well. And you will not have those moments until they have happened. They do not happen before they happen. So, you have to do the work to make them happen without having them happen.

**John August:**
So, Kyle’s experiencing intrinsic validation, where he was loving the product, he’s loving doing this because of the excitement about the idea and it was all internally generated. And eventually, it just faded away. And he’s waiting for that moment where there’ll be external forces that will tell him like, “No, no, it’s good. It’s exciting. You’ve done a good job. “And that hasn’t kicked in yet. That’s the reality of being a new person at this.

**John August:**
The other thing I will say is that as you have more experience and no one’s an amateur screenwriter. You’re a newer screenwriter. You don’t have the experience to be able to tell like, “Oh, is this a crush, or is this a possible relationship”, when it comes to a project idea. And so, sometimes you have a crush, like, “Oh my god, I’m so excited about this.”

**John August:**
But Craig and I, you and I both have enough experience to know this is a crush that will pass and I can see what the problem is going to be. And I will fall out of love with this versus there’s some ideas because you’re like, “Oh, that’s a genuinely good idea that I can build a relationship with this project.” This is a thing that can actually sustain and build.

**John August:**
And so, the choice of whether to buckle down or bail, we can make a different calculation because we know how this all goes and we know where this is. But we can only do that because we’ve been in other writing relationships with other projects that know how we react, how projects react. We just know how it all works.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. And I think Kyle probably like most people, his relationship with movies and television is he sees finished products. He doesn’t have a finished product. And even worse, he has to dive into every little grain of this thing over and over and over and over again. It becomes mind-numbing. I can be maddening. And wait until you get into the editing bay. And then, you’re really going over and over and over and over.

**Craig Mazin:**
It’s just the nature of the gig. It’s very foreign to everyone. I think nobody experiences this for the first time it goes, “Is this process been my whole life?” It’s grueling.

**John August:**
Let’s go back to a word he says. I get bored easily. So, let’s talk about boredom. And so, boredom is it happens when it’s no longer new. It’s no longer exciting. It’s no longer fresh. But also, it’s because you don’t know what to do. It’s not intriguing, or the problems in front of you are not interesting, solvable problems, are actually just difficult problems you have to grind on and get through them.

**John August:**
And so, I would say try to look for ways to make that day’s work less boring. Make some challenges for yourself. How can you approach this scene, this Lego piece, and make this the most interesting Lego piece it can possibly be? And once you tackle that, then you get on the next one, the next one eventually. You might fall back in love with it because you see something in this that you didn’t even see when you were first crushing on it.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. Megana, do you have any tricks for yourself when you’re feeling bored or unmotivated?

**Megana Rao:**
I usually have a playlist associated with a project and sometimes listening to that helps, or getting external feedback can help me, I don’t know, relive excitement about certain parts of it. Okay, I have a question for you guys. So, in talking about having a crush on a project versus a long-term relationship. So, I was recently working on a project where I felt like I was banging my head against the wall for so long. And it just felt like endless and I should just walk away from it. Because I’m never going to figure out these problems.

**Megana Rao:**
All of a sudden, it felt like the wall broke open and there was sunlight, and I could see my way out. I’m just confused how I make that differentiation. Do I trust that that’s going to happen always because it happened this time?

**John August:**
I don’t think you can necessarily trust. There’s been projects like that for years. Where I just got to a certain point I just couldn’t quite crack what that was, or that there’s something that I knew was not working quite right. And it just was wrong. And so, even though we have experience with these writing relationships, we can’t know how it’s all going to go or work and how it’s going to really be on the page.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah, again, balance. You just wait and hope. But there is a difference, I think between a project where you are stuck but you wish you had the answer, and a project where you stuck because you don’t care what the answer is. And if you’re in that space-

**John August:**
You can stop writing.

**Craig Mazin:**
… it’s over.

**John August:**
Yeah. So, I think the only case you made for finishing that project is if you’re pretty close and you just think you need to have the experience of having finished the things, that makes sense.

**Craig Mazin:**
Which is-

**John August:**
Something.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. There is a resilience that’s required, obviously, to do all of this. But I think if it gets hard, don’t confuse hard with bored. Don’t confuse I think I’m maybe not good enough to do this with bored. Boredom is an all-purpose term for dissatisfaction. But you have to interrogate a little bit why you’re dissatisfied with this. And here’s the tricky part for people who are starting out, a lot of their ideas are bad.

**Craig Mazin:**
And a lot of times, even if the idea is good, their method of executing is bad. So, they should stop because it’s bad. But then, if you don’t finish, you don’t get better. So, balance.

**John August:**
Yeah. You got to work through it. There’s a case we made for finishing those things. The other thing I’ll remind people is that a lot of times, newer screenwriters were always really good at school, for example. They’re always really good writers. And everyone’s like, “Oh, you’re a good writer.” And so, they approach this thing. And they have the sense of like, “I know what good writing is. People tell me I’m a good writer.”

**John August:**
And then, something that’s been comparatively easy for them versus other people, they’re in the middle of it like, “Crap, it’s really hard to write. This is actually exhausting. I don’t know what I’m doing. Maybe I’m just bad. Or maybe it’s this project.” And you’re just not used to struggling.

**John August:**
And sometimes, what you’re saying is bored, it’s actually you’re just struggling and it’s new and it’s uncomfortable and you’re not used to be uncomfortable writing. But that’s what writing is.

**Craig Mazin:**
And our culture encourages everybody to be a jerk. So, everybody grows up. If you’re interested in film, if you’re interested in TV, perversely, you are encouraged by culture and like-minded people to crap all over everything all the time. So, you become rather convinced that it is easy, because look at all the garbage. This is what Ted Elliott has always called crap-plus-one, your job, you think is to just write one better than all the crap out there.

**Craig Mazin:**
But the truth is, with the rarest of exceptions, if you are a new writer, you are actually not good enough to write the crap. That’s how bad you are. And that’s how hard it is. It’s so much harder than they think. So, when they get into it, there is a cognitive dissonance between this thing that’s supposed to be so simple and how hard it is.

**Craig Mazin:**
And I think maybe the brain convinces you that you’re just bored. Because the only other explanation is, you’re not good enough. But you’re not until you are. And unfortunately, you’re never good enough, because you’re just as good as you could be on that day. You try and get better. And then, it’s over.

**John August:**
I’m thinking about Megana and Megana’s metaphor for you and your writing group has a chance of accountability. And so, where you have to do stuff and that might be actually a humble thing for Kyle to find at some group of people who he can be accountable for. So, he’s actually getting some work done. And he also recognized like everyone is struggling at the same time in the same ways. And he can get a sense of how it all fits. And if you could find the right group that might get him on board.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yeah. And you can always pick somebody that if you vibe with that person and say, “Look, we’re going to spend two hours. For one hour, I’m going to talk to you about my problems about this script. And then, for the other hour, you’re going to talk about your problems with the script.” And the only ground rule is that nobody can say, yeah, I thought of that but. Or, yeah, I tried that but. Because that’s just annoying to everybody. Just pretend you didn’t talk it through. Talk everything through.

**Craig Mazin:**
Sometimes just talking makes it clear. If you write alone, you can go deep into your own weird mind and get totally lost and you can confuse feelings with facts.

**Megana Rao:**
One more pitch for writers’ group. There have been times where I’ve gotten so bogged down in the weeds and really unexcited about a project but the people in my writers’ group who have seen it since the inception have reminded me what excited me about it and that can be really helpful.

**Craig Mazin:**
Yes, something was there. You had something that made you do all of this. Certainly, Kyle, if you are writing by the seat of your pants and you feel you have a tendency to get bored, I would strongly recommend plotting the whole thing out first. It’s hard to get bored when you know exactly what you’re supposed to write that day,

**John August:**
Yeah, if you had a good outline and then you could really approach how to make this piece the most awesome scene it could possibly be and not going to waste the work, that might help him.

**Craig Mazin:**
Precisely.

Links:

* [WGA Introduces Project Page](https://www.wga.org/members/employment-resources/wgaw-project-page) check out the [pdf here.](https://www.wga.org/uploadedfiles/members/employment_resources/project_page.pdf)
* Follow along with our Three Page Challenges: [Firebird by Benjamin Blattberg](https://johnaugust.com/index.php?gf-download=2021%2F10%2FFirebird_Blattberg.pdf&form-id=1&field-id=4&hash=556a9ba8ce27120b3c1bc15354f2475bb9653a4390ca621d0313ab308900f6d7), [The Drawing by Todd William Knack](https://johnaugust.com/index.php?gf-download=2021%2F12%2FTHE_DRAWING_THREE_PAGE_TODD_KNAAK.pdf&form-id=1&field-id=4&hash=0fbb734235ffa2d759d7216cf09e4e7efb43e4b7704ce05acac5793d98fde112), [Perdition by Terry Rietta](https://johnaugust.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/NEWperdition-3-page-challenge.pdf), [Ten Million by Helen Sedwick](https://johnaugust.com/index.php?gf-download=2021%2F10%2FSedwick.Ten-Million.First-Three-Pages.10242021.pdf&form-id=1&field-id=4&hash=fba5fbccc4a5c81f9ed4bf3d075884e6b3544c52008ef870d4b4cf762f39213a)
* [Nite Ize SlapLit LED Slap Wrap](https://amzn.to/3oGhd4e)
* [The New 16 inch MacBook Pro](https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-14-and-16/?afid=p238%7CslVe23VBZ-dc_mtid_1870765e38482_pcrid_567634252511_pgrid_101595807247_&cid=aos-us-kwgo-mac–slid—product-)
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* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Ryan Gerberding ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/529standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2021/513-writing-for-stars).

**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August and this is Episode 513 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Craig is off somewhere in the Canadian wilderness this week, but I am very excited to welcome back a writer whose career we’ve followed from Saving Mr. Banks to 50 Shades of Gray, and the upcoming Venom: Let There Be Carnage. I speak, of course, of Kelly Marcel. Kelly Marcel, welcome back.

**Kelly Marcel:** Hello. Hello.

**John:** It is such a delight. And thank you so much for coming in to fill in for Craig while he’s gone.

**Kelly:** My absolute pleasure.

**John:** So last I spoke with you you were in England I think because you were working on Venom. But I talked to you this week and you are in Louisiana?

**Kelly:** Yes. I’m here in New Orleans which is an incredible city because I have a TV show that’s probably about to shoot here.

**John:** Oh great.

**Kelly:** We’re actually trying to decide whether it’s going to be here or New York. And I happen to have family in New Orleans, so in the pandemic I came here knowing that I was potentially going to be here or New York at the end of the year. And they’re very close to one another.

**John:** So I was surprised and delighted to have you in a closer time zone which makes this much easier to do. But last I texted with you or spoke with you I was asking you a very writerly question in that I had a character who needed to live in a London neighborhood. I needed to know what London neighborhood this specific character would live in. So thank you very much for weighing in on that. Because how am I going to know London neighborhoods if I don’t have great London friends.

**Kelly:** I’ll always help you with anything British-y.

**John:** Excellent. Well, you can help us out on the podcast today because we have a lot to talk through. I want to talk about the experience you and I have had which is a little unusual which is writing with and for an actor, when you know who is going to be in that role and that person is helping you work on the script.

**Kelly:** Right.

**John:** I also want to talk about translating action on the page to the screen, which is something that you and I have had a lot of experience with and you have had really firsthand experience with both the first and second Venom. So really going from what three pages look like in your script to what the experience is of shooting those pages and producing those.

And in our bonus segment for premium members I want to talk about visas for international writers. We have a blog post that’s up where we asked some writers to contribute their experiences about getting a US work visa as an international writer. And Kelly Marcel has experience on that, too. So I’m going to ask her what she can tell us about that process.

**Kelly:** That’s something I definitely have experience. I’d love to talk about.

**John:** Wonderful. Thank you so much. Unlike the people who want to listen to the back episodes, we have one episode where you and Craig and I were playing this roleplaying game where my character ended up being killed. I don’t think I will die in this episode. But there’s no promises this time.

**Kelly:** That episode was so fun and I’ll also add that we were all quite drunk.

**John:** We were. I think the ideal amount of alcohol for a Scriptnotes recording is like one to 1.5 glasses of wine. More than that was consumed during the recording of that episode.

**Kelly:** Definitely more.

**John:** But first we actually have some news to talk about. So this was in Variety, an article by Kevin Tran, where they’re looking at a report based on how theatrical movies are streaming online. Basically the movies that were supposed to go to the big screens but actually showed up on streaming services, how they really did. And the answer is they seemed to do pretty well. They actually outperformed a lot of the series that were there. And it’s the first kind of insight we’ve had into what these big movies that were supposed to go on the big screen but showed up on the small screen during the pandemic, the numbers they actually generated.

So, with Venom, you have a movie that at this point is planning to come out theatrically, but I’m sure as a producer there were discussions the whole time through about whether you were going to get your theatrical release.

**Kelly:** Yeah. I mean, look, I’ll say that I think that Tom Rothman is really sticking to his guns on this. And I kind of admire for it. I think he’s really invested in preserving and protecting the theatrical experience for audiences. And there are just some movies that you have to see in a room, on a big screen, with a bucket of warm popcorn on your lap. And, you know, he is such a cinephile and a true movie lover that I think he believes in that religiously. And so actually with Venom 2: Let There Be Carnage he has always said it will be a theatrical release.

I mean, obviously the world is changing and we’ve had to move the date a couple of times because of COVID. And we’ll see, you know, if we are able to stick to that. But I kind of love him for really, really, really holding firm on allowing audiences to see this in the theater.

**John:** Well you’ve had experiences earlier on with Cruella. So basically every writer who worked on Cruella has been a Scriptnotes guest, which I’m really proud of. But with Cruella that was both a day-and-date. So people could watch it on Disney+ as a premium entry or they could see it in theaters. And so you had the chance to do both. And you were saying you actually got to see it on a big screen in New Orleans because you got yourself a theater for it.

**Kelly:** We did. And Cruella is actually one of those movies that did well streaming. And so who knows. But I definitely wanted people that I knew to see it on a big screen. And I wanted to see it on a big screen, too. And there is this incredible little one screen movie theater in New Orleans called the Prytania Theater which is actually the oldest operating theater in New Orleans that dates back to 1915. It was the first theater to come back after Katrina. And the only theater that they had for a while. And it’s been made famous in books and it’s just this gorgeous kind of magical place.

And it had been badly hit, you know, during the pandemic because it had had to close as did everything. So, I rented it out for an evening and invited all of – this was during a period where everything was open and high vaccination rates, etc. Invited all of our friends, 50 of them, to come and see the movie on a big screen. And it was so lovely and magical to get to experience it that way in this small theater in this little part of town.

And, again, that’s an experience that can’t be recreated in your home I don’t think. And so I’m really glad that we were able to do that and I hopefully will do it again with Venom 2.

**John:** Yeah. I’ve had a chance to see some movies in the theater since started opening back up. The first thing I saw on a big screen was a test screening of a friend’s movie and that was still like really locked down and everyone was incredibly socially distanced and it was still at the time that we were putting on hand sanitizer a lot.

**Kelly:** Right.

**John:** But then I got to see A Quiet Place in theaters which was terrific to see there. I saw In the Heights on a giant screen at the Chinese which was just amazing and it’s a movie you want to see on a big screen. And I got to see Free Guy on a big screen, too, which was all terrific. And yet data like this coming out of this report shows that the studios are making some good money, or at least getting good viewership when they put stuff on streaming. So it’s going to be really interesting to see as we move out of this next wave which of these films sort of keep to they’re strictly theatrical and long windows and which ones go back to this 45-day window which seems to be sort of where we’re settling on now, where 45 days after the theatrical release it’s showing up on these services.

It’s really an open question how much we’re going to move back to the pre-pandemic way of releasing movies.

**Kelly:** Is it 45 days after the theatrical release that it goes to streaming? Because I thought it was a much shorter window now between the theatrical release and then putting it on streaming.

**John:** From what I understand it sounds like the Free Guy model was still 45 days, which I think they’re also trying to do for the next Shang-Chi Marvel movie. But I think there’s still open questions for that. And I think it also matters whether it’s free streaming versus the $20 whatever–

**Kelly:** Paid streaming.

**John:** Yeah. The paid streaming. And we haven’t talked a lot about paid streaming on the show, but premium video on demand, which is what Cruella was when it came out there, is a really good deal for you as the screenwriter. You got actual real money on that that you wouldn’t have gotten off of just theatrical.

**Kelly:** Right.

**John:** So it’s an interesting balance for screenwriters as well.

**Kelly:** Yeah. And I was reading that it wasn’t so brilliant actors. I don’t know what the Scarlet thing is with Black Widow. I haven’t really followed it closely, but I’m wondering why it’s not as great for actors because box office bonuses I guess?

**John:** Yeah. Really it comes down to box office bonuses which you and I would probably have in our contract as well, but hers are a lot bigger.

**Kelly:** Right.

**John:** And so I say the premium video on demand is good for a WGA residual, sort of that automatically calculated thing. But her argument is that by releasing it on streaming and theatrically it lowered how much it could make theatrically and therefore she should be compensated for the money she lost out of that.

**Kelly:** Right. And I think that’s why Netflix just paid Daniel Craig a big bunch of money, right, because he won’t make those theatrical bonuses.

**John:** Those negotiations are going to be tough. And it really comes back down to knowing how many people saw this movie which the studios and streamers have been loath to sort of share. And this report that came out in Variety Premium talks through basically another way to get at those numbers which is doing kind of like what Nielsen does. It’s called T-Vision which is surveying 5,000 US households to see what they’re actually watching. And through that they can see that, oh, Raya and the Last Dragon was a big hit in terms of viewership.

**Kelly:** Right.

**John:** Or that Luca was a huge hit for viewership, which is not surprising. These are the animated movies that would generally be big family drivers of viewership.

**Kelly:** I’ve been hearing a lot about these short term windows that we were just talking about and wondering actually if that’s going to be good for creators because the shorter the window now between a theatrical release and streaming means that theaters will probably need more content. And so my hope, I guess, is that we see more content being needed to go into theaters. And my hope for that would be smaller indie movies going into these slots and us kind of trying to claw that back a bit.

**John:** It would be fantastic if some of these smaller movies that kind of can only now get a streaming release can find some big screen time, just because there are available screens for it. We’ll see if that happens. It’s going to be challenging. But it’s possible.

You know, if you look back to the rise of indie films in the ‘90s and sort of what happened there, it was because there was capacity. There were actually screens that they could show these on. And so the movies that would have otherwise never made out to other than New York and Los Angeles could actually make it out to deeper markets. And that’s why you have Clerks being able to shown at theaters across America which 10 years earlier would never have happened.

**Kelly:** Right.

**John:** So it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen, but things will definitely change as we move out of this pandemic. And it’s important that we have some people actually finding the data to see who is watching these things because obviously Disney and Netflix and HBO Max know these things but they’re not sharing that.

**Kelly:** Why don’t they share that?

**John:** Because it’s their secret sauce. Because if they were able to show how much people were watching these things you and me and Ryan Reynolds and Tom Hardy would be insisting on a bigger cut of that. [laughs] Which is a natural segue to writing for and with some actors, because this is an experience that you and I have that not a lot of friends do. Because you and I have definitely come into movies for rewrite situations where a script was written and then a star is attached and we have to sort of tailor the part towards that star. And that’s common, but you and I have had the experience of from scratch we are working on a project that we know is going to a certain actor and that actor is involved in the development process, which can be great, but it can also be challenging.

So I thought we might spend a few minutes talking through the pros and cons and best practices for writers who find themselves in that situation. For you Tom Hardy was a friend from way back, from way back in London days, right?

**Kelly:** Mm-hmm. Tom and I have known each other for nearly 20 years.

**John:** And so when it came time to work on something with him, because you came in on the first Venom, but it’s really Venom 2 was the first time you were coming in from scratch. What is that relationship like? What is that discussion like? Because he obviously knows a lot about the character, but you know a lot about the character and you know a lot about writing. How did you first sort of approach that process of figuring out how you’re going to do the sequel?

**Kelly:** Well it’s important to know that Tom and I have always been collaborators. So how we came together is he was setting up a theater company in London. He asked me to come and write for that theater company. So we’ve always worked together in this capacity. So we know it very well. Venom wasn’t the first thing that I came into rewrite specifically for him. We worked on Bronson together. We worked on Mad Max together. And he’s always been an extremely creative powerhouse. He’s always had ideas.

So when it came to Venom 1, having worked with him before I knew coming in that he would have a lot of ideas and that he would have creative input, which he does. And, you know, Venom 1 was kind of a scramble and there was a preexisting script and we were rewriting on set. And we were kind of like making that movie as we made that movie. And kind of finding out what it was along the way. So when it came to Venom 2 we really knew that it had this very strange tone, sort of this balance between comedy, kind of horror, and typical Marvel action. And we kind of knew as well what the audience had loved about Venom 1. And so we very much wanted to double down on those things.

Tom immediately sort of came to the table and said, “Look I’ve got an idea for the story for Venom 2 and a character that I would love to bring into Venom 2.” And we kind of started there. And we were breaking the story together over FaceTime because I was in LA and he was in London. So, poor guy was doing some very, very late nights. And as we started to break the story together it became obvious that this was half his story and he needed a Story by credit. And so we immediately kind of made sure that he would have that credit, which is unusual for actors. Although I think Ryan has one, right?

**John:** He does. And so he actually had a writing credit on Deadpool stuff before then. So as we started this project we’re working on now we actually negotiated for him to be a writer on the project as well as being an actor and a producer from the start, which was important for this.

But my actual first experience with writing with and for an actor was on the first Charlie’s Angels. So Drew Barrymore was attached to star and to produce. And with that, you know, she had a clear sense of the tone we were going for and really the initial conversations were all about tone and what it should feel like. And so that collaboration was very much a let’s describe the world. Let’s paint what this ultimate movie should feel like. It wasn’t so plot intensive. It wasn’t so down to the nitty gritty details of this thing. It ultimately got there, but in the blue sky stage of it she was really important because I would have probably written a different movie if it hadn’t been Drew Barrymore involved. The tone of it would have been really different. And the vision for what we’re headed for.

So that is definitely a huge advantage to having that actor, that performer, involved from the very start is because you can sort of sense what it is you’re headed towards. Having a director onboard obviously early on is also a similar kind of experience because you know what they are aiming for in terms of the movie they want to shoot and in terms of what they actually feel like they can deliver. Challenging to have both, in my experience, having both the actor and the director onboard, because their visions may not match and then whose lead you’re following can be really difficult.

**Kelly:** Yeah, that can get very confusing. And very tricky because you’re very much in the middle as the writer at that point. I think we were very lucky on Venom 2 because we sort of had the freedom to write the script first before we had attached a director. So when Andy Serkis came onboard he came onboard with a full script. And that was kind of great that there weren’t kind of two voices. Although Ruben Fleischer on the first movie and Tom I think saw the movie very similarly, so we didn’t really have any of those problems on Venom 1. But it can be like that. I’ve experienced that elsewhere and that can be very tricky.

**John:** Let’s talk some other cons of the actor being involved. Because there have been times where I’ve had conversations where someone is objecting to a thing or feeling nervous about a thing and it can be hard to suss out whether are they talking as the producer of the film, are they talking as the actor in the film. Are they talking about this character as a character or as someone they’re going to be playing? And that balance between there can be really challenging. They very reasonably see everything in the story through the eyes of their character because that’s the character they’re going to be playing. But it can challenging to sort of get them to focus on this is everything else that’s around this.

And I don’t know if you’ve had that experience, not necessarily with Tom, but on other projects which you had to come on and help. It can be challenging as the writer who is responsible for the whole movie to make sure that their focus on their own character doesn’t dominate things.

**Kelly:** Yeah, absolutely. There have definitely been rewrites on other projects where I’ve experienced that. With Tom it’s more about I think things that he thinks are going to be really fun to play. And you’re like but does it fit in the movie? And also don’t forget that Tom is seeing through the lens of two characters, not just one.

**John:** Yes. Because he’s playing both himself as the human, but also playing Venom, the actual alien symbiote who has a completely different personality.

**Kelly:** Completely different personality, which by the way, this is one of the pros of working particularly with this actor is that when I write a scene Tom is literally there on FaceTime performing it back to me, as both Venom and Eddie. It’s quite extraordinary actually watching him do it. He does both voices and he plays against himself. But it means that I immediately know if those lines are working. Or if they don’t, which is an incredible gift.

But, yeah, there are definitely things that are like oh you want to do that because that’s just really fun kind of like action, but actually you know what why not put things in that are fun? Why not go to work and actually have a great day because you got to do something so crazy and amazing? I have to say that Sony were incredibly generous with us in the freedom that they gave us to play in this Venom sandbox and this Venom 2 movie I think you’ll watch it thinking oh my god they had so much fun doing that.

**John:** Yeah. You’re making the kind of movie where you really want to have that feeling. And so that’s great that you could actually do that.

Let’s talk some downsides of writing with and working with actors or with the star. Because – and this is not necessarily about, well it can be about their involvement in the writing, but also one of the blessings of big stars is that people want to make movies with big stars. And they’re attached and that movie will get made more likely. One of the challenges of big stars is that they are so busy and they’re offered so much that the project you’re working on could get pushed and pushed and pushed until you just don’t know where you are on their dance card.

Obviously it’s better with something like this where he is the main star and there’s a huge priority to make it. And having him invested in the writing of it probably pushes it further ahead. But it’s always a thing I warn newer writers about who are like, oh, I have this star attached. I’m like, wow, that’s exciting, and could be a challenge when Leonardo DiCaprio has 10 movies stacked up that he can pick between.

**Kelly:** Right. So many friend of mine, directors, big directors and big writers who have big stars attached to their movies and have had them attached to their movies for years. And their movies keep getting pushed and pushed and pushed because these people are very much in demand. I mean, you know, we just to push a little bit on a TV show that I’m doing because it has a very, very big star in it. And he got offered a massive movie. And that movie is very – it’s not Tom – but you know that movie is very appealing.

And so he’s going to do that first and it pushes the entire shoot. We’re really lucky that he’ll definitely come onto ours next, but I’ve seen movies sit around for years.

**John:** Oh absolutely. Things that are on the edge of production and it’s about one actor’s availability, or suddenly this movie is running long and then you’re going to lose the other actor because of this thing. It becomes really challenging. And so having an actor attached is a blessing, but it can also be a curse. And you’re always asking yourself is it worth it. When is it worth it? And when do you need to move on to another actor to sort of get the thing to happen?

**Kelly:** I know. I know. And that’s always such a tricky decision because you’ve lived with the idea of this person in your head. And it’s very hard to let that go. I would say as well the power of having a big actor like Tom or Leonardo or anybody really of that caliber, and Ryan, particularly if they are involved in the creation of your movie it means that they are really, really, really attached to that movie and invested in it. And so they protect the work. And when you have a star that’s protective of the script then, you know, you’re in a really great position.

**John:** They’re invested in the movie, but they’re also invested in the movie’s success, which is hugely important, too. Because having a giant star in a movie that they don’t really care about or like does you no good when it comes time to promote the movie, when it comes time to do everything else. When you have the star who has been in there since day one making the movie work when it comes time to promote it they will promote the hell out of it. And that really pays off. I mean, there’s a reason why Ryan Reynolds is sort of marketer of the year. He’s really good and works really hard at pushing things out there in the world. And that is worth more than anything in terms of the publicity and promotion you’re able to get out of them is crucial.

**Kelly:** Yeah. He’s particularly brilliant at it.

**John:** Yeah. And not every actor is going to be that way. But let’s talk about one thing which is that I think there’s this perception that if you write something for a specific actor then that role is inevitably locked to that actor. In my experience there have been so many times where I’ve worked on something where really it was tailored for one actor and then that person can’t do it and someone else does it and it works brilliantly.

**Kelly:** Yeah.

**John:** And in some ways just the fact that one actor could play a thing makes the character work enough that you could swap somebody else in and it actually just does brilliantly.

**Kelly:** Absolutely. I mean, that happens all of the time. I don’t know about you, John, but for me it’s really helpful to have somebody in mind when you’re writing. I really love to kind of plaster my walls with pictures of who I think this character is, whether it’ll actually be that actor or not, and think about cadences and tones of voices and facial expressions and body movement and the whole sort of being of a person as I’m putting the words that they’re going to speak and the actions that they’re going to do on a page.

I did it on Saving Mr. Banks. 50 Shades of Gray. And it really, really helps me to have that visual in my head to really know who it is. And then, you know, inevitably it doesn’t end up being that actor. But I still know who that character is having sort of seen them play it out in my head if you know what I mean.

**John:** But I think it also translates to the page. There’s something about the scripts you read that really work you sort of feel like you saw the movie. If you ask two years later did you see that movie it’s like I’m not sure. Wait, did I just read it? Because with really good scripts you feel like you saw it. And it’s because there’s just a consistency of that character and you really felt like you saw an actor in that role even though there was no actor. It was just the words on the page.

So, yeah, I think it’s great to pick actors you want to be in this thing, even if they’re unrealistic choices for the small indie drama you’re going to make.

**Kelly:** Of course.

**John:** Just having the consistency of voice and tone and body movement and just approach can be really, really helpful. And so I always – I do sort of cast out my movies as I’m writing them knowing that they’re not likely to be those actors in the final roles.

**Kelly:** I think you should think big because I think those big actors that you know so well are the ones that you can imagine more easily as you write these things because you’ve seen them do a million different movies. You’ve seen the way that they walk, the way that they talk, and different characters that they’ve been able to play.

**John:** Julia Roberts has played a ton of different characters, but I do have a sense of how her face works and how her energy is. And it’s useful to be able to write to that. Same with Will Smith. I’ve gotten to work on two movies with Will Smith and I do have a sense of what is going to be funny coming out of him. But if it’s somebody else put in that role I think it will still work because there’s a consistent thought and approach to it.

**Kelly:** Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know and that’s how it is with Tom. It’s really like a shorthand writing for him now because I’ve seen him do so many different things. And I kind of know his cadences and his tones and how something is going to come out of his mouth and his body as he moves it. And so it’s really a joy.

**John:** So you were working on the script from the very start and so you delivered a script, you got a director, and all that worked. But I suspect there was also a lot of writing on the set, or things that would come up. What was the relationship between you and Tom writing stuff during production?

**Kelly:** Well, it’s a really unique experience on Venom. So how Venom works is Tom starts his day in the makeup trailer obviously and then he comes onto set. And the first thing that he does is record Venom. So we have this sound guy, Patrick, who basically plays Venom back to Tom through his ear on the set. So Tom has an ear wig. And the Venom lines, which we treat, so it sounds like Venom in his head.

**John:** Oh that’s great.

**Kelly:** Are played to him so that he has himself to kind of play off of on the set. And we’ll have Venom in our cans. So everybody can hear what Tom is hearing. And then Andy will have a mic and I will have a mic. And those mics are directly connected to Tommy’s earpiece. No one else can hear what we’re saying to Tom through his earpiece.

As you know, it’s all very well sitting reading a script and reading out the lines, but you stand it on its feet and you start moving it around a set and it somehow just doesn’t work because now you’re up on your feet and now you have to put physical movement into this scene, or the blocking doesn’t fit the line, or there’s a million things that cannot work about a scene because it’s now suddenly a physical, living, breathing thing. And Tom really is a perfectionist and he wants every scene and every line to be the best line that it can be. And there’s a lot of comedy in Venom as well. So we’re always trying to beat ourselves. We’re always trying to beat the line. And so the luxury of him having this earpiece means that he has this incredible ability to follow you live in a scene and respond if you jump in with new lines for him. So, you can keep the camera rolling and I can throw new lines into his earpiece as Venom, which he’ll respond to, or give him Eddie lines so he’ll take a beat and then he’ll start the scene again with the new Eddie lines.

And we got so used to it on Venom 1 that it was kind of like second nature. But on Venom 2 when we had Andy come in and we had Bob Richardson who is this incredible DP. He’s Quentin Tarantino’s DP. Incredible.

**John:** An icon.

**Kelly:** A new producer coming in. They were like oh my god how is he doing that? And Andy would be able to say, “Tom, walk over to that draw and open it.” And then we’d plant things in there for him so that he had surprises and was kept on his toes through scenes. I really have never seen another actor do it. And weirdly there is this scene in Bronson where he does play two characters. He plays a nurse and himself and he turns his face to the makeup side of the nurse when he’s doing the nurse lines, and the Charlie Bronson side of his face when he’s doing the Bronson lines. And he did that all in one take and it’s incredible.

And so when we came to Venom it really reminded me of that scene in Bronson. And I was like, yeah, I know he can do this. Like I know he has this unique ability to switch between characters right there in the moment live and can take lines from you while he’s acting. It’s extraordinary.

**John:** That sounds great. Now my question is as you’re doing these improv bits where you’re changing stuff around, you have to make decisions about I think that worked or I think that didn’t work just in terms of coverage, right? Probably you’re doing some of that stuff in a master, but then you have to decide which of those things worked well enough that we want to make sure we get coverage on that. Was that ever a factor you had to remember, oh, we need to get more of that so we can actually make that work? Or are these really master decisions?

**Kelly:** You know, it’s sort of a bit of both. If something is really, really working and we know that it got the right response on the set then that’s the thing that we’re going to come in and collect. We’re going to collect as much as we possibly can. And so if we’ve shot something in a master and we’ve shot it a bunch of different ways and we’re going to try and shoot it again in the close-ups with the different lines as well. And he’ll just roll those out.

And by the way sometimes it isn’t live through his mic. Sometimes a scene isn’t working and you know how this goes. Then it’s a huddle in video village. Everybody is around the laptop. And we’re all there scrambling to fix a scene. Often Tom and I will write a scene three different ways and know that we’re going to go in there and shoot it three different ways and then decide having done it which one we think works best.

It’s quite fast paced this shooting of these kinds of movies. And we do find the time to be able to do it different ways.

**John:** Cool. So Venom is of course an action-comedy, but the action part of it is incredibly important, too. So I thought we might take a look at the script for the first Venom and take a look at a couple of pages early on in the first act of this. And just sort of see what an action sequence looks like on the page and talk through sort of how that translates to what we’re finally seeing on the screen. So, we’ll start with what was there in Courier and what that becomes on the day. And then where the choices that have to happen in post and sort of figuring out what the final version of this is.

So, we’re going to put a link in the show notes to just these three pages, page 31 to page 33 of the Venom script. And let’s talk through what’s happening here.

In the first movie Eddie is finding Maria, this journalist he’s been looking for. She’s in this detention cell.

**Kelly:** She’s actually the homeless–

**John:** That’s the homeless person. That’s right. So she is in this detention cell and clearly something is very wrong with her. He’s trying to break her out of this and she is actually infected by this thing we’re going to find out more about. And Eddie is also infected and doesn’t sort of know it at this point.

The action writing here is really good. And it’s kind of dense on the page and yet I’m never struggling to get through it. And all caps. You’re using italics. You’re using underlines to sort of keep us focused on what is important happening moment by moment.

“Maria LEAPS ON EDDIE, knocks him down and with surprising strength, PUNCHES HIM repeatedly in the chest and face. Maria, atop Eddie, wraps her hands around his throat, CHOKING HIM. Eddie struggles, gasping for air—“

That’s all one paragraph and yet it doesn’t feel like too much. And it probably is an accurate reflection of the amount of time we would be seeing onscreen.

**Kelly:** Right.

**John:** So talk to us about this sequence. Were you on set for this sequence?

**Kelly:** I was on set. I was on set every day.

**John:** Every day. Tell me what you can remember about this as you wrote it, then the discussions with blocking and how this came from just the page to talking with stunts, talking with director, figuring out how to shoot this thing. Figuring out what you’re actually going to build here. Can you just describe this environment and the decisions that went into shooting this action sequence, the stuff that’s happening here in this complex?

**Kelly:** Yes. Well this was an incredible set that was built with all these kind of lasers and crazy strobe lights. And so as you can see on the page none of that is indicated. That’s all done by our incredible production designer imagining what this thing will end up looking like and working with Ruben to build that set.

We also had the amazing DP Matthew Libatique on this movie who with this movie kind of kept the camera moving the whole time. He really brought an energy to the entire movie by constantly keeping it moving. So we knew that Matty would be moving the camera around during the scene. We knew that he had all of these strobe lights going. And crazy colors. And then we also had this brilliant actress, Melora Walters, playing Maria, who worked really well with Tom.

And so they’re friends in the movie, so they have a history prior to this scene. He cares about her. We’ve established that. And as we started to talk through this scene we realized that she having been infected would be incredibly powerful. And completely different to the Maria that Eddie already knows. So we knew that there would be shock, fear. You know, Eddie is not your typical action hero either. The way that Tom decided to play him was not a tall, this big–

**John:** Dashing knight. He’s sort of not mousy but he has a–

**Kelly:** He’s scared.

**John:** Yeah. He’s scared. He’s a coward.

**Kelly:** Yeah. He was like the reality of being taken over by an alien is that you will be completely terrified. And not know what is going on. And so he gets into this very physical fight with this woman who is incredibly strong. And of course she’s winning. Because Eddie Brock is a journalist, you know. And so we definitely wanted to play with that. We definitely wanted him not to be able to win easily. We knew that Matty wanted to move in and out of whatever the action was taking place in this scene. And then once he had been infected by the symbiote we really wanted to see a complete change in Eddie’s physicality and to see that suddenly he can climb up walls. Suddenly he can run faster than he has ever run before. And climb a great, big, huge tree as well.

And so in this scene as we were writing this scene these were all thoughts that have been right there at the beginning of writing this script. And I’ll add that Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg also wrote this script. And so some of this scene preexisted and some of it didn’t. And so this is definitely a mismatch of all of our writing, as is the whole script. And those guys are amazing and they’re actually really brilliant at action.

And so I took a lot of inspiration from action that they had written for this movie, because I loved the way they write action. It’s concise. It’s clear. I really think they’re absolutely brilliant at it.

**John:** Some things I want to point out that are good on the page, too, is on page 32 about two-thirds of the way down, “The Guards drop. Eddie stands there for a moment, incredulous at his own fighting skills– “Did I just do that?!” In quotation marks and italics. And it’s a thing we talk about on Scriptnotes a lot is that sometimes you have to sort of speak the thought because that is a very playable moment. So he doesn’t need to say that, but we can see that in his face. But if can see it on his face it needs to actually be in the script. So it was so important to put that there.

**Kelly:** Yeah. You’ll see a lot of WTFs in the descriptive passages of Venom 2 if we ever get to release that script. Yeah, I really like to do that. I think it’s really helpful for the actor. I think it’s really helpful for the reader. And it’s just very clear and concise. Rather than writing a whole sentence about he can’t believe he just did that.

**John:** So let’s talk about, we’ll just go on this sequence with Maria and Eddie, just that sort of first moment. So this is where he’s breaking her out of the cage and then the first time the symbiote is sort of going into Eddie here.

On the day, or on the days because this was probably more than a single day of shooting, talk to us about how you figure out the blocking for who is going to be where. Was all that blocking done in advance? How much was handled on the set as people were first showing up? What was the decision process there?

**Kelly:** Well obviously this is stunts. So, first of all Melora is a very athletic actress. So all the way back to casting you’re thinking about casting somebody that can do the physicality of this part. It’s very important. So then Melora is brought in as is Tom and as is Tom’s double, Jacob, into fight rehearsals. And so a lot of this blocking is done not on the day but weeks prior. When you’re looking at an action sequence it isn’t just blocked in the morning and then you shoot it. It’s very thoroughly and carefully and safely worked out weeks in advance. And so what will happen generally is you will have stunt coordinators with their own stunt people doing sort of a practice version of the scene which you will then see. They will film, they’ll show it to you, or you can see it live if we all happen to be in the same building.

And then once that is signed off on by the director you, and producers, you will then bring the actors in to see what that scene is. And generally Jacob and Tom who have worked together for years, and years, and years will have their own ideas that come from character. And then they will kind of incorporate those ideas into the fight sequence. And then Melora will be there also with her ideas and then they will start to work this thing through, beat by beat. But it will take days, maybe even a week to really fully flesh out this scene from top to bottom and the fight from top to bottom which is always done in a kind of slow-mo, you know, up until the last minute when you can move it to real speed.

Then once that’s worked out they’ll bring it onto the set. And that’s when we’ll show Matty and the rest of the crew what this is going to look like so that he can then light it and decide where his camera is going to be. And obviously that’s very important because you’re in an action sequence. You know, you have to think about safety all the time. And so Matty needs to see where he can get in and where he can get out with his camera.

And we’ll run through that and block it a couple of times in the morning and then hopefully we’ve added the dialogue to it as well. And then we’ll shoot it and we’ll shoot it a bunch of different ways. And this scene is how many pages, three pages. This probably took us – I think this probably took us two full days to shoot.

**John:** There’s a lot happening here. And there’s visual effects happening here as well.

**Kelly:** Right.

**John:** There’s the symbiote, there’s the goo. Stuff like that is happening, too. And so on a production design decision there was probably a discussion of visual effects in terms of like what set you’re building versus what’s going to be virtual beyond a certain point. But then with all the creature effects what’s practical, what is CG, how you’re going to do this, where is the handoff between this, how much is makeup on her before she sort of fully goes out obviously. And very early on in visual development you had to figure out how you’re going to handle Eddie and Venom and the manifestation of Venom, what is that all going to look like. So all that had to happen, which is informing the decisions you’re making as you get there to shoot just this one small sequence at the top of this bigger action sequence.

**Kelly:** Yes. You have all of our effects people in there as well. There are these incredible things they can do where they sort of bring in these iPads but place Venom in a scene so you can look at the iPad and see Venom moving around the scene even though he isn’t actually there in real life. And it’s kind of crazy, but obviously we have fake Venoms and, you know, all kinds of stuff that–

**John:** You probably have folks who were in the costumes and the little tracking balls and things like that, too, for placement. So there’s lot of tools there at your disposal.

**Kelly:** Complete hysteria when the tongue gets brought in, because you have this enormous silicon Venom tongue. Yeah, and that gem really causes a little bit of shutdown on the set. It’s hilarious.

**John:** So I bring all this up because we don’t talk very much about the nuts and bolts details of shooting action sequences because it all started with the writing and then it goes into all these other decisions and yet it’s so important that you are there along with director and Tom who has been involved from the start to remember like, oh that’s right, this action sequence is actually serving a story purpose that goes all the way back to the script you started writing. And that can be one of the things I’ve found to be frustrating sometimes working on big action movies is that you sort of forget what was the actual story point we were trying to tell in this action sequence and it’s so important that you’re there to help remind those folks.

And you’re reminding them again as you go into post. Because you’ve shot this thing 15 different ways but with that same footage one editor could make a sequence that works a certain way. A different editor would make a completely different sequence. The thing we learn as writers working with editors is how transformative a skilled editor can be on the exact footage, the exact same thing that we saw being shot.

**Kelly:** Absolutely. Look, you’ve always got to be pushing story as well. But you can’t have an action sequence for an action sequences sake. And obviously we’ve seen that in movies. But this is actually a really sad moment in the movie. It’s a really upsetting moment. She dies and she’s his friend. And she infects him. This is the moment that he gets Venom. So it’s a very important scene within an action sequence. But the story is still the most important thing in these three pages.

**John:** Absolutely. So, Kelly, thank you so much for talking us through Venom, both sort of the initial kind of thinking about it, but also the really nuts and bolts of shooting stuff. It’s really cool to get that full education.

**Kelly:** Oh, my pleasure. I could talk about Venom all day.

**John:** All right. Now it is time for our One Cool Things. So my One Cool Thing is a really useful but useless thing called Meet the Ipsums. So if you’ve ever done graphic design you’re probably used to Lorem ipsum text which is fake Latin that you put in as text for layouts. And so it’s just gibberish Latin that takes the place of stuff so you’re not actually reading real copy. You’re reading fake copy. And so Lorem ipsum is fine and good. But my friend Nima pointed me to a site called Meet the Ipsums which is alternate Ipsums. It’s bogus text you can put in that’s in different flavors.

And so my favorite one is called Corporate Ipsum. It’s done by Cameron Brister and SquarePlan. And it’s ridiculous and it’s just so funny. So here’s an example of a Corporate Ipsum. “Leverage agile frameworks to provide a robust synopsis for high level overviews. Iterative approaches to corporate strategy foster collaborative thinking to further the overall value proposition. Organically grow the holistic world view of disruptive innovation via workplace diversity and empowerment.”

So it’s just paragraphs and paragraphs of nonsense boilerplate corporate nonsense. And I just love it. I just love that it exists. I love that someone took the time to actually write it and make a website so we can download it and stick it in our layouts.

We’re working on Highland for the iPad and so we have a lot of screens where we have to have bogus text in it. And it’s just been a joy to kind of half-read this in all the different Highland versions we’re working on.

**Kelly:** Yeah. I looked at it and it kind of exploded my brain. I was like oh god. I don’t know what this is.

**John:** And there’s all sort of other weird flavors, too. So you can just find something that fits the project you’re working on. Kelly, you got a One Cool Thing for us?

**Kelly:** I do have a One Cool Thing. It’s called the Loóna App. Well I guess you’ll put the link up. And it won the Apple Design Awards. And I don’t know about you, or anybody else, but I’ve found this past year, year and a half, a little bit challenging. And I’ve been going through this weird thing where I’ve been waking up at 2 and staying awake till 4.

**John:** Yeah, that’s me.

**Kelly:** What is that? It’s bizarre.

**John:** It may be the changing of seasons a bit of that, too. But, yeah, I’ve definitely felt that. Especially this last couple weeks. So yeah.

**Kelly:** I just haven’t been able to figure it out. Anyway, I was looking at meditation apps and sleep apps and I came across this thing called Loóna which is basically a sleep scape. And I like to do it in the dark. So I turn the lights off and I load the sleep scape and they basically tell you a story as you find these particular things in the sleep scape that they’ve drawn for you that is beautiful, by the way, absolutely gorgeous. They’ve designed for you. And you find each thing that they’re talking about and you tap it and it sort of comes alive.

And at the end you have this beautiful landscape that you’ve created. But you’ve also been lulled into this very kind of sleepy state. And so it’s really working for me. I think it’s beautiful. There’s one that is set in Brooklyn that I think is my favorite. And I love that story. And it’s just gorgeous.

**John:** That’s great. Previously on Scriptnotes we’ve talked about the sleep casts that are part of the Head Space App, which are deliberately so kind of boring. They cram so many details that your brain just sort of gives up and you fall asleep. But this seems very, very cool, too. I’m eager to try it out. Are you doing this before you go to bed or if you wake up at two in the morning?

**Kelly:** I’ve been doing it before I go to bed and it’s been helping me not wake up at two o’clock in the morning.

**John:** That’s what you want.

**Kelly:** That’s what you want.

**John:** Hooray. And that is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro is a classic outro by our own Matthew Chilelli. But if you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For shorter questions on Twitter I am @johnaugust. Kelly, I don’t know if you check Twitter. Are you on Twitter?

**Kelly:** I am. I very rarely check it. But I am @missmarcel.

**John:** All right. We have t-shirts and they’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. We have our anniversary.

**Kelly:** Ah, t-shirts.

**John:** Are you wearing your t-shirt?

**Kelly:** I want a t-shirt.

**John:** Oh, well we’ll send you a t-shirt because we have our 10th Anniversary t-shirt. Our 10th Anniversary is next week. We’re so excited. So you can wear your 10th Anniversary t-shirt as you listen to the podcast.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find transcripts and sign up for our weekly-ish newsletter called Inneresting where we talk about writing things. It has lots of links to things about writing.

You can sign up to become a premium member at Scriptnotes.net where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments. You can listen to Kelly and Craig and I play fiasco and get a little too drunk, if that’s appealing. And other episodes where Kelly Marcel has been wise as always.

Kelly, thank you so much for joining us here on Scriptnotes. It’s so great to chat with you again.

**Kelly:** Oh, it’s so nice. So nice. It feels like it’s been forever.

**John:** It has been too, too long. So we won’t have you gone for so long.

**Kelly:** Yes, please don’t. It was great.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** OK, we’re back. So Kelly Marcel, if people couldn’t guess by your accent you are not from the United States.

**Kelly:** I am not from the United States.

**John:** So how did you become legally eligible to work here in the United States? I assume you’re not just sneaking in.

**Kelly:** No, I’m not. I’m actually allowed to be here. So I did the visa application. I’ve been here for nearly a decade. Initially I was here on an O1 visa and now obviously I have a green card. But it is a real process. And the O1 was a lot. It’s a lot of paperwork and a lot of time and can be very stressful.

And so I think the O1 is the one that you get if you have extraordinary abilities.

**John:** So not like Venom, but extraordinary abilities as a writer, as an artist, as a unique talent.

**Kelly:** You have to prove that only you can do the thing that you need the visa to do. And, of course, with writing it is very specific to your voice, so only I can write what I write. And so with the O1 I think I had actually – had I been nominated for a BAFTA at that point? Because that really helps as well if you have any kind of nominations or awards or stuff like that. I can’t remember whether I had it or not.

But what I did have was Terra Nova. It had been sold here in the states. And another show that I had at Showtime. And I was very lucky in that I had an incredibly famous producer on Terra Nova and was able to get a letter of recommendation from Mr. Spielberg. And so that kind of did it for me on the O1.

But I’ve written those letters for other people as well. And I’m certainly not that person. And those letters have worked as well. Where you talk about somebody’s extraordinary ability. You talk about how you know them in the industry. And kind of just how brilliant and unique they are. And so that’s one way to come into the United States to work.

**John:** We get so many questions at the website about working in the US as an international writer that we decided to reach out to a bunch of our colleagues who are international writers and ask them if they could anonymously tell us about their journey and their experience getting that O1 visa which seems to be the visa that almost everybody is using to get.

Some writers will come here on student visas. And if you’re here on a student visa there’s ways you can get an extra year after your student visa which is super helpful because then you can actually get work experience and get those connections so you can actually gather together all the materials and recommendations you need to get that O1 visa.

The biggest piece of advice we got from everybody is that you have to have a lawyer do it. Because it’s just not a thing a person can do. How did you find a lawyer? Was it something that the producers you were working for could steer you towards? What was your process of finding an immigration lawyer?

**Kelly:** It was London agents, Casarotto, who have a ton of British writers who were working in the states. And this was a lawyer that they had used a number of times. I’ll email you his name so that anyone can call him if they’re looking for someone to represent them in getting a visa. He is brilliant. And he actually got me my green card, too, which was a much different process. It was actually easier to go from the O1 to the green card.

**John:** Tell us about that, because I don’t have a great sense of how green cards work.

**Kelly:** I got my green card as a result of having – so I had my O1 – I think you can have the O1 for is it three years?

**John:** And it has to be renewed every three years apparently.

**Kelly:** Yes, I think it’s three years. So it was coming to the end of my three years. You know, I was very much living in Los Angeles at the time in the house that we did Fiasco in. It was time to either renew or get a green card. And I decided to get a green card, or try to get a green card. You know, that was when I had had the BAFTA nomination and at the time I was doing 50 Shades of Gray and so quite high profile work.

And I think Alan, who is my lawyer, Alan Klein, I think really didn’t have much of a problem moving the O1 into a green card. You do have to go for these sort of in-person interviews where they ask you all sorts of questions about what you’re doing in the US. With the O1 you actually have to be in your home country to be able to get that visa. So you have to go to an American embassy. You have to have your passport stamped in my case in the UK. With the green card you don’t have to return to your country to get that done. You can do it from within the states.

It took about, I think it probably took about eight months for the visa to turn into the green card. I know it’s taking so much longer during the pandemic. I know a ton of people whose visas have been kind of stalled because of what’s going on in the world right now. So, I know it’s much, much, much more difficult unfortunately.

**John:** Now with your green card situation can studios hire you just like any American writers? Is there anything different that a studio needs to do to hire you as a writer with a green card?

**Kelly:** No, nothing. I’m now a permanent resident of the US. Well, you have ten years on your green card. And then after that you either apply to become a citizen, or you renew – I think you renew your green card. But I think if you’ve been here ten years they like you to then decide to become–

**John:** To officially become a US citizen. So at that point you’ll be on Venom 9. You’ll have a pretty big work history there and things will be set.

**Kelly:** I think it’s going to be OK. I think it’s going to be OK.

**John:** And one thing we should clarify. Sometimes I know folks who deal with casting. And there’s a process for getting actors over here for a movie, which is a little bit different than the other things. And so the advice we’re giving is for people who want to work as writers. There are other ways, sneaky ways, to do things if you’re just coming in for one thing. But it’s not quite the same process.

**Kelly:** No, it isn’t. And also, look, I would also say the pandemic has changed a lot. You know, before I would have said you have to be in LA. You absolutely have to because you do the water tour and there are so many in-person meetings. But I think the world has changed.

You know, I have a great friend, brilliant screenwriter Jack Thorne, who has a very, very active American career, but he lives in the UK, and always has, and has never moved to Los Angeles. And has continued to work consistently in America without needing a visa or a green card because he doesn’t live or work within the US.

**John:** That’s a really good point. Because I think coming out of this pandemic it became clear that needing to actually go in to sit in a room to talk with people is so much less important than it was even for you and Tom working on this script. That was a FaceTime conversation. So it was challenging to be in different time zones, but it could absolutely work.

And I think are there some advantages to being in Los Angeles at the start of your career? Yes. Is it essential? No. And certainly not as essential as it was even ten years ago.

**Kelly:** And maybe that’s different for TV writers and as writer’s rooms start to come back then I would say that may be different. But definitely for movie writing I don’t think you need to be in LA anymore.

**John:** Well Kelly Marcel I’m glad you were in LA for a time so I at least got to know you here while you were in Los Angeles. And drink too much wine at your house.

**Kelly:** I mean, having said that, I’ll always have to come in and out of Los Angeles, so I will always have a place there. But I just think for new writers and people worrying about whether that’s something they need to do, they should worry less.

**John:** Sounds good. Kelly, thanks so much for your guidance here.

**Kelly:** Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Links:

* [Original Movies Are Becoming Streaming’s Most Popular Content, Led By Disney+](https://variety.com/vip/original-movies-are-becoming-streamings-most-popular-content-led-by-disney-1235037636/) by Kevin Tran for Variety
* [Foreign Writers on Getting a Visa](https://johnaugust.com/2021/getting-a-visa)
* [Venom Excerpt](https://johnaugust.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/venom-excerpt.pdf)
* [Meet the Ipsums](https://meettheipsums.com/)
* [Loóna Sleep App](https://loona.app/)
* [Kelly Marcel](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0545150/) and on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/missmarcel)
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast), check out our special [10th Anniversary Shirts!](https://cottonbureau.com/products/for-all-time#/10278066/tee-men-standard-tee-military-green-tri-blend-s)
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* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
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* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Michael O’Konis ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

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