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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/only-haters-hate-rom-coms).

**Craig Mazin:** Hi. This is Craig. If you’re in the car with your children or at home with your children, you may not want to play this episode too close to their delicate little ears. We’re going to be using some bad language, some R-rated language. John asked me to do this warning this time because he was concerned that usually when he does it, people think at first that I might have died, but I didn’t. I’m alive. Now get your kids out of the room.

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 225 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast, we have Tess Morris, the writer of Man Up, and she’s here to talk with us about romantic comedies. And we’re so excited because we just saw her movie and it’s really great. And so everyone can see her movie but we can also talk about the thing that her movie is which is a romantic comedy and it’s not a shame to be a romantic comedy.

Craig, you just watched it so I know you have so many things you want to say to Tess.

**Craig:** Fresh in my mind, the tears have just dried on my freshly bearded cheeks.

**John:** Yeah, people might have a chance to see that beard on December 9th. We’re doing our live show in Los Angeles.

**Craig:** Segue Man.

**John:** Hi, I’m Segue Man. Natasha Leggero, Riki Lindhome, and Malcolm Spellman will be our guests for that show along with some other folks who are not quite confirmed yet, but who I think are going to be fantastic.

People have been writing in with questions, questions like is there a Three Page Challenge at this live Scriptnotes? No, there’s not. Do I need to reserve a specific seat? And my belief is that no, it is general admission. But the most important question is, where can I get a ticket? And the tickets are available at the Writers Guild Foundation website, wgfoundation.org. They are $20. The proceeds benefit the great programs of the Writers Guild Foundation.

So you should come see us because as we’re recording this, we’re more than halfway sold out. So we might be sold out by the time you listen to this. You should probably pause the podcast right now and get yourself a ticket to the live show.

**Craig:** Fools, fools for waiting.

**John:** They are fools.

**Craig:** I mean do they not know that we’re the Jon Bon Jovis of podcasting?

**John:** Yeah. I mean the younger people might not even know what that reference is but, you know, they might think that is important.

**Craig:** Hey, kids. We’re the Jon Bon Jovis of podcasting. If that doesn’t motivate you, you’re right, we’re old.

**John:** Yeah, Wikipedia that. In the mail bag this week, a couple of questions came in about Amazon Storywriter. Do you know what Amazon Storywriter is?

**Craig:** Not only do I know what it is. I went and actually fiddled with it even though you suggested on Twitter that I never would, I already had, by that point.

**John:** Congratulations, Craig.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** So what did you think of Amazon Storywriter? Or do you want to describe what it is for people?

**Craig:** Well, as far as I could tell, I mean I didn’t go in-depth, but it appears that Amazon has created their own screenwriting software. So it’s basically a word processor that formats automatically in our screenwriting format. All the standard stuff. It’s Courier. It’s got all of your basic elements. And it works pretty much like they all do, combination of tab and return.

And it’s free and it’s Cloud based so everything saves on their servers and then you can then very easily pipe it through to their Amazon Studio thing for submissions. Also, it does export to FDX which is the Final Draft format. This whole thing by the way, side note, Final Draft I believe, I believe that company is going to die. The format will survive and I hope that we eventually kill that format too because it’s nasty, but the format will survive.

Anyway, back to this. It actually worked quite nicely. I mean, it’s not fully featured in terms of revisions and production work and all the rest of it but it was quite elegant. It worked very nice. It was smooth, looked nice.

**John:** Yeah. So you say it uses tab and return but really it’s more like — it’s based on Fountain, which is the format that I co-created the syntax, so you’re just typing in plain text and it’s interpreting what you’re doing and figuring out what the different pieces and parts are. And that part actually worked reasonably well.

**Craig:** Wait, Amazon stole your shit?

**John:** Didn’t steal it. Actually, it’s a public format that we created called Fountain.

**Craig:** They don’t have to even acknowledge that they took it?

**John:** No, no. That’s what open source is. It’s like it’s out there in the world for the world to use. And so their implementation of it is actually pretty good except they left out some kind of important things like bolds or italics or centering.

**Craig:** Yeah, I noticed that I couldn’t bold slug lines, and also I couldn’t, like there’s no way to automatically set it. So for instance, I like to have two line breaks before a new scene header, and it didn’t seem like that was automatable.

**John:** Yeah, that’s not automatable yet. So it does some of the stuff that Highland does where you can throw a PDF at it and it will melt it down and bring it out as plain text so you can edit. So that’s kind of nice. It’s just trying to do a lot of things that Highland is trying to do or that Slugline is trying to do or really any of the other screenwriting apps are trying to do and it does an okay job with it. It’s all online. It’s free-ish.

I don’t really think that many people are going to use it in any meaningful capacity. Though I think you’re going to have a lot of people who write like two scenes in it and then never touch it again. That’s my hunch.

**Craig:** We’ll find out. I mean listen, you know, my whole thing is, I’m basically rooting for whoever Final Draft is playing against so if it doesn’t hurt anybody, I’m all for it. I mean I still think that there are better options. I get very squirmy about the Cloud based option. Just the idea that it’s only Cloud based, I know that you can export it and save it locally but I don’t like it so much.

**John:** Yeah, we’ll see what happens. Next bit of follow up in the mail bag is from Pam. And Pam writes, I have this one-woman crusade. It’s futile, but I persevere nonetheless. I would love if people would stop using the word dick derogatorily. My dad’s name is Dick. He’s an amazing, wonderful, caring man. One of the most important people in my life. Whenever I hear people using the word dick pejoratively, it hurts me on his behalf. You guys use it a lot especially this [laughs] — that’s the voice of Tess Morris breaking through, not even —

**Craig:** [Laughs] Tess, you’re not even on the show yet. You have to wait for your spot.

**Tess Morris:** I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

**Craig:** I’m glad you’re here.

**Tess:** Sorry.

**John:** It feels like it’s been increasing exponentially in film lately actually. Craig, what is your opinion of the word dick?

**Tess:** [Laughs].

**Craig:** It’s one of my favorite words. It’s weird but this whole thing is basically delusional except for this one moment of awesome clarity where she says, “I realize it’s futile.” Yes, Pam, it’s futile. The word dick exists simultaneously as both a pejorative for penis or a person who’s a penis-like person.

**Tess:** Thanks for clearing that up, Craig.

**Craig:** Right. Or it is short for Richard. Your dad’s name is Dick. I know a lot of guys named Dick and they’re cool guys. And I mean Dick Cook was a beloved executive at Disney. Everybody loves him still. And the thing is, if your dad, trust me when I tell you, whatever pain you’re feeling on his behalf, he’s heard it way worse, way worse. If he’s made it all the way to this stage of his life, I’m assuming that he’s at least middle age, if not older, and he’s still going by Dick, this is a hardened man. He’s going to be fine. He knows the world isn’t going to stop using the word dick. That’s crazy.

**Tess:** My dad’s called Richard.

**John:** Oh, yeah. And is he okay?

**Tess:** He’s fine. He’s absolutely fine. But also, I think one of my favorite quotes ever from a film is 37 Dicks from Clarks, you know. “Was it 36 dicks?” When he finds out how many dicks that his girlfriend —

**John:** Right.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Tess:** Has and he just can’t get it out of his head, can he?

**John:** Yeah.

**Tess:** And it always makes me laugh.

**Craig:** I think that dick is a great counterbalance to some of the pejorative words that we toss on people that are related to female genitalia. Dick is our kind of cool balanced way of saying, no, no, no, if you’re called either male or female genitalia, we’re saying we don’t like you.

**John:** Yeah. Going back to Pam’s dad. I feel like —

**Tess:** [Laughs].

**John:** The challenge is how we —

**Craig:** You mean Dick?

**Tess:** You mean Dick.

**John:** Yes.

**Tess:** We don’t know Dick.

**John:** We don’t know him at all. And so Pam —

**Craig:** Some of us know him more than others.

**John:** Pam’s objection to us using the word dick pejoratively, well, it’s been used his entire life anatomically. And the anatomic thing is probably actually worse or sort of more annoying than pejoratively because I think when we’re saying dick, we’re saying like don’t be a dick.

**Craig:** Right.

**Tess:** It’s quite a British word I must say. I don’t hear it that much.

**John:** Oh, yeah? We use dick all the time.

**Tess:** Yeah, I hear it much more at home.

**John:** Craig and I are both Anglophiles. So we try to be British.

**Craig:** Right.

**Tess:** Where did it come from? I mean what is the dick?

**John:** I don’t know.

**Tess:** What is it? We should find out.

**Craig:** You know what I love is, in England, I love spotted dick. I mean I don’t love the actual food. I just love that it’s called spotted dick.

**Tess:** Yes. Yeah.

**Craig:** Sounds like a venereal disease. I love that.

**Tess:** Yeah, it’s a pudding or dessert as you call it.

**Craig:** It’s a pudding or dessert. Exactly. Like would you like some spotted dick? Absolutely not.

**Tess:** [Laughs].

**Craig:** Nobody, by the way nobody, I don’t care how much you love dick, if it’s got spots on it, you don’t, you just don’t. By the way, Pam’s realizing now this is backfired terribly. Look, Pam —

**Tess:** Pam’s regretting it.

**Craig:** It’s just funny. What are you going to do? Funny is funny. I’m sorry that you’re hurt. You need to get over this. You need to accept that this is the world and nobody is going after your dad. And I think if you talk to your dad about it, he would probably say, “Pam, I love you. You’re awesome. Thank you for caring about me but it will be okay. We’re good. We’re good.”

**John:** Yeah. Yeah.

**Tess:** I like that this is how we started though.

**John:** Yeah, this is very important, your introduction to the podcast was discussion over dick.

**Tess:** Thank you. My laugh about dicks.

**John:** Last week’s episode, we talked about Whiplash. And so we had a bunch of listeners writing in with different things. One of the questions was good and maybe you will have an opinion on this as well, Tess. We talked on the podcast about there was a scene that was around a big dining room table and how scenes around tables are actually much more difficult to film than you would think they would be because you have to match so many eye lines and angles that it actually just takes forever to do.

And so listeners wrote in to ask, what are other scenes that you think would be really easy to shoot but end up being like really difficult to shoot?

**Tess:** Ooh, that’s a good one.

**John:** Craig, do you have any thoughts about scenes that are deceptively difficult to shoot?

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, you listed a couple of great ones. I mean the ones that are I think most deceptive are montages of any kind.

**Tess:** I was just about to say a montage, yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah, because a montage is like shooting 20 minutes. It’s basically the work equivalent of shooting 20 minutes of finished scenes for 30 or 40 seconds. And of course the stupidest, meaning the most work inefficient montage of all time, I still maintain was Allen’s flashback in Hangover 2 where he remembered all those events, but as they were all children so we had to film a montage twice but with children.

**Tess:** I think the easiest montage is probably the Rocky montages, though. I imagine that they were not stressful to film.

**John:** No. But I think looking back at your movie, Man Up , there’s one —

**Tess:** Two montages.

**John:** Yeah.

**Tess:** Montage, montage.

**John:** Yeah, montages.

**Craig:** Deux montage.

**Tess:** Montage.

**John:** Deux montage.

**Craig:** Deux montage.

**Tess:** [Laughs].

**John:** So I was thinking there’s a montage in which they’re bowling and that’s actually a fairly — and you’re shooting a scene, so it’s a bunch of different little setups.

**Tess:** Yeah.

**John:** But you’re all in one place. The really killer montages are things that look like it’s just two-eighths of a page on your script but you’re going to a whole bunch of different locations.

**Tess:** Yeah, we did that for the second one. The first one was the bowling one that we shot that the first week of filming as well and we just played loads of loud rock music and got Simon and Lake to, you know, get on down. But the one when she does the triathlon through the streets of SoHo, that was quite tricky.

**Craig:** And that one looks so, it’s just like, okay, she’s running down a street, she turns down an alley, swims through some bachelorette party girls, then asks a guy for his bike then bikes on over. It’s like, yeah, it goes by —

**Tess:** No.

**John:** That was probably two nights of filming.

**Tess:** That was, I think it was two nights, we had to obviously shoot — Lake had a stunt, well, also a funny story. The bit where Simon like legs her in the taxi with her, she’s our taxi driver, a stunt taxi driver actually crashed into the car in front of him during filming.

**Craig:** Wow.

**Tess:** So that delayed things slightly.

**John:** It does. So montages are a time suck. He goes to over the window is my example. So like you’re in a scene and then like characters just move around in a room. You’re like, oh, the characters are moving around the room, but you don’t realize until you actually need to film one of those things is that like once a character has moved over from this place to that place, all the other angles in the room have changed and, you know, you may be crossing a line. There’s complicated things that may have happened because those characters have shifted their position.

And it may be the right choice to have those characters move around, but it’s taking up extra time. That’s why you sort of, you know, instinctively love to have characters just like find a place and park.

**Tess:** Yeah.

**John:** Because it saves you time and geography problems.

**Craig:** Yeah. You’ll sometimes and this is something that DPs will, it’s fun watching DPs and first ADs fight because of course the first AD is like shoot it as fast as you can and the DP is like, “I want it to look great.” A lot of times for things like this, you know, you have a scene of people in a room, and that’s your master and then you start covering it, but if somebody moves and changes position, well you need to — now you need a new master, and new coverage. So what they’ll do is they’ll lay down some track and as the person moves, they’ll move the camera along the track and so they’re repositioning their master as they go and then they try and do on the opposite side the same thing so they can reposition their coverage as they go.

Sometimes it doesn’t work and then yeah, you’ve screwed yourself especially if somebody goes to the window and looks out the window.

**Tess:** Oh, no.

**Craig:** Oh my God, now you got to be outside looking up at them looking out and you got to see their POV, you got to be pointing it down. Ugh.

**Tess:** Talking of tracking in two shots. What nearly didn’t, well we did — our DP, he’s called Andrew Dunn. He’s incredible. If you look him up on IMDb, he’s just got the most brilliant, eclectic CV. And him and our director, Ben Palmer, knew that they wanted to shoot everything with two shot, absolutely everything so we got all those little comedy reactions that you really need obviously in a romantic comedy, but we nearly didn’t get Waterloo Station because it was so tricky to film there. And then our DP went down there with the director and just was like, “Okay, we can do this, but we’re going to do it at 3AM in the morning with 50 extras and we’ll have a tracking thing and we’ll just move with them the whole way through right up until she’s under the clock.” So otherwise it would have been like with — I think us and Bourne are the only two films to have shot in Waterloo Station.

**Craig:** I know, it’s actually amazing because when — it’s such a different scene.

**Tess:** What are you talking about? Bourne is very similar.

**Craig:** I mean, I just love the total — I mean — but it’s the same setting, and it actually looks different because it’s a different scene. I don’t know. It’s just a funny thing.

**Tess:** Well, he goes up all into the scene.

Well, he’s all angles. Like everything in that scene is all sniper angles. Like either it’s you’re looking up where the sniper is going to go or you’re looking down at the sniper and this thing is all eyes and misconnections and straight aheads and so.

**Tess:** We didn’t need a sniper. Yeah but I like that that might go down in sort of Wikipedia facts.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Tess:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** The two movies shot there. The last thing that comes to mind for me that seems really simple but is actually really complicated or at least requires complicated decisions is anything with driving. So usually with driving, you have two choices. You can have a real car, or you can green screen it. And so green screening it saves you a lot of time because you can park it on a sound stage, and just shoot whatever angles you want to shoot and then just like put the windows in in post. And a lot of things do that these days and they do it so well that you don’t really notice.

**Tess:** Yeah, I mean nowadays you don’t know the difference, yeah.

**John:** It looks so much better.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So that’s often a good choice and sometimes it just means like not moving around. So the other choice is to put the car either on a trailer or really drive an actual car and mount the cameras to the car and that can look more realistic but it also limits your ability to move around in the car. The thing you also realize once you actually have to start putting cameras on actors in a cars is that there’s a limited number of ways that you can get both actors into a shot or to sort of cut back and forth between reactions. So that’s a reason why don’t you see movies that have a lot of time in the car.

Or you see rare exceptions of movies like that Tom Hardy movie which was entirely in the car.

**Tess:** In the car, yeah. I always think about Thelma and Louise, and I think about those driving shots because I always wanted to know how they did that. I’m sure there is a behind the scenes document.

**John:** But there’s a really good reason why they were driving a convertible.

**Tess:** Yes.

**John:** They could get shots —

**Tess:** Keeps it open, yeah. But it’s also very cool as well.

**John:** It’s very cool, yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. Most of your road trip movies at some point or another, I mean, nowadays, you will do a lot of it with green screen. It saves you a ton money and time and effort. You can go so much faster. It’s brutal shooting processed cars where either they’re on a flat bed or you’re driving ahead of them and the actor is actually driving just because you got to do an entire take. You need a run of road. You have to have the cops shut it off. There’s noise. But, there’s nothing like it for the reality of getting in and driving and getting out, you know. So you build an enormous amount of time for those things and enormous expense beyond it. Driving, to me, is number one. The thing that seems the simplest and is the most annoying.

**Tess:** It’s almost like a movie is quite hard to make isn’t it?

**John:** Yeah, you think so. I think writers never quite appreciate.

**Craig:** Well, here’s another question that we got in from Brian from Syracuse. And he writes, “After following along with this week’s script to screen exercises involving Whiplash, and hearing you guys quickly discuss how both scenes really underline the dramatic arguments posed both in the micro sense of the individual scenes and in the macro sense of the entire film, I was wondering if it might be possible for you to elaborate a little more on the subject and maybe provide a couple of examples how these types of scenes pertain to your own films. Do you usually have the dramatic argument of the entire film and then look for a way to include a scene that specifically addresses or accentuates this argument/conflict?” Brian —

**Tess:** It’s a long question.

**Craig:** Yeah. But you know, like he put a lot of thought into that question. I appreciate it.

**Tess:** Yeah, it’s a good question.

**John:** I would say that in my experience, I won’t necessarily know what the dramatic question or argument of the film is as I’m starting to write it, but it’s there already. Like, it’s the reason why I’m writing the movie and it’s sort of central to the DNA of the movie. And so that if I’ve picked the right movie and I’m approaching it from the right way, that central question — that central theme kind of permeates every scene regardless. And so, if a scene isn’t about that central question, it’s just not going to last in the script, it won’t last in the movie.

**Tess:** Yeah. I would say, it usually takes me the first draft to find my axiom — my central axiom.

**Craig:** Good word.

**Tess:** Thank you. I know especially because I write mainly romantic comedies, you are sort of always wanting to look for the bigger question for your leads or your leading lady or leading man. So I think — yeah, at the moment, I’m writing something, I remember I got my axiom about two drafts in which was when is the right time to meet someone, is there a right time to meet someone, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, I think mine comes about as I get into the — probably the same as you, really. I have to get into it a bit.

**Craig:** I think I’m a little different than you guys.

**Tess:** Of course, you are, Craig. You got to be different.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, I mostly just ask what you two do and then I think, “Do the opposite.” I do try and start before I begin crafting scenes, I do need to know. It doesn’t have to stay this one. It can change and evolve. But I need to at least begin with some central question because I need to know that my character believes the opposite of that central question. And I need to start designing scenes — and he said, like, do you look for a way to include a scene that specifically addresses? Yeah. I try and design scenes to test the character and lead them towards the truth or punish them for —

And by the way, your movie does this beautifully. Like, every time — like, I always talk about two steps forward one step back. Your character moves towards something, the possibility of an entirely opposite way of living, and for a moment it’s working and then you punish them. This is exactly how I approach these things. So I do need to kind of know. And over time, the question might change and thus the scenes might change. It’s just hard for me to start unless I have something there to build off of.

**Tess:** I mean I have — I think with Man Up, because I wrote that on spec. And I really did know, probably from the very beginning, I knew what I wanted to say about life. But then I need to — what I have to do — Philip Seymour Hoffman had a really good quote which was that writers need to fill up and then they can kind of write. And I think I sort of — I have to take a few more years to fill up again, to write again, if that makes sense. Because I sort of put everything into one script. It’s not very financially a good thing to be.

**John:** That’s not a viable strategy.

**Tess:** Yes. It’s not a viable strategy.

**John:** I was watching a friend’s cut of his movie. And it was a very early cut and so it was a place where a lot of stuff was still fungible and could change. And this idea of stating your central dramatic question, that’s I think my underlying note for him was that I had never heard any of the characters articulate what the movie was about.

**Tess:** Yeah, But you sometimes think as well, I mean I’m so into that. But I do sometimes think as well that you have to — when you’re just starting your first draft, I think there’s also opportunities to not be so sort of like regimented with yourself as well. Because I think newer writers sometimes say to me, you know, “I know exactly what’s it about.” And I’m like, “Oh, you know exactly what it’s about and you haven’t even started to write it yet.” You know, like, I think sometimes, especially if you’re writing in a comedic sense as well, like it can suddenly jump up at you what you actually were trying to say within a scene and then you go, “Oh, great. Now, it is thematic. Hooray.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I think it’s fair to say, “I know exactly what it’s about for now.”

**Tess:** Yes, that’s totally fair. Yeah. But then allow yourself the freedom to you know —

**Craig:** Always. Always.

**John:** I think what I’m trying to articulate is that it’s good that you know what it’s about. But if you’re not letting any of your characters speak to the theme —

**Tess:** Oh, yes.

**John:** Or speak to what it’s about or actually ask the question, or take actions that invite the question, then maybe you’re missing an opportunity.

**Tess:** Yeah. Sometimes I put the actual question in. But then you realize that you’ve put it maybe in the wrong scene or at the wrong time. And then you’ll get to the point where you go, oh actually now I can have them say that.

**John:** Yeah. We talked in the last episode about how sometimes you will overwrite a little bit knowing that you can always pull it back.

**Tess:** I overwrite so much.

**John:** But it’s very hard to sort of put stuff back in the movie if you didn’t actually shoot it. And so having a character state the central thematic question may be a really good idea. And if it becomes too obvious, you can always find a way to snip out but it’s going to be very hard to stick back it in.

**Tess:** We thought long and hard about whether he should actually — anyone should actually say the phrase, “Man up,” in Man Up. And then I went for it but I went with the man saying it to the woman rather than the way around. But it was a real sort of thing about do we actually say the title of the film?

**John:** So everyone clapped when —

**Tess:** Yeah, everyone cheered, like, “Yay — ”

**John:** “He said the title.”

**Craig:** They did it. They know they’re in this movie.

**Tess:** They know they’re in the film acting.

**Craig:** Are you familiar with the Book of Mormon?

**Tess:** I haven’t seen it, you know. And I need to see it. I’m probably the only person in the world who hasn’t seen it.

**John:** I’m probably the only person in the world who has not seen Hamilton.

**Craig:** Well, I’m going to see Hamilton.

**Tess:** I’m obsessed with that.

**Craig:** Oh, it’s the greatest.

**John:** Man up.

**Tess:** But you haven’t seen it yet?

**Craig:** Man up is the —

**Tess:** Man Up the musical which I would like to do, obviously, next year because I think it could work really well as a musical.

**Craig:** You want to do Man Up as a musical?

**Tess:** I’d love to do it as a musical. Do you want to do it with me, Craig?

**Craig:** I don’t know. I like it as a movie. I don’t think —

**Tess:** Yeah. Give it five years.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t see — I don’t think it needs music.

**Tess:** No, that’s true. But I just like the idea of doing it. Come on, humor me.

**Craig:** Let’s just make a new musical.

**Tess:** That’s true. Okay.

**John:** There’s a dance fight in Man Up and that would work very well on the stage.

**Tess:** Exactly.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Tess:** And you know, it’s quite a chamber piece of a film, two-hander.

**John:** It’s a heightened chamber piece, and that’s a musical.

**Tess:** It is. Thank you.

**John:** Aaron writes, “I really appreciated your most recent episode discussing Whiplash. I totally agree about your take that Fletcher obviously offers Andrew the performance slot in order to embarrass and ruin him. But would Fletcher really put his reputation further on the line to ruin Andrew? Especially since Andrew was nowhere on the scene anymore, not at the conservatory, not playing clubs, nobody knew who Andrew was, and certainly nobody in the music community.

“He would be ruining a non-entity who already seemed to have given up. And yet Fletcher decides to get his revenge on this guy in a public performance at New York’s largest jazz festival in an ensemble he’s conducting. Sure Andrew would look terrible, but Fletcher is the person standing at the forefront of the crowd. He’s already lost his job, his reputation remains intact enough that he was asked to lead this ensemble performance, and now he’s out to give a crap performance. I just had trouble seeing him as that selfless in his vengeance. To sacrifice himself and his reputation in order to embarrass someone nobody knows.”

I thought that was a really interesting point. I never really thought about Fletcher’s choice to set up Andrew at the end. We’re spoiling the movie Whiplash for you.

**Tess:** Spoiler alert.

**John:** It is really an interesting idea that like Fletcher is going into this knowing he’s going to publicly embarrass himself, but he’s going to get a lot of blowback from that himself. If things go as disastrously as it seems like they’re going to go.

Tess; Yeah. I mean I don’t remember feeling — I remember just feeling so like I’d been dragged through a hedge backwards in a good way after I saw that film. You know what I mean, I don’t know what you guys said about it last week because I unfortunately haven’t listened yet, but I will listen obviously.

**John:** Leave the room immediately.

**Tess:** Leave the room immediately. No. But I mean, it’s so visceral the whole film. There are things that you can pick apart. I understand why he’s questioning that. But in my heart of hearts, it’s such a film about being bullying and this whole journey that actually because he is such a bully, I kind of do believe that that’s sort of part of his awful journey. Do you know what I mean?

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s no way — let me offer our listening audience some certainty. There is absolutely no way that the intention there was that the character of Fletcher rigged the whole thing to bring some great performance out of Andrew. He absolutely did that.

**Tess:** Yeah, exactly.

**Craig:** He did that to humiliate Andrew and punish him because he truly believed Andrew had cost him his job and he was a revengeful bad person. And you can tell because Simmons’ performance shows joy, true sadistic joy at ruining him.

**Tess:** Yeah. Exactly, yeah.

**Craig:** And then also shows absolute shock when Andrew comes back and starts doing what he’s doing. And then epiphany when Andrew becomes something. And that is not the performance of somebody who goes, “Good. This is what I wanted to happen.”

**Tess:** It’s so incredible that performance because you still like him. It’s bizarre, isn’t it?

**John:** Yeah. So I loved Aaron’s phrase of selfless vengeance. I just think that’s a great, you know — it honestly was circling back to the question of the central dramatic argument. Is there such a thing as selfless vengeance? Because Fletcher is not acting in his own best interest at the moment. Like vengeance is actually kind of never in your own best interest. A rational person would never probably seek vengeance.

**Tess:** Rare. Well, Craig is —

**John:** I mean, is vengeance only emotional or can vengeance be intellectual as well?

**Tess:** I think it can be intellectual. I think you can play the long game in terms of vengeance.

**Craig:** You see, what’s going on here, John, is that you have a full Jew and a half of a Jew.

**Tess:** Oh, God. Yeah. Exactly.

**Craig:** Both of us are like, no, no, long term vengeance is part of our culture.

**Tess:** It’s part of our life.

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly. It’s what our parents did to us. I think that vengeance is always selfish. It can be self-destructive, but it’s selfish.

**Tess:** I think in the creative sense it can be very liberating. You know, write who you know, not what you know. So you know, I think there are times when it can be incredibly helpful. But it shouldn’t be to your own detriment or anyone else’s detriment. You know, you should just be secretly vengeful.

**Craig:** Well, we all know as writers that it’s fun to write characters who are looking for vengeance. And we also know that characters who are obsessed with revenge either die in the fire of their own self-destruction or finally let it go. We all know that’s kind of that’s the deal.

**Tess:** Yeah, it’s the journey.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s the journey. And I’m amazed all the time at how many times I will meet writers who behave in ways that they would never allow their characters to behave. It’s like they haven’t learned those lessons at all.

**Tess:** It’s bizarre behavior, but we are all weirdos, that’s the other problem isn’t it? Most writers are —

**Craig:** You have no idea.

**Tess:** We have issues. So we write about them and then we pretend that we’re okay afterwards.

**Craig:** We’re not.

**John:** So Tess Morris, tell us about your issues. Maybe that’s a good segue into —

**Craig:** Segue Man.

**John:** Talking about romantic comedies. So our special guest who’s not said a word yet in this whole episode —

**Craig:** Yeah, who’s just rolled over tradition, steam-rolled.

**John:** Is Tess Morris, she’s the writer of —

**Tess:** Hi, I’ve been here for a while, yeah.

**John:** She’s the writer of Man Up, a new romantic comedy which you can see on demand now everywhere.

**Tess:** Yes. In theaters this weekend, wider, this is my pro language that I’m using.

**John:** Yeah, nice.

**Tess:** Thank you. In about ten or 12 cities, I think, LA, Grand Rapids, which really excited me.

**John:** Grand Rapids, Michigan. Come on.

**Tess:** Houston, Dallas. Yeah, but on demand as well on your special iTunes box.

**John:** Fantastic.

**Tess:** To purchase.

**John:** This is a romantic comedy starring Lake Bell and Simon Pegg. And it is just delightful. So I saw it at the Austin Film Festival.

**Tess:** I was so excited that you sat behind me but I was also obviously really nervous. I was like, “Oh, shit. John August.”

**John:** It was really quite funny. And Craig just saw it through the magic of Internet connection.

**Craig:** But I knew that it was going to be good because my wife, Missy, went with you, John.

**Tess:** She did.

**Craig:** To see the movie and she loved it, loved it, loved it, and cried a lot.

**Tess:** She’s a big laugher. I loved her a lot.

**Craig:** Yes. She’s a big laugher, she’s a big crier. That’s why I married her, for the emotional extremes.

**John:** And the critics seemed to have laughed and cried in appropriate numbers. And it’s certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, so congratulations on that.

**Tess:** We are certified Fresh.

**Craig:** I don’t care about that. You know that I actually hate that.

**John:** Do you have questions for Tess about what it’s like to get reviews like that?

**Craig:** No. I have no interest. I don’t care. I hope that you choke on those reviews. No.

**Tess:** Oh, you know what, we only remember the bad ones as well.

**Craig:** Well, of course the only review that I care about is my review.

**Tess:** Exactly.

**Craig:** My review.

**Tess:** It’s the only one I care about for you, Craig, about Man Up, as well.

**Craig:** It’s the only one of my reviews that you care about is my review.

**Tess:** Yes, your own review.

**Craig:** Well, I loved it.

**John:** So Tess, as you were introducing this movie at the festival up on stage, you talked about how this was a romantic comedy and people shouldn’t talk shit about romantic comedies.

**Tess:** Yes, I did.

**John:** So tell us about romantic comedies and what do you even mean by romantic comedies?

**Tess:** Well, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because ever since I wrote this film and it got made, I’ve become like the spokesperson for defending the whole entire genre. My big thing with it is that people sort of dismiss it so quickly. Like no other genre in the history of film. It’s quite a strange phenomenon that people are all, “I don’t like romantic comedies.” Or “Rom-coms are dead.” Or “Rom-coms are alive.” And et cetera, et cetera.

And I find that incredibly frustrating because there have been some brilliant ones in the last sort of 10 years or so. And I think also what happens is when they win awards, they’re suddenly not romantic comedies. So Silver Linings Playbook and As Good As It Gets and those kinds of, you know, brilliant movies.

I mean when you talk about romantic comedy, you’re just — you’re talking about something that has probably I’d say 72 percent — 68 percent comedy ,and the rest is romance. If you take your central love story out of the film and it falls apart, then you don’t have a romantic comedy, you know well you do have a romantic comedy on your hands rather. And I just adore them as a genre and I always have and I like all the ones, the hybrids. Like I love Romancing the Stone, the ones that are like the action rom-coms.

So I wonder if Long Kiss Goodnight is technically a rom-com? No, it’s not — her and Samuel L. Jackson, it’s not, that was a stretch. But yeah and I mean I love Sideways which is a rom-com between two men and I love Bridesmaids which is a rom-com between two women and Muriel’s Wedding. And I think like people sometimes forget that they’re watching one, and the art of a good one is that you don’t realize sometimes that you are as well. So yeah I’ve become sort of like this strange irritating person that constantly is like “I like rom-coms” and get annoyed when people you know say that they don’t.

**Craig:** I think you’re making a terrific point because I don’t — I personally love rom-coms, I mean and I really agree with your point that what we think of as romantic comedy is across almost every comedy genre. Identity Thief is a rom — it’s like an asexual rom-com, it’s like a platonic rom-com.

**Tess:** Yeah, yeah.

**Craig:** And I happen to love the genre and I miss it. I don’t know what went wrong exactly but and maybe we can figure out why —

**Tess:** I think I can tell you, yeah. I can tell you what went wrong actually.

**Craig:** Okay, what went wrong?

**Tess:** Well and it’s — and this is not me talking, this is me using the voice of Billy Mernit who’s a good, brilliant friend of mine and also wrote this book called “Writing the Romantic Comedy” which I’m addicted to and obsessed by because it’s the one book on screenwriting that I’ve read that just really inspired me and unlocked lots of structural points for me and thematic things. But I had a big chat with him about this. And he works for Universal actually, is a story editor, and he was saying that essentially what happened in the sort of late 90s, early ’00s, is that they had these huge hits with you know, the kind of Katherine Heigl set of vehicles and made loads of money, the studios made a ton of money.

But then they essentially killed the golden goose because they then started to make identical versions of those films, just probably like they do with most genres but for a longer time period with romantic comedies, which caused everyone to say the romantic comedy is dead which only really people started saying in the late ’90s early ’00s, before then, you know you didn’t really talk about it like that because they have such a rich history of movies that are romantic comedies. So I think there was just this you know, lazy time period where everyone started to say that and now people just resort back to that whenever there’s a new one they go, “Oh the rom-com is alive,” or something bombed at the box office, “It’s dead.” It’s like, give it a break.

**John:** Christopher Orr had an article called Why Are Romantic Comedies So Bad, and the sub-head is, the long decline from Katharine Hepburn to Katherine Heigl, which I thought was —

**Tess:** It’s a great — it’s click bait — it’s a great title, great headline, but it’s not true.

**Craig:** Good anger. Anger.

**John:** Anger. We like that.

**Tess:** Can you feel it?

**Craig:** Umbrage. Umbrage.

**John:** We’ve got dual umbrage in this episode.

**Tess:** Vengeance.

**Craig:** Vengeance will be ours.

**John:** But he actually raised some interesting points in terms of what has changed. And one of the points he brought up was that actors will sometimes do one romantic comedy and they’ll just stop —

**Tess:** Yes.

**John:** Because they don’t want to be pigeon-holed as doing that, so you look at Will Smith in Hitch, who was fantastic in Hitch.

**Tess:** He’s great in it. Yeah.

**John:** It’s a great romantic comedy and he will not do anymore of them. You look at Julia Roberts and she made her start in romantic comedy but didn’t want to keep doing that so they want to do serious roles and —

**Tess:** Although I read an interview with her recently that said if she read a good one for a woman who was whoever old Julia, lovely Julia is now, I’d happily write you one, because I love her. Yeah, I mean I don’t know whether that’s because they feel like they don’t have as much integrity. I mean comedy as a whole thing and you all know this, both of you from writing yourself, that it doesn’t ever get the kudos that any other line of craft does.

**Craig:** No. It’s crazy.

**Tess:** And I would argue that to write comedy is far harder that to write drama overall.

**Craig:** Because you’re right.

**John:** So, a theory I want to posit is that part of the reason why it’s looked down upon is because almost definitionally a romantic comedy is going to have one woman in it, and like one prominent actress who has a major role in the movie. And we sort of don’t want to write for women anymore — or we don’t want to make the movies for women anymore.

**Tess:** Yeah, but I mean It’s so weird because I’ve done so many interviews about Man Up and someone ask me the other day, “Oh is your character a hot mess?” And I was like, “Oh piss off, she’s not a hot mess. She is a messy person.”

**Craig:** Right.

**Tess:** Who’s just going through some stuff and I think —

**John:** And she’s literally a very messy person —

**Tess:** Yeah literally a messy person. And I think also like you could switch the roles in Man Up and very easily either/or could play you know man or female roles. I do worry when people sort of think that there aren’t still stories about sort of romance to tell, because especially in the modern world.

**Craig:** I actually feel like were telling romance in every genre now. Part of what’s happened is everything — it doesn’t matter what it is.

**Tess:** And actually it’s too much, yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah, like no matter what the genre is, even if it’s like a wrestling movie, there has to be some sort of love story.

**Tess:** Or a Marvel movie.

**Craig:** Yeah by the way exactly, superhero movies like Ironman has to have Gwyneth Paltrow in a romance story. And we put romance into everything.

**Tess:** You know what, someone said to me recently that Superman wasn’t about his love for Lois Lane, and I got so angry.

**Craig:** Right well from the start —

**Tess:** That’s all that the film is about.

**Craig:** By the way that’s all Superman is about like —

**Tess:** Exactly.

**Craig:** I’m going to get some more angry letters, I don’t like Superman. I like that relationship. And I think It’s a really good relationship story and I don’t care about his powers but —

**Tess:** But it’s not a rom-com to be fair.

**Craig:** No, It’s not a rom-com, but I do think that we actually are more interested now, it seems to me in writing comedies for women that we have been in a long, long time. There are really prominent female comediennes that are stars now, whether it’s Tina Fey or Melissa McCarthy —

**Tess:** Kristen Wiig, yeah.

**Craig:** We’re getting a lot of them and — but were not doing the traditional romantic comedies in the sense maybe there’s a vague feeling that they’re old fashioned but I disagree. I don’t think they — I think that they are old-fashioned only in the sense that movies used to be awesome and like I thought what Man Up reminded of is a good — a movie like the kind they used to make and that’s not to say stodgy or old but —

**Tess:** No, no I take that as a huge compliment because that’s what I — the screwball kind of element and the kind of classic structure and whenever I read the bad reviews which I obviously I always do. Whenever I read the ones that say “Oh God It’s just like so obvious,” I’m like, no, you’ve totally missed the point like we’re embracing all the tropes because that’s what any good genre film does, embraces them but then turns them into — gives them your own sort of angle on it. So —

**John:** Let’s talk about the tropes because I think that’s actually one of the things that people sort of single out romantic comedies for, it’s like “Oh these tropes,” and we sort of slam on these tropes. So let’s talk about tropes. The meet-cute, is that —

**Tess:** Yeah, yeah I mean like — I mean there’s technically you know, seven —

**John:** Oh my gosh, there’s seven tropes —

**Tess:** Well they’re not really tropes, actually that’s wrong they’re more like the beats of a rom-com.

**Craig:** Can I try? I don’t know them I just want to take a stab at it.

**Tess:** Do it.

**Craig:** Okay. I’m going to start with a woman who is single and vaguely unhappy with her life.

**Tess:** Can be a man as well. Woody Allen.

**Craig:** Correct, I’m just going with the — I’m going to do the female version.

**Tess:** Do it.

**Craig:** She has given up on — she’s tried to — she’s gone through bad relationships and is about to give up.

**Tess:** Correct.

**Craig:** There’s a meet-cute — so far so good — there’s a meet-cute where she or he runs into a person and they have sparks but they aren’t — the circumstances are such that they can’t just say fall in love. There are circumstantial things that are keeping them apart, obstacles.

**Tess:** All together. Yeah.

**Craig:** Good exactly. But they then start to — they go through a honeymoon phase where things are kind of exciting and they both think is it possible that this person, nah, we’re just friends, it couldn’t be, so they’re like kind of moving towards and away from each other out of fear because there’s a problem — the problem that they had in the beginning of the movie isn’t resolved. There’s a lie that one of them tells —

**Tess:** Correct.

**Craig:** They get caught in the lie, they break up, and in the breaking up they return back to the world they started in, but no longer find that world satisfying and then one of them goes running.

**Tess:** I would give you a B-minus.

**Craig:** Okay, the B — by the way B-minus is not a bad grade because I never — I mean, you know — what did I — tell me where I went wrong and tell me what I left out.

**Tess:** No you didn’t, It’s all there really, I mean essentially what you’re talking about in terms of the girl who’s single — I’ll talk about Billy Mernit’s beats because that’s how I write. And he talks about the chemical equation which is the thing that in all writing you’re looking for your leading characters, what they’re missing in their life, what they are not doing. So in Man Up she is not getting out there, she is not putting herself in a position to meet someone. She is closed down, shut down. Yeah, then you got your cute-meet. I mean, in the history of time cute-meets are the hardest things to find original ways for your two leads to meet each other.

And I always love it, I always try and think about how do — like say you said to me how did you meet your partner, and I said, well I stole his date from under the clock at Waterloo Station. If that’s going to make me laugh, then that’s a good cute-meet. And then what you’re talking about in terms of your — Billy calls it the sexy complication turning point.

**Craig:** That’s nice.

**Tess:** Which is your end of act one, which is when — really in a romantic comedy you’ve got to find emotional obstacles to keep your two leads together. And really at the end of act one, in lots off these films, they’re not the great examples of it, they could just walk away and the film could end. Sorry, I don’t fancy you anymore, bye.

**Craig:** Right.

**Tess:** So you have to find either a plot driven thing but obviously what’s much better is an emotional obstacle or thing —

**John:** So either literal handcuffs or emotional handcuffs.

**Tess:** Exactly. Very good analogy, John August. And then you keep them together all through to your midpoint which is in terms of romantic comedy, you want to, in the smack bang of your middle of act two, you want to send them in a different direction to where they thought they were going, emotionally speaking.

And then they kind of start liking each other, but then you’ve got to get into the end of act two, your swivel second act turning point where someone makes the wrong decision. Someone always makes the wrong decision in a romantic comedy. It can be both of them and actually in Man Up, both of them don’t Man Up at the end of act two. And then all is lost from there onwards and you just have no idea how you’re going to get these two people back together and then in — you know When Harry Met Sally kind of did the brilliant run.

Weirdly now when I think about it, probably if you wrote that montage into a script now, someone would go “Nah,” wouldn’t they?

**Craig:** Of course, they say nah to everything.

**Tess:** And then he has a flashback so all of the moments in the film. And then he realizes that he loves her and then he runs.

**Craig:** Right, someone’s always running. I got that right.

**Tess:** Yeah, but you know what, they can be running metaphorically, they can be actually running. In Man Up, he does do an actual run, but I tried to sort off find a unique way without spoiling it for him to do that run.

**Craig:** Yeah and you did.

**Tess:** So it wasn’t just traditional —

**John:** Well you were calling out the trope.

**Craig:** Right exactly, you’re acknowledging, oh this is where they run, so we’ll give you a little something like a present.

**Tess:** Yeah. I mean you know, were quite on the button with the beats in Man Up, but hopefully, and I was saying to John actually when I first got here, when I wasn’t actually here, when I was pretending not to be here. I really — I sort of like love the fact that we are unashamedly saying, here they all are, you know, that I have no sort of fear in admitting. And I also think when you watch it again and this is not a plug to watch it twice, but the second time around, it’s a very fast movie the first time you watch it. When you watch it again, you can relax a bit more and understand some of the — you know catch some more of the jokes and more of the humor. So I think the first time you watch it, you can be like “Oh my god what is happening?” It’s like one night of kind of you know craziness.

But yeah and I mean I love — I just get so bored and tired of people sort off saying — the amount of times I get emails going would you like to talk about defending the rom-com for this, this, this? And I’m like yes.

**Craig:** You know what? It’s like —

**Tess:** I will talk about it.

**Craig:** I mean, I feel like the movie is a great defense. And what you’re describing when you say —

**Tess:** That’s my exhibit A.

**Craig:** Exactly, thank you. If you said look, I have a collection of tropes, and the job is not to throw them out, the job is to execute them in fresh new ways —

**Tess:** Yeah and hide them.

**Craig:** Well that’s what we’re supposed to be doing anyway.

**Tess:** I know

**Craig:** All of us.

**Tess:** Exactly.

**Craig:** That’s the point. So to me, I loved how traditional it was, and proved that a traditional romantic comedy still works because in the end — you know Lindsay Doran has this great remark, she says that movies are about what we care about at the end of movies, is relationships. And if you watch a movie, no matter what that movie is, the last scene is almost always about the relationship even if the movie is about robots blowing each other up, the last scene is the boy and the girl, or the boy and his car, or something, and it’s about the relationship. And you know the last scene — she always points out the last scene of Dirty Dancing. Everybody thinks Dirty Dancing ends with —

**Tess:** Oh, let’s talk about that.

**Craig:** She — you know, everyone says, “Oh, how does Dirty Dancing end? With her leaping?” No it doesn’t. It ends with Jennifer Grey talking to her dad.

**Tess:** No. To her dad exactly.

**Craig:** The relationship.

**Tess:** When I’m wrong I say I’m wrong.

**Craig:** Right. And so what Lindsay says is, what’s interesting is, they make these movies for boys and men about robots exploding, but then they put in this little relationship thing at the end to sort of say, okay, but also, you like movies about relationships. She said, when we make movies so called for women, that are about relationships, we’ve kind of said you’re smart enough to know that what you’re here for is the relationship. That’s the part everyone cares about anyway. The exploding robots, meh.

**Tess:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know what I mean? So romantic comedies are the purest form of that, I love that.

**Tess:** They are because like my favorite thing in the world, I love people, like even if I meet someone that I don’t like, and I’ll be able to use them at some point in my writings, so I’m like I’ll talk to you, even if you are dick. Dick. Dick. Dick. Dick. Dick. But like I sort of feel like — especially like when people sort of say, oh, you know Lake’s character in the film, because she is very, you know, it is very autobiographical. I’m not going to lie. But like — but she’s a person, not a woman, if that makes sense you know —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Tess:** And I think that’s the key to sort of — I mean, I know lots of men that have seen Man Up, and I get random messages on Twitter all the time sort of going “God, I really love that film,” like you know, I really like this and I love Simon’s character in it, and Simon Pegg is so brilliant in it and actually very underrated actor, I think genuinely in terms of like his actual dramatic chops. I mean obviously he’s not underrated comedically, but he’s very vulnerable in the film, and he’s very, you know, effed up, and all those sort of things. I’ve already sworn. I don’t know why I did an “effed up” then. I could have just said it, couldn’t I?

**Craig:** Say it.

**Tess:** Yeah they’re two people and no one really wants to be on their own, do they, in life, whether you want to be in a relationship or just be with your friends or be with your family, you know, that’s what life is about for me, being with people.

**John:** So one thing that occurs to me though about the nature of a romantic comedy is that, the — you can have a central dramatic question that is about sort of like, can men and women be friends, you know what is the duty to think — you can have central dramatic questions that aren’t necessarily specifically about that relationship, but the fundamental plot question that the audience is going to expect to have answered is like, will this couple end up together?

And the answer in romantic-comedy generally is yes. And so the challenge of the screenwriter is like how do you believably keep them apart?

**Tess:** Yes. You know your ending already, so in life, in writing, you’ve got to be so full of questions, I mean, that is just a part of the job, do you know what I mean? So it always really fascinates me when people, with romantic-comedies, they don’t think they need that, they think they just need two people who are they/aren’t they — it’s like, no, you’ve got to have these huge, big emotional things that kind of are running through it.

**Craig:** That’s, I mean to me, all the differences that keep people apart that are circumstantial, I think of as MacGuffins, they are the glowing stuff in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. I kind of don’t care about those things. I always care about the things that are internal to them, and their fears that are keeping them alone, or keeping them apart from this person, that if they only could take a risk with, things would go well. Why I think, to me, the joy of a romantic-comedy is not in wondering, will they/won’t they, because the answer is, they will.

**Tess:** It’s how they. It’s how they.

**Craig:** It’s really, it’s being reminded, this is why men should always go to romantic-comedies with their significant others, is because it’s reminding everybody of the joy of falling in love, and the value of falling in love, because over time, I mean, you know, John and I have both been in monogamous relationships for years and years and years and years.

**Tess:** All right, don’t rub it in.

**Craig:** Sorry, you can’t maintain a heightened level — and you talk about this in the movie, a heightened level of passion for all that time. If you did, your brain would explode, and you would be mentally ill. It’s just not possible.

Going to romantic-comedies, revives it, it makes you look at the person you’re with, and makes you remember the risks you took with them, and it also reminds you of the value of what you built together because in the end, when you watch a movie about somebody stopping the world from exploding, that’s never my job, but at the end of a romantic-comedy, when I see a man and woman come together and make an agreement to mush their lives together and build a thing, and I always love in romantic-comedies when they’re old couples too, like in yours, it reminds me that I did something really good.

**Tess:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s worth it, you know. I think that’s the value of the —

**Tess:** That’s the job, isn’t is? I mean actually, it’s funny because someone was asking me the other day whether they think that Nancy and Jack, the two leads in Man Up, stay together. And I actually said, “No.”

**Craig:** You’re terrible.

**Tess:** Well no, I said no because I feel like the film is actually about putting yourself out there and taking chances. That’s part of her mantras within the film, and it’s something that I struggle with myself, you know, I’ve been single on and off now for bloody years, and I go into a very closed in kind of environment and I don’t want to kind of like take any chances.

And I think the film for me, is trying to say to people like if you do something, enjoy it, and see where it goes, but don’t try and maybe over-analyze it and worry about, okay, is this the man I’m going to marry and is this my life I’m going to have? So I love that they get together in the end, obviously. I would always get them together at the end.

But strangely, with Annie Hall, when they are not together at the end of that, I actually love that film, but that’s the only thing I find slightly dissatisfying, although you know, arguably, from the beginning of the film, you know that they’re not very well suited.

**Craig:** Well, I mean that movie, you know, the original title of Annie Hall was Anhedonia.

**Tess:** Yes, good fact. Nice fact.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**Tess:** Fear of what?

**Craig:** Fear of pleasure.

**Tess:** Fear of pleasure. Exactly.

**Craig:** And so it really was a meditation on — definitely more Woody Allen in the —

**Tess:** Exactly and then it became her story, I mean you know.

**Craig:** That’s an existentialist movie, it’s in a weird way, people talk about it as a romantic-comedy. I don’t think it’s a romance at all. I think it’s actually an existential drama crisis movie.

**Tess:** Well, I think it is a romantic-comedy, but I think it’s fascinating that once the title changed to Annie Hall, you don’t really think about him as much in that film as you do about Diane Keaton. And I think that’s what turned it around, you know, he then probably hopefully realized, ah okay, this is actually much more about the breakdown of a relationship between two people that are a bit mismatched.

**Craig:** I do think that your characters, they get married, and they grow old together —

**Tess:** That’d be nice.

**Craig:** And then when one of them dies like at 92 —

**Tess:** Yes.

**Craig:** The other one just sits down in a chair and dies like 10 minutes later.

**Tess:** Like six months later? Oh, 10 minutes? I was going to give them a little bit longer.

**Craig:** Yes, because that was just the way it was going to be. I believe that. I believe it in my bones.

**Tess:** Well, I have to believe to write it. Otherwise —

**Craig:** Exactly. And I think by the way, that you’re going to have this.

**Tess:** Thanks, Craig. You know what though, I’m fine though, like I think that like being single, I keep an edge.

**John:** Yes, absolutely, you get more writing done when you’re single.

**Tess:** It keeps me writing, yes.

**John:** Here’s a question for both of you. Do we think that romantic-comedies are by their nature dual protagonist stories, or can you have a romantic-comedy that has a protagonist and just an antagonist who does not change? Do both characters have to change?

**Tess:** Well Trainwreck kind of did that recently.

**John:** Yes, so Bill Hader’s character just barely changes.

**Tess:** He clearly doesn’t change. I would argue, actually I would — I liked it as a film, but I would have quite liked him to have a little bit more of a sort of journey, to use that word.

**Craig:** Yes. I think that the best of them, I always feel like there’s one protagonist. The dual protagonist thing to borrow a Tess Morris thing, I always feel it’s like 68, you know, 32. In this movie, it’s Nancy who is the protagonist.

**Tess:** Yes, she’s — I mean it was originally much more her, actually, and then I turned it more into a two-hander and brought Jack’s character in a bit sooner.

**Craig:** So I’m going to argue against sort of that because if you look at what Nancy is actually doing, especially in the bar scene where she’s like getting him to actually stand up to his ex-wife and that like, he is a character that has the most growth. He does the most things over the course of a lot of the movie to change.

**Tess:** He does, yes.

**Craig:** So ultimately, she is the person who has to do something at the end. He is the guy who does the big romantic run at the end, so he fulfills that Harry function.

**Tess:** Well, it depends where they meet as well. With When Harry Met Sally, they meet in the first scene, you know. And they’re together, they’re in every pretty much every single scene together about bar five or six or whatever, and I think with Man Up, it’s Nancy’s story for the first 12, 13 minutes, and then it’s entirely both their sort of journeys, but obviously she has more, I think it begins with her. She is the catalyst for the things that happen in the film.

**Craig:** I also think that, I mean you’re right, there’s the quantity of change that happens for Simon’s character, for Jack, but the profundity of the change, and the resistance, he’s already somebody who feels he’s defined as passionate, somewhat plastic in that nature, he’s emotional, he’s honest, he’s free with his feelings, he just needs to get over something. She’s bottled up to me that it’s like it’s the — he can make 12 changes over the course of the movie, but for her to uncork is like the hardest thing because it’s so — see, my problem with the single protagonist, and this is another thing I actually think hurt romantic-comedies is that for a long time the model was one person meets another person, the main character is flawed and can’t see that this other person’s perfect for them.

And they continue to fail in front of that person until finally, they succeed, and that person is essentially fixed in place as a moral ideal that you’re just waiting for them to grow up enough to earn. And that’s not quite satisfying for me as a moviegoer.

**Tess:** All my favorite rom-coms I would say are dual protagonist, you know, As Good As It Gets, and Silver Linings, actually, which is a great example of like something that begins with Bradley Cooper’s character, and then she just comes along and changes his whole life. And there’s a great sort of sub — I read a thing recently about how in the first scene when he meets her, when he says to her, you know, I find you — you look nice, I’m just saying that, I’m trying to get back with my wife, it’s not that I’m trying to come on to you, and actually, that’s the moment he falls in love with her, the first time he sees her.

**Craig:** Right.

**Tess:** And then she just bowls in and they have that brilliant kind of Hepburn/Tracy-esque kind of sort of dialogue between each other. And then it becomes their film, like once they meet, it should become a dual thing.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** To wrap this up, so romantic-comedies, we’re saying they are not dead. We are saying that the things that people identify as being formulaic about them, are the tropes that are common to the genre, but you could say the same things about the tropes in any genre. And so we don’t slam on superhero movies for having those tropes and genres, I guess because they’re wildly successful.

**Tess:** Can you imagine if everyone got upset about set pieces in superhero movies.

**Craig:** How about like, how about the part where they discover their powers and don’t have control over them at first? How about the part where they make their suit for the first time. God.

**Tess:** I love it when they make their suit. I’m like, how are they going to make their suit?

**Craig:** Who cares? So boring, I’m so done.

**Tess:** Yes, sorry, John.

**John:** So we’re also saying that romantic-comedies are comedies which we are expecting to see one or two characters grow and change, but you can say that of course with any movie.

**Tess:** Any movie, yes.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Tess:** And I think sometimes when people really hate a genre, I’m suspicious of them as a person.

**Craig:** Me too.

**Tess:** I’m like, “You hate romantic-comedies? Have you got no joy in your life that you — ” I mean I get a bit like —

**John:** That’s why I think you actually need to question them on what they’re defining as romantic-comedy because I think what they really mean to say, like I hate Katherine Heigl movies. It’s like, well, that’s fair, it’s fair to hate Katherine Heigl movies.

**Tess:** That’s fine, yes. I mean, I had an argument with someone recently about How To Lose a Guy in Ten Days. They hated it like with a passion. I was like, you know what, dude, it’s fine. I quite enjoy that film when I’m a certain kind of mood, but this kind of like association that it’s a chick flick, that I’m going to sit there in my track suit bottoms, well, I don’t know what you call them. Do you call them track suit bottoms?

**Craig:** Sweat pants.

**Tess:** And eat a massive bag of Maltesers. Do you have Maltesers?

**John:** I have no idea what you’re saying.

**Craig:** Here it would be sweat pants and a pint of ice cream

**Tess:** Yes. Like don’t get me wrong, I love Bridget Jones, she’s a fantastic creation and always has been, but like we’re not all just doing that. I might do that when I watch Con Air, and that doesn’t mean, you know, it’s what is making you feel a certain thing, and I don’t know.

**Craig:** Also, why are we apologizing for things that are true? Like there are moments in movies when men are depressed and they do male depressed things.

**Tess:** Yes, and they’re allowed to do that.

**Craig:** They’re allowed to do it. Nobody goes, “Oh my god — ”

**Tess:** Exactly. In Sideways, no one went, “Oh,” which is one of my all-time favorite films, no one said, you know, “Oh god, he was so unlikeable.” The whole point is that he’s brilliantly unlikeable, you know?

**Craig:** We just did a whole episode on how angry that gets me —

**Tess:** Did you?

**Craig:** Unlikeable. The worst note. I believe it’s the last episode that you didn’t listen to.

**Tess:** I would say it’s the worst note particularly when you’re talking about female stuff when they go, “She’s just not likeable enough as a woman.”

**Craig:** For all genders, even if we’re dealing with genderless aliens or androids, it’s the worst note.

**Tess:** Do you think they got that note in Marley and Me.

**John:** The dog’s not likeable enough?

**Tess:** The dog’s not likeable enough.

**John:** Can we see the dog smile a little bit more?

**Craig:** Yes, people are going to want it to die.

**Tess:** Yes.

**John:** Yeah. CG that smile in.

**Craig:** You know what that dog is?

**Tess:** What?

**Craig:** That dog’s a dick.

**Tess:** He’s a dick. [laughs]

**John:** It’s time for One Cool Things. Tess, we should have warned you about One Cool Things.

**Tess:** Oh shit.

**John:** So you could be the third to go. You could say something that’s cool about your time in Los Angeles, because you’ve been here for a couple of weeks. My One Cool Thing is a profile of Nick Bostrom who is a scientist and a philosopher. He writes a lot about AI and sort of doomsday scenarios. And so the profile I’m going to link to is in The New Yorker.

And the things he was talking about are really interesting, but I thought it actually more interesting as a character profile, so just sort of digging into sort of what it’s like to be that sort of scientist guy who’s warning you about doomsday. It’s the character who in movies would be played by — I’m trying to think who is —

**Tess:** Kevin Spacey?

**John:** Kevin Spacey, yes, somebody like that who would be like, you know, I told you this is going to happen, this is going to happen. But the actual character that they outlined here is actually really fascinating and I think worth looking at.

**Tess:** Liam Neeson may be more —

**John:** Liam Neeson might be — Jeff Goldblum would be —

**Tess:** Yes.

**John:** Goldblum is sort of the classic —

**Tess:** You didn’t stop to think whether you should.

**John:** Exactly, indeed, so be it Day After Tomorrow or Jurassic Park, he’s the guy who’s going to warn you about that. You’re playing god.

**Tess:** I’m with him. I’m with him.

**John:** What is so fascinating about this profile though is it goes into sort of this early decision to sort of like, you know, I am going to change my life completely. And sometimes we’ll see this in movies, but it’s so rare that you see this actually happening in real life where like you sort of have an epiphany and sort of like wrote like this is how my whole life is going to change and sort of did that.

And so a really interesting character profile, and also some good science in there as well.

**Tess:** Some good science.

**John:** Some good science. And if you like what they talk about in the fermi paradox stuff part of this, I’m also going to put a link in the show notes to this really great Wait But Why article on alien civilizations and what the fermi paradox is

**Tess:** Can you see my face? I’m just like what is he talking about?

**John:** Absolutely. It’s like you’re talking about crisps. I have no idea. And track suit bottoms?

**Craig:** Crisps. Crisps. I want Crisps. Look, you know what I think about all this. We’re living in a computer simulation.

**Tess:** Yes.

**Craig:** We’re not real either.

**Tess:** No.

**Craig:** End of discussion.

**Tess:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Did you say, “Thank you?”

**Tess:** Yes.

**Craig:** Like I had put you at ease with that horrible proposition.

**Tess:** I felt suddenly like really relaxed.

**Craig:** That’s the opposite of what I wanted. You were supposed to start gazing up —

**Tess:** No, because I’m worst case scenario person. It’s the way I live my whole life in a state of panic, so when someone just says like, well, it’s over, it’s going to end, I’m like, “Oh, okay. Well fine. Good.”

**Craig:** Great, yeah. I get take a nap now.

**Tess:** Yes, that’s good, excellent.

**Craig:** My One Cool Thing, I would have done it last week, but I did the whole blood brain barrier business last week, so this week, my One Cool Thing, how could it not be Fallout 4?

**John:** You’re enjoying it, Craig?

**Craig:** A little too much.

**Tess:** Is this a game?

**Craig:** It is a game, well done, Tess Morris.

**Tess:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Fallout 4 — everyone else knows what it is, so I will just say this, the crazy thing about Fallout 4 is that it is exactly the same as Fallout 3. I mean, with like one tiny change that’s actually kind of semi-fun, it’s the same damn game, and I don’t care, I love it.

**Tess:** Is it shooting?

**Craig:** It is shooting, but it’s mostly, it’s quest-based, so people — yes, so you have missions and you go on and you find things, and sometimes you have to kill people, sometimes you have to talk to people.

**Tess:** Like the Fall Guy, then?

**Craig:** Like the what?

**Tess:** The Fall Guy, the show that was on in the ’80s?

**Craig:** Not at all like the Fall Guy. Literally not anything like the — so think of the Fall Guy —

**Tess:** There’s no Jacuzzi that you jump in at the end with some ladies?

**Craig:** No. It takes place in post-apocalyptic Boston.

**Tess:** It’s nothing like the Fall Guy.

**Craig:** It’s more like Mad Max than The Fall Guy.

**Craig:** Thank you. It’s more like Mad Max. But I don’t know, whatever it does to me and my brain, because I love following storylines, I can literally feel the dopamine squirting out of my brain while I’m playing it. When I’m done, I can feel the lack of — I know I’m taking drugs, I know it. I know I’m smoking crack when I play this game. And it’s disrupted my sleep this week, but it’s been great.

**Tess:** It’s been great. Like MacGyver?

**John:** No.

**Craig:** Goddamn it.

**Tess:** Good storylines, though. My One Cool Thing, now I’ve had two minutes to think about it.

**Craig:** Is it either The Fall Guy or MacGyver?

**Tess:** It’s the A-Team.

**Craig:** It’s A-Team? I love that you watched all those.

**Tess:** Oh my god, of course. So my One Cool Thing, since I’ve been living here, I’m coming back because I love it so much, but I’ve had my little six weeks here, and I’ve been living in Los Feliz — you say Los Feliz?

**Craig:** You can say both, actually.

**Tess:** What would you say?

**John:** I say Los Feliz.

**Tess:** Los Feliz. Los Feliz.

**Craig:** You did it right.

**Tess:** Los Feliz!

**Craig:** Never that.

**Tess:** Never that? So I’ve been living there which I love because I can walk everywhere, because I’m British, I love to walk, so I’m like, brilliant. And I discovered the Vista Cinema since I’ve been here which I think is the coolest cinema I have ever been in. And it’s just at the bottom of Hillhurst and Sunset and I just — it’s like my dream cinema, I mean not only was True Romance, I think the opening sort of scene is filmed there, but it just has everything I need.

You do cinemas so well here when you have that kind of old-fashioned sort of like art deco-y kind of sort of thing. And I got quite drunk with a friend when we went to see Spectre, and we arrived so late, so we couldn’t sit together and we were like, oh, god, what’s going on?

And then they brought out some folding chairs for us.

**Craig:** Oh, how nice.

**Tess:** So we sat drunk at the back, and then realized it was two-and-a-half hours long. Let’s not even —

**Craig:** But you know you can walk out at the last half hour, and —

**Tess:** At one point, I did turn to my friend, I was like, should we go? And he said, I think we need to see it through, we just need to see it through. And I had sobered up by then, so it was fun, but anyway, I just love how there’s just one film on there, once a week, and it’s just got a beautiful atmosphere to it, and I just — if I could be in there every night, but the only thing is that they have only one film a week, that’s the only thing. So I can’t go every night, but I just love it.

**Craig:** You could go every Saturday night.

**Tess:** I was like a pig in shit when I was in there.

**John:** Fantastic.

**Craig:** What a great guest.

**John:** Tess Morris, thank you for joining us on the podcast this week.

**Tess:** Thank you. It’s on my bucket list now, I’ve done it. I’ve been on Scriptnotes.

**John:** So is it no longer on your bucket list?

**Tess:** I’ll just keep coming back. I’ll just keep annoying you.

**John:** The buckets confuse me.

**Tess:** Yes.

**Craig:** John can’t handle it.

**Tess:** His whole face just went, what, uh?

**John:** I’m so confused. My programming won’t allow for this.

**Tess:** I won’t allow for this.

**Craig:** Literally, you divided by zero, just froze. You can find us at johnaugust.com, for show notes, where we talk about a lot of things we have discussed on the show today.

On Twitter, I am @johnaugust, Craig is @clmazin. Tess, are you on Twitter?

**Tess:** I am @thetessmorris.

**John:** She’s @thetessmorris on the Twitter. If you have questions like some of the ones we answered on the show today, you can write in to ask@johnaugust.com. If you would like to listen to back episodes of this whole program that we’ve made, you can find us at scriptnotes.net, you can also find us through the app. There’s a Scriptnotes app on the applicable app stores.

While you’re in iTunes, you should subscribe to Scriptnotes because why not? It’s free. And you should leave us a comment which actually helps us a lot and helps other people find the show. So thank you for doing that.

You should come and join us on December 9th for our live show with our special guests. And if there’s still tickets, hooray. Well, or, I don’t know, but you should come to the live show on December 9th.

Last but not least, we have a few of the USB drives left of all the 200 back episodes of the show, so you can find those at the store at johnaugust.com, and we will send you one with all 200 of the first episodes of Scriptnotes.

Our outro this week is by John Spurney, and it is a really good one. So John Spurney, thank you very much. We’re not even going to talk over it because it’s so good. And Craig and Tess, thank you so much.

**Tess:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Thanks, guys.

Links:

* [Buy your tickets now for the 2015 Scriptnotes Holiday Show on December 9th](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/scriptnotes-holiday-live-show-with-john-august-and-craig-mazin) with guests [Riki Lindhome, Natasha Leggero](http://www.cc.com/shows/another-period) and [Malcolm Spellman](http://johnaugust.com/2015/malcolm-spellman-a-study-in-heat)
* [Jon Bon Jovi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Bon_Jovi) on Wikipedia
* [Amazon Storywriter](https://storywriter.amazon.com/) and [Fountain](http://fountain.io/)
* Scriptnotes, 224: [Whiplash, on paper and on screen](http://johnaugust.com/2015/whiplash-on-paper-and-on-screen)
* Tess Morris on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2208729/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/TheTessMorris), and [Man Up](http://www.manupfilm.co.uk/) on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Up_(film)) and [Rotten Tomatoes](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/man_up_2015/)
* [Why Are Romantic Comedies So Bad?](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/03/why-are-romantic-comedies-so-bad/309236/) by Christopher Orr
* CinemaBlend’s [30 Best Romantic Comedies Of All-Time](http://www.cinemablend.com/new/30-Best-Romantic-Comedies-All-Time-43134.html)
* The New Yorker on [Nick Bostrom](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invention-artificial-intelligence-nick-bostrom)
* Wait But Why on [The Fermi Paradox](http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html)
* [Fallout 4](https://www.fallout4.com/age-gate), and [on Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B016E70408/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* [The Vista Theatre](http://www.vintagecinemas.com/vista/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Jon Spurney ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/whiplash-on-paper-and-on-screen).

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

**Craig Mazin:** I am Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes, Episode 224, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

On last week’s episode I misidentified it as episode 232, and so some listeners thought I travelled through time and they’d missed episodes. And they’ve not missed anything. We are now back on track, we’re on the 224 train.

**Craig:** I feel like we lost a lot of work there. I mean, that’s 10 episodes that just disappeared.

**John:** Yeah, it’s like one of those things where — Heroes used to do this a lot, where they would jump back and forth in time and like sort of like whole timelines didn’t exist. And those were some really great episodes. I thought that the Shonda Rhimes episode we did was phenomenal. But I guess that’s just not in our timeline anymore.

**Craig:** It’s gone. You know, Melissa was a big fan of Lost. She watched all of Lost, every episode, all the way to the end. She loved the end, by the way. She’s one of those people that just cried and cried. She thought it was great. And you know, me, I don’t watch TV. So you know, every now and then, I’d walk by, I’m like, “What’s going on with Lost?” You know, I’d watch like five or six minutes of it. And I’d say, “What’s happening?” And she’d say, “It’s too complicated, you wouldn’t understand. They’re in a flash sideways.” And I was like, “That’s it. I’m going to go — I’m going to go play a video game. I’m out.” [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. I loved Lost. I loved just sort of all the weird twists and turns they took. And I think they got unfairly slammed for like, people said like, “Oh, they broke the rule, that they were not supposed to be in limbo and like this wasn’t limbo.” But the no limbo rule is really sort of for the initial, what the island was, not that any season couldn’t talk place at limbo and so the reveal that part of it was limbo, was not fair.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s all whirring and clicking noises to me. [laughs] That’s how I feel what’s going on. But you know what we should do?

**John:** What should we do?

**Craig:** We should get Damon Lindelof to come on our show.

**John:** We should absolutely do that. So that will be a goal for 2016.

**Craig:** I don’t even think — it’s not that much of a goal, I mean. We’ll just go —

**John:** Damon is actually a friend.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch.

**Craig:** Damon, get on the show. I’m just going to tell him, “Get on.”

**John:** Damon Lindelof listens to the show so I bet he would even be happy to be on the show.

**Craig:** Yeah. Let’s go. Actually, I love — I mean, he’s — talk about a great insight into what we do. He’s written a bunch of things about final episodes. When the last episode of Breaking Bad came out, he wrote this really interesting essay where he kind of put to bed his own weird relationship with the final episode of Lost and how it made people feel, and all the rest of that stuff. It would be really interesting to talk to him about that because he is a really smart guy, and he’s got such an interesting and familiar-to-me relationship with feedback and criticism and, you know, all that stuff. So we’re just going to order Damon to be on the show.

**John:** He will absolutely be on the show. I was talking with him about Season 2 of the Leftovers which I’ve really been enjoying. And he was warning me before it happened, like “Oh, and there’s this one thing that’s going to happen. It’s going to be like a big social media flashpoint,” and you know, the difference is I now can anticipate and see that coming and sort of try to be not even ahead of the story but sort of responsive to where I know the conversation is going to go and he was absolutely correct. And so when it happened and the next morning as people started having their think pieces about what happened on the previous night’s episode, he could be part of that conversation and not say dumb things.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know, he really loves to be part of that conversation and —

**John:** But he’s not on Twitter anymore. He’s very deliberately — he steps in when he needs to and steps out when he doesn’t want to.

**Craig:** I see. I see. Well, I mean, he’s a very interesting guy that way. He really is — I think he is interested in being an active participant in the discussion about his own work which I think is really interesting. It’s not — it’s like another job on top of your job and — now, I know that there are a lot of people that, well, they follow, you know, my new role which is just go somewhere for two weeks and come back and it’ll be fine. But he’s in there, you know.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I like that he thinks about these things. He’s very — it’s an interesting thing. So, okay, we’re forcing Damon to do the show.

**John:** It has been decided. Today on the episode, we will be talking about two scenes from Whiplash, both how they function on the page and how they function on the screen, and why they are so wonderful. So this is sort of a follow-up to the episode we did with two scenes from Scott Frank. Actually, that’s I guess one scene we looked at from Scott Frank.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And people loved that episode where we really dug into what Scott was doing on the page and how it worked and why it worked. And so we’re going to be doing that with two scenes from Whiplash.

**Craig:** Great. And Damien Chazelle, by the way, also a super nice guy. And I believe I’m going to force him to be on the show as well.

**John:** Fantastic.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I got to interview Damien Chazelle for a film independent thing —

**Craig:** I remember that.

**John:** A year ago. And he was just the best. And in that conversation we talked about how those scenes shifted from what he wrote to shooting it to editing it. And we’re going to see some of the results of that in today’s episode.

**Craig:** You know what’s interesting is that, of the four of us, you, me, Damon, and Damien, three of us have something in common. One of us is not like the others.

**John:** Did you all go to Princeton?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** All right. I don’t know what that is.

**Craig:** Damien, Damon and I are all from New Jersey.

**John:** That’s amazing.

**Craig:** What a great state.

**John:** It is a great state, the undersung state.

**Craig:** Undersung. Although I’m sure some people will be like, “Yeah, well, I liked Whiplash.”

**John:** Yeah? No one else has done anything good out of New Jersey.

**Craig:** The other guys did Hangover 2 and Tomorrowland.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** F them.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** F Jersey.

**John:** This is also a great moment for us to bring up the issue of Fs because this will be an episode where we are talking about scenes from Whiplash and there are some F words in it. So in the later half of this show, you may not want your kids in the car to be listening to the episode because they will hear J.K. Simmons say the F-word.

**Craig:** Yeah. If you’re in a car and it’s moving, unfortunately, you are going to have to push them out.

**John:** Yeah, that’s fine. I mean, that’s pretty much parenting. It’s knowing when to push your kids out of the car.

**Craig:** That’s the key.

**John:** We have actual news, so if you missed us at Austin because you were not in Austin for the Austin Film Festival and you were saying, “Oh no, why do we not get to see John and Craig live?” Well, if you live in Los Angeles, you will get to see us live. We are doing another Scriptnotes holiday show. It’s long-rumored, but it’s actually going to happen on December 9th. It will be in Hollywood, California across from the ArcLight.

Our guests for the show include Malcolm Spellman, Natasha Leggero, and Riki Lindhome from Another Period. They’re the co-creators of Another Period and they are phenomenal and funny. Malcolm Spellman was a previous guest. He is a producer on Empire and writer and an all-around funny person.

We may have some other guests too that we’ll be announcing soon. But it’s important that we announce this now because tickets go on sale on Tuesday, the day this episode comes out. So they are $20. As always, all proceeds benefit the Writers Guild Foundation and you can go to the Writers Guild Foundation website in order to purchase your tickets for this show. It has always sold out, so maybe don’t delay too long.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And talk to your friends and come to see us live and in person.

**Craig:** I think these will move pretty quickly. Malcolm is one of our more popular guests. Perhaps our most popular guest and — because he is one of the key writers on Empire, which is a big, big show, I think people are going to want to hear from him about that. And then, although I don’t know Riki Lindhome’s work, I do know Natasha Leggero as a stand-up comedian. She is incredibly funny. I mean, you may be familiar with her from some of the Comedy Central roasts, but that — I always feel like that doesn’t give people a true sense of who a comedian is. And her work is really, really good. She is just smart. She’s smart. I think she’s one of the funniest people out there. So I’m really excited to meet Natasha and Riki and talk about their show.

**John:** And you’ll probably even watch one episode of their show before this begins. That’s not a promise, but it’s a thing that other hosts might do.

**Craig:** I mean, if there’s like a summary somewhere? [laughs] No. No.

**John:** Because you’ll really get a good sense of the tone or what’s unique about it by reading a summary of the show.

**Craig:** [laughs] Isn’t it great when people ask questions and it’s so obvious they just read a summary. No, I will absolutely familiarize myself with the material. And frankly, it’s going to be — I’m looking forward to familiarizing myself with it, because I know at the very least that Natasha is super, super funny. And if she’s working with Riki, I can only imagine Riki is really, really talented, too. So I’m excited about that. I’m going to watch that. But yeah, you guys should pick up your tickets quickly. And you know, usually, we have some sort of extra pizazzle in there at some point.

**John:** Yeah. There’s some pizazzle coming, we just don’t want to quite announce it to the world yet.

**Craig:** Barack Obama.

**John:** Come one, you spoil everything.

**Craig:** Sorry.

**John:** We have follow up from our live show in Austin. In the live show we talked about Zola and whether the Zola movie could happen, how much of that Zola story was real. So if you don’t remember, that was the story of the Hooters waitress who goes on a wild trip to Tampa, I believe, and craziness ensues. And so we talked about sort of what was possibly real, what was not real, how much her Twitter account was just really good writing versus actual reality.

Well, Caitlin Dewey of the Washington Post did a long story on it and did some fact checking and found out that so many of the facts actually check out. And so I’ll put a link in the show notes to that. But basically, a lot of that happened. Nobody got shot in the face, no one died, but a lot of the other stuff happened. And, there’s some disagreements about sort of who did what, when, and where, and how. But most of those people are actually real people. And they — that was their life over a course of some chaotic weeks. And Caitlin also does more follow-up in sort of the parts that happened after Zola’s Twitter story about how Z and Jess and all that stuff resolved

**Craig:** If you recall from the Austin show, my instinct was, if you’re going to make a movie about this that it should be about the strange confluence of a viral news story with — in conjunction with what’s actually really happening. As I read this, I feel it even more because, you know — yeah. So apparently, she made up the part about somebody getting shot in the face. And that’s good because you don’t want murders. That’s difficult. But here’s what I look at, I see that Jessica is 20 years old. I see that she has a daughter, a baby. And I see —

**John:** And she’s lost custody of the baby already.

**Craig:** No surprise there, considering that she is engaging in prostitution. And a greater concern is that she appears to be getting trafficked. And then you read about this guy who’s just a bad, bad man. I mean, when you read these stories on the internet, it’s like “Oh, haha, Z. You crazy nut.” No. Z is also Rudy, also Akporode Uwedjojevwe. That’s right, Akporode Uwedjojevwe.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And he is an awful human being. He is a bad, bad man who deserves to go to prison, as far as I’m concerned, forever, because he is a human trafficker. And it’s not funny. None of this is — I mean the thing is, Zola’s story attracted everyone’s attention because it was so — it was written in such a breezy, funny, catty, confident style. This is not good. I hate that all of this happened. I hate that is happens at all. That’s where I’m fascinated by people’s casual like, “OMG, Zola’s so crazy.” And in fact, what’s going on, which is a series of terrible crimes. And somewhere down the line is a baby. I hate it. I just hate it. I hate that these things happen. And so I’m fascinated by how social media grabbed on to this and looked at it and decided to have fun with it, almost.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s not fun for me.

**John:** So someone on Twitter asked what we meant when I said “taking agency,” like we have a character who takes agency. What does that term even mean? And I answered back that the ability to take agency is the ability to have control over the outcomes of things, the ability to take actions which can propel you forward. And so often in stories you see characters who either don’t take agency or basically have no agency at all. They could not affect the outcome whatsoever, and it’s very frustrating to be in their stories.

I think one of the differences between the Twitter account of Zola and sort of how she told the story is that character that she described for herself seemed like she had a lot of agency, she could actually affect the outcomes. And so she’s the one who’s like creating the profiles and she’s doing all that stuff and when the decision to like — like let’s start trapping, she could do that. And so she would cast herself as a character in her story who could make some of these decisions. And some of these decisions were just to run away, but those were decisions she was able to make.

When you look at this actual real-life account, you see that both the Jessica character and Zola had probably less agency in that situation than would be believed. And that’s the difference between a protagonist that you want to watch in a movie and somebody you kind of shy away from because you see how desperate their real plight is.

**Craig:** Yeah. The term “agency” comes up all the time. And it’s something that is most salient when people are looking at stories and saying, “Well, wait a second, this character may be making decisions, they may be doing things, they’re not passive, but are they being creative? Are they being inventive? Are they the person that is kind of master-minding what’s going on? Are they — are they solving in their minds?” This is what we think of as agency. And you’re right, I think that Zola, a.k.a. Aziah Wells, definitely paints herself with more agency than she has. But, you see, this is what we’ve talked about before, it’s this curse of narrative.

When we read these things and we read her account, we’re like, oh, my god, this is an underdog woman who’s a stripper. But she doesn’t care, she’s proud of who she is. And so she’s going to go along and do something that’s perfectly legal and fine. And then things go bad and she keeps her head, she keeps her wits, and she comes out alive. That’s somebody I root for. There’s agency and narrative. And then there’s villains. And the villain is just like a villain, you know. and he’s a bad guy, and he ends up in jail. And there’s this woman who’s weak and doesn’t have any agency. And so we lose respect for her and we — and we gain respect for Zola because she’s not like that.

But in reality, crimes are being committed and there’s terrible victimhood here. And I — and it’s so — this is what I talk about when I — the narrative sickness that we have. We can’t seem to get past our narrative biases to see how much pain and misery is going on here. And this guy, I mean — ugh, god, you see the mug shot of this guy, you look in his eyes and you’re like, “Oh, yeah, you’re a bad guy. I can see it in your eyes. You got — you got bad guy eyes.”

**John:** He does very much. All right. So what we’re going to talk about in this week’s episode is Whiplash. And specifically, two scenes from Whiplash involve characters with — taking a lot agency but also conflict. And the backbone of any one of these stories that we want to tell is characters in conflict. And Whiplash is a very specific example because it’s just these two kind of sociopaths who have this really complicated relationship over the course of the movie. And the characters are — that you’ll be hearing repeatedly in the show — Miles Teller is the actor who plays Andrew and J.K. Simmons is Fletcher.

So the two scenes that I’m going to be playing for you guys, none of them involve actual drumming or sort of the meat of what this story is which is these intense sessions with a band. So the two scenes I want to focus on first is a family dinner, which is one of the few times where we see Andrew’s character outside of this elite music education school that he’s at. And the second one is a conversation that happens at a jazz club very late in the story, in sort of a third act.

So if you haven’t seen Whiplash at all, some of this won’t make a tremendous amount of sense, but you’ll probably be able to follow along with what’s going on because we’re really focusing on what is the writing on the page and how does that manifest on the screen.

**Craig:** So should we watch it now?

**John:** Yeah, let’s do it. So let’s take a look at the first scene from Whiplash. This is a family dinner scene. So this is Andrew coming home with his father played by Paul Reiser. And it is first starting off at a kitchen and then we’re moving to a dinner table scene where we have a big family around a dinner table. So we’re going to play the audio for it. You’ll get a sense of what’s happening here and then we’re going talk about both the scene at it’s written on the page and what it was actually shot like. So let’s take a listen to that first.

[Audio Playing]

**Man:** Yikes, what did you do to your hand? Is that from drumming?

**Andrew:** Yeah.

**Father:** So how’s it going with the studio band?

**Andrew:** Good. Yeah, I think he likes me more now.

**Father:** And his opinion means a lot to you, doesn’t it?

**Andrew:** Yeah.

**Man:** Want to grab the shakers?

**Man:** Jimbo, overcooked. I can barely chew this.

**Man:** He just left.

**Woman:** So how is the drumming going, Andy?

**Andrew:** Yeah. It’s going really well. I’m the new core drummer.

**Group:** Hey, yeah. Yay!

**Man:** Tom Brady!

**Woman:** Did you hear yet?

**Father:** No. What happened?

**Man:** Travis got named this year’s MVP

**Father:** That’s fantastic, Travis.

**Woman:** And Dustin] is heading up Model UN, soon to be Rhodes Scholar and who knows what all else. And Jim, teacher of the year. I mean, come on, the talent at this table, that is stunning. And Andy, with your drumming.

**Man:** It’s going okay, Andy?

**Andrew:** Yeah, I mean it’s going really, really well. Actually, I’m part of Shaffer’s top jazz orchestra which means it’s the best in the country. And I’m a core member so I’ll start playing in competitions and actually I just found out I’m the youngest person in the entire band.

**Man:** How do you know who wins in a music competition, isn’t it subjective?

**Andrew:** No.

**Man:** Does the studio get you a job?

**Andrew:** No. It’s not an actual studio. It’s just the name of the ensemble. But yeah, it’s a big step forward in my career.

**Man:** Well, I’m so glad you figured it out. It’s a nasty business I am sure. Oh, hey, are you going to tell them about your game last week? Living up to your title?

**Man:** I scored a 93-yard touchdown.

**Man:** School record, school record, school record.

**Father:** That’s great. That’s fantastic.

**Andrew:** It’s Division III. It’s Carlton Football, it’s not even Division II. It’s Division III.

**Man:** You got any friends, Andy?

**Andrew:** No.

**Man:** Oh, why is that?

**Andrew:** I don’t know. I just never really saw the use.

**Man:** Oh, who are you going to play with otherwise? Lennon and McCartney, they were school buddies, am I right?

**Andrew:** Charlie Parker didn’t know anybody until Joe Jones threw a cymbal at his head.

**Man:** So that’s your idea of success, son?

**Andrew:** I think being the greatest musician of the 20th Century is anybody’s idea of success.

**Father:** Dying, broke, and drunk, and full of heroine at the age of 34 is not exactly my idea of success.

**Andrew:** I’d rather die drunk, broke at 34, and have people at a dinner table talk about me than live to be rich and sober at 90 and nobody remember who I was.

**Man:** Ah, but your friends will remember you. That’s the point.

**Andrew:** None of us were friends with Charlie Parker. That’s the point.

**Man:** Travis and Dustin, they have plenty of friends and plenty of purpose.

**Andrew:** I’m sure they’ll make great school board presidents someday.

**Man:** Oh, that’s what this is all about. You think you’re better than us?

**Andrew:** You catch on quick. Are you in Model UN?

**Man:** I got a reply for you, Andrew. You think Carlton football is a joke? Come play with us.

**Andrew:** Four words you will never hear from the NFL.

**Woman:** Who wants dessert?

**Father:** And from Lincoln Center?

**John:** All right. So Craig, had you seen that scene since you saw the movie?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No. So first impressions?

**Craig:** Well, it’s interesting. I love this movie. I remember not liking this particular scene that much. I loved certain parts of it. I remember thinking that there were some transitional bumps. So you know, what we have obviously is we have an insecure guy who is getting beaten up by one father at school. And now, he’s coming home and attempting to crow and build himself back up .And he’s struggling a little bit with his own father. And then with his uncle who is a dick. And so he becomes hostile.

But the — you know, there were some spots where — little transitional spots where I thought, “I’m not quite sure — I’m not sure why this conversation is flowing the way it did.” There are sections that were great and then there were a couple spots that I want to call out and sort of say, “Hmmm.” And I want to look at the pages because I’m wondering if that’s — if it’s different on the page.

**John:** Yeah. So let’s take a look at it. So if you want to read along with us, I will have these links in the show notes. Basically, there’s two PDFs. So this is the Whiplash dinner that we’re looking at. And so the scene starts on page 48, it’s actually scene 49. So INT. NEW JERSEY — JIM’S HOUSE — KITCHEN. EVENING. Jim grabs a platter from the stove, Andrew by his side. Jim asks, “How is it going in studio band?” Andrew says, “Good. I think he likes me more now.” Jim says, “His opinion means a lot to you, doesn’t it?” Jim looks at Andrew, almost accusatory. A moment. “Yeah? Grab the shakers please.”

So let’s look at what this little snippet of scene does because it feels like the kind of thing, like, “Oh, you could just take that out.”

**Craig:** No, you can’t.

**John:** No, you can’t. Because what this is setting up is that even though you have left the school, you have not left the school. And that this movie is about Andrew and Fletcher. And so the very first thing the father asks is, “How’s it going?” And Andrew answers, “Oh, other daddy likes me now.” And —

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s crucially what this movie is about, is this really fucked up relationship between these two characters. And you have to remind the audience that even though we’re not in that physical space anymore, it’s still about that.

**Craig:** Yeah. The character of Andrew’s father, Jim, will become exposed as something of a weakling. And so you have a situation where a boy-man, Andrew, is looking at his own father and thinking, “You’re not special. You’re not strong. You’re not interesting. And in school, I have this other father who is strong and special and interesting but abusive.” And watching him ping pong between these two is remarkable. And so here, Jim is kind of — it’s interesting, he’s saying — when he says, “His opinion means a lot to you, doesn’t it?” And there’s that pause and then Andrew looks at him and says, “Yeah.” There’s — in the text, you see it says, “Jim looks at Andrew almost accusatory,” got it, “a moment. Then Andrew says, ‘Yeah.'”

But what could have gone in parenthesis in front of the “Yeah” is defiant, right? I’m glad, you don’t need it. You know, Damien is directing his own movie, he knows what’s going on here. But there is a defiance there which is “Yeah, not just his opinion means a lot to me. His opinion means more to me than yours.”

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** And you get it. It’s all there, which is, this is what we’re going for. And you know, when you’re writing, you may ask yourself, “How much am I supposed to say?” Remember that sometimes what we have to say is “Yeah.” Real simple. Love it.

**John:** Yeah. So there are moments in this scene that’s to come where — which are very written. Where you definitely sense like, okay, you can sort of feel the writer’s hand there a bit. But so much of Whiplash is just responding to what it actually feels like to be in that moment. And “Yeah” was exactly the right thing to say there.

So let’s move into the dining room. So INT. JIM’S HOUSE — DINING ROOM. NIGHT. Seven people seated at the table. Jim and Andrew, Andrew’s Uncle Frank, Aunt Emma, and 18-year-old cousin Dustin. To Jim, “Jimbo, overcooked. I can barely chew this thing.” Jim laughs along. Andrew watches. There’s an undercurrent to the joking. The power dynamic between the brothers is clear. He just laughs.

So this is all we’re going to ever see of this family again. They’re never going to be around us again. And so I remember when I talked to Damien Chazelle about this scene at this Director’s Forum, I was like, “There must have been a lot of pressure to cut this scene.” He said, “Absolutely.” Because like it’s a lot of actors to suddenly bring in. It’s a whole new location. You’re shooting around a table which seems like “Oh, that should be really simple.” It’s actually really complicated to shoot around a table. It takes so long because you’re matching eye lines.

But he thought it was really important to see Andrew outside of the school and sort of have Andrew try to define and defend himself. And we’re about to move into that section.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, first of all, you bring up this fascinating thing that people don’t know. And that is, what’s hard to shoot and what’s not? Shooting around a table is brutal. It’s absolutely brutal. And it is entirely about eye lines. So the eye lines are also angles. Every time somebody moves their head to look at somebody, that’s a new angle.

So you have Andrew in this point looking at his father, looking at his uncle, looking at his cousins. Those are all angles. You have his father looking at everybody, looking at his brother, looking at Andrew. Everyone is looking at everybody, it’s endless. Anyway, the point was very well directed, very well done. And it was all about the choices of who looks where and when. I love the way that Damien does this.

We need to learn something about Uncle Frank’s relationship with Jim. And all he gives us is, “This is overcooked.” But he’s like being jovial about it, “It’s overcooked. I can barely chew this.” And then his brother Jim, Andrew’s father, just sort of like sheepishly laughs. And then Uncle Frank says, “He just laughs.” And Jim keeps laughing. It’s the most — it’s the most wonderful alpha dog/beta dog moment and you get everything. And you know, and you can see in the scene, that Andrew is watching and he hates it. He hates it because his father is a beta dog and he doesn’t want to be one. He wants to be the ultimate alpha. This entire scene is about masculinity. Bad masculinity. It’s really fun.

**John:** I want to circle back to what you said about shooting around a table because we’ll put up links to these clips as well. We’ll put them on YouTube or some place so people can see them. And what you’ll notice now that we’ve said it is that when Travis comes into the scene, he doesn’t take a seat at the end of the table which would probably be the natural place for him to sit. Instead, he sits right beside his brother. It’s basically so you don’t have to establish a new eye line for everyone around that table to look at each other.

So Travis gets to share a two-shot with his brother and doesn’t have to have his own separate eye line for everything, for everyone to look at him down at the end of the table. That saved them probably eight hours of filming to have him sit in that chair rather that at the end of the table.

**Craig:** I’ll tell you what else it saved them, production design. Because if he’s sitting at the end of the table, I got to see the other part of that room. And then I got to dress it and what does that look like? Ugh. No, smart.

**John:** Because who is important in this scene? Well, Andrew is important in the scene. Like Andrew is the heart of everything in the scene. And so the only people who need really careful coverage are people who are going to spar with him directly. So his father is the second most important character in that scene because his father is this character we’re going to follow out through the rest of this movie.

The other guys, they’re not so important. All they’re there to do is to set up stuff for Andrew to hit back. And that is why we’re not getting into huge amounts of depth about who these other people are. The aunt is just a woman who says some lines and that’s how it should be. Because if the aunt talked about what she did in knitting today or sort of what this other thing that happened in the world is, it wouldn’t help us tell the story of Andrew.

**Craig:** Right. And just as we did with Scott Frank’s pages, let’s just keep note in our minds of how much has gone by here. We’re only about a half-a-page in and I know — I know how Andrew thinks about his father. I know that Andrew and his father are locked in a battle of wills that Andrew is winning. I know that Uncle Frank is the alpha dog to Jim. And I know that Andrew knows this and hates it.

**John:** And so let’s — first line from Aunt Emma, “And how’s your drumming going, Andy?” So first off, she’s saying Andy rather than Andrew. So she’s diminishing him. “Your drumming,” it’s like, oh, it feels like something a little kid does. So she’s not taking him seriously. So she’s trying to engage with him but she’s just, you know — you can very definitely see his reaction to what that is.

And actually, in the scene description he says, “Andrew put on the spot hesitates. But then excited, ‘Well, actually it’s going really well. I’m now the core drum,’ the door opens.” So he started to be able to define himself and then Travis walks in.

**Craig:** Right. Now, here is the little area where I got a little nervous. And even in the scene, I remember even watching the movie I felt this, which is like I’m feeling a little bit of a disconnect. I know what’s happening here. I know that they’re going to be basically diminishing what he does, “Oh, your little drumming thing.” You know?

But what I was nervous about was a disconnect from their attitude and what I think would be real. At least one of them would have some moderated opinion here. He’s going to the equivalent of the Berklee School for Music. That’s kind of what’s implied in the movie, it’s — or Juilliard. I mean, it’s the top of the top. He’s already achieved something fairly remarkable by going there. It seemed not to match up for me in terms of reality that every — I mean, even Aunt Emma would be like this. I would have much preferred Aunt Emma to pipe in and say, “Well, no, it’s a very good school.” And then Uncle Frank mows her down. But I got a little worried there.

**John:** So let’s — this will be a situation where we’ll look at the difference between what’s on the page and what is actually in the film or what made it through the cut. There was a little bit more, I think, along what you’re asking for there in the written pages. So — but also it was distinguished between like, if you are a violin prodigy at Juilliard, people are going to perceive you one way. Whereas, if you play drums, they’re going to perceive you a different way. And so I think, singling out the drumming is a useful way of thinking about it because we don’t think of drummers being musicians in the same way.

**Craig:** I guess, but he is — it’s jazz. Like, if he were trying to drum in a band, I totally get it. But jazz, everyone, I think, views jazz as the academic version of music. It’s the fanciest for drummers, I think, even more so than classical music, so I don’t know. It’s just felt a little — it just felt a little broad. Yeah, I thought it was a little broad.

**John:** So let’s take a look at Aunt Emma’s next block here. “And Dustin heading up the Model UN, soon to be Rhodes Scholar, who knows what? And Jim, teacher of the year. I mean, look at the talent at the table, it’s stunning. And Andrew, with his drumming.” And so she’s trying to include Andrew in the conversation about how remarkable everyone is and singled out Andrew as well but it’s not working. And you can definitely see Andrew’s reaction. And that’s Uncle Frank’s next line, “Yeah, you said that was going okay, Andy.” That sense of like, you know, “Oh, we didn’t forget about you. We are going to circle back to you.”

**Craig:** Right. And so here, we’re getting it. I mean this is — we now know what’s going on, which is Uncle Frank, alpha dog, is going to boast about his boys. Emma is going to boast about her boys. The boasting has been over the top, for me at least. [laughs] And it’s interesting, because — I don’t want to seem like I’m down on the scene because I love the other scene. I love this movie. But there was something a little pushed about the bragging. Where it goes, though, once we get past the push about the bragging, I got very, very happy.

**John:** Yeah. So this is the section that got cut out. And so I want to focus on this. So I’m looking at the bottom of page 50, top of page 51. Uncle Frank asks, “So does the studio help you get a job?” Andrew says, “It’s not that — the studio, it’s just the name of the ensemble. And yes, it’s a big step forward in my career.” So he does say that in the movie.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Uncle Frank says, “I’m just curious how you make your money as a drummer after graduating.” That’s a reasonable question, I think, for that uncle to ask. Andrew glances at his dad wondering if maybe he’ll chime in, in his defense. But no, dad stays meek and quiet. Aunt Emma, trying to be helpful, “I saw a TV commercial for credit reports where a young man was playing the drums. You could do that.”

**Craig:** I’m glad they cut that one out.

**John:** Yeah. “Yes. Or the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, but the credit reports gig is a wonderful backup.” And so this is the first time where he’s actually just being a dick in the scene. And that’s an important thing to remember is that you have to think about who your character is in that scene. And Andrew is a dick. And we’ve not had a chance to sort of see how much of a dick he is because he has always been out-dicked by Fletcher. And this is a chance to see him actually being the asshole that he kind of deeply is in his heart. And we have to have some new characters to show that with.

**Craig:** Yeah. He’s also internalizing what Fletcher has done to him. He is copying. He is copying his teacher’s voice. He is copying the cruelty in his teacher’s voice. Now, at this point it’s warranted. We’re actually rooting along with Andrew. And what’s interesting about this scene, my favorite part of the scene, is what’s going to come next which is when Andrew stops being rootable for. So at first I get it. Now, I understood why they cut the TV commercial line up because it made Aunt Emma too dumb. And it was too much in the direction of what I already thought was a little bit too much in the direction of.

But Andrew says in the script, “Yes, it’s a big step forward in my career.” They skipped a couple of lines. And Uncle Franks just goes, “Well, I’m glad you have it figured out. It’s a nasty business, I’m sure.” Then he says to Travis, “Okay. You got to tell them about your game last week.” It was really pushing pretty hard. I would have — I would have loved for one of the kids to sort of pipe in on their own, because again we got back to “I love bragging.” [laughs] “Kids, talk more about you.” It just felt a little — it felt a little broad again.

**John:** Yeah. Yet we need to be able to get to moments where we can reveal Andrew just like how much of a dick Andrew can be. And so we need to find a way to get to a place where Andrew feels pushed enough that at least to his way of thinking it’s reasonable to go after these doofuses and sort of point them out. So he’s saying, “He plays for Carlton. It’s Division III. It’s not even Division II.” So basically like — he’s essentially saying like, “How dare you compare what he’s doing to what I’m doing?” Or not even really compare what we’re doing together because like he’s playing at like the amateurs and I’m playing in the pros and the difference then.

Ultimately, where this is all going to is allowing Andrew to state the question which we’re going to see again in the follow-up scene is what is he actually doing this for? What is the goal of being in the school? And the Charlie Parker story is what he’s going to get to here.

**Craig:** Yeah. When he announces it’s Division III, that’s the moment where — and aim for these moments, folks, when you’re writing these conflicts via discussion conversation — that’s the drop your fork. So everything has been survivable barbs. When he says it’s Division III, that’s a flat out insult. He’s literally saying you play for a lame team. It’s not real football. Stop bragging. You suck. I’m good.

Now, interestingly, there’s a line that’s in the script that’s not in the movie. And I want it to be in the movie. So in the script, Andrew explains, “He plays for Carlton. It’s Division III. It’s not even Division II.” Then you see silence. Shock around table. Then Andrew says, “The tilapia is delicious by the way.” And Uncle Frank, in parenthesis, (I’ll get you back for that), “You got a lot of friends, Andy?” Now, this moment, the tilapia line is cut out, so —

**John:** I’m happy the tilapia line is cut out. You want the tilapia line back in?

**Craig:** I do. And here’s why. Because I need a moment for Uncle Frank — I need to see Uncle Frank get angry. I don’t see him get angry in the scene. I see him get angry here because Andrew is being a real snot. He’s trying to like say, “There, I just dropped a bomb. But now moving on, tilapia, everyone. I’m in control of this discussion.” And I want — and I want Uncle Frank to go, “No you’re not. No, I’m in control.”

**John:** The tilapia felt sitcom to me. It felt too punch line. There’s something about how specific the word tilapia is that it just — it made it too clear to me that Andrew knew he was being a dick. And that he was peacocking in front of everybody else where it wasn’t — I didn’t think he was quite ready to be at that place yet.

**Craig:** Well, I would say to you that the language there is not what I’m in love with. Let’s change — I mean, let’s rewrite, Damien. We can change that to whatever. What I’m in love with is the fact that he thinks he just got away with it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And that Uncle Frank, I need — the moment that I like the least in the scene is where Uncle Frank says, “You got a lot of friends, Andy?” It comes off as a non-sequitur. It doesn’t come off as mean. It doesn’t come off as revenge. It doesn’t come off as a challenge. It almost comes off as vaguely conversational and kind of odd. So I needed that moment where I saw Uncle Frank make a decision to go, “Okay. Let’s go.” And that is a specific response to what you just did.

**John:** Yeah. So from this moment on, this scene plays as if it’s a fight between Andrew and his uncle. Of course, it’s really about his father and of course the other, you know, cousins there as well will chime in. But it’s really about this sort of, like, Andrew when he sort of feels like he’s backed into a corner will come out stabbing and slashing. And that’s just the basic nature of him. And it’s important, I think, for us to see it at this point in the movie that he actually is this kind of character. And that, you know, the hard worker we saw earlier on has become a bit of a sociopath. And I think it’s an important sort of change to see

So when he talks about, you know, people know who Charlie Parker is because of all these things that happened. And that he’s not worried about dying broke, drunk, and full of heroine at 34. Like, that’s sort of his fantasy. And that’s an important thing for us as an audience to see. And it’s the kind of thing that in less capable hands, the character would just say it to somebody or would just say to the girlfriend or to somewhere else. But Damien has created a scene that gets him to say this. And I think that’s the important part of the scene.

**Craig:** Yeah. I love that this is a thesis statement about who I am and who I want to be that is presented in the guise of “I don’t want to be you. See, you, you people are all Division III. And I am going to be great. You’re all concentrating on Model UN and Division III. That’s fake and fake. I’m going to be real.” And it’s so much more interesting hearing someone articulate what their vision is for themself if it’s done in opposition to somebody else as opposed to just sharing a thought. I completely agree. I love that this is phrased in conflict.

And then a wonderful relationship thing happens here where Jim, his dad, chimes in in support of Uncle Frank and makes a point that frankly is important and valuable. This is where Damien, I think, does something brilliant because Andrew is sparing with Uncle Frank and making pretty good points. Points that, frankly, I agree with. Until Jim points out that Charlie Parker, Andrew’s hero, died broke, drunk, and full heroine at 34. And that’s true. And this is what we talk about a lot, that the argument of your movie has to be something that can actually be argued.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** And here’s the good argument right there.

**John:** Absolutely. You know, to be able to put those words in people’s mouths to really state what your thesis is is so crucial. Now, later on, on page 52, there’s stuff that got cut out here. And you could totally see why it got cut out here. So Andrew does say in the movie, “No. None of us were Charlie Parker’s friends. That’s the whole point.” And here’s what got cut out. “Well, there’s such a thing as feeling loved and included. I prefer to feel hated and cast out. It gives me purpose.” Jim says, “That’s ridiculous. You don’t mean that.”

But the movie does jump back in to say, “Travis and Dustin have plenty of friends. I’d say they have plenty of purpose.” So we cut out those three lines and I’m so happy that those lines got out because Andrew saying, “I prefer to feel hated and cast out. It gives me purpose.” I don’t believe that the character actually understands that yet or is able to articulate it in that way.

**Craig:** I agree. It is too revealing. It involves too much self-awareness. And in a strange way, if you’re aware enough to say that then you’re aware enough to change. Because actually, the truth is when Jim replies, “That’s ridiculous. You don’t mean that.” I agree with Jim. That is ridiculous and you don’t mean that. So I’m glad that that isn’t there. But I love this when Andrew says, “I’d rather die broke and drunk at 34 and have people at a dinner table somewhere talk about it than die rich and sober at 90 and have no one remember me.” That’s the movie. Right? He’s literally just told you, this is the argument of the movie.

And what’s wonderful about this movie and why I think it had an extended life beyond what you would expect from a small independent film is that that question is worth discussing. It’s the kind of thing people walk out of the movie theater, go somewhere, have a cup of coffee or drink, and debate it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because it’s actually worth debating. It’s really interesting. But it’s also where you start to see that Andrew, because he is saying it to his father and literally saying, “I’d rather be what I want to be than what you’re going to be.” It’s where Andrew starts to turn from “I’m making a point that you can all agree with” to “I’m becoming a bad person in front of you. I’m becoming cruel now.” And this is where it escalates.

**John:** Yup. Also very notable that the scene ends as filmed with Jim’s line, “And from Lincoln Center.” But the scene as written goes on quite a bit longer. So there’s an extra sixth-eighths of a page. It says, a moment of silence, Andrew looks at his dad, his dad just looks right back. A simmering anger in his eyes, Andrew turns to the others and slowly says, “In 1967, a scientist named Laszlo Polgar decides to prove talent isn’t about what you’re born with but about conditioning. He has three kids Susan, Sophia, and Judith and he gets them practicing chess for hours and hours before they could even talk. Fifteen years later, Susan and Sophia are the two top female players in the world. And Judith is on her way to entering the history books as the greatest female chess master of all time.” And so Andrew says this thing and — okay. But that wasn’t the scene we were just in. And I’m really glad that got cut out.

**Craig:** Yeah. It is the kind of thing that you probably don’t know until you know, you know. So we have the benefit of seeing the scene. And I think we all do this. There are times when we think, I know what to do here. I know how to drive this home. Because you put yourselves schizophrenically into each character as you write each line. And so I ping pong around as I’m moving through and I get back to Andrew and I can feel how frustrated he is at what his father just said. And I want him to deliver the killing blow.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** And what I think is wonderful that Damien found is that, in fact, the killing blow that should be delivered, the one that’s more dramatic is the one from Andrew’s father. That is, in fact, the moment where Andrew gets up and walks out. And we understand his relationship with that man is now essentially severed. That he’s — because what Jim had said to him is, “You can’t do it.” And what’s fascinating is that’s exactly what he’s hearing from Fletcher, “You can’t do it.” They’re both — they have both now found an agreement for different reasons. And so brilliant choice to end, “And from Lincoln Center?” because what leads into it is Andrew saying something very, very mean to Travis. Because Travis is actually being —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know, I mean look, that was insulting and unnecessary. It wasn’t like Travis was tooting his own horn, his dad was doing it for him. And he says, “You think Carlton football is a joke? Come play with us.” And Andrew says, “Four words you will never hear from the NFL.”

**John:** And that’s a closer line. Like, the scene really can’t continue after that line. It does feel like that is the button on the end of the scene.

**Craig:** Well, it’s almost the button because you’re like, “Oh, yeah. He just dropped the mic.” And then his father walks over and drops a bigger mic. “And from Lincoln Center?” Like who is it that you think you are all of a sudden? You can say that you want to be great but you’re not. You’re just you right now.

**John:** Yeah. I did not actually connect the “And from Lincoln Center?” to the NFL as well as you did. And so it always felt like a bit of weird floater for me that the Lincoln Center line there. Particularly because there are cuts early on the scene to talk more about Lincoln Center.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so it’s not the ideal out for the scene as it was finally staged. I could imagine an out which is something that Jim says. I agree it should be Jim’s last line there to cement what the conflict is, it’s going to keep going forward in the movie after this dinner table scene. But I just loved this scene.

**Craig:** Well, this is — by the way, this is what critics never understand. So let’s talk about the ticky tacky argument that must have gone on in the editing room. That last line I think is terrific because I think it’s really important for the character and I think it’s important for the relationship for Jim to point out “You aren’t great yet. And so maybe be a little less arrogant.” But the area that sets it up is buried in some stuff that isn’t working. So that stuff has to go. So you sometimes make a trade. And what was working so — what was working at 100 percent is now only working at 80 percent because you’re trying to get rid of something that was only working at 10 percent.

Well, down the line, someone watches this movie, and I say this all the time, they watch it with the belief that everything is intentional and it’s not. And they may go, “I don’t know. That scene just ended with, it could have been better. It just could have been better a line.” Well, ugh, you don’t understand. There are compromises, there must be compromises because not everything is going to work, and even the things that do work sometimes get a little reduced. I still love that line.

**John:** Yes, I do think though if Damien had known in shooting it that like he was going to be cutting out the other stuff, he would have found a way to make Jim’s last line work better because he would have also known it was the last line of the scene, so it was just feels like a bit of a weird floater to me. Or just some other moment of eye contact between them that could have just done the same job.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Yeah. Still a great scene. So let’s take a look at another one that involves our two main characters, our protagonist and antagonist, Andrew and Fletcher. And this is a quite late in the story. So Fletcher has been dismissed from the school. Andrew sees him at a jazz club. And so the video clip which we’ll link to will show sort of the whole sequence which is basically Andrew spotting Fletcher as Fletcher is finishing up a piano solo. It’s the first time, I think, we’ve seen Fletcher actually perform, as just not conduct, but actually perform, and they ultimately will get together and sit at a table and have a conversation.

So you will remember this conversation we see in the movie because it’s where Andrew asks the question, “Where is the line?” Basically asking the question going back to the Charlie Parker story, if someone hadn’t thrown that cymbal at his head, would he have become Charlie Parker? And that’s the thesis that — not just trying to state, it’s like without that cymbal being thrown at his head, he would never have pushed himself to become Charlie Parker that we know. Andrew asks the question, “Well, where is that line?” Where do you push too far that Charlie Parker just walks away?

And so let’s start listening at the end of the sort of a long monologue from Fletcher where he’s talking about this idea of Charlie Parker and his frustration with society.

**Fletcher:** There are no two words in the English language more harmful than “good job.”

**Andrew:** But is there a line? You know, maybe you go too far and you discouraged the next Charlie Parker from ever becoming Charlie Parker?

**Fletcher:** No, man, no because the next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged. The truth is, Andrew, I never really had a Charlie Parker. But I tried. I actually fucking tried, and that’s more than most people ever do. And I will never apologize for how I tried.

**Andrew:** See you later.

**Fletcher:** Hey, Andrew, listen, I have no idea how you’re going to take this, but the band I’m leading for JVC, the drummer is not cutting it. Do you understand what I’m saying?

**Andrew:** No.

**Fletcher:** I’m using the studio band play list. You know, Caravan, Whiplash. I need somebody who really knows those charts.

**Andrew:** What about Ryan Connolly?

**Fletcher:** All Connolly ever was to me was incentive for you.

**Andrew:** Tanner?

**Fletcher:** Tanner switched to pre-med. I guess he got discouraged. Hey, take the weekend to think about it.

**John:** Obviously the clip will show the whole sequence as we go through it, and there’s really great stuff in the head of this scene, but I really want to focus on the end of the scene and the discussion, the decision between the two characters, and the choices they’re having to make as they go through the end of the scene. So let’s take a look at, if you’re looking at the pages, at the top of page 88 is where we’re starting with Andrew’s question of, “But do you think there’s a line, you know, where you discourage the next Charlie Parker from becoming Charlie Parker?” This is, again, stating the thesis of the film. Fletcher says, “No, because the next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged.”

Andrew takes this in a moment, and here’s stuff that got cut. And again, I think it’s so useful to see what was on the page versus what was actually shot. Andrew used to ask, “And you, are you back to playing now?” Fletcher used to say, “Not really, here and there. The playing never interested me. I never wanted to be Charlie Parker. I wanted to be the man who made Charlie Parker. The kid who discovers some scrawny kid, pushed and prodded him, shaped him into something great, and then said to the world, check this out, the best mother fucking solo you ever heard.”

Andrew asks, “Where is Charlie Parker then? Sean Casey?” The name hits Fletcher. Fletcher looks at Andrew, who immediately regrets bringing the name up. Why? Because even after everything, the sight of Fletcher hurting affects him. There’s more stuff here. So basically we go through the whole Sean Casey of it all who’s the kid who committed suicide. We skip all that stuff out, and instead we just leave it with Fletcher reflecting on, “I never had my Charlie Parker,” like he doesn’t even say that he was trying to create it, not trying to be it, he makes it clear that he was trying to have a student who would be a Charlie Parker, and he never did.

And instead Damien just let’s — sort of the eye contact and the look between them tell more of that scene.

**Craig:** Yes. It’s really a very smart excision. First, of note is that in the dinner scene, we talked about this question, is it better to be great, or is it better to die you know, 90, and sober, and rich?

And that is a great argument worth having, and people had it. And then the gift of this movie is that it gives you another one. And it’s this one, which is must you forge greatness and fire, or is there a way to create greatness with love and support? And can in fact love and support backfire, can in fact forging someone in fire backfire? And great topic, and well worth debating. And the movie doesn’t answer the question for you which I think is terrific. In fact, Damien, I met Damien at a discussion that was moderated by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, and I think the topic was essentially ambiguity. What do we do about this, and how intentional is all the rest? It was a really interesting discussion.

So you have that, that’s a challenge there. And then the thing is, Fletcher has certainty. There is no debate in Fletcher’s mind. In his mind, it’s almost tautological, we would call this, begging the question in philosophy structuring your argument in support of an answer by assuming that the answer is part of the argument. But that’s the way he is. No. The next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged.

Now the rest of what happens here is understandable. We are always trying to guess how much the audience needs to get the point. And in this case, I think Damien wrote a lot of really interesting things to make us get this point that Fletcher was never about being supportive and teaching a group of kids to play some songs. He was always about finding that person who needed the cymbal thrown at his head, throwing the cymbal at his head, and creating the next great thing.

But the truth is, as good as the acting is in this moment, and as good as the dialogue is later on, all you needed was for Fletcher to go from the top of 88, “No, because the next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged,” all the way down to the bottom of 88. “The truth is, I don’t know if I ever had a Charlie Parker,” regret, “but I tried,” and that’s it. We get it. Perfect. Perfect cut.

**John:** Yeah, “I tried,” and “I will never apologize,” I think that’s the crucial thing, too, is that we should sort of back up and talk about sort of what information the characters have going into this. So Andrew testified against Fletcher basically, did agree that Fletcher had done bad things. There was an investigation and Andrew had cooperated with that investigation. Andrew knew that Fletcher had been let go from the school.

What Andrew doesn’t know is whether Fletcher knows that he was part of the process because he should have been kept out of it. So he has a lot of questions about Fletcher. Does Fletcher know what I did? And so the top half of that scene you’ll see there’s a little bit more of that sort of like probing. And what didn’t make it into the final cut was really more of those questions about sort of like what actually happened and sort of how much does this guy actually know about what my role in this was.

Most of that got dropped out of the actual cut, so that what it seems like this scene is doing is for these two characters, it’s like these two warriors who meet off the battlefield, and actually can have a conversation about like, “Oh, hey, remember that war?” to some degree, and that’s what the scene seems to be about.

What I think is so smart about it is that this is actually a misdirection yet again, because it seems like Fletcher is being totally honest about what he’s trying to do, and sort of like he’s sort of coming clean about sort of how he’s built and how he’s wired. But as we go into the next beat here, you see he wants something from Fletcher. And what it seems like he wants is, kid, you’re really good, please play in my band. So as written on the page, as we go outside, Andrew and Fletcher exit, they stand for a second, look at one another in awkward silence. Andrew says, “Nice seeing you.” Fletcher nods. Beat. Andrew turns, about to head off when, “Look, I don’t know how you’ll take this. The band I’m leading for JVC, our drummer isn’t cutting it. Do you understand?” “No.” “I’m using the studio band playlist, Whiplash, Caravan. I need a replacement who already knows those charts inside-out.” Andrew looks at him. You can’t be serious.

So it’s turning the tables where it seems like Fletcher is extending an olive branch, he’s saying, like, hey, you really are that good. He’s trying to put the past behind them, and more importantly, he’s validating Andrew who’s not had any validation as a musician for a long time here.

**Craig:** Yeah. Fletcher is a master of the mind game. And in this case, what Damien is doing is he’s having Fletcher mind game us in the audience as well. Because what Damien understands is we are connected to basic narrative understanding, and we believe we’re watching Rocky, and we believe Rocky needs to win at the end, even though of course, Rocky loses, but we need Rocky to at least make a good showing, right?

So Andrew has quit, he is done. I think his father is happy about this. And Fletcher gives him this speech that’s really just, well, it’s a discussion about his philosophy. They’re no longer teacher and student. There’s no power and balance. In fact, in a weird way, Andrew has the power because he’s come to watch this guy play. Assumingly he’s getting paid. And Fletcher says, “All I ever wanted was to find Charlie Parker.”

So now, they walk outside, and now Fletcher goes, hey, my drummer isn’t cutting it. Now, you and I both know as creative people that when someone comes to us and says, “Hey, my writer, they’re not cutting it,” there is a little dopamine blast that goes on in our brain, which goes, oh, so this is about me. Maybe I’m the one you want. And it’s very, very attractive.

So even though Andrew doesn’t quite understand it at first, when he gets it, you can see the dopamine, you can see that release. And then Damien’s really smart because Andrew says, “What about Ryan Connolly?” who was the drummer ahead of him — the seat ahead of him. And Fletcher says, “What about him? All he was was your incentive.” Like, I think, don’t you get it, idiot? You’re going to be my Charlie Parker. I think you could be my Charlie Parker. And it’s this juicy, juicy bait on the end of a hook. And Andrew just bites.

**John:** Yes, he does bite. So the relationship between these two characters is described as sort of like a really fucked up love story. And I think this is one of the scenes that’s sort of most fucked up about it where this is like, well, what about those other girls you were sleeping with? Like, oh, they didn’t mean anything to me. I was only thinking about you this whole time.

And that’s essentially what Fletcher is saying to Andrew is that these were just bait to sort of to get you to work harder. And that’s why they were never anything to you, they never meant anything to me. You are the only person who could possibly do this thing. And that’s incredibly attractive to this kid who really wants to be Charlie Parker. He really wants someone to tell him he is Charlie Parker, and that he’s not just good but he’s like once in a lifetime great. And so this is exactly what he needs to hear, exactly when he needs to hear it, and Fletcher knows it.

And so it’s interesting that Fletcher does say, “We’re rehearsing next Thursday, why don’t you take the weekend to think about it?” And in the script, on the page, Andrew thinks about it and says, “I don’t need to.” But this is a line that was scripted. I’m sure they shot it, but it’s good you shoot it because then you cannot use it. In this case, they did not use it. It lets the cut be the answer where you see, you know, you end the scene on a question mark, and then the far side of the cut is the answer which is basically like I’m so excited, I’m going to do this thing.

**Craig:** Yes. So on the other side of the cut we see Andrew opening his closet and pulling out his old drums. So we get his answer, we know his answer. What’s fascinating about Fletcher’s appeal here is that he doesn’t mean any of it. He’s lying. He is lying in order to set Andrew up, to punish Andrew, because he believes Andrew is the reason he got fired. He’s being vindictive, there is nothing about what he’s doing here that is true to any notion that Andrew could be the next great one. He doesn’t believe that at all, which sets up this remarkable ending, where Andrew becomes that, in spite of, and yet, also because of.

And that’s why the ending of the movie is so fascinating because it’s not like Fletcher’s plan really was to do that. It happened because Fletcher was awful, and this kid came out of that cruelty as great. And then, of course, the great question of the end of the movie is, what now?” Are they friends now? I don’t think so.

**John:** Oh, I don’t think so at all.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that Andrew moves far beyond Fletcher, who returns to a life of obscurity, and that’s the greatest tragedy of all. But also, the question is, Andrew, who ends up in his moment of glory, playing all of his blood and sweat all over the place, what will happen to him? His father is shut out completely in a shot that is almost a direct lift of Diane Keaton having the door closed on her at the end of The Godfather. So his father is gone. He’s cut strings there. He’s gone far beyond Fletcher. He doesn’t need him anymore. Now what happens to this guy? Does he end up dead at 32? It’s a fascinating movie. And this scene is another great example like the Scott Frank scene of people fighting without fighting.

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** It’s terrific.

**John:** So we only focused on the end of the scene, but we’ll have the pages up for the whole scene, and the video for it. And I would strongly encourage people to look at both the scene as shot and the page, and really compare them in real time because what you’ll notice is that I think because Damien is the writer/director, he felt file with actors making huge changes to how they were saying those lines of dialogue as long as they were getting the effect across. And one of the most notable things I noticed was, tense changes, and so a lot of things that were written in the present tense in the script are spoken in the past tense in the movie, and it totally makes sense. It all tracks.

What you have to be really mindful of if you’re in production is if you have two characters who are speaking to each other, and you’re cutting those as singles, lines of dialogue might not make sense anymore because people are speaking in different tenses. So are they talking about a theoretical future, or are they talking about a thing that happened in the past? In many cases, especially J. K. Simmons has changed a lot of what those tenses are, and it totally works in the course of the movie, but you have to know your text really, really well as the writer and the director to feel comfortable with an actor making all those changes.

**Craig:** No question. And I think that he did that thing that some writers fail to do, which is transition successfully from the guy who wrote the script, to now I’m the guy directing the script. He treated the script the way he should, which I think was very respectfully, but also with flexibility. And he did a terrific job. I really enjoyed that movie.

**John:** Yes. So that was two sequences from Whiplash. Thank you, Damien Chazelle, for writing your great movie. We’ll have links in the show notes for the script pages, and also links out to the video clips so you can see what the scenes actually look like when they were shot. Craig, it’s time for One Cool Things. What is your One Cool Thing this week?

**Craig:** Well, today, my One Cool Thing is in my frequent category of neurological advances, but this one is amazing. This one actually could change a lot. So one of the problems with treating brain illness, whether it’s cancer or other kinds of disease, is that there’s something called the blood brain barrier, and the blood brain barrier is a mechanism that protects the brain from being affected by whatever the hell you throw into your body at any given moment.

Obviously, we know that some molecules go through the blood brain barrier, that’s why they work on us like you know, heroin, but a lot don’t. And this becomes very frustrating because a lot of pharmaceuticals are really big molecules, and they just don’t go through that barrier at all. So what ends up happening, when you’ve got something, for instance, a cancer in the brain, and you want to treat it with chemotherapy, you can’t because the chemo won’t get through the blood brain barrier.

So what these folks have done in Canada, led by a guy with the best name ever, Dr. Todd Mainprize.

**John:** Love it.

**Craig:** Yeah, if this works, Todd will get the main prize. So Todd Mainprize and his team in Toronto have come up with this remarkable concept where they introduce a particular chemical into the blood, and then they use ultrasound to expand that chemical as it’s moving through the blood brain barrier, and open up tiny little tears in the blood brain barrier that they can then get medicine through. And it’s really targeted, and it’s just kind of amazing.

And if it works, well, you’re going to see major reduction, I think, in terminal brain cancers. I think this could be truly amazing. And of course, when they try and take a cancer out of somebody’s brain, it’s invasive, you know. Sometimes the surgery itself is permanently debilitating. So I don’t know. I mean this is a crazy one, but it could work, it could really work and it would change the game. So very excited, congratulations Dr. Todd Mainprize. You have the main prize of today. You are my One Cool Thing.

**John:** Very cool. My One Cool Thing is called what3words, and it is a system for mapping the entire surface of the earth and providing coordinates that are actually described by three words. And so what they’ve done is essentially they’ve taken the entire surface of the earth and broke it into 57 trillion squares that are about three-meters by three-meters, and so that’s really quite small. But 57 trillion seems like a huge number, but it’s actually a number that could be described with a combination of any three words. And so the computer system is actually assigned a word to each of those squares on the surface of the earth, so you are able to then say like I am at alpha dog hypotenuse, and that is where I am. And it is really a fascinating system, and it makes sort of similar to like providing a URL or sort of a short code for any place in the real physical world, and it seems like a really ingenious system for doing that. So I’m going to link out to what3words.com which will show you how they’re doing it, and provide interactive maps so you can actually figure out where you are, and what the words are for the place that you are currently at. So it really is quite clever and I’m surprised it hasn’t happened before now, but it seems very smart.

So our live show on December 9th will take place at Tides Vivid Snail. And literally you can download the app and put in Tides Vivid Snail and it will give you directions to that specific venue.

**Craig:** That’s so much better than like an address. So much better.

**John:** Yeah, and why this hasn’t happened before? I don’t know, but it seems like a really, really smart idea. So a friend of ours who works in mapping sent this through and it seems just like a very clever way to do things.

**Craig:** Brilliant.

**John:** What’s interesting is that three-meters by three-meters square is small enough that like our house has a bunch of different squares, and so like if I’m out in the office, that’s a different square than the kitchen is. And so it’s a really very specific thing.

**Craig:** Yeah, three-meters by three-meters, that’s basically 10 square feet. That’s amazing.

**John:** Yeah. And it’s fascinating that you could actually think about mapping all the surface of the earth to that, but of course you could. So we have the technology now to do that. So I’m excited by this as a possibility.

**Craig:** We got to figure out how to use this for D&D because we’re basically D&Ding the world now because it’s becoming a grid —

**John:** Absolutely. Everything is on a square grid. Our grid that we’ll play at on Sunday, it will be five-foot squares, but this is similar to that.

**Craig:** Similar. All right, very good, very cool.

**John:** All right. That is our show this week. Our outro this week is by Kim Atle. If you have an outro you would like us to use, please send us an email at ask@johnaugust.com with a link to your outro. ask@johnaugust.com is also the place to send question to us. We love to answer questions, and we’ll do so in a future episode. If you have short questions for me, or for Craig, I am on Twitter, @johnaugust, Craig is @clmazin. You can find our show on iTunes. We are just Scriptnotes. Search for Scriptnotes. That’s also where you’ll find the Scriptnotes app which lets you get to all the back episodes of Scriptnotes.

To register for the back episodes of Scriptnotes and to get special episodes like the Drew Goddard episode, just go to scriptnotes.net.

A reminder that we have USB drives with all the back episodes as well, so you can get all 200 episodes of the show before now on USB drives shipped to your house, which is handy. Lots of people have been using those. A reminder that our live show is January 9th and you should get tickets. They will be at the Writers Guild Foundation website, wgfoundation.org, and we look forward to seeing so many of you there.

**Craig:** Excellent.

**John:** Great. Thanks for a fun episode.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**John:** All right, bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [Buy your tickets now for the 2015 Scriptnotes Holiday Show on December 9th](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/scriptnotes-holiday-live-show-with-john-august-and-craig-mazin) with guests [Riki Lindhome, Natasha Leggero](http://www.cc.com/shows/another-period) and [Malcolm Spellman](http://johnaugust.com/2015/malcolm-spellman-a-study-in-heat)
* [The true story behind ‘Zola,’ the epic Twitter story too crazy to be real](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/11/02/the-true-story-behind-zola-the-epic-twitter-story-too-crazy-to-be-real/)
* [Whiplash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiplash_(2014_film)) on Wikipedia
* [Whiplash, family dinner scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSDmo-gJ8XY&feature=youtu.be), and [the PDF](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/WhiplashDinner.pdf)
* [Whiplash, jazz club scene, Script vs Screen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kunUvYIJtHM&feature=youtu.be), and [the PDF](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/WhiplashClub.pdf)
* [Sunnybrook doctor first to perform blood-brain barrier procedure using focused ultrasound waves](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/sunnybrook-doctor-first-to-perform-blood-brain-barrier-procedure-using-focused-ultrasound-waves/article27171384/)
* [what3words](http://what3words.com/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Kim Atle ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/rewrites-and-scheduling).

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

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

**John:** And this is episode 216 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Now, Craig, for a second I thought you weren’t going to introduce yourself as Craig Mazin but rather as Louis B. Mayer because that is the name I associate with you having heard you on Karina Longworth’s podcast.

**Craig:** Yes. Now and forevermore, Louis B — so I’m playing Louis B. Mayer on her new series of You Must Remember This. So her last series was about the Manson family and how they were intertwined with Hollywood. And the new one is about the history of MGM, which is kind of the most classic of the classic movie studios. And Louis B. Mayer was the guy who ran it.

And so, I don’t [laughs] — I keep joking like I got the job because I sound like a quietly angry Jew.

**John:** [laughs] Seething with rage. And I really loved hearing you affect a voice on a podcast. So I want to make it clear to all our audience that sometimes I love it when Craig does voices. And this is a voice you just did spectacularly well. And it’s a great podcast. So we’re going to highly recommend people listen to it.

So Karina Longworth is a film historian. Her podcast, you can go back through in iTunes and find all the episodes she’s done. This new series she’s doing, it’s just about, you know, really the birth of Hollywood.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And you can’t think about Hollywood history without thinking about MGM. And so she’s tracking not just how the studio came to be but sort of all the changes throughout the generations. And MGM is still a label that exists today but is not sort of the same —

**Craig:** It’s not the same.

**John:** Kind of thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t know specifically where the next episodes are going but I have recorded lines for the next one or I think it’s the next one. From the few lines that I do, I get a sense of what it is and she’s going to get into some interesting things, you know.

The shocking difference between the Hollywood that Hollywood presented to America and the actual Hollywood and the stuff that was going on is just startling.

**John:** You know, I’d be a little bit jealous except I have exciting news of my own, is that I just signed on to be the killer in the next season of Serial.

**Craig:** Ah, great.

**John:** So at least that way we’ll both be doing other podcasts and, you know, sort of raking in money for ourselves.

**Craig:** It’s not going to be much of a mystery. If someone’s named John August, they did it.

**John:** I probably did it.

**Craig:** It’s a killer name.

**John:** It’s a great name. It’s a good name.

**Craig:** What’s your middle name?

**John:** It’s my original last name which is Meise.

**Craig:** Oh, so you made that —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You pulled that in. But did you jettison a prior middle name?

**John:** I did. It was Tilton, T-I-L-T-O-N.

**Craig:** Oh, my god. [laughs] That’s the most —

**John:** Which is a family name but wasn’t really related to anything.

**Craig:** I mean, John Tilton August. Ugh.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Shivers.

**John:** Yeah. It’s like, you know, who was that Arkansas serial killer? Oh, it was John Tilton August.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah. [laughs] You listen to that name you can smell the mold in the basement in which he is keeping you.

**John:** Yeah. There’s also a distant banjo playing.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** Mm-hmm. Today on the podcast, we’ll be talking about the anatomy of a rewrite. We’ll look at how production schedules work and we’ll answer some questions from listeners. We have so much to do on the show this week that we should probably get started.

**Craig:** Yeah, let’s go.

**John:** And so first some follow-up. We need to thank everybody who bought a Scriptnotes T-shirt. And we had a whole bunch — this is the biggest order we’ve ever placed. Dustin and Stuart are at the printers right now, placing that order. We will be packaging and shipping these out to all of the people who bought them probably the second week of October so everyone will have them in hand for Austin Film Festival. So, thank you very much.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Next up. Last week we talked about the odds of making it in the NFL versus making it as a screenwriter. And Nathan wrote in with some good statistics. Do you want to share those?

**Craig:** Yeah, sure. So he mentions that there are 32 teams in the NFL and each has a regular season roster of 53 players. This I did not know. I’m more of a baseball guy. So the total number of players in the league at any given time is 1,696. Let’s call it 1,700. So you could say that the number of people playing in the NFL is slightly larger than the number of people who are feature screenwriters in a given year, assuming the 1,500 number you gave for 2014 is representative.

Granted the yearly numbers for the NFL are slightly higher than 1,700 as players are added and dropped from rosters but 1,700 is a good ballpark number. And I agree. So we are, I think, under that number, clearly. I think the 1,500 number is correct. And mind you, that 1,500 number also includes our version of pickups and drops, you know, people who maybe worked for a month and then didn’t again.

So, yeah, I think we’re right on in saying that it’s harder to be a working screenwriter, at least statistically speaking, than to play in the NFL. And a lot of people on Twitter pointed out also that there’s another major difference in that if you’re trying to become a professional screenwriter, you’re competing against all people that want to be screenwriters, including women.

In the NFL, there are no women. Women cannot play in the NFL. Not by rule but just by physical reality. So men are only competing with men.

**John:** Oh, Craig, you’re going to get so much email just for that one sentence you just said.

**Craig:** You think so? That —

**John:** That physical reality? Yeah.

**Craig:** Because women —

**John:** By tradition —

**Craig:** It’s not tradition. [laughs] They physically can’t — I mean, I can’t compete in the NFL physically. I mean, you would have to be just an incredibly roided up woman. Yeah, I probably will get [laughs] a lot of letters but I don’t —

**John:** Yeah, exactly.

**Craig:** I’m not judging. It’s just that there’s a reason why we haven’t seen a woman in the NFL, just physical realities. But that’s not the case happily for screenwriting. Anyone with a brain can be a screenwriter. So the competitive pool is quite a bit larger. So, again, tougher to be a screenwriter than to be a football player.

**John:** I think it’s a very useful statistic for your Aunt Sarah. So if she has in her back pocket like, “Oh, my nephew is a working screenwriter in Hollywood, like it’s harder to be a working screenwriter in Hollywood than it is to be an NFL player. It’s like less likely.” And that’s actually probably true.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Another crucial difference is that anybody who — that 1,700 people who are in the NFL, those people are all making a living. Their whole job is to be in the NFL, by definition. Of the 1,700 screenwriters, a lot of those are also doing other jobs because they are not making a real living as a screenwriter. So they might be getting paid something over the course of the year. That doesn’t mean that that’s enough to actually support themselves.

**Craig:** Yes. So we continue to crush everyone’s dream with remarkable efficiency.

**John:** So as we crush people’s dreams, let’s go on to lawsuit time. So we’ve talked a lot on the podcast about the Gravity lawsuit. We’ll never talk about that again.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** But there was another lawsuit this week settled or at least another development on the lawsuit. This is over The Cabin in the Woods. That’s a movie directed by Drew Goddard, with a script by him and Joss Whedon. So Peter Gallagher was suing, claiming that Cabin in the Woods was based on and inspired by or took from his novel, The Little White Trip: A Night in the Pines.

And so this week, it came down that Judge Otis Wright II who’s just the best name ever for a judge.

**Craig:** [laughs] Right up there with John Tilton August.

**John:** He wrote, “The few alleged similarities that are not grossly misstated involve unprotectable forms of expression, such as the group going to a cabin or the alpha male character attempting a risky escape plan to bring back help. A list of random similarities only further convinces the court of one thing. After thorough analysis of both works and application of the extrinsic test, The Cabin in the Woods and The Little White Trip are not substantially similar.”

So we’ll have a link on the show notes to his whole ruling. It was the first time I’d seen this extrinsic test mentioned, so I went through a little Wikipedia hole on what extrinsic test and intrinsic tests are. But they’re ways of judging substantial similarity.

**Craig:** Right. Well, first we should make it clear. This is not the actor Peter Gallagher. This is —

**John:** But wouldn’t it be great if it were?

**Craig:** It would be [laughs] fascinating, to say the least.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** It would be a weird move by Peter Gallagher.

**John:** It would be like Sex, Lies, and Videotape 2. It would be great.

**Craig:** It would just be like Peter Gallagher sitting down, he’s like, “What could I do that would be the worst possible thing for my career? I know. I’ll sue Joss Whedon. That’ll be fun.”

**John:** Good choice.

**Craig:** This is how all of these end. I don’t know how else to put it for people. This is how they all end. And we’ve said this before. The feeding frenzy and excitement and, “Yes, stick it to the man-ism” that happens at the advent of these things is never matched when they all inevitably fall apart because it’s just not true. It’s just not true every single time.

And when he says something like “grossly misstated”, yeah, I mean that’s basically what we see all the time when you and I look at these things. We see that things are grossly misstated.

**John:** The reason why I want to bring this up at all because we hadn’t mentioned this lawsuit in the first place is that I do feel like we only see the news of these things being filed and we never see the outcomes of them.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so I just want to sort of highlight the outcomes. And I think there are actually three possible outcomes. There’s the outcome where the plaintiff actually wins, which is very, very rare and it’s so exceptional that we actually note when the plaintiff won like the Coming to America case was a rare case where a plaintiff won something there.

We sort of note sometimes when these things come down with negative opinions and the plaintiffs say they’re going to take it to another court and they’re going to appeal or whatever and they just sort of disappear. But 90% of these cases just magically disappear. And they never get to any sort of meaningful state or they get to a sort of pre-trial finding and there’s some sort of settlement that happens that doesn’t acknowledge any fault but basically says it would be cheaper just to make this all go away.

And that’s the other thing that happens frequently.

**Craig:** I don’t know what the statistics are when you compare, say, in we’ll call it somewhat failure, the difference between cases that are dismissed and cases that are settled. I suspect that if it’s already going to trial and they’ve gone through discovery and there’s a judge that the studios have decided, “No, we’re not giving this guy a dime or this woman a dime. We’re fighting this because, you know.”

Look, if they just routinely settle, just because, all they’re doing is inviting more of it. It becomes a gold rush.

**John:** Right.

**Craig:** So I think actually a lot of times what happens is these things get dismissed. I don’t know what the ultimate stats are but I do know that in our lifetimes, I can think of only one case where it was a win and that was Art Buchwald in Coming to America. And he was Art Buchwald. And he wrote a treatment and they definitely ripped the treatment off.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And that was it. I mean, everything else either if someone has a real case, they do quietly settle. They don’t even bother with the — the last thing they want is this being written about in the media. So I always feel like by the time we’ve heard about it, it’s a loser.

**John:** Yeah, I think you’re right.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Alex in Miami wrote in to say, “During the Deflategate portion of the podcast about how would this be a movie,” so we talked about Deflategate and Tom Brady, “you mentioned it might be best to just create new characters that represent these people to avoid conflict.” So rather than use the real people, create new characters that sort of take the place of those real characters. “Can you guys explain what the difference is when compared to a film like Game Change which portrays real people like Sarah Palin and John McCain? How did they get away with it?”

So, yeah, let’s talk about what the difference is between a movie based on real events like Game Change was and what we were talking about you might want to do with this football movie.

**Craig:** Right. Well, when you’re dealing with public figures, you have a lot more latitude. When you’re dealing with private individuals, that is people that have an expectation of privacy and don’t live their lives on the public stage, they have a right to their own life story. You can’t just tell someone’s life story. You have to actually buy their life rights.

But if somebody’s a public figure, then essentially what the law says is the part of your life that’s lived in public and the things that we know from public disclosure, they are public already. So you don’t have to buy it.

Now, obviously politicians, a lot of their lives are lived in public. Similarly, Tom Brady’s life and Deflategate was lived in public. So it wasn’t a question of life rights. What concerned me about the potential movie adaptation was in fact this issue of how to deal with the fact that you want to show logos and you want to be in the NFL and you want to say, “Well, he plays for the Patriots,” and use the names of all these people, some of whom are not public figures.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And you cited a really interesting article from Business Insider. So tell us about that.

**John:** So this is something that another listener had sent in. I think several listeners sent in. Business Insider wrote a piece about Ballers, the HBO series that stars Dwayne Johnson. And that uses real football logos. And that seems surprising because we think like, “Well, how can you use those football logos because they’re trademark things. NFL is going to come after you.”

And they just did it. And the explanation they give in this article, I don’t completely buy. I think they’re saying like, because we weren’t portraying the NFL negatively or in an untrue manner, we can get away with doing it.” I think they basically just felt like, “You know what, NFL try to come after us and you’re not going to succeed because NFL doesn’t have the ability to allow somebody to not show, you know, their logo on screen. It’s a real thing that exists out in the world.”

And they basically just had the courage to say, “You know what, this guy plays for the Dolphins and we’re showing a Dolphins logo.”

**Craig:** Yeah. There is always a space in between the obvious yes and the obvious no. And every studio has a different tolerance for playing in that space in between, because being sued is a problem. It’s expensive and it’s embarrassing in the media. And if you lose, it could be disastrous.

I think for Ballers, I think they were like, “Please sue us. This would be amazing publicity.” And it’s not like HBO is a lightweight.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I think that was exciting. And I think also that they felt from a legal point of view that in that gray space, they were way closer to yes than no.

**John:** I was thinking like the counter examples, like you show character opening up a bottle of Coke and saying like, “This Coke is poison,” and they drink the Coke and then they die from poison, that would be an issue where Coke would probably come after you and would have a little bit more ammunition that you are lying about their product.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And showing their product, you’re associating their product with death.

**Craig:** Correct. In the case of our prospective Tom Brady movie, the problem is that the movie would need to make some kind of statement and take some kind of position to be at all interesting. And all those facts are disputed. And we just saw how the report was disputed and the penalty was overturned by a judge.

So you make your movie and you’ve got people wearing NFL logos doing things like actively cheating, Tom Brady actively cheating. Yeah, you’re going to get sued because he’s going to argue, “No, I didn’t do that, so you’re defaming me.” You can’t defame public — the only thing you can do with public individuals is satire them in such a way that it’s obviously satire. And that goes back to The People vs. Larry Flynt and the Jerry Falwell stuff.

**John:** So, circling back to portraying real people and the difference between Game Change and what this movie was describing, a good movie that sort of falls in the middle of that is The Social Network. And so Social Network shows Mark Zuckerberg and Mark Zuckerberg does not come off especially well in The Social Network. And those are real people and many of those people are real.

But I have a suspicion that as they were thinking about making the movie and as they looked through the people who were like less and less famous, they were actually much more careful about how those people were portrayed. And in some cases may have changed the names of some people just so they weren’t going to run into problems.

And like you said that I did this thing but I never did this thing and I’m not a public figure. Mark Zuckerberg is such a huge figure that he’s sort of impossible to libel. The smaller people have a much greater claim to protecting their own rights to privacy of their own life story.

**Craig:** I suspect that Mark Zuckerberg was a little jammed on this no matter what. Even if some of the aspects of the movie could be considered defamatory or libelous and he had a case or could make a case, the costs of disputing the movie would be the Streisand effect. You’re familiar with the Streisand effect?

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Yeah. So for those of you who are not, Barbara Streisand once sued some random guy who had basically published a picture of her home on the internet and said, “This is Barbara Streisand’s home.” And Barbara Streisand went after this guy. On a website nobody even knew about. And suddenly because she went after him, everybody knew about it and everybody now knew where she lived.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, sometimes I think that’s the wedge against a guy like Zuckerberg because he’s just like, “Ugh, let me just ignore this until it goes away.”

**John:** Yeah. For sure. Our last bit of follow-up, this is actually just a nice email that somebody wrote in. And we get a lot of these and we get some nice comments on iTunes, too, but this was a guy who’s been listening to the show who had some good stuff happen. So I thought we would just read one of these.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Robert writes, “You don’t know me. I’m an avid listener to the podcast and the advice you’ve given to listeners since its inception has been incredible. It’s been such a pleasure and honor getting insight into the industry from you two and the fact that you both generally seem like standup guys makes things even better. I was recently hired by [big company] and started my first job as a staff writer on [big television company’s] show. I’m only on week three but I had to reach out and tell you that your guidance and advice has been absolutely priceless in helping me find and navigate the choppy waters of executives, showrunners, and other writers.

“I use something I picked up from the show probably every day. So I guess the reason I’m messaging you guys is because I wanted you to know that you are making a difference and doing something good for every writer out there who listens. So from all of us little guys who will hopefully be the big guys, let me write something in all caps for emphasis. Thank you. All the best, Robert.”

**Craig:** Well, that’s just wonderful. I mean, that’s why we do what we do. I really do believe that we are training an army of people. An army. And then one day —

**John:** An army.

**Craig:** When we need them, [laughs] we will call upon them.

**John:** We will rise. They will rise. [laughs] But I think part of the reason why I like to have this conversation with you every week is that it’s just talking about sort of the way things are and the way you sort of wish they would be and finding that balance between the two things. And so, hopefully, Robert is entering into a job at big television show where he can both do the work in front of him but also chart a path forward for himself and for writers like him that is at least as good, and maybe better than what we have.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, the dream is that as people start to enter the business and people in their 20s, so they’re new, that maybe a writer is sitting in a room with a producer and a studio executive and all three of them maybe have listened to the show and have heard some things about how to behave and how to be kind to each other and how to help each other in the middle of this very difficult process, and how to put themselves in the other person’s shoes.

And who knows? Maybe things will get better. Nah, probably not but that’s when we —

**John:** [laughs] Probably not.

**Craig:** That’s when we mobilize the army and then —

**John:** That’s right.

**Craig:** And then, my friends —

**John:** That’s the goal.

**Craig:** Oh, buddy.

**John:** Yeah. So, we won’t know if it gets better but hopefully it won’t be any worse for it. And hopefully there’ll be some people who know not to do certain things because of what they’ve seen on the Three Page Challenge.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** Mm-hmm. And this is going to be a great sort of object lesson in this because you’re going to talk us through this idea about rewrites and the anatomy of a rewrite and sort of best practices both for managing it psychologically and for the words on the page.

**Craig:** So this topic was suggested by a listener and it kind of shocked me because I thought — I don’t think we’ve actually done this and it’s kind of crazy that we haven’t. So she wrote, “I know you guys have touched on the etiquette of reaching out to writers when you’re hired to rewrite, but I wonder if you guys could discuss the creative process of rewriting. Maybe it’s too broad of a question but I’m curious how your approach is different compared to starting from scratch or compared to each other.”

Excellent question.

**John:** Very good question.

**Craig:** How do we go about this thing called rewriting? So first thing’s first, we have to figure out what the actual scope of the gig is. And sometimes the first thing that happens is you engage in a kind of a triage. You take a look at the material and then you start asking questions of yourself and others. How extensive is the perceived problem? Is this something where we kind of need to go back to scratch and start from page one and write something new? Or is the problem that there are sequences that aren’t working? Is the problem that the story is in good shape but maybe this character needs help or the climax of the movie needs help?

The first thing that you have to do when you’re rewriting a script is to get everybody to agree on a diagnosis of the problem.

**John:** That’s really smart. I think it’s a question of what do I think needs to have happened. But more importantly, what does everyone else who has a stake in this think needs to happen and can I convince them of my vision, if possible?

**Craig:** And sometimes, you find that you’re the only one who thinks there’s a major problem. And that is a great indication that this is probably not a job for you. And that’s good information. I need to know if I’m a good match for what they think is required.

**John:** This happens to me a lot. And tell me if you’ve had this similar experience where I’ll get sent a script and I’ll read through it and like so, “Wow, okay, wow. I just don’t — I mean, I think I know where to start but like I’m starting really kind of from scratch.” And then I’ll get on the phone with my agent and it’s like, “Yeah, I think this is like maybe a week or two of work.”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** And that mismatch, it’s just like it’s so fundamental that I know that like there’s no reason for me to try to pursue this project.

**Craig:** Well, that’s right. And in fact, that becomes one of the initial questions. What’s the timeline here? They always seem to give you one. Sometimes, if something is in early development stages, there isn’t a timeline. It’s just, “Look, we really love this project. We would love for it to be something. We don’t like where it is now. What do you think? So sky is the limit. Let’s just figure this out.”

A lot of times, there’s a timeline. The movie will be getting made. Or more commonly, “We need to get this movie in a place where we can show it to this actor by this point or this director by this point because that’s when they become available.” So I always ask, “How much time is there to do this work?” Inevitably, when you hear about these jobs from studios, they’re going to lowball you on the time every single time.

It’s not because they want to pay you less. It’s just standard wishful thinking.

**John:** Yeah. In terms of time, sometimes they’ll come to you with, you know, “We think it’s two weeks work. We think it’s a significant amount of work but, you know, we want to hit the certain date or time.” There have been jobs where it’s like, “Literally we’re shooting this next week, so you have days to get this done.” And you’re getting on the phone with the crucial people right away. And that’s where you have to really be able to discuss exactly what you think you’re going to be able to do and be honest about sort of what’s possible and what’s not possible in the limited amount of time.

**Craig:** Yeah. Good rule of thumb. When they say it’s a week, it’s two weeks or three weeks. When they say it’s three weeks, it’s six weeks. When they say it needs a rewrite but it’s not a page one, it’s a page one. Just upgrade every single thing [laughs] because that’s what’s going to be true.

You do then have this new challenge, which is you’re coming into a process that pre-exists you. When you start something new, you sell an original or you’re the first person on an assignment, a team is assembled and starts to gel. And you have time to figure out who’s in charge. “See, I know he’s saying he’s in charge but I think she’s really in charge.”

When you come in on a rewrite, that team is there. And you need to figure out pretty quickly who the real boss is. And just as important, you need to figure out how things went wrong before because they did. That’s the one fact for sure you know coming in on a rewrite.

So there was a problem. And the problem may entirely rest with the writer. More often than not, it’s a combination of wrong writer for the project and then problems with the process. As much as you can, if you can try and clear the mines off the field before you start marching through it, you’ll be in better shape.

**John:** And this is a mistake I’ve made before where I would come in to a project, it was a page one rewrite. We were starting over from scratch. And, you know, I had forgotten that like, “Oh, that’s right. They’ve actually been through this all once before.” And it wasn’t until I was like four meetings in on a project and one of the producers said something that was referencing the previous draft. I’m like, “Wow, you still think we’re making that movie that was that movie, you know, six months ago.”

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** And I had forgotten that there actually ever was something before because it was such a fundamental rewrite. And so, clearing the field is exactly the right idea. But even if you get all the mines off the field, you have to remember that they’ve fought a war before you even got there.

**Craig:** That’s right. And there are going to be areas that are emotional for them. In the way that for us, when someone casually says, “You know what, why don’t we just get rid of that line?” And you look at that line and think, “Yeah, fine.” Or, “You know what, why don’t we just get rid of that line?” You look at that line and think, “But that’s the line that I wrote that made me love this. That’s the line that made me feel proud to be a writer.”

We are attaching emotional weight to something that can’t bear it and shouldn’t have to bear it. Well, they do the same thing. So they’ve had fights. And when you come in and you sit in that room, just be aware when you say something like, “Well, I just have no idea why Joe is being mean to Sue.” That’s not motivated. You are taking a side in an argument that’s happened. Somebody is getting angry [laughs] and there’s nothing you can do about it except to be as impartial as possible. It’s not like you wrote it. So, you get that benefit.

**John:** Yeah. Yeah. I find those conversations I’m always trying to phrase the possibility of what the next thing is going to be rather than crapping on what is there right in front of me.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So you can acknowledge that things aren’t working but don’t try to be specific about like, you know, this was a mistake or a fault or a problem. Rather it’s like, “Here are the opportunities for how we can get to this that we all want to get to.” Always talk about the movie you want the make, not the script that’s on the page.

**Craig:** And with that in mind, when we are asked to rewrite something, part of what we need to accomplish is rekindling the spark of the thing that got them all excited in the first place. Somewhere before you showed up, people got excited and they fell in love. And then something went wrong.

So, yes, you can say, “Look, here’s what isn’t working here but here’s what could be working.” But you need to recognize that once there was love. And you have to figure out what that is because what you love about it needs to connect with what they love about it. That’s how your movie will get made. That’s how your version of this will get made because, and this is maybe the most controversial thing I’ll say about rewriting.

Rewriting is not really the right word for what this is. When we say we’re rewriting, that’s like an employment term. We’re writing. Because, look, when we write something, we write a draft and then we rewrite our own draft. Fair. But when we’re rewriting somebody else’s work, it’s the first time for us. It’s not a re anything. It’s new for us. It’s a new write.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So the rest of the world can call it a rewrite, but it’s a new write. And as part of a new write, and this goes directly to the question, you have to be concerned about all the things you’d be concerned about if it were not a rewrite. That is, theme, character, narrative, tone, scenes. All the things that you bundle up to fall in love with, you need to bundle those up into this because it’s new to you.

**John:** Absolutely. There have been jobs where I’ve come in where I’ve just done incredibly surgical craftsman work to fix one little thing. And those I was literally just applying my skills to a small little bit. And they never felt like my movie.

But if I’m going in and doing a real draft, that is now my movie and I have to think about it on a fundamental level on answering all those questions. What does this movie mean to me? Who are the characters to me? What are the voices? And really start from scratch. That’s no slam on the previous writer. That’s just, you know, the process. It’s how you write a movie is to write it from the inside out.

**Craig:** No question. In many ways, when we take on what’s called a rewrite, what we’re really doing is adapting in the way that we adapt a novel. So I get a novel, I read the novel, and then the first questions I have are, “How faithful am I going to be to this novel? What parts of the novel should I keep and what parts should I not keep? What did I fall in love with? What’s great but probably not right for a movie? How could I change the ending to make it work better with the beginning in a movie?” You know, all those things.

Or should I touch nothing and just really do what the book — all those questions are the questions I ask when I get a screenplay because I’m adapting it. That’s how I think of it. I’m adapting it into a new work. Yes, there are times when you’re only there for a week or two and that’s not adaptation. You’re literally writing lines. “Give us five lines for this.” Or “Write a scene that does this.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But when you are working on something that’s lengthier, for instance, I don’t know about you but even if it’s not a page one, and when we say page one, we mean we are keeping the rough idea of the prior movie, prior screenplay and just starting over. Even if it’s not that, even if it’s kind of a half a “rewrite”, I start a new document in my software. I can always go back and take things from their file and put it into mine. But I need to do the thing that I do when I’m writing, which is I imagine what’s the opening image, what’s the first thing, what’s the first person, what did they say, what does this mean.

I go through that same process. How do you approach that?

**John:** Exactly the same way. So anything where it’s a fundamental rewrite of something, you know, I guess a new write of something, I do start with the blank document. And then I bring over the stuff that’s actually working really well and I’ll look for the stuff that’s great. And if there’s stuff that I don’t need to rewrite, I will happily keep every little bit of it.

You know, the original writer made choices and often those choices work terrific. And if I can make those same choices, I will make those same choices. So I’ll make the same choices of especially character names. If those character names are right and those characters feel like the right characters for the story, they stay. If the locations and settings are the locations and settings that we feel like we want to make for this movie, all that stuff stays.

So often, it’s really the storytelling. It’s the order of how things are happening. It’s all the new stuff is what I need to do. And so, a lot of what’s in that current script I shouldn’t even try to bring over. And if I find that if I just try to rewrite within that other writer’s original document, it’s going to just feel weird and forced because I’m trying to park in too tight of a parking spot. I’m trying to make my stuff fit into their stuff rather than just make my own movie.

**Craig:** And it just won’t work. It’s important to acknowledge that there are times when, as part of our adapting choice, we are taking things from that existing script and porting them over because they’re consistent with our vision of what this is supposed to become. But it’s just as important to note that you need to give yourself room to be the writer that you are. You need that room. There’s no other way for you to express yourself freely and interestingly.

And after all, they didn’t hire you to squeeze little new things in between the existing stuff. They hired you because of your voice and your expression. So you have to essentially approach it as an honest broker but give yourself the room to write your version because that’s why you’ve been hired.

**John:** I think I’m very mindful of it. It’s like I won’t change something just for the sake of changing it. Something will change because I need something different to make this movie work. And I need to get from this place to that place in a different way. Or the way this works in my brain is different than the way it works in the previous draft. And that’s okay. I don’t feel a responsibility to anyone as much as the audience. Like, what does the movie want to be, and it’s my job to sort of be a conduit to getting us to that movie.

**Craig:** Well, that sort of brings me to some basic dos and don’ts because you’ve outlined a really good one. And I guess we’ll start it as a positive thing. What you do want to do is be an impartial judge. There’s no honor in saying I obliterated the other writer. And similarly, there’s no shame in saying I preserved the stuff that worked.

I think sometimes people that have a rewrite assignment feel like, “Well, they’re paying me money. If I just take this scene over then it’s cheating,” it’s not cheating. They don’t mind that. They don’t care. What they want is a movie that works. And believe me, you’re going to new write plenty of stuff.

Similarly, don’t be squeamish about what you have to do to get there. The greatest gift you can give the prior writer is a green light. And the deal is this. And there used to be a lot of strife between writers over this stuff, less so now because I think everybody’s been on both sides of the coin enough.

That writer got fired. They didn’t get fired because you got hired. They got fired. They’re done. Their script will not get a green light. Those are facts. Yours might but you need to give yourself the freedom to do what you think needs to be done to get there. So you can’t operate in fear and you can’t misinterpret respect for another writer with a preciousness about what they did, nor can you misinterpret my duty as a writer with, “I got to get rid of everything they wrote.” You just have to aim towards what’s going to get this movie made.

**John:** And I will say that my relationship with some of my favorite writers came because I was being rewritten by them or I was rewriting them. And we had that conversation when the handoff happened and we were grownups to say like, “I know that I’m not going to be the person to get this movie made. Maybe you can be.”

And when you approach it that way, like please take care of my child and see it to, you know, the safe shores of moviedom, that can be a real gift. And when you can have that conversation openly and honestly with the person who’s going to be writing next, that is a terrific joy because you get to first explain all the stuff we said before about who the stakeholders are, where all the bones are buried and sort of, you know, you guys know sort of what went wrong because something obviously went wrong. But something went right. And to sort of get to know what was it that was so fantastic that sort of got this whole process started.

And that’s true, I’ll say because, you know, she’s our podcast Joan Rivers. My first conversation with Aline Brosh McKenna was about this kind of situation.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And neither of us was particularly excited to be on that phone call but it was a good phone call to have because it made it clear sort of what was really possible with this movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. Sometimes people will say, “Do you really do the thing where you call the prior writer?” They don’t believe me. And I just, yeah, I do it. I do it. I don’t do it if there’s been 20 writers because then it doesn’t matter. But, yeah, I mean if there’s been very few, absolutely. Of course I do it. And it always works.

**John:** Yeah. Sometimes I’ll do the even more awkward thing which is when I’m being rewritten, I will reach out to go to that writer who’s replacing me. And that person is usually terrified that I’m reaching out.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** But I assure you, I’m only doing it because I want them to succeed and I want them to know sort of what things are really happening. And I will say that with the advent of Twitter and social media and just general accessibility of emails, it’s much easier to make that conversation, that connection happen.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It was very hard in the days where I had to go through their agent and then it’s like, god, this is awkward for everybody. But it doesn’t have to be awkward for everybody now.

**Craig:** No, it doesn’t. It’s just a nice collegiate thing to do. It always helps. Some other dos and don’ts. Don’t change the character names unless you have good reason. That’s something you already mentioned. What’s good reason? I mean, I just don’t do it if I don’t have to.

Even if I don’t really like the name, I just don’t do it because, eh, it just feels cheap. You know, it just feels cheap.

**John:** If there’s some fundamentally bad or confusing choices, I will change a character’s name. Like there have been scripts that I’ve gotten where like two characters have the same first letters of their name and it actually is just genuinely confusing —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Then I will do it. But I’ll always think twice about doing it because I don’t want to be the guy who just changes names to make it seem like it’s a different character when it’s not really a different character.

**Craig:** Yeah. You change names if there’s a gender change. You change names if there’s a nationality change. You change names maybe if there’s a racial change or a class change. But, you know, if it’s the same person, don’t just go, “Ah, I just hate Denise. I just hate that name. It’s stupid. She’s, you know, Sophie now.” Don’t do that.

**John:** There have been situations where I’ve gone in on a rewrite and the character who was taking the place of that — taking that function was so vastly different than the character before, it was helpful to change the name just so that there wasn’t the baggage of that previous character being there. But that’s honestly one of those situations where you’re changing it almost as much as changing the gender.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s just fundamentally different characters serving the same function that I don’t really consider that being changing the character’s name. I put a different character in that place.

**Craig:** Right. That’s a different thing. So if you have, you know, a script where somebody is married and you say, “Look, the character of the wife is just not working at all. I propose an entirely different character.” Then you’re not renaming that character, you’re making a new character. That’s fine.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s really more about like, come on, why did you change his boss’ name? [laughs] It’s the same guy. He doesn’t even say it that much.

**John:** Here’s a good litmus test. If you’re changing all the names and mostly their dialogue is staying the same as it was in the previous draft —

**Craig:** Then you’re a dick.

**John:** You’re probably making a dick move.

**Craig:** Yeah, you’re a total douche. Similarly, another douche move, don’t think about the arbitration. It’s not a common thing, but every now and then somebody will tell me, “Well, you know, I just took this job and I’m going to be rewriting this thing. I wonder if I’m going to get credit.” I’m like, “Stop. Just stop.” It’s like, you know, when they bring a reliever out in the middle of the baseball game, as he’s walking to the mount, he’s not wondering like, “Well, let’s see, if this works out, who’s going to get credit for winning the game? I mean he went six innings but I might go three.” Forget it, just do your job. Just do your job. Don’t worry about the arbitration. Later on. [laughs] it will happen one way of another.

**John:** But, Craig, I will admit to myself and to you and to everybody listening to the podcast, there have been jobs where I’ve gone in for where I just know from the start, there’s just no possibility I would ever get credit. In some ways, that’s really liberating, to not even have to think about sort of like — I don’t have to think about the future. I can only just think about this work in front of me and doing the best work that gets this movie made. And that’s actually kind of liberating too because it frees from the burden of possibility and wonder and indecision. Like I know for a fact there’s absolutely no chance my name will be on this. And that is sometimes really good.

**Craig:** Yeah. To me that is the ultimate expression of not thinking about the arbitration because you don’t want credit. You’re not there for credit. There’s never going to be an issue. If there is an arbitration, you’re going to say, I don’t want it. Those assignments are nice sometimes because you get to feel like a ninja.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Nobody will know, you know. I like that. A couple of other dos and don’ts. Don’t blame the prior script for your current problems. If you are rewriting something and you’re struggling, the last thing in the world you want to do is to say, “Well, you know, the script before me — I mean all this stuff.” You know, you took the job. Shut up and fix the script.

**John:** That’s why you have the job.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That’s probably the reason why you’re doing this job, is because the script had problems.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’ll tell you a little story without names. A little blind item story. So once I was hired to write something and then someone was hired to rewrite it. And that person, I heard from a reliable source, said well, you know — when the people were unhappy with his work, he said, “Well, I mean look what you gave me.” [laughs]

**John:** Oh.

**Craig:** I just filed that away.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then when he was fired —

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** I was brought back. And then —

**John:** There you go.

**Craig:** There you go. It’s not a rational, supportable argument to make. If you take a gig to rewrite something, you’re saying you’re paying me and I can help, not you’re paying me and, “Well, yeah, but the script is bad. And he — ” Shut up.

**John:** Yeah, yeah. If you’re taking only easy jobs, you’re not really doing your job.

**Craig:** No. No. And also, if you take — it doesn’t matter whether it’s easy or hard, [laughs] you took the job.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s it. Stop blaming the other script. Lastly, do be a calm voice. This is one of the few times in our business where we actually begin with a good hand because everybody is nervous and upset and something hasn’t worked and in you come to save the day.

You may not end up saving the day. But at least in this early moment, you have a good hand. People are looking to you. And this is the time to project back confidence and coolness. Nobody is blaming you for what’s there because you weren’t there. So as best as you can, try and be a soothing presence. You don’t want to sew panic. You don’t want to come in and say, “All right, so you guys — I’m going to be rewriting this but I go to tell you, it’s in bad shape. And I know that you need it for six weeks from now. And there’s just no way. This is going to be bad because still — because this is — ” No, no, no, no, no. Don’t take the job then. [laughs]

**John:** No. Don’t take the job. Run away.

**Craig:** Don’t take the job. Just you got to come and say, everybody, it’s going to be okay. I got this.

**John:** Yeah. So the advice we’ve just given you is I think really good advice if you are the writer who’s being brought in to work on a project that is not crazy town. And so if it’s like, this is a movie that’s going to be made or is it that, you know, it could be made but you’re the person who is going to get it into production.

If you have a movie that is speeding down the tracks at 1,000 miles per hours, some of the stuff may not apply quite as much because you’re on an insane trainful of explosives. And so we have friends who are working on those insane trains full of explosives. And I think you can aspire to the kind of things we’re about here. You can certainly aspire to be calm, you can certainly aspire to be gracious and generous and never trash the earlier stuff and be the hopeful problem solver.

But sometimes you’re just going to be the person who’s like chugging through pages and emailing them in because they’re going to be shooting them in two hours and it’s just crazy town. So I would say, if you are in one of those situations, just know that — just do the best you can and be the best, most generous respectful writer you can be, but also know that you’re in a war and it’s a war to sort of get this movie made.

**Craig:** You know, when you were talking about that, it occurred to me that one of the things that trips new screenwriters up is that they don’t understand that there’s one name for job, screenwriter, there’s five different jobs that —

**John:** Yeah, you’re right.

**Craig:** It’s the weirdest thing to say, yeah, you know, the same person that sits down and creates an idea and writes 120 pages and invents a world is the same person that has three hours while they’re on a plane to fix dialogue that’s being shot six hours from now. And then when they land, they got to get to a set and rewrite something to bring the budget down. Two different jobs, but often times, same person.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So you just need to be able to shift those hats around as you go between the various kinds of rewriting.

**John:** Yeah. And I would just say, don’t confuse those two roles and don’t try to be that crazy, mercenary person when you have, you know, three weeks or you have, you know, time. The gun is not always aimed at your head. You don’t always have to act like the gun is at your head and that it’s always a crisis situation. Most times, it isn’t that. And most times, you have days or weeks to get the stuff done and being that calm, cool presence is really crucial. I want to make sure I’m offering some sympathy to the writers who do find themselves in just those nutso situations.

Reaching way back so it’s not anything shooting right now, but like the first Charlie’s Angels had a bunch of writers who worked serially and so I know that each of those people who’s coming in was coming in to just crazy town. And so for them not to reach out to me individually to get my feeling on the script, that is totally cool. I knew what they are going into. How I met the Wibberleys is they were brought in do the second Charlie’s Angels and we had that great phone conversation and it was so useful because it wasn’t crazy town yet.

**Craig:** Right, exactly. You just have to kind of suss out, am I one in the line? Is this is a mill? You know, some of these movies turn into like, what I call, a weekly mill.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Where they just start paying people’s weeklies one after another after another. Less so now in the 2000s, more common — it was the —

**John:** At some point, they got — the studios got really smart and they would make all services deals for writers who they thought could carry it to the finish line. And so then they would pay a flat fee to these writers and keep them as indentured servants on these runaway productions.

**Craig:** Yeah, and I think they also started to look at the quality of the patchwork of seven different writers on a movie and think, eh, big ticket items, you know.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s not quite knitting together. So yeah, but if you’re one of a procession, nobody cares. Everybody gets it. But if you’re not, yeah sure, give a call.

**John:** Give the call. All right, our next topic — this is something that occurred to me because it occurred to me this week is I just finished up a script that is hopefully a script that I will direct at some point in the future. And one of the things I needed to do is figuring out like, well, how much would this even cost? And so I went to a line producer friend who is fantastic and I asked her if she would take a look at it and figure out for me how much this might cost.

And so one of her first jobs is to figure out a production schedule. And so I want to talk through what a production schedule is and sort of what is involved in figuring out how long it takes to shoot a movie.

**Craig:** Yeah, good idea.

**John:** So production schedules, the reason why you need to do it first is that your budget is so dependent on how many days it will take to make a movie. That’s probably the single biggest factor in how much a movie costs is how long it will take to shoot it.

**Craig:** Right, shooting days.

**John:** Shooting days. Time equals labor and labor equals money. And so if you are at Sundance Film Festival and someone raises their hand and says, “How much did the movie cost?” Everyone will shutter because you’re never allowed to ask that question. But what you’ll hear people ask is how many shooting days did you have? And people will happily answer how many shooting days. And shooting days is a useful proxy for how much the movie costs.

When I’m talking to a friend, he says like, “Oh yeah, we’re shooting it in town. It’s 30 days.” Like, wow, you are racing and that budget is much lower than I would have guessed for that movie.

**Craig:** Yeah, the amount of pages that you can shoot in a day vary wildly, so, you know, television they’ll sometimes shoot all the way up to nine pages in a day. But they’re shooting certain kind of material that can be done that way. For feature films, big studio movies, page-and-a-half to three pages a day is about the normal thing.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Some pages take three days to shoot because it’s an action sequence and, you know, some pages take — you can get four pages done before lunch because it’s two people talking on a bench.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You’re doing it as a oner. So that’s what a line producer can kind of help figure out. But overall, yeah, if somebody says, “Oh, how many days did you shoot?” “42, 45.” Oh, it’s average. Okay, it’s typical. “How many days did you shoot?” “30.” Fast. “18.” Oh my God. “79.” Whoa. [laughs] You know, you —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Work around. I always just work around 50, seems like — that’s sort of the —

**John:** 50 seems like just a solid, you know, studio feature.

**Craig:** Yeah, 50.

**John:** And so Go was a movie shot in town, shot in Los Angeles and was 30 days. And that’s become sort of my benchmark sort of like it’s not a total indie, but it’s not a big studio feature either and so I sort of keep that as my threshold.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** The Nines was also about — it was 22 days and that’s not a crazy amount of time for a small indie feature. So talking with this producer, I sent her over this script, but I also sent over a list of kind of assumptions. And this is a helpful way for her to think about the schedules she’s trying to build.

So some of the assumptions that are useful for her to know. Which scenes do you think are practical locations versus sets? And the difference is when I say sets, that’s stage work. Those are sets that you’re building in a black box to do certain things. And that can be really useful for anything with visual effects, you can sometimes move a lot faster on sound stages. Cheaper movies tend to use a lot more location work, but also expensive movies use location work, too. You can get production value by using real locations and not having to build things.

If you look at most television shows, they have what’s called in days and out days. And in days means that they’re on their standing sets. They’re on the police precinct headquarters. They are at Central Perk in Friends. Those are the days they’re shooting inside the studio and that can be a huge difference for a line producer is just figuring out your schedule.

**Craig:** It’s kind of remarkable how much sets cost, just to build — because it’s not like they’re building a real house. I mean you can’t live in it.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** But it costs a lot, like just a wall costs a lot.

**John:** So to help people figure out like what is a set and what’s not a set, in the movie Go, almost everything is a practical location. So we’re in Todd Gaines’ apartment, that’s a real location. It’s a real apartment off of Western.

But there are certain things we had to build sets for because you couldn’t do it in a real location. So an example is Simon sets a hotel room on fire. That hotel room — the inside of the hotel room had to be a set because we had to have fire control there and be able to light it all on fire and put it all out.

There’s a sequence where Ronna tries to flush these pills down the toilet. We had to build that bathroom and the toilet because the real location wasn’t big enough. And it’s just actually very hard to get flushable things and make a bathroom big enough. Bathrooms are sort of weirdly a thing you end up building a lot because they’re hard to control.

**Craig:** Right, you can’t fit equipment into a bathroom. I mean more than anything, how do you shoot inside a bathroom?

**John:** Yeah, walls are your enemies.

**Craig:** Right. So on sets, walls can fly in and out. And this how you get stuff done. That’s half of the time you’re doing stuff like this is because of that. Sometimes you’re doing it because you can’t find something practically. Sometimes you can, it’s just too expensive or arduous. There are always — I mean in the end, they’re always trying to decide what’s going to be the most efficient way to do something in terms of time and money. And there are times when you get jammed and you have to build something you wish you didn’t have to build. But, you know, hey, look at it this way, at least, it’s cover. Every now and then, you need somewhere to go if it’s raining.

**John:** Yeah. And so that idea of rain cover becomes crucial specially later on as you’re budgeting to figure out like, what happens if it rains. And so Big Fish was a movie we shot in Atlanta. And it rained all the time. And so the crew could be out on location, it starts to rain and they could suddenly pull back to our sound stages which was built in these warehouses and shoot these interior scenes. And that was because it was cleverly constructed in a schedule that there’s always stuff inside that we could shoot if we needed to.

The next thing we’re talking about with the producer is locations and which locations in the scripts could we shoot at other places? So you may have experience with this with like your Hangover movies and also with Identify Thief, you had to decide like how much flexibility is there between going to the real places and faking it.

**Craig:** Well, so much of it comes down to budget. There’s also a general feeling of, well, why are people coming to this movie? This is one of the bummers. You know, everybody that writes a screenplay imagines in their mind the place. If they’re going a good job, the place is its own character, it has a vibe, it has a feeling. And a movie like Identify Thief which is a road trip, the terminal points of the trip are really important. And then if you have a travel movie like The Hangover Part II, which takes place in Bangkok, good luck faking that. You’re going to Bangkok.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s the point, you know. Now, on Identify Thief which cost, I don’t know, what fraction of Hangover II — I think it cost I think $30 million or something like that, all in. The original plan was that the road trip would be from Boston to Portland. I liked the idea of taking the Northern route because I hadn’t really seen that travelled in a lot of road movies. It was just a different look.

**John:** Yeah. I saw your movie and they didn’t take that route.

**Craig:** [laugh] No, they didn’t. So the initial suggestion from physical production, so at a studio, physical production is the department that handles budget-making and all the rest of that. So their suggestion was, what if it was from Miami to Orlando? [laughs] I kid you not?

**John:** That’s great.

**Craig:** Then they expanded to Miami to Atlanta. And I was like, “Look, guys, Miami to Atlanta is a day. You can do that in a day. Forget Miami or Orlando. That’s not a journey. That’s just a day. That’s like saying, ‘Oh my God, we’re going on a road trip from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo.'”[laughs] It’s like who cares?

So when all was said and done, they’re like, “Look, fancy pants, we’re shooting this movie in Atlanta entirely for tax reasons and budget reasons, so figure it out.” And what we ended up doing was starting the movie in “Florida,” which was not Florida. We faked Florida, you know, so we shot Georgia for Florida.

And then the other area was Denver because Denver is — I mean —

**John:** It’s generic.

**Craig:** It’s just generic. I mean that’s the thing, it’s like a generic skyline. People in Denver and people in Atlanta, I’m sure, looked at this and went, “What?” Everybody else was like, “Yeah, okay, I guess that’s American city.” I hate it. I mean I hate, hate, hate it because it just cheapens the movie.

And what happens is when people watch movies like this, they don’t realize it necessarily but they’re quietly going generic America, did they not care? No, no, no, trust me, there were fights and fights and fights. We, making the movies, care very much. The people spending money on them, they’re a little more calculating. And look, hard to blame them. They’re like, people aren’t showing up for the awesome cinematography of Portland. So yeah, we’re faking it for Denver. And that’s basically what happened.

**John:** And so that conversation starts right at the scheduling thing. So this is the email I sent through to the line producer said, “These are the locations that I think are important. There’s a section of the movie that takes place over there. I would be fine shooting that some place different all together. So I can tell you where it’s actually set, but I would be happy to move that somewhere else. Also, I’d be happy to break the interiors from the exteriors if that becomes a helpful thing, too.” So I just let her know where the flexibility was.

I had to tell her which characters were minors and how old they would be, not miners with a hat, but like young people —

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Because that would affect how many days they could work. And I’m sorry, how many hours they can work per day. And that could be a real factor. And so for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, those kids were really young. And in the U.K., they could only work like four hours a day or something. And so they had to build their whole schedule so that they would have the Oompa Loompa stuff to shoot in the afternoon. So they have kids in the morning on stage, and their whole schedule is built around the Oompa Loompa numbers. And so that becomes a factor.

**Craig:** And don’t forget, you’re also paying — you’re paying for teachers because they have to go to school when they’re working.

**John:** Yeah. And the last thing I had to tell here was how much of the things that’s felt like visual effects in the movie were meant to be visual effects and how much was supposed to be done on the day in camera.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Because it’s really expensive to be in production. But post-production is really expensive, too. And I wanted her to know what I saw being a visual effect and what I saw not being a visual effect. So those are some of the assumptions I had to send through in email with the script so she would have a sense of how to being scheduling this movie.

**Craig:** Well, I mean it’s all magic to me how they do it. I mean I know that it’s not magic [laughs], but — yeah.

**John:** So Craig, you’ve never had to physically make a schedule —

**Craig:** No.

**John:** For a movie, have you?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** So I had to do it. I had to do it in film school.

**Craig:** Oh my God.

**John:** And so for my master thesis, we had to actually do a breakdown of a schedule. So I will talk through what that process is. Not that a writer will ever have to do this herself, but to know what the thing is really kind of magic. So back in the day, this is back in film school, this is, you know, the 90s, this was still done by hand. So you’d have these cardboard strips and in order to get the information to put on those cardboard strips, you’d go the script, carefully number each scene, you’d number each character and which characters were in which scenes, not just the characters who speak, but the characters who are present in a scene because those are the actors we’re going to need for those scenes.

Then you would measure how long each scene was. And you measure in eights. Craig, do you know why eighths of a page came to be?

**Craig:** No, why? Why did they do that?

**John:** You know, I’ve heard different explanations but I think it’s essentially, it’s very easy to conceive of half a page and when you get to a quarter of a page, like, “Oh yeah, I can see a quarter of a page.” And then at an eighth of a page — well, an eighth is about as short of a scene as could possibly be. And if you actually look at a script, an eighth of a page is essentially a scene header and like two lines of action.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that’s an eighth, and so that was a small as they decided they ever wanted to make a portion. But every scene is measured in eighths which is just nuts, but that’s just how it’s done.

**Craig:** It’s so annoying.

**John:** We all know as screenwriters that because of how we write screen description, you know, a scene that’s three pages long could be really short in terms of actual screen time or could be incredibly long in terms of screen time but we still measure in pages and eighths of pages.

**Craig:** Yeah. And that’s one of the first things I do when a movie is about to go in production and they issue that schedule. I go through and I’m like, “Hmm, let’s see. Let’s see if they’re right,” [laughs] and they’re almost right. But every now and then, I’ll go —

**John:** Yeah, they are.

**Craig:** “Hmm, you know — ” and usually, what it is, is that I think to myself, they’ve said this is two days, I bet it’s one.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know, they’re being fooled by the fact that it’s five-and-three-eighths, you know.

**John:** And back in the day when this was on cardboard strips, you would literally pad the strips. So you’d, basically, on each cardboard strip, there’d be a different color for whether it was day or night, interior, exterior. On that strip, you would write and code whether it was interior or exterior, who is in the scene, there’s like coding for which characters are in the scenes, where the scene is and sometimes you would even squeeze in like a description of what the scene was. You would have all these strips of paper of cardboard that were flexible enough that you could slide them into a binder and literally slide them up and down. And then you’re trying to group them together to maximize and sort of optimize how you’re shooting this movie.

So now this is all done with software. But it still mimics the way that it was done when it was cardboard strips.

**Craig:** You’re so old.

**John:** I’m so old. It was really fun to do it. I was really happy to do it once because, as you know, Craig and I both wrapped sign posts or wrapped strike placards once.

**Craig:** We did.

**John:** And I was really good at wrapping stuff with duct tape. I’m really good at like physical crafts and it felt fun in a very physical craft kind of way.

**Craig:** [laughs] Do you remember what mine looked like?

**John:** Mine were prettier.

**Craig:** I mean I have always feared arts and crafts class. When I was in school and I would get to arts and crafts, something would always go disastrously wrong. And you think like how could it go that wrong? All you had to do was just assemble the Popsicle sticks. You just had to glue the things.

I remember, we were given an assignment. Collect some local foliage, bring it into school and we’ll make a winter scene on construction paper. And so people brought in little bits of things.

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** And they glued them on and made little winter wonderlands. And I was like, “Okay, so I just gathered up a bunch of vegetation without any concern [laughs] whatsoever, sat down, started gluing it on. It all smelled. There was something about like the weeds I had picked up. Like they were smelly weeds.

**John:** Oh no.

**Craig:** It wasn’t marijuana, it was just nasty weeds. And then I thought, “Well, this looks terrible. I know what I’ll do. I’ll cover it in glue because glue is white and it’s like snow and it will look nice.” But when glue dries, it’s clear. So what it ended up being was just this horrendous pile of nasty street mulch covered in a crisscrossing of clear crust.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That is how I do with arts and crafts.

**John:** Like it could be art. You never know.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** There’s a possibility you made art.

**Craig:** No, it could not be art. It was not art or a craft. It was neither.

**John:** So the line producer has all this information now broken down into strips, either real strips or in this case, virtual strips in her software. And there’s a specialized software. Movie Magic Scheduling. What’s the big one? I’m not sure what people are using these days. But then she’s trying to arrange a schedule. And she has a bunch of competing goals. And that’s where it becomes less craft and really an art and really knowing how to make a movie.

So she’s trying to keep her days together and her nights together as much as possible because it’s really brutal on a crew when they have to be shooting — it’s actually impossible for a crew. Like a crew can’t shoot all night and then turn around and shoot the next day.

**Craig:** No, you’re protective — like what it is, like 12 hours in between or something?

**John:** Yeah, that’s called turn around and so that’s, you know, going from night to day, you have to have time off. And so what you’ll find is that usually, let’s say, your schedule runs from Monday through Friday, you’re shooting five day weeks in town and you’ll start shooting early on Monday morning and then your schedule will drift a little bit later and later over the course of the week. And so your start times will be later and later each day until you reach what’s affectionately known as Fraturday, which is where you have a really late call on Friday and you’re essentially shooting into all of Saturday night and then driving home on Saturday morning. That is a pretty common schedule.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But you would never start your week as nights unless you were shooting nights the whole week.

**Craig:** Yeah. And then there are the dreaded splits. So splits are when you’re going to be shooting half day, half night. Nobody likes those.

**John:** It’s just the worst.

**Craig:** It’s just terrible. It’s just terrible.

**John:** Craig, have you run into situations where you’ve had to shoot interior at night, but as daytime? So I’ve been on movies where if you had to like blast —

**Craig:** Oh my God, are you kidding me?

**John:** Bright lights in through the windows to make it seem like it’s daylight but it’s, of course, it’s like three in the morning?

**Craig:** Always. And it’s so distressing to your circadian rhythm. You have no idea what’s going on. I mean people talk about how casinos don’t have clocks. And I mean a sound stage is the ultimate casino that way. It’s a huge windowless box where no noise or light can penetrate.

So yeah, you’re shooting on a set. There’s some huge ass light on a thing shining through a window blasting light and it’s — I’ve shot scenes that were morning scenes in the middle of the night. And morning is the worst because it’s like, your brain is really getting fooled because it’s the color temperature of morning light. You’re like, I should be waking up. I want to go to bed. This is all wrong. It’s terrible. It’s really bad for you. It’s bad for your health.

**John:** It is really bad for you, I agree. And for me, it’s always that I will be on the set and it would seem like daylight and then I’ll go out and realize like, “Oh, that’s right, it’s three in the morning.” Like it’s just night and it’s cold and you hear the crickets. And like, wait, what, what am I doing? And then the worst is always like driving home like as the sun is coming up, that’s just the worst feeling.

**Craig:** Well, it’s also a real problem because there have been deaths and no doubt there have been quite a few accidents that were less than fatal, but still serious. It’s just dangerous. I mean the way we shoot movies is so — and I understand why there was that flirtation for a while where big directors were drifting towards all mo cap, you know, Spielberg did Tintin that way and Zemeckis disappeared for a while and only did those, you know, like Beowulf and The Christmas Train. [laughs] I don’t know the actual name. I want to call it The Christmas Train.

**John:** Polar Express.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s called The Christmas Train in my house. Because you could actually have a normal day. You could show up, you shoot your time and you go home. It doesn’t matter what time the movie — if it’s a night scene, you’re still shooting it during the day. And morning, you shoot — and you have total control. And I understand that because the way movies are actually made is just distressing. It’s brutal. Every time I do it, every single time, I will stop at some point and think, there’s got to be another way. Nobody would believe that this is how we do this. It’s so dumb and inefficient. But I think it’s the way and I don’t think there’s another way.

**John:** I don’t know if there’s another way either. So this smart line producer, she is creating the fantasy optimized schedule and the optimized schedule will have less brutal situations like that. It’s only over the course of the production and things go wrong that the schedule has to shift and you run into those jam situations.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So she’s trying to optimize for not moving between days and nights or being smart about that. She’s trying to finish off all the work at a location because you don’t want to have to go back to a location. Once you’re done — ideally, you want to shoot all the scenes at a location and then move on.

But maybe that’s not the case. Maybe you want to have, if it’s a lot of scenes at a house, an interior house, maybe build that as a set and then it becomes your cover set for rain or for other disaster so you can always shoot something there in case something goes wrong out in the field.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah, also you want to avoid the dreaded company move, which is when you have two different locations on the same day and they’re not right next to each other. So you’ve finished shooting at the first location and everybody piles all the crap up into their trucks and drives over to the new thing, just a day killer.

**John:** Yeah, that’s terrible. She wants to finish all the work with one actor, ideally, to the degree it makes sense you want to finish all the work with one actor. So if an actor has six scenes total in the movie and it’s possible to schedule those scenes together, you will try to schedule the scenes together so you can “shoot them out”. And there may be reasons why you can only get that actor if you can compress all his days down to a certain window of time.

There may be just budgetary reasons why. It can sometimes be very expensive to drop an actor and pick up an actor. There’s weird union rules about sort of how you do that. So sometimes you have to have an actor who just sits around a lot and that’s just the nature of it. But ideally, you try to get through all of an actor’s scenes in one chunk if possible.

**Craig:** Indeed.

**John:** She will ask me and I will tell her how important it is to stay in sequence. So there are movies in which characters go through physical transformations where you actually need to shoot them in order. Most movies are shot wildly out of order. But for both performance reasons and for just like logic reasons, sometimes you have to stick closer to order.

In my movie, The Nines, Ryan Reynolds and Melissa McCarthy have wildly different hairstyles in the three different sections. They look very different. And so we had to shoot those basically in sequence. Once we started one of those chapters, we had to stay in that chapter and we couldn’t mix and match things. And that meant that we had to come back to some locations three times which was a production nightmare, but it was just the nature of the movie.

**Craig:** They hate stuff like that. They hate it.

**John:** They hate it.

**Craig:** They hate it.

**John:** The last thing which she may need to factor in is maximizing the use of certain equipment. So let’s say you have a techno crane, like a really fancy crane and there’s like three scenes that need it, there may be a reason why you want to board those together so that you can rent that thing for one day and be done with it.

Or if you have like a boat sequence or there’s some reason why there’s special equipment you need that might drive sort of how you’re doing stuff. Even like a camera package like, let’s say, you have a high speed camera that’s used for these two moments, you might want to put those two moments together so you don’t have to rent this incredibly expensive camera rig for, you know, two different days over the course of your shoot.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** It’s a lot.

**Craig:** Yes, no. I mean —

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Everything that they’re doing is to save money, everything. Sometimes they come to you and then they’re like, “Is there any way we could not have him wear his hat? It would save us $400,000?” [laughs] It’s like sometimes they have these little things and you’re like, “Wait, what? Of course not. Yeah, no.”

**John:** Wait, yes.

**Craig:** Burn the hat.

**John:** Burn the hat. You don’t care about the hat, whatsoever. Like who said there was a hat? Like there’s —

**Craig:** I mean exactly. But then sometimes they come to you and they’re like, “Is there any way they could all be 20 years older and in one room?” No.

**John:** [laughs] Yes.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They can’t.

**John:** 100%.

**Craig:** Yeah, sorry, the multiple classrooms of second graders can’t be one group of 25-year-old post collegiate — no. Yeah, they — it’s amazing the things they ask. And I’m always shocked by how much you — sometimes you can save so much with tiny little things. So I don’t blame them for asking.

**John:** No. So usually, a screenwriter will not have to get super involved with a schedule, but when it comes time to make a movie, you will see what that schedule is. And what I find so helpful about it is like it’s that first glimpse of like, how will this be made as a movie? It’s that first snapshot of this is what it’s going to take to move from what I have on the page to actually going into production. And you see it like, “Oh my God, that is so much more than I thought,” or like, “Oh, that’s actually much more achievable than I thought.”

In the case of Go, it was my first moment of horror/revelation, like, “Oh my God, I wrote a script that takes place entirely at night and we’re going to be outside at night for like 20 days.” And that was terrifying and it made me rethink [laughs] how I use night in movies that I want to be part of because it is just a debilitating condition to be outside at night all the time.

So I’m looking forward to what she says with this script and what the schedule turns out to be because it will be my first indication of how possible it will be to make the movie I have on the page and then she may be able to come back to me with some suggestions for the things that are making this crazy and impossible are these things and think about whether any of those things could change and where the flexibility is because it will make your life happier and easier.

**Craig:** Exactly, exactly.

**John:** And on the subject of time, we went way over time. So once again, we’re going to kick to the curb two other great questions that came in from our listeners. But we will get to them in a future week.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But I think it’s time for One Cool Things.

**Craig:** All right. Well, I’ll be real brief. My One Cool Thing is called Escape Room LA, the Detective. Escape Room LA is one of these outfits where you go downtown and they stick you in a room and they lock it and it’s full of puzzles and you have to solve all the puzzles to find the key to get out and you have an hour.

And the detective is one of the themes they have. I believe it’s their hardest one. And I did this with my wife, Melissa, and Alec Berg and his wife, and Megan Amram and her boyfriend, and David Kwong, and Chris Miller of Lord and Miller. This is a powerhouse team. I just want to point out, of this team, three Harvard grads, two Princeton grads, and a Dartmouth guy, okay.

**John:** So all idiots.

**Craig:** All idiots and we failed.

**John:** Oh, Craig.

**Craig:** And we were so — and it’s actually heartbreaking how we failed. We were flying through this thing. Like the record I think was something like 48 minutes. At minute 50, we had just one thing left to do. So we were close to even the record. And then we just died on the shoals of this one problem. And once it was revealed to us at the end, we were like, “Oh my God.”

**John:** So I think we skipped over a little bit of the set up of what this actually is. So they are locking you in a room and you’re trying to get out of the room?

**Craig:** And it’s full of puzzles. So all the clues are leading to other clues. They are leading you to unlock things. And the puzzles are all different varieties, there’s logic puzzles, math puzzles, there’s Morse code puzzles. There’s so many different ways. So you have to solve something like probably 13 or 14 major problems to finally unlock the thing that gets you the key to unlock the room.

And so much fun and it’s designed to be for anywhere up to 12 people. We were a little small. I think we were eight. But that’s a good —

**John:** But I have a hunch that 12 people wouldn’t actually necessarily improve it.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Maybe like that one more man problem actually like slows you down.

**Craig:** It will. And I think — yeah, I imagine every group of 12, one person is going, “Yeah, I’m lost, I’m going to sit down.” [laughs]

**John:** So Craig, after we wrap, you could tell me who the dead weight was in the group and how it slowed you down.

**Craig:** [laughs] I’ll throw many people under the bus.

**John:** Sounds good. My One Cool Thing is a television program called You’re the Worst. It’s on FXX. It’s actually on its second season, but I just last night watched the pilot from the first season which is on Hulu. And I really enjoyed it. And I would highly recommend people watch it just because it’s such a fascinating look at how you do the anti-romantic comedy and sort of how you take the tropes and play against the tropes.

So the show is created by Stephen Falk. And the natural comparison is with Catastrophe which I think was a previous One Cool Thing which is another great show you should watch on Amazon. Like Catastrophe, weirdly, it involves this one American and this one British person. They’re falling in love. They seem like a terrible couple. Catastrophe takes place in London. This takes place in Los Angeles.

What’s so different about You’re the Worst is the characters in it seem like they are the sidekick characters in other romantic comedies. They’re like the hyperactive, terrible like slutty people in the other romantic comedies. Like you would have the upstanding, like the Meg Ryan, but then she has her slutty best friend.

**Craig:** The wacky friends.

**John:** Sort of the slutty best friends.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Yeah. It’s nicely done and does some interesting things and there’s moments where I worried it was going to just be pushing buttons to push buttons. But it actually manages to find some humanness underneath there. So again, I’m basing this off of just watching the pilot. But I would recommend people watch the pilot because it’s a very great exercise and sort of like thinking about how you take the tropes of a genre like a romantic comedy and really play with them.

**Craig:** Well, I’ll put that on the list.

**John:** Craig is not going to watch it. Craig won’t watch anything.

**Craig:** Put it on the list of things I won’t watch.

**John:** It sounds very good.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That is our show for this week. Our show is produced, as always, by Stuart Friedel.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Who is off ordering t-shirts right now. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli who also did the outro this week. Thank you, Matthew. He got a new cello so you’re hearing his new cello. If you have a question for me or Craig Mazin, we’ll eventually answer your questions, ask@johnaugust is the email address you want. Craig on Twitter is @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust. We are on iTunes, so subscribe to us there if you wouldn’t mind and leave us a comment if you would like to.

We also have all the back episodes available at scriptnotes.net. If you sign up there, you get the whole back catalog for $2 a month. And you can find those episodes in the Scriptnotes app which is available both for iOS and for Android on their respective stores.

Craig, thank you so much.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**John:** Have a great week.

**Craig:** You too.

**John:** Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [You Must Remember This: MGM Stories, Part 1](http://www.vidiocy.com/youmustrememberthispodcastblog/2015/9/14/mgm-stories-part-one-louis-b-mayer-vs-irving-thalberg-ymrt-56) guest starring Craig Mazin
* [Joss Whedon, Drew Goddard & Lionsgate Get $10M ‘Cabin In The Woods’ Suit Tossed](http://deadline.com/2015/09/joss-whedon-drew-goddard-cabin-in-the-woods-lawsuit-lionsgate-chris-hemsworth-1201526687/), and [Substantial similarity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity) on Wikipedia
* [Here’s why The Rock’s new HBO show, ‘Ballers,’ can legally use NFL logos without the league’s consent](http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-rocks-ballers-can-use-nfl-logos-without-consent-2015-6) on Business Insider
* [Streisand effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect) on Wikipedia
* [Movie Magic Scheduling](http://www.ep.com/scheduling/)
* [Escape Room LA](http://escaperoomla.com/)
* [You’re the Worst](http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/youre-the-worst/episodes) on FXX, and [on Hulu](http://www.hulu.com/youre-the-worst)
* [Catastrophe](https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B00X8UKEEQ) on Amazon Prime Instant Video
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/ghosts-laughing-at-jokes).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 136 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, no funny voice this week?

**Craig:** Uh, that wasn’t a funny voice?

**John:** Oh, no, that sounded like your normal voice.

**Craig:** Oh, you mean, [creepy voice] you mean this voice, John?

**John:** Yeah, no, that wasn’t the voice I wanted. I was looking for something, I don’t know, something British maybe, I don’t know. I was expecting something different. I don’t know why.

**Craig:** What are you looking for buddy?

**John:** Yeah. You’ve got a whole trench coat full of voices and you just pull one out.

**Craig:** I’ll give you what you want. Sexy Craig is back!

**John:** Sexy Craig needs to go away forever.

**Craig:** Sexy Craig! Oh yeah!

**John:** So, I think it’s because of your voice last week that I had a mild stroke. And when I said the dates for this Writers Guild Foundation event that I’m hosting a little panel on with Kelly Marcel and Linda Woolverton, I said July 12, which is completely wrong. It’s April 12. And I often get dates wrong, but that’s like really, really wrong. So, it’s April 12. It’s a Saturday.

So, if you are interested in coming to see me, and Kelly, and Linda Woolverton, and a bunch of other screenwriters, there’s a link in the show notes to that.

**Craig:** “Sexy Craig needs to go away forever.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You don’t mean that.

**John:** I think sexy Craig might have a better use inside your own home than on this podcast.

**Craig:** Sexy Craig goes where he wants.

**John:** Ah, that’s the danger of sexy Craig.

**Craig:** [laughs] He’s so dangerous. Sexy Craig honestly is nothing but trouble. Nothing but trouble.

**John:** Yeah. You feel like sexy Craig is probably the younger brother who sort of like started smoking a little too early, started drinking a little too early because the parents had kind of given up on him a little bit.

**Craig:** Hey man. I don’t need them to tell me what to do.

**John:** Exactly. The parents I feel are actually kind of old at this point and they just really can’t control him.

**Craig:** Sexy Craig doesn’t need parents.

**John:** Sexy Craig was born in the wilderness.

**Craig:** He was born fully formed. He knows what he wants. He goes out and he gets it. He doesn’t need advice. He doesn’t need guidance. He guides you.

**John:** That’s right. He’s the master of his own fate and destiny.

**Craig:** Yeah. Sexy Craig is a real sociopath, by the way.

**John:** Craig, this week I got to do something kind of amazing. I am going to qualify it down as kind of amazing. I very rarely, and I want to ask you about this, how often do you play the sort of “I work in the industry and I have a certain profile and therefore I’m going to ask permission to do a certain thing.” How often do you sort of play that, like, screenwriter card?

**Craig:** Oh my god, like zero.

**John:** I never do it at all. But my daughter’s favorite show in the entire world is Lab Rats on Disney XD, which if you don’t have a young kid you have no reason to know that this show exists at all. But it does exist. It exists on Disney XD and it is a show about these four — well, there are three bionic kids and one unbionic kid.

**Craig:** Yeah, my daughter watches it.

**John:** Yeah. And so it’s the kind of show that an eight year old watches. And it’s not my taste in a show, but my daughter absolutely loves it. And so Stuart, Stuart Friedel, who everybody on the podcast knows because Stuart is the producer of our show, he used to work for Disney. So, he said, “You know, I can totally get you in to see a taping of Lab Rats.”

And so I finally said, “You know what? I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it for my daughter.” So, on Monday we went and saw a taping of Lab Rats. It was kind of fascinating.

**Craig:** That doesn’t count as like pulling rank or throwing your weight around. I mean, you know, that’s no big deal.

**John:** Maybe not such a big deal. Except that they don’t really have an audience for their tapings.

**Craig:** Oh, you were observing a taping? I mean, I honestly thought that where this story was going was that you were going to say that I was waiting to get into an event and they weren’t letting me in and I said, “Do you know who I am?” [laughs]

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** I thought this was going to be a “don’t you know who I am?” moment.

**John:** Oh, Craig, that’s every day for me. I’m pretty much always throwing my weight around that way.

**Craig:** Stomping your little foot.

**John:** Yeah. Here’s the thing. It’s because Stuart knew the people that it was very easy to sort of make those first phone calls. But because it’s not a show that normally tapes in front of a live studio audience, it was a little bit odd to go visit the set. And they weren’t used to having a lot of visitors. But they were actually terrifically nice and wonderful and helpful. The producers are Chris Peterson and Bryan Moore who created the show.

It was also just a fascinating time to sort of see what that whole universe is like because you and I don’t do that at all.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Like you’ve never written multi-cam, have you?

**Craig:** The very first stuff I was trying to do were multi-camera sitcoms. But I never actually got a job, you know. So, I watched some tapings. I went to some tapings.

**John:** Yeah. I’ve been to some tapings, too. And so it’s a show without an audience but it still has a laugh track. And so I was always curious like how do they do that? Do the actors just know to pause because that thing is supposed to be funny and therefore they’re going to fill it in with wild applause even though it doesn’t deserve wild applause?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It turns out the answer is they have this group of like six or seven people who sit in these sort of lawn chairs and watch a monitor and laugh. And these are people who I think are probably paid as extras whose whole job it is is to watch the show and laugh, take after take, and laugh the same at every joke as if it’s as funny the first time. It’s such a bizarre job and it’s such a great — I wish Ricky Gervais were still extras because it’s exactly the kind of thing you would want to see him do.

**Craig:** I’m honestly stunned. [laughs] I can’t quite absorb what you just told me. To reiterate, if I may, the show is not shot in front of a live studio audience. Obviously a laugh track is put in after. But rather than just leave some spaces and put the laugh track in as they desire, they have commandeered human beings to pretend to laugh over and over and those people do that?

**John:** I would clarify to say they are actually laughing, whether it’s genuine or not genuine. They provide a full voiced laughter that is apparently helpful for the actors in their timing to sort of know how things are supposed to feel.

**Craig:** I guess. But the thing is, A, no, it’s not natural because they’re adults. [laughs] I mean, look, I actually really enjoy the fact that there has been this resurgence of multi-cam traditional sitcom format on Disney Channel, and Nickelodeon does some as well because those were the shows you and I grew up with watching.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Laverne & Shirley, and Happy Days, and so on. And so I like that my daughter can watch them and she really enjoys them. But she’s not laughing out loud at them. Nobody really laughs out loud at them with rare exceptions.

**John:** Every once and awhile my daughter does laugh out loud at them.

**Craig:** Okay. Every once and awhile.

**John:** In some ways it’s a strange thing because I think it teaches kids that certain things are funny that actually aren’t funny. I do wonder about the dangerous quality of that laugh track.

**Craig:** There is that. But I guess my point is that adults surely wouldn’t be laughing out loud at that. Granted, when you go to a live sitcom taping, because it’s live theater and you’re in the moment, you do tend to laugh. And they do have to remind you to continue to laugh if there’s a retake, which they try and not do over and over. I mean, a lot of a sitcom is just shot, you know, okay, we’ve got it. We’re moving on.

But, there’s just six people. It’s not a big crowd. It’s just six people. They have to laugh. And I’m just a little surprised that the actors wouldn’t be completely creeped out by the fact that there’s this fake laughing going on.

**John:** Yeah. But they’re three seasons in and they’re all 17 years old and this is their job. Two years ago they were living at the Oakwood auditioning for things. So, it’s not a bad gig that they’re in right now.

I think the reason why they can’t have a normal audience for this is because they’re so — you’ve seen the show probably. There are so many stunts and effects that they can’t shoot like a normal multi-cam can, so they are doing things like four or five times and they’re having to do specific like wiring of stuff, so they couldn’t do a normal audience.

But it is just strange.

**Craig:** That’s weird. Yeah. Hey, if it works for them, god bless them.

**John:** Our mutual friend Melissa McCarthy is on a multi-cam right now. She’s on Mike & Molly. And so she’s describing how they do pre-tapes for certain things like car scenes they’ll do a pre-tape. And they’ll anticipate sort of where the laughter would be naturally, but on the day they actually film the show in front of a live studio audience they’ll just sit on apple boxes without like any of the set around them and just do the same scene again so they can get the laughter, get the jokes timed right.

**Craig:** And they’ll see where humans would naturally laugh.

**John:** Yeah. But there’s really nothing natural or human about a Disney XD show. And I’m not sort of denigrating them, and bless them for having me come over. I don’t really want to sound like I’m throwing them under the bus.

**Craig:** Why would that — that’s not denigrating.

**John:** It’s a strange thing.

**Craig:** Yeah, for you to say that there is nothing less natural, [laughs], what was it? Nothing less natural than a Disney XD show?

**John:** I may have said nothing less natural or human than a —

**Craig:** Or human, yeah. There’s nothing negative about that at all. [laughs] They did you a favor!

**John:** They did me a huge solid, so I am just being sort of a jerk now. But it was fascinating, this is a show about androids. Sorry, they’re not androids. I’m sorry, they’re bionic.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** There is something actually inherently non-human about them, so maybe that’s what makes it all work.

**Craig:** Listen. Whatever production tricks they need to do to get through the day, that makes sense. I just find it so odd. I mean, I would have never thought of that.

If somebody were to say to me do this show and you can’t have a live studio audience, but you do need to figure out the timing of the laughs, I suppose I would just say, well, I think since I’m controlling where the laughs go, and there isn’t a live studio audience to cue me where they would naturally go, it’s entirely arbitrary per my decision, so why don’t I just get a thing to playback laughs live on the stage and not have people do it over and over?

**John:** Yeah. Why don’t you actually just like push a button for where the laughter is, where you think it’s going to go.

**Craig:** Right. Have you ever seen one of those guys with their machines? Those guys are gone now. Everything is on a computer. But when I started in the business way, way back in the ’90s, there was a guy who would show up with this special patented machine and he would plug it into your mixing board.

**John:** A sweetener.

**Craig:** Yeah. And he would select the laughs. And there are stages of laughs. Little — everything from titters to guffaws and awes, and oohs, and all that. And actually the creepiest thing about it was I remember, I was talking to that guy and he goes, “You realize all the people you hear laughing on TV, they’re all dead. They were recorded in the ’50s.” And so a bunch of 50 and 60-year-old men and women in the 1950s were just recorded laughing and doing all these reactions. And they’re all gone now, so it’s like ghosts laughing at jokes that they wouldn’t even understand about iPhones. [laughs] It’s so weird!

**John:** Yeah.

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

**John:** Today on the show we’re going to do a Three Page Challenge. People love the Three Page Challenge. And we have three new entries for the Three Page Challenge.

**Craig:** Oh, I wish I had a thing right now so I could go, “Ahhhh.” Yeah, after everything you say I’m going to give little laughs.

**John:** Maybe Matthew Chilelli will add in a little laugh here or there. But, actually, this is sort of an interesting segue because one of the things I realized as I was watching this, I asked the guy who had written this episode like what are your scripts like, are you writing them like a single cam or like a three-camera, because there is no reason why you should kind of write it like a multi-cam, but they do write it like a multi-cam, so they write it in that format that I find so odd where dialogue can be all caps and parentheticals are in part of the dialogue. They’re not set aside as their own separate line.

But I recognize fully that my thinking it is odd is just because it’s not what I’m dealing with on a daily basis. And so a good transition to us talking about some follow up on what a screenwriting format could look like or should look like and what some of the priorities would be. Because we actually had some people email us and tweet at us this week following up on our last conversation.

**Craig:** Yeah. There was a little bit of a discussion in our last podcast we talked about how you and I have this instinct to move away from slug lines as the scene dividers and talk about sequences as the primary chunk in which to parse out a screenplay.

And there was a little bit of discussion back and forth, and it’s true that initially when we started talking about this we were saying, “Oh scenes are the thing,” but I think you and I realized fairly quickly that scene is a strange word because it means different things to different people. And I’m going to agree with a lot of people who are like, “Hey, slug line doesn’t define scene.” That’s correct.

It does, I think, in current format to some extent, maybe to the detriment of the screenplay, it does define the scene. When you’re shooting people say, “Well, what’s the scene number?” And they’re referring to something that’s connected to a slug line. Interior or Exterior, location, time of day. And what we’re saying is that’s useful information to have, and that’s important to have, but that’s actually not a great way to split up the work. A better way to split up the work is to think of a sequence and a sequence is a group of scenes that are organized around a certain narrative movement.

And when I even say a group of scenes, I mean to say bits. You know, bits. And those bits may actually cut across slug lines as well. For instance, in one of our Three Page Challenges today we’ll come to a part where there is a bit, where a kid is upstairs and then he’s downstairs. And there is a missing slug line in there. And I missed it. But that doesn’t mean that the scene isn’t really one scene.

**John:** Absolutely. I think when we get to that Three Page Challenge you’re going to see what we’re talking about. I agree with you that I really like that our listeners have challenged and pushed back on some of our assumptions, because that’s exactly what you sort of need to do at this early stage of talking about what could be new or better.

Right now when we talk about scenes, ultimately you and I are still in two different worlds. We’re trying to write a movie and we kind of know what a scene is in a movie. It’s this chunk of a movie that it’s about this thing. And usually it’s often characters in a certain place in a certain time. And then that scene — you kind of feel like that scene is over and then you’re onto the next scene. And so location and time is often a useful way of describing the boundaries of it.

But we are always running into situations where you have people on two sides of a phone conversation and that ends up sort of being kind of two scenes, or is it one scene. Or you have people who are moving through a space and you’re trying to decide do I break this out as separate scenes, or is it continuous. And all that stuff is really just weird text baggage being put on something that’s very natural when you see it in a movie, but it’s really weird on a page.

And really what we’re talking about — and I don’t know if we’re going to end up on scene or sequence as being the right sort of defining block for it — but, yeah, we’re talking about what makes sense in a story purpose as a scene, not what necessarily needs to make sense on a budgeting or a strip board kind of thing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** A lot of what is in the modern screenplay format is there as much for the AD or the line producer as it is for the reader. And so things like INT/EXT as a shorthand for are we inside or are we outside. The location and trying to be really consistent about the name of that location so you’re not calling the same place three different things. Well, it’s not maybe the best experience for the reader, but it’s meant to be sort of consistent for the person who has to figure this stuff out later on.

**Craig:** That’s right. The slug lines are there to help you figure out how to shoot the movie out of order, because you are going to shoot it out of order. But, of course, we read it in order. So, we have this strange format that straddles out of order and in order. And as you were talking it occurred to me that I guess one of the defining characteristics of this useful bit of parsed out storytelling that we’re trying to describe here is continuous time.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** That there is a section of storytelling that occurs in continuous time. So, if somebody is inside and then they walk outside and then they get in their car and then they pull up, and there is not a jump — or even if there is a jump but the jump just exists to compress, it’s about a sense of continuous time.

**John:** There are cases in screenwriting where it’s discontinuous time, but you’re continuously at a place or you’re continuously on a certain idea. And you really, I mean, yes, sometimes you really call this more sequences where you’re going back and forth between a lot of different things, but it’s really all one idea. You’d really call that one scene.

**Craig:** I agree. Or one sequence. Exactly.

**John:** So, yes, in both cases our reliance on that single line of scene header to describe what’s going on and what this feels like as a movie is really hurting us, I think.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that’s why sequence is the best word. Because scene is borrowed from stage anyway. And it probably made a lot of sense when they first started shooting movies and everything was on a stage.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And it was just you enter, you talk, you leave. We really do need to switch to this notion of sequence and leave this word scene behind. Scene doesn’t even describe what the slug lines are doing anyway. All the slug line is is just an indication of location and time of day.

**John:** Absolutely. What people may not be aware of, in the origin of screenwriting the first screenwriters were largely women. And the first screenplays were essentially just a list of shots. And so they were this list of sort of like how you’re going through things and basically shot, by shot, by shot this is what you’re seeing. And it evolved into this format that we have now which is sort of like halfway like a play, halfway like a radio play. It’s its own weird beast, partly because of how it started.

And I think it doesn’t necessarily do a great job of describing what we’re actually making right now. So hopefully if there’s going to be something to replace it it would do a better job of describing that.

One of the things which people who haven’t been through production are probably also not aware of is there’s a stage in production where you take a script and you break it down. And by breaking it down you’re going down to scene by scene. And by scene I’m talking about that sense of this is the location, this is the time, this is how many pages or eighths of a page is occurring in this block of shooting.

And one of the functions that so often an AD or a line producer is doing is writing a synopsis of that scene. It’s basically like a one sentence or two sentence description of what happens in that scene.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** As a screenwriter I often, if I’m heavily involved in production, I will often ask for that and go through and rewrite that quite early on. And I’ll rewrite what the synopsis of those scenes were, because so often I’ve seen the purpose of the scene horribly misrepresented. And so it’s like they’ll describe it as being like “Susan confronts Tom about this” when it’s actually not what happens in that moment, so people can get confused. But that idea of a synopsis for a scene I think is actually a really interesting idea as an element to be part of the screenplay format from the start.

And it’s actually a thing that exists in Fountain. We have a thing where if you start a line with an equal sign that’s called a synopsis line. And it’s just a way of — a shorthand for what happens in that moment. And that can be very useful for writers. So, essentially almost that kind of what you would write on an outline or what you would write on an index card for a scene could be part of the actual document itself.

**Craig:** I think that that ability is in Fade In and Final Draft and Screenwriter. They have these kind of summary little things that are attached that you can tag onto, but what’s interesting is that none of it is really formalized, you know, because we’ll do all this stuff, but you’re right at some point it just goes through the meat grinder of an AD going, “Okay, how many pages is this? How much time do I need to shoot it? Is it a day or two days? Is it inside? Is it outside? Where is it? What time of day?” And, yeah, some brief often ham-fisted description of the action just so people…

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this. I’m fascinated. I cannot do it. It’s funny, Todd Phillips and I would talk about this all the time. We’d be on set and somebody would walk up to us and say, “Hey, listen, for scene 72 did you guys mean…,” and we both are like, “Don’t — we have no idea what that means. None.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Zero.

**John:** I do that all the time in production. Because they’re only looking at numbers.

**Craig:** And they actually memorize it. And they all do it. It’s incredible. I feel so stupid. I mean, it’s like some guy will come up to me and he’s like, “Hey, are we doing 85 tomorrow?” And I’m like, uh, how did you do that? [laughs] Where? What?

**John:** What’s fascinating is that once you start production, from production through the end, that actually is a meaningful thing because editors are looking at those scene numbers, too. So, like everyone else can talk about scene numbers, but weirdly the people who wrote the script generally have no idea what those scene numbers are.

**Craig:** None.

**John:** Which is crazy. But maybe that’s reasonable, too.

**Craig:** Well, we’re the ones that put it in. It’s just that we put it in for everybody else. But in our minds we’re, you know, we’re just thinking about the movie.

**John:** We’re thinking of the movie. We’re thinking of how you get from place to place. How you transition from that moment to the next moment.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** So, a couple wrote specific tweets that I thought we should address on the air. So, Alyssa Brick wrote, “Is there a danger that people could hide bad writing behind good AD presentation in a new format?” I think absolutely. There is a danger that in some ways you could forget about the writing and sort of like the importance of the writing by having all of these other gimmicks in there. And somebody else had written in with some pages of a script that they were working on that I just, I don’t know what you thought about it, I thought that was a mess and I would not be interested in reading that or seeing that. I wouldn’t want to be handed those pages and say like, okay, here’s the movie.

Did you look at those?

**Craig:** I did. They were fascinating. The problem was that the writer used every possible thing. It was a bit like, I mean, I like mustard and I like ketchup, but I don’t want mustard and ketchup and salt and pepper and this and that. I mean, they just went kitchen sink.

There were ideas in there that I thought were at least nibbling at the sort of things that could be helpful, but I do agree with the implication here. The last thing we want to do is basically imply, oh, you’ve just got to go and puke a bunch of insanity onto a page to flimflam us.

By the way, I don’t think it’ll ever work.

**John:** I don’t think it would ever work. And here’s why I thought those pages didn’t work specifically for me is that even if you’re adding more stuff into a script page than would normally be there, the experience of watching a movie is essentially linear. You can’t pause and take everything in. It’s going to keep running forward. And so, you know, a script ultimately has to be very linear because that’s the experience of watching a movie is very linear.

So, if you’re throwing out a bunch of stuff that has like two column charts and then like all these other stills in there and you have — if I’m spending like five minutes looking at this page trying to figure out what’s going on, that’s not the experience of what a movie can actually be. And that’s not going to be a great experience. So, while it’s great that you have all of these resources, I think you actually have to look at sort of what the experience of watching the movie is going to be like and how can you reflect that in a document. Because the experience of watching a movie is nothing like that page, I would hope.

**Craig:** I agree. And in fact one of the things that I think we should think about as we invent our new format is to use the flexibility of digital format, so that the reader has a choice of when to call up extra information. It’s not imposed upon you. The page isn’t a scattered pastiche of text, and image, and sound, and all the rest, but rather I understand that there’s a small icon next to a description. I can click it, a window will pop up, show it to me, and then I can make it go away.

It’s at my command, as I wish.

**John:** Yeah. So, Mr. Bowers wrote in saying, “Have you guys seen Scrivener?” Which I have seen Scrivener. “It’s very close to what you describe as your ideal new screenplay format.”

No. And I think you tweeted back saying that Scrivener is an app, it’s not a format, and I think that’s a really crucial distinction and I want to make sure that as we talk about this that that sort of comes out clearly, because I think if there’s any one app that does a bunch of this, that does all this stuff, that’s not the solution. The solution — because we’re not trying to replace Final Draft. We’re really trying to replace what screenplays are like.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** And that’s a much broader thing and that’s existed before Final Draft and everything else that generates these kind of documents, too. So, it’s really a system for like how you could display this kind of information. And what I think has worked so far about Fountain is it’s not trying to be one company and it’s not trying to be one app and it’s not trying to be one thing.

It’s about there is going to be buy-in by a bunch of different people. So, in many ways I think what you and I are talking about is incredibly utopian and would probably never actually really happen, but it might steer a conversation in an interesting way and some of these ideas could come to pass.

**Craig:** I think it’s going to happen.

**John:** All right. That’s great.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m a go-getter.

**John:** The last thing is people tweeted back saying, “Oh, you can’t get rid of one page per minute,” and so I want to have one last little bit of discussion about the one page per minute because there is a step that, again, I don’t think people realize because they haven’t been through production is that before you actually start shooting a script there’s what’s called a script timing. And that’s where a person with experienced production goes through the script literally with a stopwatch, reading through it and sort of feeling out how long each thing is supposed to be taking, often in conjunction with the director, timing it out to really get a sense of like how long the finished product would be.

Because you and I both know that there are scripts that are 140 pages that come out at 100 minutes and scripts that seem incredibly short that come out very, very long, especially in episodic, the different shows will have a completely different style, so a show that is really rapid fire like Gilmore Girls, their scripts were like 80 pages long for a show that was going to be 42 minutes because they spoke a thousand miles per hour.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And I wouldn’t be surprised if True Detective was kind of the opposite where those scripts weren’t a full — wouldn’t feel like a full hour, but it’s because of the pacing of it that it wouldn’t be that. So, there is a stage called script timing which is actually designed to do exactly what we’re talking about. Even if we’re not doing this one page per minute rule, someone is going to time it out. You’re going to know how long something is.

**Craig:** No question. I still believe that you get a sense of how long a script is from reading it. And if you were to hide the page numbers from me, or hide pagination entirely and I just read it, I would be able to give you some vague sense of how long I thought the movie would be. And that would be, I think, more accurate frankly than some paginated page number.

Look at The Social Network. I mean, very famously Sorkin wrote massive — I mean, the opening scene, I don’t know how pages that it’s paginated. 15? I mean, it’s wall-to-wall dialogue but it was meant to do at a very rapid pace. And it certainly didn’t take the amount of time that the one page per minute would indicate.

Similarly, when I was doing spoof movies with David Zucker, I understood that they were done at breakneck speed. And that it was really more like 45 seconds a page if anything. The people that are clinging to this one page a minute thing I think are just afraid.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They feel, it’s like we’re taking their woobie away. But the woobie is not real.

**John:** The woobie is not real.

**Craig:** No. There is no woobie.

**John:** Craig, you brought up a topic that I think was great and incredibly apropos, so I would love you to take over this. This is about when it’s okay to work for free.

**Craig:** Yeah. This has coming up a bit lately and there’s a little bit of a confusion about it. And so I just wanted to lay the groundwork for people in terms of what the rules are, which I think frankly parallel what is best for us as screenwriters. This is not always the case. In this instance it is.

So, per the WGA and our agreement with the companies, so called “spec writing” is forbidden. And you’re like, “Well, wait a second, we write specs all the time.”

Okay, let me explain. The deal is that you can write on your own. You control the material. You own the copyright as you wish. You can write a spec screenplay, you can write a novel, you can write anything you want. And obviously no one is paying you for it because it’s yours.

You can do this even in conjunction with a producer, because remember producers don’t employ us. Producers are employed by the studios just as we are. If you were to sit down with a producer and they say, “Hey, we have an idea and we’d like for you to write it. And you could write it on spec and then we would go out and try and sell it.” You are perfectly free to say yes. And I don’t think there’s any issue with that, because you control it. That’s the most important thing. You have the copyright on it. It’s yours. You wrote it.

You don’t feel like selling it? You don’t feel like selling it for a certain number? It doesn’t happen. It’s entirely under your control.

The kind of free writing that is unacceptable is free writing that occurs as a condition for employment or free writing that occurs as part of employment. So, if somebody says to you, “We would be interested in hiring you to write this. Write me ten pages to prove that you can.” That’s a huge no-no. It’s against the MBA and it’s also something that we just shouldn’t do as writers. It’s unprofessional.

If you are hired on something and the employer says, “We know we’re supposed to pay you now for the script you just turned in, but we don’t want to. We want you to write another draft of it.” That is a no-no.

Now, there is a flexible area where producers are asking for this and this is the whole free rewrite conundrum. We’ve gotten into that before. But the biggest issue to just keep in mind is that you cannot, cannot write to get employment. You can’t accept writing as a condition for employment. They’re not allowed to ask for it. They can’t even ask you for a summary or a lead behind or an outline or a treatment. And, frankly, as writers I would strongly suggest that you not do it, that you not give them that in order to get a job.

They will put that on as a condition and one of the things that we’ve been talking about with the studios is to say to them, “Look, not only is that against the rules, but it’s going to blow up in your face because…” and this has happened now a bunch of times. Somebody is going to write one of these things to get the job. They’re not going to get the job. And now you have somebody out there with material that you don’t own. And you’re going to make a movie and as we know there are similarities and they’re going to come back and they’re going to get you, because they’re going to say you stole it.

So, anyway, that’s the basic dividing line and hopefully that clears it up for people in some way.

**John:** In some way. I think the take home from this is that there’s nothing wrong with free writing if it’s your writing. If you are writing for yourself a spec work that you are doing for yourself where you’re writing a script for yourself, yes, and that’s one of the most wonderful things about being a screenwriter is no one can stop you from writing, unless they have some exclusivity on you, which is a crazy thing, which we’ll get into at another point. But essentially no one can stop you from writing and that’s the gift you have as a writer.

One of the other gifts is you can say you want to work with somebody on a project, you can do that. And a producer who is not a guild signatory who is not a person who would be hiring you in general, you could agree that you’re going to write this thing and collaborate with this producer on getting this thing to its final best form, but it’s still yours. You’re going to own this. And you can choose whether to sell it or not sell it.

It’s when you are going into a buyer, a person who is going to pay you money to do stuff who chooses not to pay you money to do stuff, but rather is just going to have you write for free and if they like it then maybe they’ll buy it. That’s the problematic situation.

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**John:** So, where it gets complicated and where you and I both know people who have run into this situation is that conversation of like, “We would be really interested in something like this,” and so it’s like, uh, so are you telling me that you want me to spec — not telling me but they’re telling the young writer — are you telling me that you want me to spec something that’s in sort of this ballpark? And they can’t really quite say that, but they talk about the kinds of things they’re interested in and it becomes this conversation that is essentially asking you to write something for free.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, but the difference again is if you really like, yeah, you own it. They don’t want it, go sell it to somebody else, assuming that it’s something that anybody would want.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** The trickiest of these for me is when a producer comes to a writer and they control a property. They have an option on a book, for instance. And they say we’d like you to adapt this on spec to see if we can go set it up somewhere. I’m not a big fan of that.

**John:** Yeah. Because it’s really clear to see how this can go wrong, essentially they decide they don’t like your script, they drop the option on the book, and suddenly you have a script that’s based on material you don’t own or control. And you can’t sell this project.

**Craig:** Precisely. So, the idea is when you’re writing on spec you need to write in an unencumbered way, so that you own the material completely. The only other thing I would say is if you really loved some underlying property that a producer controlled, it would be fair to say, “Fine, I’m going to write this on spec, but I need us to sign an agreement. And that agreement is that if you’re going to set this project up, you’re setting it up with my script.” And usually they won’t, [laughs], they won’t agree to that. And that’s why I like asking those questions because suddenly they have to show you who they are.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** The leverage you have as the writer is the ability to say no. And there are times where you’re going to need to say no, or at least ask the questions that will lead you to a no.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** All right, let’s get to our Three Page Challenges this week. We have three that Stuart picked. So, Stuart, I want to just stand up for Stuart here for a second. Stuart read 70 Three Page Challenges yesterday. They had sort of backed up for awhile. And so when I asked him like, hey, could you grab some for me and Craig, he went through 70.

**Craig:** I am impressed, Stuart.

**John:** So, these are the three he picked. And some of these may have been from before this last batch of 70, but if you are new to the Three Page Challenge let me talk you through what happens here. So, we solicit our listeners to send in three pages of their script. It’s almost always the first three pages, but there’s no rule that it has to be the first three pages. But if you’re going to do that, there are rules that you have to follow.

And that is go to johnaugust.com/threepage, all spelled out, and we will ask you to have certain boilerplate on the email. Send only the pages. Don’t send anything else. Just send the pages. We’d love to have your name. We’d love to have a title page is great and helpful. But it’s just these three pages. And we talk about them on the air, a very small fraction of the people who send pages in actually are discussed on the air, but we really thank everyone who sent them in. And we especially thank people who are brave enough to hear us talk about their pages on the air because you guys are heroes.

If you want to read along with these pages, there are PDFs attached to this episode. So, go to the show notes either on your app device or at johnaugust.com and you’ll see the show notes and these Three Page Challenges attached.

So, what should we start with, Craig?

**Craig:** Well, you know, I just noticed. I was looking at our three submissions today and I feel like Stuart hides little themes.

**John:** Well I think I picked up a theme, but what are you going to say?

**Craig:** I think the theme he hit today was single word punchy title.

**John:** Yeah. All these are — the three scripts this week are Reactor, Bruiser, and Paragon.

**Craig:** Paragon.

**John:** They all kind of feel like they could be ABC shows. Like Scandal. Betrayed. Or Revenge.

**Craig:** [laughs] That’s right. Revenge. Well, we can start with any of them. I’m holding, well, I’ve got all three of them. Do you want me to summarize this first one here?

**John:** If it’s one that I’m not ready to summarize. Do you have Chris Sandiford?

**Craig:** I have Chris Sandiford right here. Reactor.

**John:** Reactor. Yeah, I want to talk about this one, so let’s go for it.

**Craig:** Okay. So, Reactor. We open up high above the clouds at night in moonlight and then we descend down through the clouds to realize we’re in a violent thunderstorm.

On the ocean below there is this big Maersk E-Class Ship, big cargo ship, and there’s a heavy cable, like a toe cable that fires from the sky and hits one of the containers on the ship.

Inside the ship we can now see that a helicopter is attached to this toe cable and it’s using this toe cable to sort of pull itself into the ship.

And then we go into the helicopter where Colonel Drumm is advising his pilot and some guy using a laptop to essentially take it easy and try and land thing.

We go onto the ship’s bridge where a crewman is watching his radars fizzle out and then he notices that there’s this helicopter that’s coming in. He gets on the radio to the captain who is in the mess hall eating spaghetti and basically says there is an unidentified helicopter and there are three guys with weapons coming out of it.

And we then go to the engine room of the ship where a crew person is alerting Emilia Alvarez, an engineer, that there are hostiles outside, emergency protocol. We think that she’s just working on the engine, and then it is revealed to us but not to the other crew person that in fact she is assembling some very fancy looking grenade launcher.

**John:** And I took it that she’s actually a hostile.

**Craig:** It appears that she is a hostile. Yeah, a saboteur.

And so that is Reactor by Chris Sandiford.

**John:** So, my take on this is this is essentially all action setup. And so this wasn’t like, you know, oh we’re getting to know who these characters are. We’re not getting to know the world. This feels like the start of an action movie. It feels like the start of a Die Hard or some sort of like big set piecey kind of action movie taking place on the seas.

And I actually kind of dug it for what it was doing here. There are some things that didn’t work. I thought some of the dialogue didn’t especially ring true. I don’t like Spaghetti Captain. I don’t like on page three we have, “Then, with respect, Captain, get your ass in gear! These guys have weapons!” That’s how you’re talking to your captain? That feels kind of odd.

But I liked the overall sense of scale and size and drama. I felt like I knew what kind of movie this was after these three pages. And was excited to sort of see well what is this set piece going to be like.

**Craig:** Well, I agree that there was a good sense of pacing to it. I mean, it was an example of how to introduce elements and reveal things cinematically. These are very cinematic pages. We’re watching everything and that’s great.

In a general sense, tonally this feels out of time. It feels old fashioned to me. This feels a bit like a Steven Seagal movie.

**John:** I was going to say Steven Seagal. Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. Mid-’90s. I think we’re past this. Even video games, frankly, are past this. This feels like a cut scene from like the first Splinter Cell, not something that you would see now. So, there was a kind of an old fashioned sense to it and it was not helped at all by the characterizations that Chris gave us.

Even the names. We’ve got Colonel Drumm. “Easy, ace.” And in fact, Ace says, “Aye, Colonel. This storm is something else.” All of the dialogue is very cornball, frankly. I really got puzzled, very puzzled by the interaction with the captain.

I’m just going to read this exchange. This crewman, he’s seeing this thing that — I mean, they’re on a ship in the ocean and there’s a helicopter that’s towing itself in that he does not recognize and his radars are gone. And they’re in the middle of a storm. Captain, for some reason he’s eating spaghetti, fine. The guy turns an alarm on and then calls the captain and says, “Bridge.”

And the Captain says, “This had better be good!” Why? Because it’s spaghetti time and everybody knows don’t bother the captain when he’s eating spaghetti? They’re in the middle of a storm. There’s an alarm.

“Sir, we’ve got a chopper more to the bow,” which isn’t true because it was actually more I think to a container, but fine. “You expecting anyone?” It’s already that kind of vaguely, quippy Michael Bay Armageddon-y kind of dialogue.

And the captain says, “Alarms are for emergencies, crewmen!”

I don’t know. I kind of feel like some strange helicopter that’s moored itself to your bow in the middle of a storm is sort of notable. And then, yes, the guy with the assault weapons come out and then the crewmen says, “Then, with respect, Captain, get your ass in gear! These guys have weapons.”

And then the captain slams down the receiver, turns to the other three crewmen in the mess and says, “OK, listen up!” This almost is bordering on spoof. Assuming that there’s a kind of a modernization of the dialogue and a little bit more of a professional veneer to — not professional screenwriting veneer, but professional crew person veneer to how these people behave.

What I did like was the visual of a helicopter towing itself in. I would have loved those people in the helicopter to be more serious. I like the idea of crew members going, “Whoa, what the hell is that?” And I thought it was a good reveal to see that there is this engineer who is listening to headphones and seems to just be oblivious, actually being part of the sabotage crew.

**John:** Yeah. So, where I thought this could have really benefited from is just a little bit more mystery. And so more sense of like as the audience we’re watching these two sides and we’re not sort of sure who to root for. Because I guess right now I’m not sure who to root for. But honestly if you were to take out all of the dialogue I think you have a much stronger, more compelling scene.

So, if we see this helicopter landing and we see like just quick barked commands behind like what people are doing and mounting this ship, and then if we didn’t really see, if we didn’t know much about sort of what the captain situation was — honestly, just give us less. I think you could take out almost all the dialogue in here.

And then we’re watching this thing, it’s like should we be rooting for the people in the helicopter who are boarding this ship? Should we be rooting for the people on the ship against the helicopter. Is this an invasion? Is the ship evil? Is the helicopter evil? These are all kind of fascinating question and I feel like holding back on this a little bit longer would have been great.

**Craig:** I agree.

**John:** I mean, even right now I don’t quite know who I’m rooting for, but I’d like to really have that heightened more.

**Craig:** I agree. My suspicion is that the helicopter guys are bad guys, but I don’t know, then they’re military. It seems like they’re acting like bad guys? I couldn’t tell.

The other advice I would give on just the plotting, just logic, is you’re a helicopter and you’re going to do this very fancy maneuver to land on this ship. And obviously you’re up to no good. Why would you start landing in a spot where they could see you? I mean, there’s this guy tapping on a computer to shut their radars down. But yet they’re just landing in front of a window. You know, it seems like it would be a good thing to show that these people are a little more competent than that and are revealed only because something goes wrong or the ship gets rolled by a wave or something.

**John:** Yeah. And if we’re going to have a guy on a laptop there may be a better way than “guy on laptop” honestly. It would be more exciting to see the physical action of what you’re doing to take down that radar thing. A person doing something is almost always more exciting than a computer doing something. So, if it’s a physical person taking something down or breaking something or changing something, that could be great to see as well.

**Craig:** Yeah. Guy on laptop in helicopter above turning radars off below, again, just feels like a cheesy misunderstanding of how computers work. And you used to be able to get away with that sort of thing, I guess, but less so these days. People do demand a little more technical verisimilitude.

**John:** Yeah. I mean, if it’s the thing where like you’re tossing something out the radar that makes it look like a lightning strike but it wasn’t a lightning strike, that you’re doing something to physically knock it out feels probably a little bit more rewarding.

A couple other things I noticed, sort of words on the page. Right now we’re starting “EXT. SKY — NIGHT. FROM A GREAT ALTITUDE WE SOAR over a thick blanket of endless CLOUD,” I think it’s clouds, “bathed in enchanting moonlight.”

I don’t think you need the “EXT. SKY — NIGHT.” The first line is telling you that we’re in the sky, so I think you’re just redundant. And I love starting a script without that scene header slug line when we don’t need it. It was a little too written for me.

**Craig:** A little purple.

**John:** It was a little too purple. And it’s like, “Thick blanket of endless bathed in enchanting moonlight,” and then we’re going through the fluff and into a violent thunder storm. Let’s just start at the thunder storm. It’s a thunder storm. Let’s be in the middle of this.

**Craig:** Yeah. You’re going to end up there anyway when they cut the first part.

**John:** Yeah. You are. You’re totally going to be there.

**Craig:** You just are. You see the company logo and then, boom, you’re in the middle of a thunderstorm. It’s a cool way to start.

**John:** So, Chris Sandiford is evidently British because he spelled “storeys,” which is absolutely fine. Nothing wrong with being British. But I will say a general bit of —

**Craig:** [laughs] I think there’s something a little wrong with being British.

**John:** Just a little bit wrong.

**Craig:** I can think of somebody I know who is British who is just a little wrong.

**John:** Oh, but she’s wrong in just the right ways.

There is a general style note. Let’s talk about numbers in scripts. Because we’ve talked about how you shouldn’t really write numbers in dialogue, you should spell them out. Let’s also spell out numbers that are starting sentences. And numbers less than 10. I mean, I’m sort of talking MLA style here. But here “20 storeys,” spell out the twenty. Don’t give me numbers for that.

Later on another page he does “4 men” with the number four to start things. No, spell those out. Numbers ten and above, I would say probably better to use the numbers for those. But the smaller things, use words because they’re easier to read. It just feels more natural.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** Chris, I think I’m a bigger fan of these pages than Craig was, because I was — I was honestly sort of skipping over some of the dialogue moments because I was so excited by the skill and scope of which this ship was being setup and sort of what this action was going to be.

**Craig:** All right. What are you going to do now?

**John:** I can do Paragon by Aaron Kablack.

**Craig:** Kablack.

**John:** Sure. Like Kaboom? Kablack.

**Craig:** Like Slotboom. Kablack.

**John:** Yeah. I think you’re right.

**Craig:** We never heard from Slotboom, did we?

**John:** I don’t think we did. I can check through the mail. But I don’t think we heard back from Slotboom.

**Craig:** I don’t think she listens to the show.

**John:** All right. She just sent in pages randomly.

**Craig:** Yeah, she’s too cool, man. She’s Slotboom.

**John:** Yeah, I submitted my pages but I didn’t bother listening. That’s how cool I am.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly. Whatevs.

**John:** That’s the title of the script. It’s called Paragon. As this story begins we’re in an elementary school hallway. And we start with Ashley Ayers, and she’s being slammed against the lockers by Wanda, who is 10. Ashley is only 7 years old.

Wanda is going to beat her up for narcing on her that basically she was cheating off the test. Ashley ducks the blow, gets on top of Wanda, starts beating her up. And she’s fighting hard.

Cut to principal’s office, where we see Ashley with her mother, Blair. The principal says, “This is the fourth time this year. I’m sorry, but we have no choice but to suspend Ashley. Again.”

We’re in the car. We’re driving home. Ashley says it’s not her fault. Her mom says, “We’re going to deal with this when your father gets home.” A comment about whenever dad does get home. Some setup about how he works for the news station.

And then traffic starts slowing down more and more and more and suddenly people are running past the windows, concerned. A distant wail of sirens. More people sprinting past. And suddenly a whole bunch of people are sprinting past the windows, getting away from something as we reach the end of our first three pages.

Craig, go for it.

**Craig:** Well, this is the first thing, “INT. ELEMENTARY SCHOOL HALLWAY — DAY. The back of 7-year-old ASHLEY AYERS’S head SLAMS into a locker door. Her barrettes CLACK off the metal.” And here we were off and running with problems.

**John:** Yeah. There are a lot of problems in that first sentence.

**Craig:** A lot of problems. I mean, problem number one: I don’t think you know many 7 year olds, because this is not — the whole — all these pages were not appropriate for a 7-year-old character to be behaving the way this little girl was. First of all, the fight between a 10-year-old and a 7-year-old seemed way misaligned. The kind of dialogue, the fact that she calls her a bitch. And they’re back and forth and the severity of the fight just seemed way off for a 7-year-old.

I mean, I know 7 year olds. My daughter is 9, so I can remember all the —

**John:** Yeah. 7 year olds, they’re second graders.

**Craig:** They’re second graders.

**John:** They’re kind of tiny.

**Craig:** They weigh 40 pounds soaking wet. They’re sentences are all ka-jumbled. [laughs] They’re little girls.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They’re really little girls. I mean, a lot of them are still like learning to read and stuff, you know. So, just the age was nuts.

Her barrettes clack off the metal? I got really just like, huh? How?

**John:** Because here’s the thing — there’s a physics problem of like if her head is slamming against that, well that slam is going to be louder than the clack. It felt weird. And so I get the instinct behind the barrettes. It’s like it’s trying to make her younger by giving her barrettes in a way, like reminding her that she’s still a little girl. But, it doesn’t make sense.

**Craig:** I think being 7 would be the tip off. Also, let’s just be realistic. It’s impossible to shoot that. You literally can’t shoot a 7-year-old girl having her head slammed against a locker. How exactly does that work on the day, you know? So, really I guess my first thing is just say to Aaron I think you mean an older girl here. Everything that happens here seems to be asking for an 11 or 12-year-old girl.

**John:** Yeah. 7 year old girls haven’t been suspended multiple times.

**Craig:** Absolutely not.

**John:** It’s actually really hard to get suspended from school in second grade.

**Craig:** It’s really, really hard. And, frankly, if you’re fighting that much in second grade, you’re just mentally ill. [laughs] Little girls in second grade aren’t doing this.

**John:** I want to stop for one second and say like assuming that all these girls are older and that this is a fight that actually should happen, which I don’t think probably should happen, the actual beating up and the fighting was handled relatively well. I got that that slugging and stuff was kind of fine. It just didn’t make sense for this little girl at all.

**Craig:** The fight in and of itself was fine. I’ve seen it before where the girl gets on top of the person and starts punching and then they pull her off. The back and forth discussion I found very mundane. It was sort of just paper thin. Mean girl who’s super mean bullying tiny girl. Frankly, if Ashley has in fact gotten into fights this many times to the point where she was suspended this many times, pretty sure everybody would kind of give her a little bit of a wide berth. I certainly would.

We then get a scene in the principal’s office where we meet the mother. And the principal delivers some exposition. And he says, ” I have no choice but to recommend suspension.” To whom? You’re the principal. Go ahead and suspend her. Suspend her.

**John:** So, Craig, you’re familiar with stock photos?

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** I feel like they’re stock scenes. I feel like you could actually just go to like iStock Scenes and just buy this little thing that you can just copy and paste into your script. Because I think I’ve seen this exact scene. I mean, I actual can picture the people in the photos that would go with this thing about like this is what it looks like when you get suspended. Your kid being suspended is such a trope. I mean, it’s not even a trope. It’s sort of a super trope.

**Craig:** [laughs] Yes. Super trope.

**John:** It sort of demands to have some sort of weird spin put on it, but there’s no weird spin here at all.

**Craig:** I agree. It’s like Clip Art. These things, we’ve seen — the mean, motivation-less bully, and then she beats the bully up. She gets blamed by the glum, 50s, central casting principal. And then, frankly, we’re going to have another scene that’s Clip Art where the little girl is saying it wasn’t my fault, the mom doesn’t get it. And then the little girl starts making these pointed comments about the absentee father. And then the mom starts making very on-the-nose comments that are defensive, including a reference to his job.

It just felt so out of place.

**John:** Yeah. So, for people who don’t have the pages in front of them, let’s do the scene together.

**Craig:** Let’s do it. Would you like to be mom or daughter?

**John:** You be Ashley, I’ll be Blair.

**Craig:** Okay.

**Craig:** I mean —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Like even the sigh you put in, it was like, because the problem is this isn’t — people don’t talk like this.

**John:** People don’t talk like this.

So, here is what’s so fascinating though is like these pages would drive me crazy, but then on the very bottom of page three suddenly like there’s a whole stampede of people going past. And clearly this is not the movie you think it is. There’s something strange is happening here and it’s going to be, you know, something remarkable and probably supernatural is happening here.

So, there’s a bigger thing. And so it made me think like well maybe this is all meant to be sort of like, you know, stupid sort of template scene stuff to set up the banality of this kind of movie. And then it’s going to go someplace else. But it’s not played that way at all.

**Craig:** I don’t think so. Yeah, I don’t think this is intentionally off. And even this bit at the end where the action begins is Clip Art because I’ve just seen — I just saw this in World War Z. I’ve seen it in every zombie movie.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They’re in a car and suddenly there are sirens and people are running and are heroes are confused.

**John:** Yeah. So, World War Z, I mean, obviously this made me think so much of World War Z in terms of everyone running past, and it made me think back to like that opening scene in World War Z is not awesome. It’s sort of a Clip Art scene. It’s like that pancake scene. And it’s not like the best moment of everything, but there’s something to be said for something that like really lowers your expectations in a certain way. Like you’re just like — it’s just like so kind of common. And then like something supernatural happens. So, there’s nothing wrong with having some really natural, normalistic stuff, but this isn’t normalistic. It’s just —

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** It’s far too familiar.

**Craig:** Right. I mean, the opening scene in World War Z is — nothing happens in it. It’s just a family waking up in the morning and they are really happy with each other. They’re just a super self-satisfied American golly gee family. But, it does feel realistic. It feels, like you said, naturalistic. It feels like a happy family.

They didn’t jam any exposition down our throats except for one little tiny bit where we get the sense that he used to work for important people and now he doesn’t anymore. But this feels very after school special. And then zombies are going to show up.

So, I just think that — I am concerned, Aaron, about your grasp of tone and character. And I want you to take some time. Unless this was intentionally meant to be this way, I think you need to do a little remedial work, frankly. And watch some movies that are of your genre and really examine how people are set up and talk to each other.

And above all ask yourself am I — is my job to mimic stuff I’ve seen or is my job to offer something unique?

**John:** You know, actually fascinating. If this were to be intentional, I mean, even if like after the fact this sort of odd tone was deliberately intentional, wouldn’t it be fascinating to have like Ashley’s voice over, like almost like a Veronica Mars kind of voice over where she’s commenting on it or something. Like where she had this sort of beyond her years sense of who she was in this place? I feel like there’s something you could do with sort of exactly these scenes where if she had a voice over that was playing against it.

Sort of like what I think about for both Clueless and Heathers where there is this sense of like the world is sort of deliberately a little bit fake, but it’s —

**Craig:** Pushed.

**John:** It’s pushed. But it’s because these characters are able to talk directly to you that you sort of go with it. I mean, Brick, Rian Johnson’s Brick is also the same kind of way. It’s not a realistic world.

**Craig:** But we’re made to understand that. In other words, you know, we’ve talked about how the beginning of a movie teaches you how to watch the movie. And so Rian understands how to teach you to watch that movie. The problem when I’m reading this is I just think, this isn’t teaching me how to watch an interesting kind of movie. It’s just copying other movies.

And, frankly, if you’re going to copy movies, copy better movies. Because the other thing is sometimes I think it might be frustrating for people to say, “Well, look, you know, I saw a movie in the theater, maybe even one that you or I wrote. And that wasn’t very original, or that scene felt ripped off.” And I guess my point is for those people to say that’s the end. That’s the end result after maybe somebody else rewrote it, maybe somebody had a different way of shooting, maybe people got involved. Maybe actors got notes. Production problem. God knows what.

The entire process of going from page to film is a degrading process to quality in general. It’s corrosive. It’s very hard for the best to remain at that level, the best of what you can do to remain at that level. So, all the more reason to start as good as you can because it’s going to get worse from there, not better.

**John:** For sure. Well, it also goes back to that sort of plus one fallacy, which is like if it’s better than the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Well, that’s not anything to aim for at all.

**Craig:** Nobody is going to — yeah, what they’re doing is they’re actually buying brilliant screenplays and then turning those into crap. [laughs] So, you can’t start with crap.

All right, well, so our last three pager is entitled Bruiser and this is written by Jessica Wiseman.

So, we begin in William P.’s House. William P. That’s abbreviated, P. He’s 13 years old. Comes into his room, good-looking kid, starts tossing his backpack and his book bag and his gym bag aside. He’s on the phone talking to someone named Rajeev and telling him to stop freaking out. He gets on the computer and he’s basically saying to this Rajeev, and we only hear his side of the conversation, something about who cares if it’s cliché, people love that. Can we get a picture of an eagle.

It’s like he’s advising somebody who is designing something for him. And he takes a soccer ball out and starts juggling the soccer ball. He’s apparently very good at it. And then he hears a noise from downstairs. He comes downstairs. We don’t see him. We just hear him, because we’re in a different room. Heads downstairs. And he’s surprised by somebody that he knows but isn’t expecting to see. There’s an off-screen scuffle. And then William enters into a room. His nose has been bloody. He’s trying to calls somebody but he can’t.

Two people in black hoodies run in, pin him down. William is begging. Call my parents. Don’t hurt me. And another person enters the room whose face we cannot see. I assume it’s from behind. And William knows them and is asking them please to stop. This was all just fun. And the person slams his face with their boot. We cut to black.

Next day we’re in Nate’s house mourning. Nate, also 13, preppy kid, reading a book about politics. And his mom is giving him breakfast. And apparently Nate is going to be running for some sort of class office or something. Mom talks about getting together for family time. And he asks her if she has any cash she can lend him.

**John:** Yup. And so three pages. I was really excited to read page four and five and six. Of all the things we read this week, this was the thing that I was sort of most excited about. I thought it was hardly perfect, and there are some things — there’s a lot of stuff to talk through with this. But I was excited to see it.

Let’s start with what we talked about earlier in the show which was that sense of when you’re moving between two places but it’s really unclear on the page where you are. And so this happens for us on page two.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** He leaves the room, but it’s not really clear that he leaves the room. And it’s not clear that we have stayed behind in the room. You have to be clear about this people. So, that’s one of those cases where it’s appropriate to say we stay behind as he leaves and we hear him off-screen, because right now the only indication that he’d left was that he’s O.S.

**Craig:** O.S. Right.

**John:** Yeah. So right on page two. He hangs up the phone and immediately walks out of the bedroom door to check on the noise. We hear him start to descend the steps to the living room. Well, tell us that we’ve stayed behind, because otherwise we’re going to think we’re going to move with him. He’s the only character we’ve seen.

We’re not used to, as readers or as an audience, staying behind empty rooms unless you’re telling us that specifically we’re going to do that because it’s just not a thing we do in movies without a good reason.

**Craig:** That’s right. I mean, we need some kind of indication of geography here. And, frankly, I’m not a big fan of even staying in the room anyway and then coming back to the room. It’s an odd move, but I guess it could work.

**John:** I liked it. Actually I liked it a lot because it sets up tension. Because it’s an unusual thing to do. So, we know that there is something wrong but we’re not quite sure what’s wrong. And then he comes back in and he’s been bloodied and apparently it’s probably a continuous shot, so that’s going to feel great.

**Craig:** That’s my problem with it in a way is that I have an angle — I’m just imagining I’ve got to shoot this. I have an angle on this kid in his room and then he leaves and I’m stuck with that angle. So, when he runs back in I’m stuck with him just running back in. It almost feels like my camera has become a webcam or a point-of-view camera like a security monitor, because I’m locked into that angle. And in my mind, what I kind of wanted was for him to leave the room and then I’m downstairs in a living room. And I hear something off-screen and then he runs into this new room, just so I could reorient myself.

But, regardless, listen, that’s a choice, but geography is a choice and you need to get it across very clearly.

**John:** So, I think she made an interesting choice. It just wasn’t clear. It was confusing to the reader and therefore she lost a lot of the power of her interesting choice by not making it clear to the reader.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** But I actually really liked the sequence that happened here. I liked —

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** — William P. I liked that he was clearly focused on something. And you see him like — he pulls a soccer jersey out, smells it, but puts it on anyway. He’s talking to some guy on the phone. We’re not sure even what he’s talking about, but he sits — he’s working on stuff beyond his years. He senses that there already could be trouble before he hears the first sound off-screen.

I thought all of that was really well done. And I like a 13-year-old getting the shit kicked out of him. That’s surprising. And so that happens on page two and you’ve got me for another ten pages based on what happens there.

There were some surprising formatting errors and so while we were talking I actually looked to see what app made this PDF, because there are things which felt really like strange mistakes.

**Craig:** Yeah. And consistently done incorrectly.

**John:** Yeah. So, this was made in Final Draft, so this person was using a normal app but maybe hadn’t read a lot of other screenplays, because there were things that were sort of odd.

When you have a parenthetical under a name, the convention is that that parenthetical is lower case. And so all of these got upper cased for sort of no good reason.

At the bottom of page two, for whatever reason, “You gotta stop this. This…this was all just…fun. You know?” It’s centered rather than being dialogue.

**Craig:** Right dialogue is always left justified.

**John:** Yeah. Always left justified. So, just some odd things. Then, when we get into page three, she makes a choice to have the mom character be I guess almost like a Peanuts character with like a wah-wah-wah, so it says —

**Craig:** Peanuts or penis?

**John:** Peanuts.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** Sorry.

**Craig:** [creepy voice] I thought he said Penis character, John.

**John:** Have you seen the trailer for Peanuts?

**Craig:** Yeah. I did see the trailer for Peanuts.

**John:** You know, it wasn’t awful. I just don’t know what that — I know what it is. I guess it’s like the specials in a way, but just like a better version of the specials.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen Peanuts moving around. I mean, I love that they used the Vince Guaraldi, yes.

**John:** [hums]

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, I’m positive. I mean, you know, hopefully it’ll come out nicely. I mean, I did like that they didn’t — it wasn’t like uncanny valley. It was a very subtle 3D-ification of the artwork.

**John:** So, on page three, back to the script, the unseen mom, so it’s referenced a plate of bacon, scrambled eggs, and a glass of orange is set in front of him by his unseen mom. So, by using the passive voice and saying unseen mom, you’re establishing like that you’re never really going to see her and that it’s all from this character’s perspective. I guess. It just feels like I got a little bit nervous about sort of how locked focus we’re going to be on not having adults be in this world. But it felt a little bit strange to me and it felt a little arch on page three.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, I agree — I think where I was happy was on page one most of all. There’s a big chunk of action at the top and I liked it. It was good description. And it was the sort of description that I felt didn’t cheat. I just liked it. Even the part that was kind of cheaty was more hypothetically cheaty. He probably has older women cooing at him all the time.

**John:** She actually wrote “older woman cooing at him all the time.”

**Craig:** Yeah. That is true. There are a bunch of those in here. And I like what he was saying — what I liked is that William P. is really cocky. And he’s talking like an actual kid talks, which was great.

I wasn’t thrilled about him suddenly doing soccer ball tricks while on the phone and doing this because that felt very — that was an indicating movie, like he knows how to do soccer. And then the ball ends up on his head, which first of all is just annoying to shoot, but also more importantly it just felt forced.

Then we already discussed the moment where he gets attacked. Wasn’t thrilled with his dialogue once he got caught. Less is more in that circumstance. And I feel like this comment comes up all the time when we do these Three Page Challenges. Think about how many words you would be able to form and speak when your heart is racing and you’re physically hurt and you’re afraid for your life.

**John:** Yeah. I thought her scene description on him was really nice there. So, “William’s face is soaked with tears. Snot mixed with blood streams out from his nostrils.” That feels really appropriate.

I agree that less is more, and so don’t have a giant block of dialogue ahead of that. I wanted to get to that moment. And so break up your stuff. Just do something different.

**Craig:** I think that when people are hurt and they’re not action heroes of a kind of archetypal sort, archetypical sort, that they tend to regress. I think that, “I’m sorry, it was just fun,” is all he could probably be able to get out. And that’s the only part that matters anyway.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, I think less is more there. I did not really love this next scene. Again, felt a little like, okay, so it’s a kid reading a book on politics and he’s running for class office. And everything he says is sort of, I mean, “Chris Matthews doesn’t say anything about eating bacon as a key election strategy,” feels very, very contrived and not true. It’s like it’s too much.

**John:** Yeah. I agree.

**Craig:** It’s too much. The mom off-screen I actually think can be a cool choice. What I would say to you, Jessica, is that if you want to have somebody off-screen that’s unseen, what you’re telling us is that our focus should be on this kid. And if our focus is on the kid, give me more from the kid. Let me know what’s happening. Show me more than just quippy comebacks and a discussion of breakfast which is irrelevant. And show them either studiously not listening to her, not paying attention, or show me what he’s reading. Show me him, because you’re making a choice that he’s lost in something and I want to understand why.

Because right now he’s lost in something but he’s not, because he’s responding to everything she says. He’s eating. He’s talking about Gus, about bacon, and then about cash. And that last line indicates that he’s up to something.

**John:** Yeah. And I like that he’s up to something.

Getting back to the mom being off-screen, I’m counting up lines here and she has a lot more dialogue in the scene than he does and it just feels weird that — here’s one of her blocks of dialogue: “Well, I guess he would know better than me. Your dad is getting off work early tonight and he wants to know if you’re up for some family togetherness time, maybe bowling?”

That’s a lot to be sticking on an off-screen character while we’re just sitting here watching this kid with a book.

**Craig:** Right. I mean, to me, there’s an interesting choice here. If you have this kid and he’s reading this book and food gets put down in front of him while this mother is talking, and I wouldn’t have her talk about what he’s doing. I wouldn’t have her talk about the campaign or anything. She could be talking about other things. “Remember, I’m going to be gone from this to that.” We don’t see her. We just see him looking at the book. And he’s looking at a passage in the book or something about it that matters that we’re hip to. And she’s just rambling, rambling, rambling, rambling. And he’s not eating. He’s not drinking. He’s just focused.

And then at the end he sees something and then he goes, “I’m going to need some money.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** He wasn’t listening to her at all. He’s on his own track. So, if you’re going to make this choice, Jessica, you have to match the storytelling to the choice.

**John:** Absolutely. Jump back over to the first page. I like so much of it, I just felt like there was a little bit too much scene description overall. So, you were talking about getting rid of some of the soccer moments of it all. I honestly felt that the first paragraph just went on too long. So, that whole thing about older women cooing over him all the time, you need to cut off that line shorter, but it just got to be too much there. And it took me too long to sort of get to his action.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, either that or maybe just paragraph break it, because everybody — I mean, I liked the content, but six lines in a row right off the bat is a little bit of a ugh…

**John:** And it shouldn’t be, but it is. And it’s just the reality is whenever we’re faced with a paragraph that is six, or seven, eight lines long, you’re just going to go, [sighs], and I’m going to dive in and read that paragraph. Versus a two or three line paragraph, just churn right through it.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** Cool. Well, thank you again to these three people who sent in their Three Page Challenges which are great. And I think Jessica, I would love — I have a suspicion that the rest of your script is probably really, really cool. And I think she can really write. I think these other guys also had some really promising stuff in their scripts to. So, thank you again for sending them in.

**Craig:** Yes. Thank you. and thanks for facing the firing squad as it were.

**John:** Yeah. Craig, my One Cool Thing this week combines two things that I suspect you love and that many of our listeners love which is technology and fire.

**Craig:** I love technology and I love fire. How did you know?

**John:** Because you are an…

**Craig:** I’m an open book.

**John:** Yeah. Because you’re Craig Mazin.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** As you recall this last week, or two weeks now when the podcast comes out, we had a little earthquake. Not a big earthquake at all. But weirdly we had just actually done all of our — every six months we do our sort of earthquake shopping and we sort of go through our food supplies and throw out the stuff that’s about to expire.

We have like a whole set aside stuff for food supplies. But one thing that I’ve been thinking about is like I really want to get a little camp stove so in case we lose power here at the house we can actually just boil water and cook food and do the normal kind of stuff.

And so I was in the market for a camp stove and I found this little thing called the BioLite Stove. Have you seen this at all?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** So, it’s a wood burning stove. And it’s kind of nice it’s a wood burning stove because you can fill it with anything that burns, basically stick it inside, but really wood, cardboard —

**Craig:** Flesh.

**John:** Pine cones, anything you want to stick in there is great.

**Craig:** Human hair.

**John:** Yeah. It’s about the size of like a Folgers coffee can. It’s about that size.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** What’s clever about it is that it actually has attached to it is a battery pack that has a fan. And so what the fan does is it blows extra air into it. You know sort of how you blow on a campfire to get it started, it burns much hotter, and it really gets going. Well, this fan is blowing on it all the time. And it blows much hotter. And because of that it’s much hotter than sort of trying to boil water over a campfire. It’s a good hot flame.

And so we were able to boil water in ten minutes, like a big pot of water in ten minutes, and it was really impressive. What’s clever about this battery pack is that it has a heat exchanger in it so as the fire is burning it’s actually recharging the battery.

**Craig:** Ooh. It’s a perpetual motion machine.

**John:** Well, it’s not perpetual motion because you’re having to burn fuel, but it’s burning sticks and twigs.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** And you can also charge USB devices off of it.

**Craig:** That…now you’re talking.

**John:** See, that’s the technology thing that I thought you would really appreciate.

**Craig:** When shit goes down, and I’m dismembering people in my front yard, I want to be able to take a human hand, the hand that tried to strangle me and that I severed, [laughs], I want to take that man’s hand, put it in a tin can, light it up, and get on Twitter.

**John:** Yeah. I mean, when civilization falls apart Twitter may not really work so well, but you could at least play some Threes.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly.

**John:** You can pass some time.

**Craig:** I will tell you that even when everything goes down there will still be porn out there.

**John:** Oh, there has to be.

**Craig:** Has to be. Porn never goes away.

**John:** So, I’ll have a link to this in the show notes because I was really impressed by it. So, the downsides of it is it’s still essentially a fire, so we were testing it out at lunch yesterday and so I wanted to make sure it worked really well, and it did work really, really well. But your clothes smell like smoke because you’ve built a little hot campfire.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, it has that drawback. But, the fact that it can burn anything is kind of amazing.

**Craig:** That is amazing.

Well, I’ll tell you my One Cool Thing is something that I could theoretically attach to your flesh burning tin can. I’m obsessed with the idea of just putting human parts into this thing. It is — did you play Infocom games when you were a young man?

**John:** I did. Zork.

**Craig:** Zork. So, for those of you who are annoyingly young, or too cool, Infocom was an early videogame company and video is really stretching it because they created text based games. There was no artwork whatsoever except for the game boxes which were totally misleading.

So, an Infocom game was basically a text adventure. They would describe where you were and then you had choices to make — move east, west, north, south. Pick this up. Show this. Hand this to this person. Buy a thing. Limited text commands. And you had to move through an adventure. And in these adventures you could die and have to start over, which was super annoying.

And some of them were notoriously hard, verging on impossible. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy probably the most notable example. So, when I was a kid you’d have to scrimp and save to buy an Infocom game. Well, there’s no an app called the Lost Treasures of Infocom.

**John:** Ah-ha!

**Craig:** And it has not all of them, but most of the games. It’s got all of the Zorks, which was like essentially Dungeons & Dragons. It’s got Ballyhoo and Border Zone and Cutthroats. And it’s got Trinity, which is a great one. And Infidels and Planet Fall and Leather Goddesses of Phobos. All of these games that I remember.

And you buy the app, but I think they give you Zork for free. But for $10 you get them all.

**John:** That’s great.

**Craig:** You get all of them. And the nice thing about text based games is that it plays so well on your iPad or your iPhone. I mean, it’s such a goof. Because I really don’t like — when they try and duplicate analog controls on the iPad or the iPhone, I don’t like it. So, anyway, if you remember those Infocom games and you love them, $10 you can have them all. And they come with hint systems and, you know, I don’t know.

**John:** And also now we have the internet, so when you really get stuck you can just go to the Wikipedia article and figure out what you’re supposed to do.

**Craig:** That’s exactly right. And I kind of like these apps more than anything because I feel like I’m literally laughing — not literally — figuratively laughing in the face of my younger self. Like, ha-ha, stupid. I have all the things you wanted. All of them, for $10.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** On this futuristic thing.

**John:** Yeah. If you’d only waited you could have had them this whole time.

**Craig:** Right. All of your whining, I have them all!

**John:** I do remember a couple of years ago, do you remember they sold, what was — like the old Atari joystick, but it actually had all of the games built into the joystick. Itself.

**Craig:** I bought it.

**John:** Yeah. And I played it for awhile. And then at a certain point I realized like, you know what, the other games I have are much better.

**Craig:** Yeah, they’re terrible. But that — to me that’s a great example of I’m just buying this to insult my past.

**John:** Oh yes.

**Craig:** Like look at what I can have.

**John:** A giant middle finger towards nostalgia.

**Craig:** Yeah, look what I can have that’s cheaper, smaller, and I don’t even want it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** God.

**John:** I put it in recycle.

**Craig:** What will the future bring?

**John:** Who knows?

That’s our show for this week. So, you can find links to the things we talked about in the show notes at johnaugust.com/scriptnotes. It’s also where you can find transcripts for our previous episodes.

You can listen to all of the back episodes, both on the site and through the Scriptnotes app for iPhone and Android. Check there. And, if you want to listen to all of the first 100 episodes, we still have a few of the USB drives left where it has all 100 of them on. So, you can just buy the USB drive and we will mail it to you and you will have them all.

You can find that store.johnaugust.com. We also have a few random weird sizes of t-shirts left. If you have a question for me or Craig you can find us on Twitter. I’m @johnaugust. He is @clmazin.

Scriptnotes is produces by Stuart Friedel who picked those Three Page Challenges. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli.

And longer questions go to ask@johnaugust.com. And our outro this week is provided by Jeff Harms. So, thank you to everybody who sent in the outros because they’re amazing. So, we have a big stack of great outros now that will last us many weeks.

**Craig:** I love those. I just love those. I just think people are so creative.

**John:** Awesome. So, if you want to hear all of the outros, in the show notes there is a link to all of the outros that have ever been used in Scriptnotes and it’s just a good sort of fall into a hole and listen to them for 45 minutes because there have been some great variations.

**Craig:** Word.

**John:** Word. Thanks Craig.

**Craig:** Word! Thank you, John. Bye.

Links:

* Get tickets now for John’s [WGF panel](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/first-draft-feature/), From First Draft to Feature
* [Lab Rats](http://disneyxd.disney.com/lab-rats) on Disney XD
* Screenwriting.io on [multicamera script formatting](http://screenwriting.io/how-are-multicamera-tv-scripts-formatted/)
* Three Pages by [Chris Sandiford](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/ChrisSandiford.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Aaron Kablack](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/AaronKablack.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Jessica Wiseman](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/JessicaWiseman.pdf)
* [How to submit your Three Pages](http://johnaugust.com/threepage), and [Stuart’s post on lessons learned from the early batches](http://johnaugust.com/2012/learning-from-the-three-page-challenge)
* [BioLite Woodburning Camp Stove](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BQHET9O/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00BQHET9O&linkCode=as2&tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* [BioLite KettlePot](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FYX4TW8/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00FYX4TW8&linkCode=as2&tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* [Lost Treasures of Infocom](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lost-treasures-of-infocom/id577626745?mt=8) for iOS
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Jeff Harms