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The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2020/other-things-screenwriters-write).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 437 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the podcast, sure, we’ll talk about screenplays, but we’ll also focus on other things that screenwriters write, including outlines and treatments, because Craig you and I, we’ve been doing a lot of that recently.

**Craig:** Good lord have we.

**John:** Then we’ll be answering questions from listeners just like you. And in our bonus segment Craig and I are going to discuss the Myers-Briggs personality test. And we will reveal which four letters tell everything you need to know about us.

**Craig:** Uh, I don’t know why anybody listening to this show hasn’t kicked in the whatever it costs to get these bonus segments. They’re better than the show. They’re the best. [laughs] They’re really better.

**John:** Sometimes they are really quite delightful. So, if you want to sign up for these it’s obviously at Scriptnotes.net and you can get in on all the bonus action.

All right, a little bit of news. I’m doing a criminal justice panel called Beyond Bars: Changing the Narrative on Criminal Justice. That’s February 26. This is one of those special little panels that will hopefully livestream, but if you want to be there live in the audience you should come to it. So, I’ll put a link in the show notes to that. It’s going to be me and some TV showrunners and some criminal justice experts talking about our portrayals of the whole system on screen and what the realities are and how we can do a better job making those things match up.

So, it’s sort of a companion piece to the mental health and addiction panel that I did last year.

**Craig:** And where is this panel taking place?

**John:** It’ll be at the SAG building, so on Wilshire.

**Craig:** Got it. Got it.

**John:** Pretty small space. So a lot smaller space than what we do for our live Scriptnotes shows. But if you want to come see that that is available to you on February 26.

**Craig:** You know what I wish in terms of follow up and news and all the rest, I will there was something you could tell us about Highland 2.

**John:** Oh, thank you. I was even going to omit that for this week, but now I’ll say it.

**Craig:** No, I refuse. Say it.

**John:** A couple shows ago I talked about student licenses. So if you are a student who needs to use Highland 2 we do have the capability of adding your whole school so that if you have a .edu address for that we can sign you up for that. You need to give us the contact information for your program or professor. I didn’t really explain very well this first time. I’ll try to explain better now.

But you can send us an email at brand@johnaugust.com. That’s brand@johnaugust.com. Say what program you’re in, but most importantly who the instructor is who teaches your writing program so that we can contact them and they can actually send out the form for signing everybody up. So it’s not just like a “hey I’m a student, give me the license.” We actually need to get your program signed up so we can see that you genuinely are part of that writing program.

**Craig:** On behalf of the public school district in my town of La Canada, I’m curious do you also offer this to public school districts, for high school maybe?

**John:** At this moment we don’t because we need to have somebody who has a .edu address. And high school kids generally don’t. College kids generally do. So, if we can expand at any point down the road we will, but it’s kind of a manpower problem. We need to actually verify who these people are.

**Craig:** I was thinking more of like the schoolwide thing, you know. If a district called you and said we want to purchase a school license.

**John:** Oh yeah. That’s very doable. And that’s already doable sort of in existing plans.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Perfect.

**John:** Totally possible.

**Craig:** All right. Great.

**John:** Let’s segue to the main topic today which is the stuff that we write that is not screenplays. So we’ve talked a lot about screenplays obviously over the course of 400-and-a-zillion episodes. All the words on the page. The format. How to best convey things. But this last couple months I’ve found myself having to write treatments for things. And I’ve sometimes written a treatment for myself which is basically a set of notes, a plan for how I’m going to attack a movie. But this was the first time in a decade that I’ve had to write a treatment that is being turned in. It is like the plan before the plan for the movie. And I found it difficult to write. I found it difficult to convey some of the stuff I would normally be able to do in a scene in just paragraph form, especially when it comes to conveying the inner thoughts of characters. Why they’re doing what they’re doing. A sense of tone. The comedy. The decision about when to move into italics for suggestion of dialogue.

I found it kind of a frustrating form. And you’ve done a little bit more of this than I have, so I wanted to talk through why we write outlines and treatments and sort of best ways to use that document form to convey the movie you hope to write.

**Craig:** Let’s do it. Because I’ve written a lot of treatments and my treatments are very scriptment like. The last one I wrote I think was about 70 pages. And so I believe in them, but I also find them painful for so many reasons. But ultimately a good pain.

So, I’ve done it all for all sorts of things. And it’s not something that is necessary unless you’re being commanded to do it as a condition of employment, which is rare.

**John:** Is rare but actually the thing I’m doing right now, one of the steps was a treatment.

**Craig:** Well there you go. Then you’ve got to do it.

**John:** And so to have a document that is going to be judged based on how well they can understand the movie in this was new for me.

**Craig:** Well, then this is a good opportunity for us to kind of talk about some best practices and some techniques that make things a little bit easier. And also some tips and tricks, because there are some pitfalls. You can get trapped inside of a treatment pretty easily trying to achieve an effect that ultimately is not really achievable inside that format.

So, I guess maybe the first thing to sort of ask is how do you even define one of these documents.

**John:** I think that’s a great place to start, because I would say you scale up from sort of a beat sheet, to an outline, to a treatment, to a scriptment. And the first time I ever heard the term scriptment was in relation to James Cameron who writes these very long, sort of 70-page scriptments that actually do have some dialogue in there and are almost – if you squint you can sort of see the screenplay in them.

But let’s start with that smallest form. Do you have any different levels of document that you would describe?

**Craig:** No. And the truth is I’ve never done a beat sheet because once I start thinking that specifically then I’m already kind of writing an outline.

**John:** I would define a beat sheet, and these are much more common in procedural television, but I would define a beat sheet as not necessarily single sentences but really kind of bullet points that sort of talk through these are the moments in the story, especially in television leading up to act breaks to sort of show you – it’s almost like just the index cards of how you would get through the story. And so they’re very minimal and you’re just sort of looking at the big actions that happen there, or the big reversals, the big moments.

An outline is a much more flexible term, and you’ll see things that I would describe as really kind of a treatment but they call it an outline. An outline is, to me, a much more – a better fleshed out version of the beat sheet that actually shows – tends to show scene by scene, definitely sequence by sequence how you’re getting from point A to point B, what is introduced where, the callbacks to things. It’s a longer document. So to me an outline is probably a 10-page document. What are you thinking?

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, outline is basically a very thorough beat sheet, where you’re not just saying things like “police station, they interrogate the suspect.” And outline would say “Police station. This person and this person interrogate the suspect. They want to know this. She says this. They’re not sure. They decide to go talk to somebody else. Next bit.” That’s kind of like how you would scale up I would imagine from beat sheet to outline.

**John:** I find outlines very difficult to read if I’m not actually familiar with the story itself. I’m thinking back to an arbitration I did a year or two years ago and where one of the documents in it was an outline. And I would say it was 15 pages. And it was almost incomprehensible. It was very hard to follow bullet point to bullet point, paragraph to paragraph sort of what was happening. It was in this weird middle ground where it wasn’t kind of telling the story. It was just sort of saying – it was just giving the scene without enough of the transitions and segues between moments to really help me understand what movie I was watching.

**Craig:** I agree with you. I find outlines to be in a kind of useless no man’s land. I mean, I understand the value of a beat sheet. It’s this minimal organizational tool. It’s sort of the equivalent of continuity. So when you’re making a movie or a television show and you’re in editorial at some point someone will generate a continuity which is just literally a list of scenes in order with their numbers and the briefest description of what happens in them.

But as a plan, an outline kind of falls in between. It’s almost like so if a beat sheet is the plan for tonight is chicken with rice and string beans, an outline is chicken, butter, parsley, string beans, this thing. But there’s no instructions of like how long do you cook, how do you cook it, are there any other ingredients. When? It’s just not enough. It’s not enough to be anything.

Once I decide – this is personal – but once I decide to flesh something out it’s going to be a treatment or a scriptment. Those are really where I find myself living.

**John:** So this project I was writing this treatment for was going to be one of those longer form things. And so I wasn’t stuck in this sort of no man’s land. I really was sort of writing up the whole thing. I really looked at it as this is a prose document that is describing the movie that you’re going to be watching. And so it’s not trying to be an approximation of the screenplay. It’s really describing sort of sequence by sequence this is what’s happening in this sequence but told in really prose form. And when I needed to use dialogue I would move into italics, which is sort of a common choice. Then it always becomes awkward when you have two characters who need to talk to each other. Generally one person is in italics, one person is not in italics. It’s not perfect. But it works.

The other thing I will say about this treatment that I turned in, it had a lot of preamble that was not filmable material but was really talking you through this is the world, these are the characters, these are the challenges, this is what you expect, this is what you don’t expect. So there was quite a bit before we actually got to the story part of the treatment which is a luxury you generally don’t have when you’re turning in the screenplay. You don’t have five pages to talk through the plan for the thing. You’re actually delivering the actual object itself.

**Craig:** And how many pages did that – you’re describing this as a treatment.

**John:** This whole treatment was 26 pages altogether.

**Craig:** Perfect. So this about makes sense to me. To me, the only difference between a treatment and a scriptment is that in a treatment you are prose-ifying the plan for the movie, but you’re not saying everything. You don’t have to explain every transition or every tiny little thing. You can compress a couple scenes into one descriptive paragraph about the sort of thing that happens. For instance, if there’s a battle you can kind of summarize the battle and explain what matters. And as scriptment you’re doing it like a script, where you just now will say everything. Every moment, every little detail, every little transition. It’s all being spelled out in prose.

Prose is more efficient than screenplay to an extent. Although what I suspect is that I probably have written more words in the 70-page scriptment than I am in the 110-page script because in a script it’s just the description is, I don’t know, it’s just a little bit more efficient. And dialogue is a little punchier.

So, do you have to do – there’s no reason to do a scriptment, by the way. I’m one of the few people that does them. I guess James Cameron is one of the other ones. They’re a bear. It’s just that what happens with me is if you said to me, “Hey, I need you to write the classic 25-page treatment,” I’d start and I’d end up with a 70-page scriptment. Because that’s just kind of how my process goes.

**John:** Yeah. It was everything I could do to stop myself from doing that and to actually not keep expanding, keep expanding, keep expanding from the inside-out, but actually sort of limit myself to, OK, in this section, about ten minutes of screen time, it’s going to be about this much page count in my treatment and I’m not going to keep expanding and keep expanding. It was a real danger at certain points.

**Craig:** I mean, the benefit of the scriptment is, well, there are two main benefits. One I think is pretty much a wash with the treatment. The other one isn’t. Both a treatment and a scriptment will provide your collaborators with a very clear picture of your intentions. It’s very hard for them to say afterward, “Why did you do this? Or why did you do that?” You told them you would. It was incredibly clear, in fact. They can disagree. Meaning they can read your script later and go, “OK, we know you said you would do that, and you did it, and we now realize we don’t like it.” That’s fine.

But they can’t be surprised. The benefit, the special benefit of a scriptment, is that you are that much more prepared to write the script. The script becomes that much easier because you’ve kind of written it. You haven’t written all of it. There’s all those wonderful nuances and bits and bobs that come out in scene-crafting. But you’re never wondering, well, OK, now how am I going to get from this to this? Every question has essentially been answered. And so the writing becomes a little bit more of an extension of the scriptment as opposed to just starting up a new process.

**John:** Yeah. So let’s talk some pros and cons here. I would say a con for the treatment is that as a screenwriter you don’t have all of your tools. Like you don’t have your ability to easily do dialogue, to do transitions, to do a lot of – the film craft of this is not available when you’re just doing sort of prose form. And so you don’t get all the magic you get in writing a screenplay.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** An advantage I would say though is as I head in now to get notes on this I’m probably a little less protective of what I’ve written because it’s not sort of the finished versions of things. And so it will hopefully be a conversation about this is what I’m trying to go for in this scene, this thing that is not fully written yet. So, while it’s frustrating that I cannot give them the full version of what that scene would be or what that sequence would be like, it’s going to be very easy to change my plan for it based on their feedback and their reactions and get the director’s input into these moments before we’ve even written the scene.

**Craig:** No question. There is a rigidity that is implied in a scriptment. That said, what I have discovered is that producers have no problem blasting through that rigidity.

**John:** Of course.

**Craig:** But the nice thing is even then revising a scriptment as I just did last week is also relatively academic. Because so much of what is there is there. And even when they are saying, well, OK, it seems like a better version of this would be this, or we would prefer if this would happen, that it’s all still within the context of the scriptment. That they’re sort of subconsciously working within the framework that you’ve created. They are aware that there are certain things that if you knock down are a much bigger deal. That is an added benefit of the scriptment. It is a little harder for them to fall into the trap of “we’re making a small thing, a tiny suggestion,” that in fact would unravel the rug. They kind of can see that it would unravel the rug, and so they’re a little more crafty about how they’re going to approach things, presuming that they want the script done within some reasonable amount of time.

**John:** Also, you can talk about the story as a story rather than the execution. So you can talk about this is why we think this is not going to work. Or this is why we’re not happy with how the story is tracking here. As opposed to we are not happy with the dialogue you wrote in this scene. And so it is a chance to sort of focus on story without the question of is the problem what happens in the scene or is the problem the words that I used to describe the scene.

**Craig:** For people who might be hearing a strange noise it’s in my office. The heat system sometimes does this little rattle-y thing. It’s a very old building. This building is like from 1908.

**John:** Yeah. I’ve not been to your new offices yet, but based on everything I’ve heard on my side of the microphone I think it’s like a steampunk kind of collective place.

**Craig:** It is.

**John:** And that there’s artists and people living together in this big giant space. And they sometimes have a drum circle going.

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah. We all wear top hats with goggles on them. And–

**John:** A lot of unicycles. A surprising number of unicycles.

**Craig:** Unicycles powered by little flamethrowers. Yeah, that’s how it is over here. It’s very steampunk. Steampunk is the nerdiest of nerd stuff.

**John:** I love how nerdy it is.

**Craig:** It’s so nerdy.

**John:** I mean, I don’t enjoy it for myself, but I really enjoy that people enjoy it so much.

**Craig:** Like do you like science fiction? And Victorian England? It’s such a weird combo. Anyway, you were talking earlier and you said something interesting that I kind of filed away that I wanted to circle back around to. And that was the issue of comedy. It is very difficult to be funny in a treatment or an outline or certainly a beat sheet. To the extent that I don’t really try too much. The only kind of comedy I will ever try and include in a scriptment is if it’s the kind of comedy that could be neatly encapsulated in a three-sentence exchange between two people.

But beyond that you can just sort of vaguely say an insane thing ensues, or something like this, and describe it. But if you’re trying to get laughs with this thing you’re going to be sorely disappointed. And you probably will risk seeming a bit sweaty.

**John:** Yeah. I would agree. Both of the things I’ve been writing in treatment form recently have been comedies. And there’s moments in which like I’ll put in the right line that sort of indicates what the tone of the dialogue is. But more I think I’m indicating like these are funny elements that will be together. Like you can see why these characters in this situation will be funny and what the specific moments are that can happen. But I’m not trying to get you down to the granular joke level, because it’s just not the right medium for it.

**Craig:** Yes. And, so balancing out the fact that comedy is really difficult, one thing that’s actually very easy to do in a treatment or scriptment, which is very helpful I think for us as writers to both prepare for ourselves and also share with our collaborators, is subtext. Because there are things that characters can be thinking. And as you know from writing a novel prose is brilliant at letting us know what someone is thinking. Whereas in movies and television, the entire point of the process is for us in the audience to discern what someone is thinking through their behavior, their choices, their performance, and so we write toward that. We write to create subtext.

A treatment or an outline or a scriptment allows you to make that subtext clear. So nobody has to wonder what someone is thinking. They know because you’ve told them. Now, whether or not you execute that correctly in the script, who knows. And rewriting is always necessary. But there can be a discussion about intention. Because what happens is a lot of times is without this step, without the treatment or the outline, you turn in a script, it comes back, and they go, “Well we don’t like this scene.” Well why? “Because she’s being mean.” And you go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, she’s actually being gray. See, here’s what’s going on. And I thought that was clear. It wasn’t clear to you. But this is what’s going on. This is how it should be done on the day. And they go, “OK, OK, OK, we see that, we see that, we see that. Got it. Got it. Got it. Maybe you could just throw another word in or something just so we…” Because people get confused and draw the wrong conclusion all the time. I do it as a reader, too.

Scriptment kind of helps pave the way for that.

**John:** Yeah. Because you essentially can cheat in that the scriptment form doesn’t have the same rules in that you can only write what can be seen or heard. You can sort of veer into character’s thoughts to make it clear why they’re doing what they’re doing. It comes with the territory there. It’s nice.

**Craig:** Absolutely. So, it is an exhausting process. I find it very exhausting. And I had to do two of them recently for complicated reasons. I mean, not one and then the same one again, but rather two different ones, but somewhat related. And it’s exhausting. It is as exhausting as writing a screenplay.

But it is really helpful. It is the kind of I think most useful homework you can do. It will always save you from fundamental problems of not knowing where you’re writing to. I think some people get concerned that it may limit them somehow. That it will limit their imagination. But my response to that is always twofold. One, once you’re writing the script if you want to deviate from your scriptment or your outline, do it. And, two, you are perfectly free when you’re writing the scriptment. In other words, you can’t argue that it’s restraining or anti-imagination. You’re using your imagination when you’re writing that. It’s just a question of when do you start making decisions. Do you start then or now? I personally like to do it before I start writing the script because writing a script is really hard and I get very anxious when I have no clue what’s coming next.

**John:** Yeah. See, I’m generally not a planner ahead. I generally start writing the script without any sort of detailed outline or treatment going into it. So this will be the first time I’ll be doing that based on my treatment. And I will say I am looking forward to the fact that some complicated decisions will have already been made about like how I’m going to get all these things together. That’s great.

But thinking back to Arlo Finch, you know, with Arlo Finch I started the first book with a pretty detailed plan. The second book I didn’t go into it with a specific plan for how I was going to achieve all the things I wanted to achieve. And I really loved that process of discovery. And I discovered the villain who I thought was going to be the series villain was not the series villain and there’s a whole different character. And so I respect that like my not having a very good plan going into the second book probably freed me up in some ways.

But then in the third book I did end up writing an outline and it was helpful. So I’m saying I guess it really does depend on your situation, how much time you have, and sort of which way you work best.

**Craig:** I’m not surprised that that’s how it went for you. Because if you think about it, you planned chapter one, you planned act one. And you planned act three. And then act two you let yourself roam around a little bit. And that makes sense to me actually. The areas where you get the most screwed when you kind of don’t know what you’re doing is in the beginning and in the end. And it’s only because, look, the inherent risk to full-on freedom, the kind of freedom that comes with the fog of war, of not knowing necessarily right off the bat what comes next, the cost is that you may suddenly realize, oh god, I’ve literally written myself into this terrible corner.

If you’ve planned your beginning and you’ve planned your end, then I think makes total sense – give yourself some license to roam around in the middle.

**John:** I agree. At some point we will have Michael Arndt on the show. Michael Arndt I think is still in the process of this movie that he’s written that I think he’s directed several versions of along the way. He is the ne plus ultra of what Craig is describing where by making a plan and then sort of building on a plan and building on a plan and building on the plan you can make something hopefully terrific. So, we’ll get Michael on the show at some point because I’m curious to see – he’s probably the most extreme version of this process.

**Craig:** Yeah. He’s a big planner, isn’t he?

**John:** He is. All right. Let’s get to some questions. And the first question is actually about that planning. So Michael writes in, “I’m wondering how long the Chernobyl bible that Craig delivered with his pilot was for his development deal. I’m about to start pitching an historical series with a similar scope. And I’m curious to know what kind of deal my reps should be asking for and what kind of document was sufficient for the pickup.”

**Craig:** OK. Good questions. So I’m looking at it right now. And it was 65 pages. The 64 pages included, let me just give you a sense of it so you have a basic sense of the range, an overview, which was basically a mission statement. This is why I’m writing this. And this is ultimately what it’s about. Then were a number of pages that were about the characters. So the main characters would each get their own page and a description. And then the sort of sub-characters, secondary and tertiary characters would maybe get bundled onto a page together. And then each episode would get its own outline. And those outlines were not scriptments.

So, I’m going to pick a random episode. Episode two is about 12 pages.

**John:** And these are paragraph pages. And your paragraphs are five to nine sentences maybe?

**Craig:** Well, you know me, I’m a big white space guy. So typically the average would be three I would say. So I like lots of white space. I also would include photos to kind of help people have references as I was talking through things. And so that was it. I kind of did it that way. And laid it all out in that regard.

Now in terms of the deal, the deal that I made which I think was fairly standard was that I would provide them with a show bible, and then I would provide them with a pilot script. That’s kind of what they do. I think that’s pretty standard. I mean, Michael I’m not sure if you’re going to places like HBO or streamers, or if this is a network thing. I don’t know. Probably not network because you’re saying it’s a six-hour miniseries, so I assume it’s like an HBO kind of thing. That’s basically what you’re going to get. I mean, that’s how they do it.

Now, I had never written a show bible before. I asked Carolyn Strauss to get me an example. She sent me one. And lo and behold I did mine much longer. It’s just what I do. So I’ve written the longest show bible ever and probably ruined it for people after me who are going to be like, “Well, you know, Craig’s show bible was…” Sorry. Sorry other writers.

**John:** I do hear other folks who are doing shows for streamers find that they are being asked to write a bunch of additional stuff that was sort of not in their original contract between delivery of the pilot script and the decision to actually pick up the series. And that can be incredibly frustrating. And that is a situation which you do want to stand up for yourself and say like, “OK, I’m doing this because it’s helpful for me, but at a certain point you need to start paying me for the things I’m writing.”

It sounds like your show bible was already part of your contract which is great, which is how it should be.

**Craig:** Yeah. And honestly it’s all about get the show or don’t get the show. And I’m going to do that anyway. I mean, it’s just part of my process regardless. So the thing about the term show bible is it’s incredibly flexible. It can be, I suppose, whatever you want it to be. I saw one sample that was like five pages long. And I’m like I don’t know how this is a bible per se. So it’s really what you make of it. Just like same in features. Same deal.

All right. Next question. Anonymous writes, “I have a short film that I’ve birthed.” Oh, I like that. “I hired a writer.” Wait, so did you birth it or, OK?

“I hired a writer to write a 14-page script and now after a year of revisions a team of people are helping produce the film on a very small scale. A producer came onboard to help, non-paid, and they are insisting that you can’t have the word ‘I’ in the title. Apparently they are OK with the letter ‘I’ but not the word “I.” They say you are asking the audience to be in the position of a character before knowing anything about them. They have taught screenwriting in college and won screenplay competitions and apparently this is a big sticking point for them. Am I missing something? Is there filmmaking gospel that I missed about the word ‘I’ in titles? I am Legend. And I, Tonya seemed to do just fine. I acknowledge the word ‘I’ sounds weird in a title but I think the uniqueness helps it stand out. And there is some logic to using I am blank based on our story.”

John, this is a puzzling question.

**John:** It is a puzzling question. So, Anonymous, you are not crazy. It is absolutely fine to use “I” in the title. The reason why I picked this question and put it here is because it comes down to the issue of what is rules and what is taste. And the producer has certain taste, and the producer does not like the word “I” in a title. That’s fine. That producer can have that opinion. That does not make it gospel. It does not make it right. You can freely debate that person on whether “I” can be there. But there certainly is no rule.

And people have tastes. People have opinions. And I remember on Charlie’s Angels one of the producers was really obsesses with – she wanted to see the Angels eat to make sure that it was clear that for all the physical activity that they’re doing they do actually eat food. But didn’t want them to eat food in a messy way. And she had a problem with any sort of like Carl’s Jr kind of messiness. And I get that. That’s taste. That’s not actually a story point. It is just her taste and her opinion. And when you are bringing somebody in on your project you do want their taste and their opinion. But it does not mean that you always have to follow it or treat that as being gospel.

**Craig:** Yeah. First of all, Anonymous, if you hire a writer to write a 14-page script I just want to caution you to not write into a screenwriting podcast and say that you have a short film that you birthed. My problem with “I” is that. It’s when you say I’ve birthed. How about you and the writer birthed it, since the writer wrote the 14-page script.

But that said, you say a producer came onboard to help, nonpaid. So I’m not really sure what that means. But what you’re describing that they’re doing is this – it’s called appeal to authority. Rather than expressing their opinion as an opinion, they say it’s not an opinion because, A, I have taught screenwriting in college, and B, I have won screenplay competitions. Well, that in fact represents zero authority I’m sorry to say to that particular individual. Also, this is art. It has nothing to do with authority whatsoever. Either it’s good or it’s not, depending on who you are and where you’re standing and how you see it.

No, there’s no rule. And anybody that starts to do stuff like that needs to go away. Especially when they’re tossing out rules that you know are wrong. I mean, you just know that’s wrong. How is this person walking around in a world where this is plenty of stuff that has the word “I” in it and thinking that somehow you’re going to be fooled? That’s the part about this that I find vaguely sociopathic.

**John:** Yeah. That they’re holding onto their opinions so strongly even despite evidence to the contrary.

**Craig:** Right. Like clear evidence. And they presume that somehow you won’t unearth it? You will.

**John:** Oh no! They have IMDb.

**Craig:** Wait a second. Before I say what I’m about to say, do you have or have you ever heard of the Internet? You haven’t, great. So you can never say “I” in a title. Yeah, no, that’s just silly.

**John:** Not true. Salvatore from Australia writes, “Listening to Episode 436 with Liz Hannah you mentioned that the writer should always focus on what their own unique perspective is when writing a project. But what exactly does that mean in this context? I’ve heard that a lot but I’ve never actually heard it defined. For example, what did Craig recognize as his own unique perspective in the Chernobyl disaster? Was it the theme that lies always incur a debt of truth? In other words, how do I answer the question of why should I be the one to tell this story?”

**Craig:** Those are two different questions.

**John:** OK. Different questions. But let’s try to answer both.

**Craig:** Yes. So, you have one question, Salvatore, which is what does it mean to have a unique perspective on something. And then the other question is why should I be the one to tell this story. There is no answer to the second question. Nobody should be somebody to tell any story. You want to, you are compelled to, you feel a need to. It would give you artistic pleasure to do so. That’s why. I don’t believe in this kind of notion that one person or another is specifically anointed by fate or the universe to tell a particular story.

What is your unique perspective? The way your mind works. That’s it. Meaning when we say that to people what we’re really saying is do this the way that feels instinctively beautiful to you. Don’t do it the way you think other people do it or would want you to do it. So, when I sit down and I think I’m going to write something like Chernobyl, what I don’t do is go and watch a bunch of other limited series based on historical events and go, OK, oh, that’s good, I should do it like that. Or obviously I wanted to do it like this, but they do it like that. I should really do it like that.

No. I just follow my gut. So that’s what we really mean. Every writer has some sort of instinctive understanding of what they want to do. And that’s the part that you provide that nobody else can. So, let that be your loadstone.

**John:** Yeah. Salvatore is asking about unique perspective. I think what we tend to look for is unique vision and unique voice. And those are things you can find in writing, both writing on the page and sort of what the ultimate thing is that gets made. But it’s sometimes easier to think about that in terms of other media. So like with a composer, like composers have very distinct styles. You could imagine sort of a Danny Elfman score on this movie versus a – I cannot pronounce Craig’s Chernobyl composer, but–

**Craig:** Hildur Guðnadóttir.

**John:** They would be very different approaches. And they have different ears, different visions, different voices when it comes to how they are going to do their work and do their art. And so it’s a question of like what are you brining about your art and your perspective, your vision to this material. And that’s why Aaron Sorkin writing about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook is going to be very different than Craig writing about that or me writing about that. There’s different things that interest us and there’s different things we’re going to highlight. It’s just going to be a different thing.

And so you are inevitably going to be coming into a project with all of your priors. All your history. Your tastes. Your fears. That is going to make it unique. I think what Craig is arguing is don’t try to minimize what makes you unique in order to write the version of the movie that someone else could write, because that’s pointless.

**Craig:** Exactly. That’s exactly right.

**John:** Cool. Do you want to take Breton Zinger?

**Craig:** All right. Our next question is from Breton Zinger, which is awesome.

**John:** It’s a great name.

**Craig:** I want to be Breton Zinger. Breton Zinger writes – this is not a question. This is an order. “You should do a segment on how to be productive writing wise while traveling. I always have grand plans to get X, Y, and Z done, and then I only get X started.” Yeah, what do you think? You’ve done a lot of traveling. I’ve done a lot of traveling. How do you manage this?

**John:** A recent thing I’ve started doing while traveling, and I went to Korea and Japan, and I had very long flights ahead of me. And so a thing I’ve started doing which I really recommend for everybody is you know you’re going to have two, five, 13 hours on a plane. That’s great time where no one is going to interrupt you. While we’re in the plane before we’ve taken off I make a list of here’s all the things I want to do on this flight. And that’s stuff I want to actually accomplish, but also I want to watch that movie I’ve been meaning to watch. I’ll go through and figure out what movies are on the seat back that I’ve not seen yet that I do want to see.

I have books and it’s like I want to read two chapters in this book. So not just the stuff that I have to get done, but the stuff I’ve always kind of wanted to get done. Because to me there’s nothing more dispiriting than having spent 13 hours on a plane and realize like, oh, I got kind of nothing done in that 13 hours. Or I played games on my phone that I could have done anywhere.

So, I try to make that time really productive. And so whether it’s travel, whether it’s jury service, whether it’s some other thing where you have a block of time that is uncommitted, use that time.

The other thing that I’ve been much better about in the last few years, especially with writing the books, is that I need to have at least an hour of uninterrupted writing time every day. And so I claim that with my family saying I’m going to need this time. And so I can go downstairs to the lobby. I can go somewhere else. But I need to be uninterrupted for one hour to do my work. And that’s been great. And I’ve actually been pretty productive during breaks because I’ve sort of blocked off that time.

**Craig:** Those are all very strong notions. Yeah, long flights are nice because you actually get so bored that the notion of doing work becomes attractive.

The one thing to keep in mind, Breton, is that when you are traveling you’re going to be more tired than you normally are. So I think possibly just lower the expectations. There’s possibly going to be some jetlag. Also, you’re traveling, so that means you’re probably there for some purpose. To see things, or do things. So you’re going to have less time and your mind is going to be a little more distracted. And also the writing is something that is contextualized within your normal life at home and you’re not in your normal life at home.

So, I would say also give yourself a little bit of a break and maybe don’t make grand plans to get X, Y, and Z done. Since you only get X started, how about next time just make a plan, a non-grand plan to get X done. And see if you can do a little bit more on X, and then you don’t have Y and Z staring down at you going, “You suck.” And see if that works. If that works then maybe next time you could do, OK, do X and start Y. Just manage your expectations. It’s hard.

**John:** Yeah. Agreed. Patrick Tebow writes, “During the Three Page Challenge section of Episode 434 you two briefly touched on the use of pictures in a scene, such as when a character looks at a photo on a desk. Is this prop and avoid at all cost kind of situation? Or is it mostly a problem when a picture is used as a cheap way to start a conversation between two characters?” Craig, what do you think? Is it always a bad idea to be referencing a photo or a picture in movies?

**Craig:** It’s mostly always a bad idea.

**John:** I agree with you.

**Craig:** I never want to say anything is always wrong, but somebody using a photo to start a conversation between two characters, that’s easily avoidable. The bigger issue is when a character is alone and looking at a photograph. Because that’s a cheap way for the people making something to externalize a thought. I need to know that they miss mom. Or, you know, the classic one is some guy picks up a photo and it’s him and this woman and he’s sad. And we realize that she’s either dead or left him. And it’s just pretty tropey. It’s pretty clunky. And it’s kind of incumbent upon us to come up with interesting new ways to do that. I think at this point in 2020 pulling the old staring at a photo thing is going to feel a little soap opera. A little The Young and the Restless.

**John:** I agree with you. Because I’ve never actually had the experience of wanting to pull out a photo and stare at it. It’s just not a thing I’ve ever done. And I don’t believe it. The movie 1917 which I enjoyed very much does have that as an element. I think it gets away with it to a larger degree than you’d expect because it’s set up in the plot and also because we have an expectation that these soldiers actually would have been carrying those photos with them and it’s a prop that is actually handed off and sort of useful story wise in the course of the movie.

So I believed the characters more when they are referencing photos because that’s a thing that soldiers do.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly. So if it’s appropriate to the time then it makes total sense. I mean, but if you’re telling a story now you’re right. I mean, I don’t look at photos ever by the way. That’s a whole other side conversation. What’s happened to our culture with photos, I just don’t understand it. I mean, do you ever just sit there and start looking through old photos?

**John:** No, I look through Instagram to look at other people’s photos.

**Craig:** Yeah. [laughs]

**John:** Photos are about what’s happening right now, not about history.

**Craig:** Right. So that’s also insane, by the way. So it’s all crazy. But when people are like we have to get a photo of ourselves I’m like, OK. Why? Are we going to – I mean, I’m becoming that guy who is like, fine, I’ll do it, but will this ever be looked at again? Why are we doing it? It’s so weird. Anyway.

**John:** Let’s do one last letter. This is from Mark who is actually Mike. So this is the guy who wrote in saying that he is moving to Los Angeles and wanted advice and people wrote in with advice. His real name is actually Mike. We changed it to Mark because we’ve sort of gotten in the habit of changing everyone’s names unless there’s a real reason to keep their real name because of all the assistant stuff we’ve been doing. We just don’t want to accidentally put people’s real names in things. But his name is actually Mike even though we called him Mark early on.

Craig, would you read this for us?

**Craig:** Yeah. This is his update. He says, “Thank you so much for airing my question about moving to LA. I’d also like to thank the listeners for their fantastic advice. I especially appreciate how widely the advice has ranged from esoteric to practical. Passion, enthusiasm, patience, and consistency will still with me for years. But don’t write at home and get a California driver’s license are going to be equally useful.

“Here’s my update. I landed yesterday after a hectic month of packing my Brooklyn apartment, quitting my job, and using up every last drop of healthcare I could squeeze out of my employer-sponsored plan.” Oh America. “It’s a huge relief to finally be here. All I’ve seen of the city so far has been the freeway from LAX and the two-block radius surrounding my North Hollywood apartment.” Ah, that’s where I was.

“And I can’t wait to get a car so I can continue to explore. I’m heading to a D&D game tonight.” What? This guy is amazing. “And I’m hoping to meet a bunch of fellow nerds and writers. Would it be possible for you to put me in contact with Eric from Episode 432? If he’s comfortable sharing his contact info with me I’d like to reach out regarding writer’s groups. Thanks again for your time and everything you do. I’m hoping to make it out to a live event soon. Best, Mike.”

Well that’s, I mean–

**John:** That’s lovely.

**Craig:** He sounds like us.

**John:** He does. So I did put him in contact with Eric. Eric wrote back and said, “Sure,” and so they are going to be talking about a writer’s group.

**Craig:** Three months later we’re going to be doing a How Would This Be a Movie. Eric has murdered Mike.

**John:** [laughs] Wouldn’t that be fantastic? So it’s really two outcomes. Either like the same way that Megan McDonnell was hired to write Captain Marvel 2, it could be that Mike was hired to write another Marvel movie, or he killed Eric.

**Craig:** Or Mike and Eric met and fell in love. And then just started doing crimes like–

**John:** Perfect.

**Craig:** Just like Bonnie & Clyde. Listen, there’s a lot that we can do with this.

**John:** It’s a ripe story area.

**Craig:** We really got to see how this turns out. This is exciting.

**John:** All right. It’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is a Reddit thread called r/imsorryjon. It is told from the perspective of Garfield, sort of. Basically it’s a re-imagination of Garfield in which Garfield is a Lovecraftian monster who kills and possessed Jon Arbuckle and does horrible, horrible things. It is a dark, disturbing thread to go down. And I just greatly enjoyed it. I just love appropriation of cultural elements and twisting them into wild shapes.

I particularly like this idea that Garfield is sort of one of those lantern fish that sort of like lures people in. So I would just say if you want to see some disturbing Garfield imagery I would point you to this Reddit thread.

**Craig:** I mean, yeah, I do want to see that. How could I not want to see that? My One Cool Thing this week is a person. And I don’t know if you know him, John, but I certainly do very well. His name is Scott Silver. Scott is a screenwriter like you and I and Scott is nominated for the second time for an Academy Award. This time around it’s for co-writing Joker with Todd Phillips. He was also nominated for 8 Mile.

And I just want to call him out because I think a lot of times what ends up happening, especially when you’re writing with a director is that suddenly the other writer kind of starts to disappear a little bit for whatever reason.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** And weirdly the reverse happens in television where I notice that suddenly – like Johan just started disappearing from things. And even sometimes people would say “Chernobyl director Craig Mazin” and I would have to be like, no, for the love of – let me right it and tell you why that’s not true.

But Scott has been doing fantastic work forever. He wrote and directed Johns. That was his first movie, which is a really cool movie. He wrote 8 Mile. And he also wrote The Fighter which is awesome. And now Joker. And so he’s had a very long, very productive career. And he’s a terrific guy and an excellent writer. And so I just thought, yeah, I’m going to give this guy a little extra love because, you know, a lot of times when this stuff is going on you can get easily overshadowed by the actors, and the directors, especially in features. And so my One Cool Thing this week is Scott Silver.

**John:** And also Scott is an east coast based writer as well I believe. Right? He’s not living in Los Angeles.

**Craig:** Yes. He lives in Manhattan.

**John:** Fantastic. So, again, you can run your career from wherever you choose to live. Easier in Los Angeles, but definitely doable in New York.

Stick around if you’re a Premium member because we will be discussing the Myers-Briggs personality index. But otherwise that’s the end of our show.

Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao, with production assistance this week by Stuart Friedel and Dustin [Box]. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by James Launch and Jim Bond. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions like the ones we answered today.

For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts. And a reminder, of course, sign up for Premium membership at Scriptnotes.net to get all the back episodes and our bonus segments. Craig, thank you for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** OK, Craig. When did you first hear about the Myers-Briggs type indicator?

**Craig:** Many, many years ago. It was I think literally when I met Melissa. Because–

**John:** So college?

**Craig:** College. Because her parents were super into it.

**John:** So for people who don’t understand what we’re talking about, it is an assessment, it’s a test, it’s a short three to five minute test you take where you answer a bunch of questions and then it scores you. This is back in the days of pencil and paper when I was doing this in college. It scores you and you get a four letter code that sort of indicates your personality type.

So there’s four criteria. There’s four sort of characteristics. And it comes out to be a grid of 16 personality types.

**Craig:** Yeah. So this is all based roughly on Jungian stuff. Jung, how will I say this as charitably as possible, was wrong about a billion things.

**John:** As was Freud.

**Craig:** Correct. But that’s the point. They were early. They were wrong the way that a lot of people thought the world was flat and yet they were brilliant. So, Aristotle did not know that the world was round, but he’s a pretty brilliant guy. So they were, you know, at the forefront of things. Did Aristotle not know that the world was round?

**John:** I don’t think he–

**Craig:** I don’t think he did.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** Well we’ll put that in the hopper for a later discussion. But so, you know, he had these theories, this kind of collective unconscious and these archetypes and these things that meant something to all of us. Regardless, out of that comes this fascinating way of analyzing personality. And unlike a lot of other ways of analyzing personality which basically come down to asking you are you a this kind of person or a that kind of person, Myers-Briggs uses like a quad-axis formula where there are four different scales. They are binary scales. You go this way or you go that way. So for instance you are extroverted or introverted. The words don’t always mean what they mean colloquially.

What’s fascinating about this is that they take the results of those four things and then analyze each combination. There are 16 in all. And out of the combinations of these things they make inferences which aren’t necessarily intuitive to what the individual parts of the collective four letter descriptor is. But for whatever reason when they look at it and combine those four things and assign this, OK, if you’re this, this, this, and this, you’re going to be this. It’s kind of right. It kind of works.

**John:** It’s kind of right but it’s also kind of right in the way that horoscopes are kind of right sometimes.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Or your astrological sign or a lot of other things that feel like this does apply to me as opposed to the other criteria. So, we’ll put a link to one of these tests so if people want to test for themselves to see what the score would be for their personality type. You told me that you came out as an ENTJ?

**Craig:** That’s right. Yeah.

**John:** And so when I took this test in college I also came out as either an ENTJ or an INTJ. Anyone who knows me that I’ve become much more extroverted over time. So, that I became an E over time. When I took the test last night I came out as ENFP, which was different. But honestly I think I messaged you the actual scorecard I got. I was very close to the median on all of these things, and so it really was not a strong thing. Like answering one question slightly differently would have changed my score. So I think I probably am very similar to you on a lot of these things.

Judgment versus perception. I would perceive you to be strongly judgmental. That sounds negative and loaded, but you do tend to have very strong opinions on things.

**Craig:** Yeah. So it’s not in the Myers-Briggs model, judgment is not necessarily like I’m judge-y.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** It’s rather – and neither is perception more like, oh, I notice lots of things. In the Myers-Briggs model judgment is basically about, well, frankly it’s related to what we were talking about in the main episode about scriptments. Judgment is really about planning, and being decisive, and you’re preference if you are more towards judgment is liking things to be a bit more clear-cut and decided. You don’t do well with a general sense of not knowing what’s going to happen. Uncertainty is not your friend.

Whereas people who are more towards the perception side of things, it’s a little easier for them to adapt to changing circumstances. They’re OK with a kind of I’m not really sure what I’m going to do next. I mean, really what it comes down to is are you the kind of writer that likes to know the next scene or are you not. And that’s kind of cool actually.

**John:** That does describe the difference between you and me. It’s that I am a little bit more on the seat of my pants. We should I think say that mental health professionals don’t use this test.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** So it really is a thing that is interesting for lay people to do and explore. Have you ever tried to use anything like this for the characters that you’re writing?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Nor have I. But I do feel like it’s the kind of thing where aspiring screenwriters might that that, oh, this will be a great insight. I suspect there are tools out there that will help you figure out the personality types for your characters. And I just do not think it would be a useful way to spend your time on thinking about your characters.

**Craig:** Not even remotely. Because ultimately what it is is there’s 16 of them. So what are we saying? There’s only 16 kinds of humans in the world? Not at all. It really is just a general sense of how you – the only useful aspect to this as far as I’m concerned, other than just vague curiosity, is that it might help you feel a little bit seen and a little bit normal. Because there’s a description of who you are and it’s kind of cast in the most positive light.

For instance, I think in our society we tend to view extroversion as a very positive thing. You’re a people person. Whereas introverts are a bit suspicious. They’re shy. And maybe they’re afraid. And what Myers-Briggs says is neither of those are two. Extroversion/introversion are simply defined as what energizes you more, being around people or not? And that’s a very positive way of thinking about who you are.

So that part is really helpful. And in that sense it’s fun to do.

Should you use this for writing? No. Should you go to those sites that are like if you’re this type you want to marry that type? No. [laughs] That’s nonsense. That’s all just nonsense.

That said, if you are with someone, as you and I are, not just by the way with our spouses but with each other, and you’re involved with people, and you’re–

**John:** You have relationships in work relationships, in friendships, everything.

**Craig:** Exactly. And you’re kind of curious why when you relate to a certain person there are some times where there are conflicts or confusions, doing this could actually give you a little bit of insight. And by insight really what I mean is understanding and empathy. You go, OK, they actually do see the things a bit differently.

So it’s easy to say, ugh, the problem with that person is they’re so rigid. They’re always just trying to quickly decide what we’re doing next. They’re not open-minded. And the other person could say, oh my god, that person literally doesn’t plan ahead or think of anything, they’re just improvising constantly and it’s just this mush. Well, those are negative ways of thinking about those things but there are positive ways of thinking about those things. And I think this helps you do that.

**John:** Yeah. And the degree to which those could be complementary traits for the other person.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** In terms of thinking about this with your characters, as I was going through the questions yesterday I would say that some of the questions are worth asking of the characters in your story. So, I would say I don’t think it’s a good idea to come out with what is the four-letter score for this character. But asking question about like does this person seek out parties and social interactions, or does this person want to sort of retreat and build up energy for themselves? Is this person quick to make a decision or want to gather everything in before making a decision? Those are useful metrics that could apply to some characters in your script. And especially if you’re looking at the protagonist in your script and how he or she works then you might decide, OK, you know what’s going to be great and frustrating for this character in this comedy that I’m writing is a person who is going to do the opposite. And that is probably a useful way of thinking about some of these traits in terms of the characters we’re writing.

**Craig:** Yes. It is a really good way to interrogate your own personality bias that may be getting imposed on your characters. Especially if people say all your characters sound the same. Well my guess is then they all sound like you. And so you have a way of thinking about things and suddenly all of your characters are. So taking a look at the ways other people think about things, not as deficits or failures but rather simply as differences might help you expand some things.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** For instance, one of the axes of the Myers-Briggs test is sensing versus intuition. By the way, their words are terrible.

**John:** I think they’re bad choices. Because it’s not like sensitive is more sensitive. It’s actually relating to does it have to have data or you’re going on gut feeling.

**Craig:** Yeah. They didn’t pick great words. But regardless, the sensing side of things are people that are rather detail-oriented. They’re somewhat literal and practical. They like to deal with concrete stuff. And the other side, the opposite on that axis is intuition. These are people who are more conceptual. They’re more abstract. They like to know what the overall theory or big picture is. They like to know what’s the point of this as opposed to how does it function. There’s an interesting dichotomy there.

**John:** I’m not sure it quite is a dichotomy though. That’s [unintelligible].

**Craig:** Right. It’s kind of an arbitrary thing that they’ve done. All of it is arbitrary, honestly. But it is a nice way to challenge yourself when you’re writing your characters to say, wait, if they’re all sounding the same is it because they’re all kind of super detail-oriented people? Where’s the person that gets frustrated with that and just wants to know why and how? Just big picture this for me, I’m a dreamer, I’m a conceiver, I’m an imaginer. Whatever it is. Just nice ways to get out of your own head. Weirdly I suppose the tool is designed to get into your own head. But I like to think of it as getting out of your head.

**John:** So, as I was doing research last night another sort of test that’s done in a similar way is called the Big Five personality traits. So OCEAN is the model they have on call. And those five characteristics are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

**Craig:** [laughs] I’m neuroticism. All of it.

**John:** Yes. 100%. And I bring it up just because in the traits that the Myers-Briggs is looking at, those aren’t the only meaningful traits that help define how we react in the world.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so I would say just if it’s helpful for you to look at it that way, great. But that’s not going to give you a complete picture of why someone does the things that they do.

**Craig:** No question. This is just I think more than anything it’s food for thought and a fun party trick to do when you’re – I mean, when I would sit and do this with Melissa’s family, half of the discussion was, “Wait, you say you’re a blah-blah-blah? No you’re not.” The other problem with this is that usually these tests are, well, they’re asking you a question and you’re answering it. But we don’t always know what we are.

**John:** 100%. And you’re imagining one scenario in which you remember, oh that’s right, I left that party early. But that other time where I stayed out till 4am. Wait, so how do I answer this?

**Craig:** Correct. Sometimes people also – they think that one way is better than another and so they answer that way.

**John:** Totally. My personality type is that I want to ace the test.

**Craig:** Well there you go. So then you’re starting to min-max this thing.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** I think you do, min-maxing the Myers-Briggs. We’re nerds.

**John:** Craig, thanks.

**Craig:** Thank you John.

**John:** Bye.

* John will be part of the [Beyond Bars: Changing the Narrative on Criminal Justice](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/beyond-bars-changing-the-narrative-on-criminal-justice-tickets-91710373195) panel on February 26th
* Contact [brand@johnaugust.com](mailto:brand@johnaugust.com) for information on [Highland 2](https://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland-2/) for students and educators
* [Outlines](https://screenwriting.io/what-does-an-outline-look-like/) and [treatments](https://screenwriting.io/what-is-a-treatment/) on screenwriting.io, and some examples in the [johnaugust.com library](https://johnaugust.com/library)
* Scriptnotes, episodes [436](https://johnaugust.com/2020/political-movies), [434](https://johnaugust.com/2020/ambition-and-anxiety), and [432](https://johnaugust.com/2020/learning-from-movies)
* Reddit’s [r/imsorryjon](https://www.reddit.com/r/imsorryjon/top/?t=all)
* Scott Silver on [IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0798788/?ref_=tt_ov_wr) and [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Silver)
* The [Myers–Briggs Type Indicator on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator) and an [online test](https://www.16personalities.com/)
* The [Big Five personality traits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by James Llonch ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/437standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2018/austin-2018-three-page-challenge).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. So today’s episode is the live Three Page Challenge we recorded at the Austin Film Festival a few weeks ago. There is some swearing, so keep that in mind if you’re listening in the car with your kids. If you’d like to see another live show with me and Craig and a bunch of other great guests we just started selling tickets to the December live show, December 12th at 8pm in Hollywood. So if you want a ticket for that you can go to the link in the show notes or to wgafoundation.org. Enjoy the show.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

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

**John:** And this is the Three Page Challenge of Scriptnotes. And so what we do on a Three Page Challenge is we invite folks to send in the first three pages of their script. It can be a feature, it can be a TV pilot. It’s not always the first three pages, but it’s usually the first three pages. It’s confusing if it’s not the first three pages. And we talk about what we’ve read.

And so a crucial thing we should all note is that these are not necessarily the best things we’ve read. They’re the things that have the most interesting stuff to talk about. So, people were brave enough to send them in, so we always commend the folks who are brave to send their work out so we can all discuss it in this room and on the air. So let’s applaud for all these folks.

**Craig:** And we should thank our producer, Megan, who is the one that makes these selections. In a sense, the people here are slightly less brave than the usual people because we’re nicer in person. It’s just sort of a–

**John:** Well, except that they’re also brave because they’re going to come up. That’s the difference between the live thing. They’re actually going to come up and talk to us about the things they wrote which–

**Craig:** It’s a wash. They’re about as brave as everybody else.

**John:** They’re just about as brave as any normal people. And they’re braving a hot day, a very cold air-conditioned room for us to talk about this.

**Craig:** It’s freezing up here. But we do have another thing going for us on this kind of Three Page Challenge which is we have help.

**John:** We do have help. So with help in the form of guest analyzers of scripts. First off let’s welcome up Lindsay Doran. The legendary Lindsay Doran. Lindsay is a producer whose credits include Stranger than Fiction, Sense and Sensibility, Nanny McPhee, Dead Again. Executive producer on The Firm, Sabrina. She’s the former President and CEO of United Artists. She is right now the script whisperer. She is the person that people go to help solve script problems. So we are very lucky to have her with us today.

Do you have a microphone Lindsay Doran?

**Lindsay Doran:** Got it.

**John:** We are so excited to have you.

**Lindsay:** Thank you.

**John:** Our other guest is Jewerl Ross. Jewerl Ross is a manager and the founder of Silent R Management. His clients include such names as Barry Jenkins, Matthew Aldrich, Jack Stanley, Our Lady J, Evan Endicott, and Hannah Schneider.

**Craig:** That’s where the real bravery is. A manager shows up at the Austin Screenwriting Film Festival. That’s impressive.

**Jewerl Ross:** Glad to be here.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** Before we get started talking about these three page samples, I want to talk about reading scripts overall because the two of you must read an enormous quantity of scripts and you’re probably reading them for different reasons. So I’m guessing Lindsay you’re often reading scripts for things that are in development and things that are going hopefully into production. And you have an eye for what are the challenges, what are the problems, how can we make this script better. But you’re not doing the basic filtering at this point. Like you’re not reading terrible things. You’re reading maybe pretty good things that need to become great. Is that fair for what you’re doing right now?

**Lindsay:** Yeah.

**John:** Microphones are so helpful for a recorded podcast.

**Lindsay:** Here I thought you and I were just talking.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Lindsay:** So when I nod it doesn’t really do you any good? Yeah. So that’s true.

**John:** That’s true. And are most of your conversations these days with the writers, or with studios and producers who are coming to you for guidance on scripts?

**Lindsay:** Both. Both absolutely. I mean, I’m usually hired by studios but then I end up in the rooms with the writers. Once and a while things are in such bad shape that it’s about how do we get this in the kind of shape that we could even give it to a writer to do something with. Craig knows what I’m talking about there.

**Craig:** I didn’t write that one.

**Lindsay:** [laughs] But, no, a lot of the time I’m working directly with the writers.

**John:** And Jewerl, are you still filtering, because I feel like early on in your career you probably were just reading a ton of stuff and having to just triage like is this even a person I should consider as a client.

**Jewerl:** True.

**John:** Are you still doing that now, or you have so many people that you–

**Jewerl:** No. I’m lucky that I have enough people to filter things and so hopefully the things – I’m only reading client stuff, current clients, and things that my people think are great. And occasionally, you know, if something comes well recommended. Like if Lindsay sends me a script but I give it to my people and my people are like Jewerl don’t read it, I will occasionally say, “Well, I like Lindsay a lot. She has great taste.” So I’ll dip into their pile every so often.

**John:** So, how far into a script do you need to read before you see that this is a person who has a talent, has a voice, has an interesting thing. How long does it take you to get into a script before you get that sense?

**Jewerl:** You know, I can get that in two pages.

**John:** We gave you a third.

**Jewerl:** I mean, you can certainly see a bad script on page one. You know, but there was a script that was on the Black List that one of my clients was attached to direct at one point. I’ll remember the name in a minute. That the writing was so magical. The world was so interesting. I mean, it was like – I think about that script often because that’s what I want to feel right away. Like I’m in the hands of someone special.

You know, like craft is interesting and figuring out how to – act breaks is interesting. But what’s more interesting is someone who is doing something so differently. That has a perspective on the world that’s so different. And I did get that this year. I signed this 23-year-old kid out of Penn. His professor called me and said, “This guy is a genius and I’ve heard about you.” And so she sent me the script and it was the weirdest thing. It broke every screenwriting rule.

**Craig:** Thank god.

**Jewerl:** It took me five hours to read it.

**Craig:** Oh, cool.

**Jewerl:** And I think he’s a genius.

**Craig:** It broke every screenwriting rule. It broke every screenwriting rule. Remember that. Love it.

**Lindsay:** It started at the end.

**Craig:** We’ve already seen that. That was already a movie.

**John:** It was white letters on black paper.

**Craig:** Ooh. I would read that.

**John:** Lindsay, how quickly – he says he can do it in two pages. When do you get a sense of when a writer has a voice?

**Lindsay:** I try to be more generous than that, even though I do completely understand why the first page tells you an awful lot. The second page tells you an awful lot. I do a thing that I did yesterday morning called The First Ten Pages based on the situation I had with Dead Again where I found out later on that Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson were reading a ton of scripts at the same time. He had just made Henry V and he was getting sent a million things and he was touring the world with King Lear and Midsummer Night’s Dream and they were carrying around dozens, and dozens, and dozens of scripts.

So they just said we’re just going to read the first ten pages of everything and if we don’t like it we’re going to throw it away. And they had a huge trash can in their dressing room at the theaters. And when they read the first ten pages of Dead Again they missed their cue. Because they were so excited and they couldn’t wait to get off stage so they could keep reading.

So that is in my mind. And I do remember the first time I ever read Scott Frank. The first time I read Little Man Tate I called the agent on page 11 and said I don’t have to read anymore. I just want to meet this guy. And I know when Emma Thompson was reading Stranger than Fiction she called me on page 11 and said I don’t have to read anymore. So, I do know that it can make an impression on you that quickly.

**Craig:** Yeah. It would seem it’s a lot harder to determine how far to read to decide that somebody is great. But it should be fairly easy to determine that somebody is absolutely never, ever, ever, ever, ever going to qualify as a screenwriter. That you can sometimes see in four words.

**John:** Craig, I want to push back a little on that.

**Craig:** Go for it. You think you can get it down to two words?

**John:** Some of what we’re talking about is voice and vision. But some of what we’re talking about is purely craft. And sometimes you read stuff where the writer clearly has not read a lot of screenplays and doesn’t have a sense of what the form is. So they’re really struggling with the form and having a hard time understanding–

**Craig:** I would never turn something aside because the form was incorrect. It’s just sometimes you can read a few things and you realize just the mind is not a particularly strong mind. I mean, you guys have read things, right, where you’re like–

**Jewerl:** You guys are harsher than I am. Geez.

**Craig:** Oh, you have no idea.

**Jewerl:** Geez, I’m going to like you.

**John:** I mean, some of the things that knock it out quickly for me is when it’s halfway through the first page and I’m already on a cliché. And there’s no spin on the cliché. You’re just in this really rote moment. And it’s like, OK, if you’re doing that so early I don’t have good faith that it’s going to be worth my time to do it. And really what we’re talking about, reading a screenplay is an act of faith. If I’m going to give you an hour, two hours, five hours of my time, and the writer says I’m going to make it worth your while to do that. And there’s trust and faith. And if you break that trust, that sort of social contract between the writer and the reader, that’s a problem. And that contract starts on page one.

**Lindsay:** When I was doing my First Ten Pages workshop yesterday morning two of the scripts, the worst writing in the scripts were in the first page and a half. They were both things where they were putting the bomb under the table. You know, they were setting up the thriller underneath the other stuff. And once I got to the other stuff the writing was really sound and really good. They just didn’t know how to do that whole other thing.

So, and yet I was trying to convey that a lot of people will just put it down after a page and a half. If you’re not on the top of your game on page one. At that workshop I talk a lot about how everybody who reads your script has too much to read. Would rather be doing something else. They’re exhausted and distracted. So that’s what you’re up against. And that’s what we’re up against with the audience really. They may have paid the ticket, but they’re still thinking about a lot of other things before the lights go down.

So we have to grab people who would rather be thinking about something else or doing something else. That’s the job.

**Jewerl:** You know, I never stop reading at page two. I always give someone ten, 20, 30 pages. You know, I’ve been developing a TV pilot with Howard Gordon who produced 24 and some other big television shows.

**Craig:** X-Files. I think he was on X-Files.

**Jewerl:** Yeah, all these big television shows. And I stopped feeling bad because he has this thing where if there’s a logic problem on page 12 he can’t go to page 13. He’s like we have to fix the logic problem here before I can get to the – it’s an OCD thing with him. And I’ve appreciated that because it’s like when there are too many logic problems for me they’ve lost me. I can’t – I’m not longer in fantasy. I’m in why do you suck.

**Lindsay:** You think he’s meaner than you. Wow.

**John:** Yeah. Let’s hope he doesn’t repeat those words.

**Craig:** I can outdo that. I can absolutely go – that was positively Amadeusian. That was the greatest laugh I’ve ever heard. That was amazing.

**Jewerl:** I still want to figure out the name of that script. The three pages. I’ve been looking at my phone and I can’t figure it out.

**Craig:** The one that you loved, loved, loved?

**Jewerl:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Well we should probably deal with these three pages.

**John:** We should. So I’m going to look at my phone and I’m going to read the summary for this first script. So as a reminder if you are in this audience and want to read along the pages with us, or if you’re at home listening to this podcast you can go to johnaugust.com/aff2018. Or if you’re listening to the podcast you can just click the links there. This is Night Trauma by Athena Frost.

We open in a boy’s bedroom in Chicago where 50-year-old Raimond Fanon is performing a ritual with incense. The young boy clings to his mother. Aimee Fanon, a woman in her mid-20s says the boy needs to stay in order to draw it out.

Raimond says that Connor Leidenfrost should remain outside, but Connor says my monster, my fight. Raimond begins chanting. The room begins to shake violently. Something bursts out of the closet, moving so fast we can’t finally see it until it ends up atop Connor. The monster is six-feet tall and thin as a broomstick, with sharp claws that cut down to Connor’s body armor. Raimond magically holds the creature and shouts to cut off its head.

Aimee dispatches it with Connor’s knife.

We cut to a hospital in Seattle where an Asian man in his 20s pushes his way into a critical care room. There, doctors Foster and Goralczyk are working on a gunshot victim. And that’s where we’re at on the bottom of the first three pages.

Lindsay, do you want to start us off? Talk about your first impressions going through these three pages.

**Lindsay:** Well, Craig knows that I have this thing about where is everybody standing. It drives him crazy. He thinks it drives other writers I work with crazy.

**Craig:** Only because they told me so.

**Lindsay:** Oh well, OK. If you’re going to go with that. So, I have to say my first impression was I couldn’t tell where anybody was standing. You start in the room. It’s boy’s room. But then the character comes into the room. I couldn’t tell whether those other people were in the room. So I was just confused and there’s – I work a lot with Phil Lord and Chris Miller on their movies and they always refer to me as Captain Clarity because if I can’t get past the clarity of the situation I have a really hard time getting engaged.

So, for example, I thought Connor was the father for a while because he talked about my monster, and so I thought that’s why he was there. But then he seemed to already know those other people and he was the one with the knife. So I guess he must work with them, but they don’t seem to like him. I was having such a hard time. Because I love the situation. I love being in a situation where it’s so scary and you need the boy to draw it out. Aye-aye-aye. What the heck? All of that seemed really, really good to me, but I was so troubled by the clarity of the situation that it was getting in the way of the suspense of the situation for me.

**Jewerl:** I totally agree. The geography of the room–

**Lindsay:** See?

**Jewerl:** Is impossible to know. Like for example, paragraph three, “He pulls out a small gray puck,” and I highlight the word puck. I don’t know what a puck is. “From his bag and lights it on top of an incense burner.”

OK, so he has a bag. He can light something while holding the bag and put it on an incense burner. I’m trying to imagine him doing that and I can’t imagine him doing it because I would need a third arm to do all of those things and hold those things.

And then you say he edges slowly into the room. Well, you’ve already told me that I’m in the interior of the room. And so how can he come into the room that he’s already in? And then when you introduce, mother has dialogue next, and mother says, “What is he doing?” Well, you’ve only described Raimond and you’ve described Raimond already in the room. You never told me that mother even existed. And so now I’m thinking she’s off-screen. She’s like – she’s saying something and you just didn’t write OS or something.

Like I don’t know – and so then I read more and there are more characters there and I’m like I was scared. I thought we were doing something where people were magically maybe appearing. Maybe he’s having a fantasy sequence. That they’re not really alive. I didn’t know if there were real characters in the room at that moment.

**John:** So geography was the first thing I underlined on the page because I got confused where we were. But I felt like if you’re introducing characters in the middle of the scene that totally works, but you need to tell us that we’re not supposed to see that they’re there until they start speaking. So like the word reveal is useful. So like we reveal a young boy clinging to the mother’s waist. Then it’s that sense of like OK now we’re seeing this kid for the first time.

If you set up the mother but we hadn’t seen the boy, and then you used reveal to show that the boy was clinging to his mother, that’s great. Then you’re adding to the scene versus just piling more stuff on.

The challenge with so many characters in a scene, I got really confused who was driving the scene. Who was in charge of the scene?

**Lindsay:** Right.

**John:** Because my assumption would be that it would be Raimond because he’s the first character who spoke. He’s the first character we meet. He’s not the first character who speaks. So I assumed that he was going to be driving the scene. But it seems like Connor is. And ultimately Aimee is. And we don’t know enough about any of them to sort of really have a sense of who has the storytelling power in the scene and through whose eyes were supposed to be watching this thing unfurl.

**Craig:** These people are terribly mean. Let me be very, very nice to you for a second.

**Lindsay:** Living up to his reputation.

**Craig:** Exactly. No, everything they’ve said is true and we’ll get around to it, and then I’ll be worse. But what I like a lot is that there is a situation. I’m not – it’s sort of reminded me a little bit of Constantine. It had a little bit of a Constantine kind of vibe to it, but it was different. I loved the description of the monster and so I’ll just do a quick little thing here.

I loved the way you did this. This monster appears through sound, which was wonderful. And then we couldn’t find him. It says, “The sound is continuously getting louder. It is in the room somewhere but we can’t see it directly. A flash here. In the corner of the eye there.” I can imagine that and I’m feeling it which is great. “Raimond motions for everyone to stop moving. No one can hear anything anymore.” That’s cool. I can see that. I can feel that. “He stands calmly in the middle of the room and pushes the incense away from him, talking quietly.” Then it says, “All sound stops,” which means that you’ve done that twice, right? You know that because nobody could hear anything else. But that’s a side.

What I loved was I’m learning about him and how he responds to things around him. I’m learning about his character through this action and his choices, which is great. And then the description of the monster is wonderful. “Over six feet tall but as thin as a broomstick, it glares at the three of them through shiny black eyes. Tufts of lint hang on to its glistening body. Its skin looks like it’s wet with syrupy tar. It spews out its previous meal of skin and hair and cloth.” I mean, I don’t know exactly what it looks like but that’s so cool. And so I kind of imagine this creepy, gross, like oily laundry monster. So amazing.

There’s all this really cool shit going on. But now here’s what’s going on. Why they’re confused I think in part is you’ve left them too much room to fill in. The human mind is expert at filling in gaps. That’s how we move through the world because we don’t see everything happening. We fill in gaps. So he starts to fill in gaps. I didn’t see her in the room. I’m hearing her voice. She must be outside of the room. Two or three of those mistakes in a row and everyone is completely lost.

So, I will absolutely be Captain Clarity with you as well. You can’t go into a room if you’re already in the room. There’s a point here where the mom says to her son, “Don’t worry. I won’t let it past this door.” What door? They’re already in the room. So are they just outside of the room? Are they in the hallway? Are they looking through the room? This is where I’m totally like you because what I think you need to do is set your stage. Just think about how to set this stage. John is absolutely right that there’s no real strong perspective in the scene.

So, when we talk about perspective we mean to say, for instance, “RAIMOND FANON (50s) looks a bit Rastafarian at first glance with his dreads and dark skin, but he carries himself…” Great description there. Black Dumbledore. Amazing. And then mother. I would do that off screen. What is he doing? Raimond turns to see an old woman standing there with a younger woman and a son. She’s scared. The young – you know? Put it in his perspective. Let that motivation. See what I mean?

When we’re shooting scenes that’s how we break down how to do it. Someone’s head turns to see something. And it’s his perspective because I think you’re right. It feels like it’s his scene.

The only other thing I would mention to you is the – I don’t know who Connor Leidenfrost is. I don’t know how he fits into this. Here’s what my mind did. My mind saw that Connor Leidenfrost – just from his name I went sounds white. Then nods to Aimee as he follows Raimond into the room. Nods to Aimee. Friend? Husband? Boyfriend? Not sure.

“He’s a handsome, corn-fed Midwesterner,” nailed the white, and then it says, “Accent and all the backward thought that comes with it.” And I went, oh, racist. Wait, hold on. What’s this racist doing with all these black people? Just reasonable.

**Lindsay:** That’s why I thought he was the father.

**Craig:** Wait, what?

**Lindsay:** There’s a mother and a son. I thought he was the father of that child.

**Craig:** The racist father?

**Lindsay:** Well I didn’t know where else he could fit into this thing. Eventually I realized–

**Craig:** OK. So I wasn’t really sure. You can see where we’re all really, really puzzled. And when he says, “My monster, my fight,” then I thought, OK, he seems to work with Raimond, so maybe they’re like a team. But he’s a racist? So I’m trying to figure out, OK, then what’s Raimond’s feeling about him and how does that work? And also all you’ve really told me is you’ve told me he’s a racist. But nothing he’s doing here is racist. So don’t tell me he’s a racist now. Reveal it later when it’s going to shock us and we’re going to go, oh, that explains why – really it’s just more like he seems like this perfectly fine person except that his partner is like, eh. You know what I mean? It’s all about that perspective.

So, anyway, oh, final, final thing. When all the clothes get torn away it says, “Clothes rip away to body armor.” Body armor underneath regular clothes for a guy like this is a bit surprising. This is one area where you might want to think about all-capping that, or underlining, or something. Just so that the reader doesn’t just go right past it. Because that’s actually really interesting.

**John:** It’s a really cool detail. Because it shows that he was prepared. It’s a surprise that you’re giving us, which is awesome. So, give yourself some weight on the page so we can see that and know that it’s a really cool moment.

**Craig:** Yeah. But there’s a really good thing going on here. Like I actually want to keep – I want to see what happens. I just think – take this all in. This is all kind of the best possible sort of mistake in that it’s super-duper fixable.

**John:** Yeah. You know what the great thing is. She’s just not a voice on the other end listening to us. She’s actually here. Athena Frost, can you come up and take a chair here?

**Craig:** And you know I’m so happy that Megan picked Athena’s work because Athena has been to many of our shows.

**John:** I recognized her name. I was curious whether she’d actually been on a Three Page Challenge before.

**Craig:** She’s a physicist.

**John:** I like physicists.

**Athena:** Astrophysicist.

**Craig:** Astro. She’s an astrophysicist.

**Lindsay:** Oh my god. So you’re a rocket scientist.

**Athena:** No, no, no, no. I’m not an engineer.

**Craig:** No, no, no, no. Those were the applied people here. She’s more theoretical. All right.

**John:** So, Athena, so what we’ve talked through here, you obviously have a geography in your head, and so what we were thinking about with like they’re mostly in the hall but some of them are going into the room. Were we right there?

**Athena:** Yeah. That’s what’s going on.

**John:** Are the three characters, so are Connor and Raimond and Aimee, are they the three main characters we’re going to follow in the course of this story?

**Athena:** Yes, they are.

**John:** And this kind of monster we saw in the first one is the first of many monsters we’re going to see in the course of the story?

**Athena:** Three for three. Yes.

**John:** All right. So what I think is good about this is I was able to make the right assumptions about what kind of script this was and what kind of movie I was going into based on these first three pages which is awesome. Because there’s nothing worse than like you’ve read something and you’re like this feels like a thriller and then you come up and tell us, “No, no, it’s a goofy romantic comedy.” And then it’s like, ah.

**Craig:** Tonally it was consistent. I think we all kind of probably saw the same thing happening, so that was great.

**John:** What world is this happening in? I had a hard time figuring out what kind of universe this was. What city are we in? What does this feel like?

**Craig:** And what time period?

**John:** Is it present day?

**Athena:** Yeah. So this is present day. It takes place in Chicago on the south side, which is where I’m from. And so the idea is that it’s a supernatural TV show that takes place in a hospital. So later you’re going to find out that Aimee is the head nurse of the ER. And that Connor Leidenfrost is a doctor.

**John:** It feels like you changed some stuff there or you’re not quite sure.

**Athena:** No, no, no. I mean, he’s a doctor to most people, but he essentially took over this other guy who died. Like weird backstory.

**John:** So where are you at in the process of writing this? This is whole thing done? Is this something you’re working on right now?

**Athena:** Yeah. The whole thing is done. I know that I need another rewrite and essentially very related to you all’s notes which is that I need to make some things more clear. A lot of times people are like left with questions.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, you know, it’s always that game we play of mystery versus confusion. Keep the mystery. Avoid the confusion. One thing to think about on a page one sort of thing now that we know where this is set is the very first thing people see will be – it will kind of help them understand what you’re going for and what’s special about your show.

So, for instance, in this case you’re in the south side of Chicago, but I would never know it. This could be any year. He’s pulling out incense and he seems a little old-fashioned in a way. So, if I heard or saw through a window South Side of Chicago and then just moved away from that to this weird situation that doesn’t feel like the typical South Side Chicago story that would be kind of cool.

Just something to get us into your world.

**John:** Or to the establishing shot that sort of begins this thing where you can paint a picture of what neighborhood we’re in would really help anchor us and sort of know that we’re in a specific place and time that’s going to carry through.

But this sounds cool. In your head is this more Buffy or is this more Grimm? Is this Grey’s Anatomy with monsters? What is this in your head?

**Athena:** The comps I usually do is Grey’s Anatomy meets Supernatural. More recent ones that people like to do is I think they like to say Gray and Constantine.

**Craig:** Yeah. I definitely had a Constantine vibe. One more thing for you to think about. When you get to the hospital scene at the end, your first scene there has an annoyed nurse, a woman, a child, and an Asian man. That’s four no-named people. So, I’m OK with one no-named person. Maybe two at the most. But I kind of want to know that I don’t have a scene with four day players kind of moving around. Just something to think about there. Cool.

**John:** Athena Frost, thank you so much.

**Craig:** Thank you, Athena. Which one should we do next?

**John:** Let’s do The Conch Republic.

**Craig:** Is it Conch or Conch?

**John:** It could be either one.

**Craig:** Conch.

**John:** Conch, sorry. Got the author here.

**Craig:** I have the conch.

**John:** Do you want to read it?

**Craig:** I’ll read the summary, yes. The Conch Republic by Elden Rhoads. We’re on a commercial fishing boat off Key West, Florida. It’s June 1975. Kittens sniff a chum bucket. The fishermen speak a mix of English and Spanish. Eduardo and Hector talk about the kittens and then use them as bait to catch sharks.

Oh, get over it. Felix, 30, is a burly fisherman. Fisherman? Fisherman. Drags Ramon Sanchez, 20s, up from below deck. Sanchez swears he doesn’t know who called the cops. Felix says Sanchez was going to testify against Artie. The men throw Sanchez to the sharks. Notice no one cared that a man was fed to sharks. It’s a human being, but fine.

Cut to one month earlier. In Miami police officer Carmen Soto, 20s, rides in a squad car with partner Cal Lakewood, 40s. Lakewood tells the story of finding a missing woman in a smelly apartment. Soto is unimpressed and keeps eating her sandwich.

And that is our summary for The Conch Republic by Elden Rhoads. So–?

**John:** So, before we get started here we have to – who can raise a hand and tell me what trait we saw in this script? What specific Three Page Challenge phenomenon we witnessed in this script?

**Craig:** Stuart Special.

**John:** It’s a Stuart Special! A Stuart Special is when you go through some time and then you jump back in time to sort of set things up. So, I just want to acknowledge the Stuart Special.

**Craig:** Lives on.

**John:** It lives on even after Stuart Friedel has left us. Jewerl, can you start us off with your first read on Conch Republic and what saw as you were reading through it.

**Jewerl:** I was just looking on my notes and I have a lot of little, little things about language. A lot of little, little things about why you used this language here. But I think overall I really liked these pages.

**John:** What was it that you made you spark to them?

**Jewerl:** It’s vivid. When I was looking at the geography of the boat and the fishing line and the chum in the water and what these guys were doing. And it was clearly gritty. And then we pan and we see these kittens. And at first I wrote why have you introduced kittens on a boat with fishing gear, like you’ve changed the tone of the movie. That was my note right then.

**John:** Yeah. Right then.

**Jewerl:** But then when he puts the kittens on the fishing line and they go into the water and the sharks eat them I’m like, OK. And then when they bring out the man and they throw the man overboard so the shark can eat him, I’m like this is a lot of work to kill someone, but it’s F-ing cool.

**Craig:** So great.

**John:** It’s an amazing laugh. Lindsay, what did you read as you were going through this?

**Lindsay:** I don’t disagree with anything you said. But you kill in a kitten in a script and I’m out. I’m out. I’m a proud owner of a brand new kitten. I cannot read about kittens being thrown overboard. Craig will be glad to know I also felt really bad about the guy. I felt really terrible about that.

**Jewerl:** And I happen to be a dog person.

**Lindsay:** See? Good person. Bad person. Can read about kittens/can’t read about kittens. But I think it’s important to say that certain people are going to read this and just say that’s it. I wish I could unread these pages.

**John:** Yeah. Because we’re talking the first three pages. And so as a person who can’t read about – the kittens freaked me out. And so I had a hard time going back and reading it a second time. The second time I was like, OK, you get desensitized to the kitten death. But, here’s what I’ll say on the second read through is that the first read through I was so shocked by the kittens and then the guy gets thrown overboard that I wasn’t paying attention to the dialogue and sort of to what the guy was saying, what Sanchez and Felix, what their dialogue was about. And so I wasn’t really paying attention. There’s something going on between them. Someone is betraying somebody else.

The second time through when the shock wasn’t there so much I was looking at the dialogue and I wasn’t believing the Sanchez/Felix moment. Here’s the reason why. This guy was beaten up down below decks and then is brought up deck. And he’s saying the things I think he probably would have said down below. I didn’t feel like it was his final pleading. I felt like he was saying those things for me and the audience and not for himself in those moments. It didn’t feel real like what he would be saying in those moments.

So, if he’d been blindfolded and then blindfold was off and he realized where he was then I might be able to buy sort of what he’s doing there right now. But I feel like he already knows he’s on a boat. He already knows he’s really screwed. So I need to have a different way in. I always think about how would you direct that actor. What would you be talking to that actor about? I feel like I wouldn’t have the note for him given the lines that are there right now.

**Craig:** We have a typo on the very first line. June has an E at the end of it.

**Elden:** Oh, that’s throughout the script. I just used (inaudible).

**Craig:** Why? I guess later on when I saw Aug or Sep I would know, but here it just looked like Jun. Regardless, I think the best thing about this are the kittens. Here’s the deal. She’s right. You will lose people on the kitten thing. But, the name of the game is not to get the most people to sort of like something. The name of the game is to get one person to fall in love with something. So I thought it was shocking and remarkable. I’ve never seen it before. That alone gets a huge checkmark.

I think in a weird way you didn’t do it enough in a sense, because it’s so shocking you have to kind of build the moment around it. So for instance the first line – well first it says, “On board, KITTENS sniff the chum bucket. Looking closely at the litter, we see they all have six toes.” No we don’t.

**John:** No one will see that.

**Craig:** No one is going to see that. Ever. We’re not looking that close. And you want us to look at all those paws all at the same time? That’s not the way cameras work. And more important, that’s not important right now. There are kittens on a ship. What’s that about?

The first line is Eduardo, “Why all the gatos?” No. No, no, no, no. Everybody should know what the cats are for. The cats are the last thing on their mind. They know what the cats are for. The cats don’t know what the cats are for. But I want to think, right, lull me into a sense of security. Like that these guys are on a fishing trip and they just have cats. They like the cats. Maybe they’re feeding them some of the fish. They’re pets. They’re lovely. It’s fun.

And then when they casually grab one and stick it on a thing we go oh my god. It will come out of nowhere. It will be terrifying. So, that I think is important.

I want to read–

**Lindsay:** Yeah, make it worse.

**Craig:** Yes! Yes. If you’re going to do it, do it is my point. Right? Aim for me. You’re never going to get her. But you can get me, right?

**Lindsay:** Bargain.

**Craig:** This is the second line. I just want to read this. “FISHERMEN, leathery skin burned rusty brown by the tropical sun, monitor their thousand pound test fishing lines plunged 300 feet below the sapphire blue waters.” Do you sense a certain monotony to the rhythm there? So when you have a three-line sentence and it’s da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da without much punctuation or breaking it’s going to start to – you know, people want to skip past that stuff anyway. So, make it a little bit more fun or a little more breaky-choppy.

John is 100% right. This deal with Felix does not work because it’s not real. So we talk about emotional math. We are doing the emotional calculations here and we are immediately coming up with a wrong answer. For instance, they drag him up. “I swear man, you got to believe me. Please. It wasn’t me.”

These are not the most original lines in the world. However, that’s probably what somebody would say there. I believe the math.

He gets hit on the face. He falls to the side of the boat. And then a yellow pool forms between his legs and Felix says, “Damn, he pissed himself.” Felix has seen people piss themselves a thousand times. Felix doesn’t even notice anymore. Felix feeds cats to sharks. This is all in a day’s work for Felix. Let us go – in fact, we learn something when somebody sees a man pee and goes, uh-huh, we learn about them. OK. This ain’t your first man peeing.

**Lindsay:** He’s one of those.

**Craig:** Yeah. He’s one of those guys.

**Jewerl:** I’m having so much fun.

**Lindsay:** There’s more challenges here than just the three pages.

**Craig:** And so I think John is right that this feels like an info dump and it’s coming from somebody under emotional distress who is the worst possible choice for an info dump. Because when people are under emotional distress they don’t speak in complete thoughts. They are not concerned with the information anybody else needs. Sometimes they can barely get words out at all. And so you can be interesting and creative about that.

If you need an info dump, he can try to say something and they can say, “Yes, we know. Blah-blah-blah. You said it a thousand times. It’s still not true.” Kick. You know what I mean? Find ways where the emotional math works.

I love this little bit at the end where he’s like, “Whew, not this cat. This is my daughter’s cat.” I thought that was great.

The only issue is I would think maybe to pull it earlier because if you’re going to do a Stuart Special you kind of have to cut on a moment of shock. And this is sort of – the moment of shock is they feed Sanchez to the sharks. Maybe the cat can meow and then cut. But there can’t be probably too much chitchat and then cut. This conversation between Soto and Lakewood, I’m having some emotional math problems here too. I feel like it’s trying very hard to make me feel something about Lakewood. Lakewood is talking to Soto like he’s never been in a car with her before. I mean, are they new partners?

**Elden:** He’s a rookie.

**Craig:** OK, have they been together for more than a day?

**Elden:** It’s very, very early.

**Craig:** Then I need to know that. Even the way he’s telling the story feels so casual, like two partners, and she’s like, “I’m eating my sandwich. You’re so boring with your stories.” So it was a mismatch. If he’s like let me tell you, you’re new, so let me tell you something. Whatever it has to be so we know that they don’t know each very well, then he would tell this story differently.

Also, why this story? Why is he telling it to her? Just to gross her. She’s a cop. You know what I mean? You’ve got to do a lot of that emotional math. And constantly ask is this true. I know I want to do it, but is it true?

**Jewerl:** By the way, for me the most important thing about these three pages, I wanted to read more.

**John:** That’s crucial.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Elden, you’re here. Can you come up and talk to us about so we can know more about.

**Elden:** If there’s anybody from PETA please don’t kill me.

**Craig:** They’re just words. Just words.

**John:** So on the title page it says inspired by actual events. So can you tell us the shortest version of what are the actual events and were kittens harmed?

**Elden:** This is literally a story I heard around the dinner table as a child. Growing up in Key West, very shortly in the ‘70s it was a very big drug trade going on. And it was dark. So, this story just came out of – I thought if I ever told the story about Key West and the Conch Republic this was always the opening scene. Cats were used as bait on commercial fishing boats. And I heard this story many, many times growing up.

And to what you’re saying about the shock value of it, the Ramon character I really had to build it out because I had him just coming up with a blindfold on and being thrown overboard and the first people who read it literally didn’t even notice that a person went overboard and was killed because they were so freaked out–

**Jewerl:** Cat people.

**Elden:** About the cats.

**Craig:** Terrible.

**Elden:** And I’m not like deliberately doing it to be shocking. I’m doing it because this is literally the stories that I heard.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s cool. Don’t apologize for this. It’s awesome.

**Lindsay:** You’re horrible.

**Craig:** I know.

**Elden:** And so I had to expand. They’re like give him some lines. I didn’t even notice that he went overboard. Give him some lines. And what would he say?

So, when you’re saying that I’m like going back and the history of the rewrites and saying, OK, I was little clumsy here because I’m just trying to force this dialogue in here so people are paying attention.

**Craig:** I have an idea. Do you want an idea? I don’t know if it’s right or not, but what you could do is while these guys are talking and catching sharks with cats, you could just show that there’s a guy sitting there who is all beaten up and gagged watching. You know, so we’re like who is that, but he’s also – now the cats are contextualized in oh my fucking – these people do that to cats, I’m so fucked.

**John:** So, I mean, I think the other thing Craig might be suggesting is that is there a piece of information you want to get out of them. Are you just there to dispose of the body? Because you could kill him in advance and it wouldn’t really matter. Or are you trying to get some information out of him? That makes the scene alive.

**Elden:** Well, I’m trying to – I mean, the thing about Artie, this guy is a snitch. He snitched on Artie. Artie is a big kingpin/drug dealer/gun runner who is one of the main characters in the rest of the story. And he’s a snitch who is getting what’s coming to him.

**Craig:** Stitches.

**Elden:** Yeah.

**John:** Fishes.

**Elden:** So, I put the Artie line in there to tie him back to Artie so we know who this person is snitching on.

**John:** I have a question. So you’ve done I’m sure a lot of research figuring all this out. It’s 1975 and we have Carmen Soto, early 20s. She’s a spark plug of a Cuban-American chica. She’s a police officer riding with this guy. Does she exist? Is there going to be an early 20s in Miami female police officer riding in that car with that guy?

**Elden:** In this era there were women who were serving in the police force as well as military but they weren’t treated very well. And one of the things, again, about the dialogue that’s going on – he’s testing her. He’s trying to push her buttons and gross her out. And so right now she’s resisting him by eating the sandwich saying you’re not grossing me out.

**Craig:** I think we got that. I think the problem with that exchange is that he’s bad at it. He’s too bad at what he’s trying to do and she’s too good at ignoring it. It needs to be better. For me to feel that she – to give her credit for resisting I need to feel that she actually has to resist. Because the story he’s telling is too goofy I think ultimately for me to feel like, oh god, I’m in her shoes and this is – if that makes sense.

**Elden:** I will tell my criminology professor you thought his story was too goofy.

**Craig:** I’ve done it before.

**John:** Ah-ha.

**Craig:** You know the thing about real life is it’s often boring.

**Elden:** Yeah. That was a story literally out of–

**Craig:** Oh yeah, there’s all sorts of them. But it’s not, you know.

**John:** Elden, thank you so much for coming up here.

**Craig:** Thank you. We’re kind of wondering if–

**John:** Hey, Joseph Valezquez, are you here?

**Joseph:** I am.

**John:** He’s here. All right. We weren’t sure if you were here.

**Craig:** Good, good, good.

**John:** Good thing, because we were about to talk about your script. And we would talk totally differently if you weren’t here.

**Craig:** I would not.

**John:** All right. This is Cameraman by Joseph Velazquez. Here is a summary. In a production office Australian animal show host Jimmy Cool Waller, 40s, tells cameraman Jason Rodger, early 30s, that he loves his name because that name, Rodger, means fuck. Waller tells Jason he’s hired, but Jason says he’s never worked with animals before.

When staffer Rachel Hawkins, her late 20s, enters with a snake Jason jumps up on his chair and screams. He falls, curling into the fetal position against the wall. He says a snake ate his Billy goat when he was a child. Waller says Jason is the missing ingredient this show needs. And that’s where we’re at after three pages of Cameraman.

Craig, why don’t you start us off?

**Craig:** Sure. This is my sort of thing. I do love these sorts of movies. And I was enjoying at least the sense of understanding who this guy was. This was sort of a pushed version of what’s his face.

**John:** Steve Irwin?

**Craig:** Steve Irwin. I thought it was – I loved the posted that he’s on open water behind a boat using two crocodiles as water skis, shocked yet delighted to have just noticed the rope he’s holding onto is actually a snake. And I love shocked yet delighted because I can see that idiot poster like, so that was great. Water skis does not take an apostrophe S. But fine.

Waller’s voice is unique and true. I believed it. It felt like he was this kind of like over-eager, over-happy, weirdly dim Australian adventurer. And Rodger literally means “to fuck.” “Your name’s a verb, mate,” is very funny.

All right, so, here’s what’s happening for me. Where things go a bit off the rails. The premise of these three pages is that Jason is being hired to be a cameraman because Waller loves his camera work, but you show us through a quint split screen, a five-way split screen, that everyone has fired him before. So I guess this scene is now from his perspective, even though you’ve put it from Waller’s perspective, so that has shifted.

The premise here is that he’s not very good at his job, therefore I’m wondering where’s the mistake in the comedy of errors where Waller thinks he’s great. I don’t understand why Waller is excited about him. So, the comedy starts to fall apart. Even though what you’re showing me is that he’s scared of snakes and all the rest of it, because I’m missing information I start to just drift away from the comic premise of everything that’s coming after.

So that’s sort of where I landed.

**Lindsay:** I was assuming, again, that what you want was they’re hiring him not because he’s a good cameraman but because he’s scared and he thinks having a scaredy-cat on this part of the show is good for the show. I just don’t understand how having a scared cameraman is good for the show? I would understand having a sidekick who was scared who would be funny and we would laugh at him running away from all of the things that he loves to do, but the guy behind the camera running away I couldn’t figure that out. So, I agree. There were a lot of things about these pages that I thought were really fun, but the basic situation I just couldn’t understand.

**John:** Could you understand there Jewerl?

**Lindsay:** He’s so far ahead of us.

**Jewerl:** For me, a comedy can make a lot of mistakes. It can make geography mistakes. It can make, you know, a lot of the mistakes that we talked about in the other scripts I forgive a comedy. The only thing I want from a comedy is to laugh. You know? This line, five people in five different Australian film sets fire Jason simultaneously I thought was the funniest joke of the three pages. But you know, I misread the joke. Like I thought that five different camera people had been set ablaze. I mean, that’s what I thought the joke was and I was like, god, this is the best joke in these three pages. I loved it. I might have even laughed out loud at the joke you didn’t write.

So, and I had the same problem that he did which is five different people are set ablaze and you tell me that in one line. I’m like they’re going to have to film that for – that’s a two-page thing. That’s a half a page joke. You know? And so yeah.

**Lindsay:** We also don’t care about killing cameramen as much as we care about killing kittens apparently.

**Craig:** Nobody cares about killing cameramen.

**John:** I want to talk a little bit about Jason in this scene, because it’s a question of like is this scene from Jason’s point of view? He sees this larger than life character. Or is it from Waller’s point of view trying to convince this kid to sign on and be the cameraman? And when Jason freaks out and climbs onto the chair and falls back he’s so big, we got to be so big and so cartoonish that I stopped believing it. Or I stopped believing the dynamic.

And so Waller is this big giant bulldozer character. He’s a Craig. And Jason in that moment was doing a big giant thing and you can’t have two Craigs. You can have one Craig. One Craig is enough. Two Craigs, it doesn’t really work.

**Craig:** It’s gilding the lily.

**John:** So, the idea that Jason is going to be hired on because he is terrified of stuff is a really good idea, but I think you need to find a smaller way to get into that that’s a less of a big, yelping, screaming kind of thing, but just we see how terrified he is and let that be the joke and set that up as the dynamic.

Because I suspect when we bring you up here their dynamic is going to be the heart of this. And I’m excited to see that. And even like your minor character who comes in, Waller.

**Craig:** Rachel.

**John:** Rachel, I’m sorry, Rachel. She has very few lines but, “He’s a fuckwit.” Great. That’s the perfect line. I see who this woman is in her very minimal things. And so that gave me confidence. We talked at the start about, you know, you have to have faith and trust that this writer is going to take you on something that’s rewarding. On every page I saw some stuff that I really loved and that was what was going to keep me reading along further into the script.

**Craig:** I still, you know, what I still cannot answer is whether Jason wants this job or not. Or does he need the job? Because when Rachel says, “What the hell is wrong with you,” because he’s scared of a snake, he says, “A snake like that killed my kid.” And they gasp. And then he says, “Kid Billy goat. A snake like that killed my goat.” He’s lying, but he wants the job so he’s trying to explain why he got scared because he needs this job. But if he needs this job then why one page earlier is he saying, “I’m a little concerned.” It’s like, are you or are you not? Do you need it or do you not need it? There’s something very funny about somebody who is deathly afraid of animals and absolutely must get this job working for deadly animals. Right?

And so then I understand the fakery and why and all the rest of it. And, frankly “A snake like that killed my kid” is a great excuse. He shouldn’t have – I don’t even understand the logic of why he left that. Why is the goat better than that? That’s a great one. That worked for him. You know what I mean? So there’s a lot of these picky little logic things, but they’re poking holes in the side of your comic Titanic and there aren’t enough lifeboats.

**Lindsay:** May I just say though if anybody has heard the big talk that I give here, it’s all about relationships. And what I felt very happy about was that I felt grounded in the central relationship right away and it felt like it could be something like My Favorite Year or The Producers where you have the sort of bigger than life character and this little scared guy. And they’re going to be on this journey together. And I love that right away on page one I felt grounded in that.

And I had a feeling that Rachel might turn out to be the love interest. Ta-da. So now I’ve got two different relationships going at the same time. And I just thought, man, you did that really fast in three pages. You told me that this was going to be a fun movie about this particular triangle, father-daughter-wimpy guy. And I thought that was good.

**John:** Cool. Joseph, come on up. Let’s talk more about your project.

**Joseph:** Hello.

**John:** Joseph, is this a movie or a pilot? What is this?

**Joseph:** So it’s actually a short but it was – I wrote it as an outline for a feature and then I wrote the short. And not I’m taking the short and I’m putting it back out to a feature.

**Craig:** Well that sounded good.

**Joseph:** I don’t know why I did that, but I think just to find the structure of it.

**Craig:** Sure. Whatever works.

**John:** What did you have first? Did you have Waller as the host and then you’re trying find someone opposite him? What is the genesis of the idea?

**Joseph:** I mean, it comes from watching Steve Irwin and like watching these situations where the snakes are biting him or this animal is terrifying. I was like, man, what is the cameraman thinking? I’m scared for the host. The cameraman is not a nature guy. He’s just a person. He just knows about video.

**John:** So, let’s go to what Lindsay said, because in some ways the cameraman is the worst person because the cameraman wouldn’t show up. I think she’s maybe pitching that it’s the sound guy or somebody else who has to be there and has to be really close who is the guy. How are you feeling?

**Joseph:** Well, I mean, I’m open to that. The reason it’s the cameraman is that he is actually good at his job and what makes him good is anticipating what people are going to do. So a lot of this movie is him learning to – that, and he only does it there. He doesn’t have that connection with people one on one, or the connection with nature, the thing that binds us all, right? So that’s kind of what he’s going to learn on this journey.

So he’s actually a good cameraman. The reason that Waller likes him–

**Craig:** Why has he been fired so many times?

**Joseph:** Well, that was a bad way to try to show that he needed the job. And it’s illogical, and you’re right.

**Craig:** It’s not illogical. We definitely know that he sucks. That’s what that means.

**Joseph:** Yeah, so that is an error.

**John:** So you’re saying, so he says there “my visa is going to expire.” So basically he needs this job or he gets kicked out of the country as well. Is that another aspect of this?

**Joseph:** Yes. Exactly.

**John:** And how soon do we find out why he wants to stay in Australia in the first place?

**Joseph:** Pretty much so the next scene is a quick like kind of Jerry Maguire/LA Confidential rundown of Australia opening where the animals and how terrifying and how ridiculous they are. And then the very next scene is where he goes back to his apartment in Sydney. He’s like I’ve got the job with his friend that’s there. And then he goes off to the northern territory right after that.

**Jewerl:** I mean, I personally don’t want him to be terrible. What I was imagining was a scenario where just a normal guy wants his job and he has the boss from hell. This guy is going to put him in danger with the alligators. Put him in danger with the snakes. And he needs the job but he doesn’t realize he’s signing up for the job from hell. And I thought that was such a clear idea, you know. I think making him terrible at it or making him super afraid of animals just muddles this very clear idea.

**Joseph:** OK.

**John:** In some ways the cameraman is the voice of reason. No, no, what you’re doing is crazy. So that sense that we can identify with him. So, you may want to push and heighten to some degree so we can be, because it’s a comedy, but like he is probably our way into, no, no, it’s nuts what you’re doing. You shouldn’t be doing these things.

**Craig:** And why is Waller so excited about hiring him?

**Joseph:** Well, so the excuse, and I guess maybe it’s not in those early pages, is that he loves his reality/crappy reality television show that he’s been shooting in LA before that. Whatever show it is. So he’s a fan of that show. So he knows he works on it. But I think there’s more.

**Craig:** Nobody gets that excited about cameramen.

**Joseph:** He sees something inside of him.

**Craig:** I mean, look, there is a version of this where – because John just said these magic words “the way in,” and I think Jewerl is talking about it, too. The way in is really important with comedy. If you have a cameraman who is quite competent and quite good but he’s been screwed over by something that’s realistic and, you know, we can identify with it. You know, like the company folded and you don’t get paid. And his visa is running out and he needs a job. And then lo and behold is looking through the – this is all page one stuff – looking through the ads and there’s a cameraman job that pays four times as much as any other one he’s ever seen. He’s like, I’ll go there, but there’s going to be like 20 people. And he gets there and there’s no one.

It’s just him. And then this guy is like, oh my god, great. First I’m going to interview you, then you get the job. No, I didn’t say that. Let me interview you. Maybe you’ll get the job. Right? Point being nobody wants to work for this guy because people die. That’s interesting. And you are – that’s where desperation meets need and situation. Now he can’t leave it. But you definitely want the last cameraman to be dead. Like behind Waller is like a think of In Loving Memory of.

**Joseph:** Croc got him, mate.

**Craig:** And a guy with a camera. Right? That’s what you want.

**Jewerl:** I mean, basically the joke that I misread, you need to change it to what I thought it was going to be.

**Joseph:** It’s way better.

**Craig:** Right. Like your last cameraman seemed to have died. He goes, “No, no, the last cameraman was terribly maimed. Oh, no, this is the cameraman before the last cameraman. This one died.” There’s a million ways. But it’s the way in. Also, we want to know who someone is before the – in comedy, I believe – we want to know who somebody is before the meteor smashes into their life. We need a little bit of, just a little brief sense of who I am as a normal person and then madness. So like for instance wonderful movie that you mentioned My Favorite Year. It’s a great movie to watch if you haven’t seen it. And it’s about a guy who works on a television show in the golden age of television. He’s a very junior comedy writer. And his hero, who is basically Errol Flynn, played by Peter O’Toole, comes to be a guest on the show. And he, our hero, our little guy, is put in charge of him. And the problem is this man is a terrible, terrible drunk. And a disaster of a human being. And probably won’t show up and it will mean his job and everything.

And, of course, a relationship is formed. We must know what it’s like for this writer and this girl that he is in love with but doesn’t seem to quite know how to, you know, can’t really get. And the situation vis-à-vis him and these older men. We need to see it first, just to know. And then in comes a wrecking ball that will smash his life apart and then somehow put it back together better. That’s this kind of movie I think.

So definitely watch that kind of movie.

**Lindsay:** I think of this as a bringer of chaos movie. And the surprise of the bringer of chaos movies, you know, Cable Guy and all these various things, is you start out thinking, god, if only that character would go away and by the time it’s over the person who has had to change is the sweet guy.

**Craig:** What About Bob?

**Lindsay:** Who has to realize, or Planes, Trains is a good one.

**Craig:** Yeah, there’s another one.

**Lindsay:** You essentially welcome him into your house when at the beginning it’s like how fast can I get away from this person.

**Craig:** They’re reverse Christ stories basically. It’s like what if Jesus were really freaking annoying, but has also been sent to save you. That is what What About Bob is. That’s what that movie is.

**Joseph:** Definitely spot on.

**Craig:** And then you can see in like Rain Man and Midnight Run, it’s like people that make us a little nuts, sometimes that’s what we need. So, watch those movies. See how they do it.

**John:** Thank you, Joseph. Thank you so much for coming up.

**Joseph:** Thank you guys.

**John:** All right, we have time for some audience questions. We have no microphones, so raise your hand. I’ll call on you and we will repeat your question back. Second row.

**Audience Member:** I was wondering if you could clarify the term emotional math. I kind of understood from the context, but I want to be sure what you meant by that.

**Craig:** Sure. I mean, I’ve invented it, so you don’t really need to – I mean, it’s not super-duper important. There will be no test on that. But to me when we are reading characters, and so we’re reading a representation of what a human being is. But on every bit of these lines what they say and what they’re doing, what the writer is doing is asking the reader or ultimately the person watching the movie or television show to believe it. The whole point is that we give ourselves even to a show. Even shows that are doing bizarre things that we know aren’t real. There’s no Chewbacca. But I want to believe that when Chewbacca sees Han Solo for the first time in a prison cell that he’s going be, “Ooh!” Right?

So it’s all about that. The words and the decisions and what is said and what is said and what is not said add up to, as I do it, yep, that equals real. None of those things seem to violate what I understand about how humans work.

And that means asking questions sometimes of your work that are pesky and annoying because you thought something that is funny to you, or you had a line that you thought would be really cool, and then everybody else goes, yeah, but that’s your problem. Our problem is it’s violating the real of what you have created.

**Audience Member:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Question back there. So I’m going to repeat the question back just so we can have it on the podcast. So, Jewerl, when you’re reading a five-hour script that sort of breaks all the rules, do you think there’s a value to a writer deliberately breaking rules so they will get your attention?

**Jewerl:** That’s a really hard question. Generally the only thing that matters on a screenplay, to me, have I had a feeling response. And so people who are good craftspeople can produce that result with all of the rules. People who are just intrinsically talented who are channeling a story that is beyond them can do that. You know, people who have had an authentic experience in their own life and they are replicating that experience on the page can do that.

So whatever your means to get me to feel and be invested in your journey, that’s what you should do. If that means doing the Robert McKee method, fine. If that means telling a story that no one would actually film, you know, but you’ve written it so well that suddenly it’s the filmable thing. So that’s all that really matters.

**Lindsay:** One of the First Ten Pages things that I did yesterday, it was one of the things that I was really tired. I didn’t want to read anymore, but I thought, oh, I’ll just look at the very beginning. And I opened it and the first two lines of the script were in the past tense. And I went I’ve never seen this before. And it really got my attention. But eventually it felt like a gimmick and I became a little bit resentful. The writing got a little bit overblown and it felt like they were deliberately trying to get my attention with something that wasn’t organic.

I think breaking the rules is the only way to tell your story as opposed to here’s a way to get somebody’s attention and then you begin to say, oh, they’re just trying to get my attention.

**Craig:** Yeah. Don’t calculate. Don’t calculate.

**John:** Great. Oh, another question. Right here?

**Audience Member:** Thank you. I’m really interested to know kind over time from the beginning of your careers and reading scripts to now, how have you seen script writing change? Do you prefer scripts that are in the style of now? Do you still like scripts that were maybe 10, 20, 50 years ago in the style? What are you thinking about? How has it changed and what do you like to see now?

**John:** Lindsay, you probably have the longest track record of reading scripts.

**Lindsay:** Yes, 50 years ago when I was reading screenplays. [laughs]

**John:** Let’s actually talk about sort of the evolution of–

**Craig:** When sound came in…

**Lindsay:** Yes, exactly. [laughs]

**John:** We can do a very quick look at sort of—

**Lindsay:** When DW and I were talking about this very thing. You know, the first thing that comes to mind is the people who would fuck in the stage directions. That – you know, Shane Black.

**Craig:** Did you say people would fuck in the stage directions?

**Lindsay:** They put the word fuck in the stage directions. People start cursing in the stage directions. They became very informal and the language began to become informal. And I really did think that – for me, I just remember reading a Shane Black screenplay and I was, oh my god, I didn’t know you could do this. And it really did get people’s attention in a huge way. Now I feel like it happens so often that I don’t pay that much attention to it anymore.

But I do feel as though that format used to be much stricter. Now I think for better people feel a lot more free with stage directions to get a mood across, to get a tone across, to get a type of humor across. And it just makes the whole thing more of a whole. That’s the thing that comes to my mind first.

**John:** If you look back at the original screenplays, the women who were writing those were basically doing – it was kind of a list of shots. It was a plan for this is our shooting sequence and it very much feels like you’re shooting it this way. With Casablanca you start to see things that more resemble our modern screenplays.

And what we write now is basically you’re trying to capture the feeling of being in an audience watching that thing up on the screen and we’re kind of allowed to do anything it takes to get that experience across. And so I think it’s good that some of the harder restrictions of like that it’s only what the camera can shoot, some of that has melted away in a good way I think.

**Craig:** Yeah. As the actual format of what we’re writing for changes, so to can the format. It used to be that there was either a 30 or 60-minute television program, or a 120-minute movie, and so you go forth young person. And now you can write anything, in any length. It can also be a three-part thing, or a two-part thing, or a nine-part thing, or one thing.

And so you are allowed, I think, to write in such a way as to get across what is unique and wonderful about you and your story. Ultimately there is so much going on now in Hollywood that it’s the new, it’s the exciting. You know, we always say like if you’ve written something that seems like it’s something like they make, they’ll just hire one of us to do it, because it’s sort of something like they make.

What happens is it’s the new. They want to find somebody that just has some sort of undeniable thing that is of its own. And that’s where breaking the rule – it’s not even breaking the rules, it’s really making your own rules, right? Because breaking the rules is just an act of sort of petulant rejection. But it must be this way is an act of creation. So that’s more interesting to me.

**John:** I remember reading Natural Born Killers, Quentin Tarantino’s script for Natural Born Killers, and it was such a groundbreaking script for me to read early in my career because it would just morph into a completely different movie at times. And suddenly it became a sitcom. It just felt vital and alive. It was the first script I remember getting to the last page and just flipping back and reading through the whole thing again because it felt like the form had changed a bit. And that I think we see a lot more now.

What Lindsay was describing about with Shane Black’s scene description is he had voice in scene description. I don’t think that was a thing we were really focusing on then. Like the whole movie should feel like one person wrote it, like no one else could have written this scene description that way. That you’re in capable hands. That goes back to that trust and like if you give me your trust I will make this worth your while.

**Lindsay:** You know, a lot of times I feel like when directors write screenplays they already know how they’re going to make the movie so they leave out the stuff that makes them readable because they don’t think they have to fill them in. They already know.

But I remember before I was ever in the movie business I read the screenplay for I think it was The Apartment. And Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond wrote it together. And one of the things in The Apartment, I hope I’m thinking about the right movie, is that there’s all this slang that goes around the office about that’s the way it crumbles cookie wise. That’s the way everybody is talking. And the last line of the screenplay is “That’s the way it ends screenplay wise.” And I thought they’re just writing for themselves. They’re awake and alive and doing it for you. And I just love that.

**John:** I think we can fit one more question in.

**Craig:** Can we fit one more? We can fit one more.

**John:** One more question. Who has got the question? A gentleman with a hat back there and a pink shirt. Yes.

**Craig:** So, the question was are there things that we see repeatedly in screenplays that seem as if the writer was intending to be clever or interesting or provocative but in fact it’s sort of old hat and producers find it a bit annoying and obnoxious.

**John:** Jewerl, I bet you have insight there.

**Jewerl:** You know, I have a really big vocabulary. When people use words that I don’t know I’m like, wow, they’re trying to be smart and interesting and I just have to stop, figure out what the word is before I can move on. I find that people who can convey feeling with very short sentences and very simple words are the most exciting.

You know, the first book on writing I ever read when I was 16 years old was called On Writing Well, and it’s a famous, famous, famous book that’s been around for 40 years. And it’s about nonfiction writing, but the rules apply to simple language, simple sentences, clarity. Over the last year I’ve sent 40 copies of that to friends when they talk about – they’re at a hump. They don’t know if the thing is readable. I’m like these simple rules work everywhere.

You know, like simple way that we can convey – simple ways to convey what you’re talking about. You know, when someone gives me a run-on sentence, a three-line sentence, a three-line sentence, I say can we just do each of these sentences be three words. And it’s like magic.

**Lindsay:** I remember reading – I talked about this yesterday for some reason. A Steve Soderbergh screenplay 20 years ago. And the first line was, after it said interior bedroom day or whatever, it said, “The football just won’t fit.” And it was a scene about a guy packing. But I’ve never forgotten the rhythm of that and the simplicity of that and how it told me the emotion of it weirdly and everything else right away.

But in one of the scripts I read this week there was something where literally the villain was referred to as like the magnificent maestro of malice or something, like if you’re talking about what gets people annoyed is that kind of stuff. Where you just feel like people are showing off or it just takes you out of the scene in that kind of way.

**Craig:** Well, separating what your intention is from what you want it to be. Your intention is to move or create an emotional response, high, low, or something, fear. All these things that we want to do in the reader. And when people employ material like that their other intention which is love me, like me, be impressed by me is taking over. Well that’s ego. And no one is interested in anyone’s ego. They just want to read a good story. Your ego will be so well fed if you write a good script.

**John:** The last thing I would point out is that we talk about sometimes you need to underline, bold face, call something out so we can actually see it on the page. Sometimes I read scripts where it’s almost all bold face and there’s like double asterisk and things like that. Especially action movies.

**Craig:** It looks like the side of that guy’s van.

**John:** Exactly. [laughs] It’s bomber van text. Just be aware of that.

**Craig:** Like cats and van. We just want to find where the points are where we use them.

**John:** Be aware that the more you shout the less we hear. And so you got to really be careful with where you’re putting your emphasis so we actually are paying attention. Craig and I are big fans of white space and making it feel really natural to fall down a page. Anytime you’re doing stuff to stop us from reading it’s got to be worth what you’re doing to stop us.

Cool. This was so much fun. I want to thank Lindsay and Jewerl for this. I need to thank our three very brave Three Page Challenge entrants. Thank you again.

**Craig:** Thank you guys.

**John:** We need to thank Paul and Olivia, Hannah, Travis, and Jonas from the Austin Film Festival. Thank you for having us again. We need to thank Megan McDonnell for producing our show and picking out our things. And Matthew Chilelli for editing. Thank you all very much.

**Craig:** Thanks guys.

Links:

* [Tickets](https://go.wgfoundation.org/campaigns/8810-the-scriptnotes-holiday-live-show) are on sale for the Holiday Live Show!
* Thank you for joining us, [Lindsay Doran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindsay_Doran) and [Jewerl Ross](http://www.silentrlit.com/)!
* [Lindsay Doran’s Ted Talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=752INSLlyf0) is also great.
* The [Three Pages](https://johnaugust.com/aff2018)
* [On Writing Well](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060891548/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by William Zinsser
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