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The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2019/holiday-live-show-2019).

**John August:** Today’s episode of Scriptnotes contains some explicit language. Also, for this live show we have three guests, one of whom uses sign language. So you’ll be hearing the voice of her interpreter. It will make sense in context, I promise. Enjoy.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

**Craig Mazin:** And my name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is the Holiday Live Show 2019 for Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Craig, tell the listeners at home where we are.

**Craig:** We are currently recording live in Hollywood – I was about to say that, live in Hollywood – live in Hollywood at the LA Film School.

**John:** It’s nice. So we do this benefit every year for the Writers Guild Foundation which is a fantastic foundation which does a lot of great work throughout the year. A question though for the folks here in this audience. It’s a very packed house. Do we have any assistants in the house? Oh my god, look at all those hands going up. That’s really nice.

**Craig:** Why aren’t you at work?

**John:** So, we have heard from a ton of assistants over this last couple of months, and so it’s so great to see so many folks here.

A tiny bit of news happened this past week. Verve, the agency, stepped up and decided to pay its assistants more, which is great. We are always happy to congratulate the folks who are doing better, so we don’t have to chastise the folks who are doing worse.

**Craig:** Yes. Although, well, I actually love that.

**John:** Because they’re not a bad guy.

**Craig:** I feel like that’s not the last.

**John:** I hope it’s not the last.

**Craig:** Of the important organizations that employ assistants.

**John:** Absolutely. So, hopefully we’ll be also applauding the second, the third, the fourth, and the 15th places that do step up and start paying assistants better. It’s certainly a goal for 2020.

**Craig:** And then we collect a little piece, just a little taste. Whatever your increase is, just, you know.

**John:** Is that called a Vig? I don’t know.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** A little something.

**John:** A little something.

**Craig:** You know, wet my beak.

**John:** It works out. Now, Craig, while we’re talking numbers, I think it’s important at the end of the year for us to sort of review our numbers and really take a look at where we’re at and sort of where we’ve been and where we’re coming to. So let’s take a quick look at the numbers here.

**Craig:** Statistics.

**John:** Statistics. So Scriptnotes, where are we at in terms of the numbers? You’re the guy who crunches the numbers, so tell us.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah, I’ve worked real hard on this. We are currently at 430 episodes of Scriptnotes.

**John:** Nice. That’s good.

**Craig:** Yes. For which I have been paid zero dollars.

**John:** Not a cent.

**Craig:** We have every week an average of 80,000 listeners.

**John:** 80,000 listeners across the world.

**Craig:** 80,000.

**John:** We have listeners here from Germany, which is awesome.

**Craig:** Fantastic. Our staff is you, it’s me, it’s Megana, our producer, and it’s Matthew our editor.

**John:** Yeah, that’s good. Every week that’s what we get it done with, four people.

**Craig:** Although I do notice a former staff person here.

**John:** Aw, Stuart Friedel is here.

**Craig:** Stuart. You know, we used to talk about the Stuart Special, but it’s our Special Stuart.

Every week we receive on average 103 emails.

**John:** That’s a lot of emails. Megana is reading a lot of emails. So thank you for sending in–

**Craig:** 99 of them are stupid, but man, those four. Whew.

**John:** Some of them are good emails.

**Craig:** We get some winners. And, of course, we continue to provide transcripts for every single episode.

**John:** Every single episode. So transcripts are a way for people who can’t listen to the show to experience the show. Also it lets me Google to see how often we’ve mentioned Kevin Feige on the show, which is a ton.

**Craig:** Yeah. Weirdly. Mostly critical, so we’ll get into it.

**John:** Yeah. Now.

**Craig:** Because I want to commit career suicide.

**John:** That’s a good idea. All right, so last year at this show we were talking – the big thing was about all the mergers, so we had Disney and 20th Century Fox was merging. That was a big, god, remember that?

**Craig:** I do. For sure. That was crazy.

**John:** That happened. We had Comcast and AT&T.

**Craig:** Wait, I thought AT&T was Warner Bros?

**John:** Oh, I did make that wrong. Somebody else was buying out – it’s so confusing.

**Craig:** That’s Warner Bros.

**John:** Who owns who now?

**Craig:** I don’t know.

**John:** That’s the thing. We don’t know who owns who.

**Craig:** I’m pretty sure that that Death Star owns Bugs Bunny.

**John:** OK.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** So I got a little freaked out this show last year because I was worried like should we merge with somebody, because we could just be swallowed. So I was thinking we could merge with Pod Save America. I mean, that feels like a good, safe choice.

**Craig:** It’s a good show.

**John:** S-Town. S-Town is really popular. I mean, like there’s some problems with it, but it’s a popular show.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And then Dirty John. Really the serial killer thing.

**Craig:** Dirty John.

**John:** Yes. I could be a serial killer.

**Craig:** It’s the partner of Sexy Craig. Dirty John.

**John:** So ultimately though you convinced me. Craig, what did you convince me?

**Craig:** That we should stay indie, man. Because my indie cred is crazy. Yeah.

**John:** So this is to announce we’re not merging with anybody. We’re staying the same way we’ve always stayed.

**Craig:** Which is free.

**John:** Free.

**Craig:** With no ads. It’s sad that I have to look at this to tell you I’ve done 430 of these. We come out every Tuesday as you know.

Now, only the most recent 20 episodes are available freely to everyone. And generally speaking we didn’t do a lot of bonus stuff.

**John:** We didn’t. So we do have a premium feed. For the last couple of years we had a premium feed. And the premium feed has all the back episodes. It has bonus episodes. It requires a really janky app.

**Craig:** That app was jank. It was called jank.app.

**John:** So frustrating. At least like 45 of those 100 emails are about the app. And it’s confusing. Signing up for it was confusing. So we asked our listeners what would be better. And they said anything would be better. And so we’re making some changes here.

**Craig:** We like clear feedback, it’s our favorite feedback.

**John:** So people wanted things to be simple. People wanted to use their own player rather than the janky player. They wanted more bonus stuff. And they wanted all the back episodes.

**Craig:** I know what, let’s use Patreon.

**John:** We talked about Patreon, Craig.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** I’m sorry.

**Craig:** No, we didn’t do it.

**John:** So, here’s the problem. Patreon is simple, kind of.

**Craig:** Just like me.

**John:** You use your player. Great.

**Craig:** Just like me.

**John:** More bonus stuff.

**Craig:** Just like me.

**John:** The problem is we couldn’t get all the back episodes in Patreon.

**Craig:** Also just like me.

**John:** There was no way to do it. So, we ended up going with the folks who do Slate. So we partnered up with them. They didn’t buy us out, though. We’re still indie.

**Craig:** Indie, man.

**John:** Indie, man.

**Craig:** No sellouts here.

**John:** But this is Scriptnotes Premium. Scriptnotes Premium is now the thing. Simple. You can use your own player, whatever you use to listen to normal Scriptnotes in. Listen to it in this. More bonus stuff. And all the back episodes.

**Craig:** Now, as you know, I’m not great with this. So let’s say I have a way I like to listen to podcasts. First of all, let’s imagine I listen to podcasts.

**John:** Yeah, Craig who hosts like multiple award-winning podcasts.

**Craig:** I host them, but listening is–

**John:** I know.

**Craig:** So, let’s say I have my favorite app. But now there’s the thing. How do I get it to go to my favorite app?

**John:** OK. Three steps. First step, you join. You go to Scriptnotes.net. You put in your email address and your credit card. That’s it. There’s no password. There’s no username. Just those two things.

**Craig:** This is where the money comes to me?

**John:** You click subscribe. Then you can subscribe to the Scriptnotes Premium feed, any of the back episodes. We broke it down by seasons so you don’t have to download everything at once. Finally you just listen to it in whatever app you like to use.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** That’s pretty cool.

**Craig:** That is pretty good.

**John:** Craig, you get confused sometimes about sort of how stuff works.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** We made stuff even simpler. So you just put in your phone number and it will send you a link to how you actually install it in the app. So it’s pretty–

**Craig:** So then I just tell it what I want it to–

**John:** You don’t have to use Siri at all.

**Craig:** I text back, “I use this.” So I’m talking to a robot.

**John:** You tap a link. Can you tap a link?

**Craig:** I talk to a robot all the time.

**John:** Ha, you do. You tap a link. You tell it which app to install it in. It’s installed and it’s there.

**Craig:** This is fantastic.

**John:** And you subscribe.

**Craig:** Even I can do that.

**John:** So you get all the back episodes. All the new episodes. We’re going to do some bonus stuff, too. Craig, talk us through some bonus stuff that we might end up doing.

**Craig:** Well you know we like to do a deep dive every now and then on a classic film.

**John:** Absolutely. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Little Mermaid.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** What should we do first?

**Craig:** I’m thinking Die Hard.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I think Die Hard should be the first episode we do. Let’s have it come out on Christmas.

**Craig:** Let’s. Shall we? Because it is a Christmas movie.

**John:** A couple other things. Scriptnotes comes out every Tuesday. Honestly, Megana gets it done on Monday. You get the episodes on Monday afternoon when she’s done.

**Craig:** That Megana.

**John:** And we’ll also try to do things like advance tickets for shows like this. Because we now have your email address, which we never had your email address before, which was weird. So that is the–

**Craig:** To recap, if I may. Nothing is changing about the classic Scriptnotes that theoretically you love.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Scriptnotes Premium does not require that weird, janky app anymore.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** Huzzah. And there’s a bunch of new stuff, including early episodes and bonus segments. So that’s pretty great. And you can literally subscribe now to it, although again I just want to make it clear I get none of the money.

**John:** No, Craig will still get nothing.

**Craig:** None of it.

**John:** This money will pay for Matthew. It will pay for Megana. And honestly we probably need to hire somebody new because it’s just been a lot. So it will help us pay for–

**Craig:** The emails alone.

**John:** The emails on assistant stuff alone has been crushing. So, this is Scriptnotes.net. You can sign up for it on your phone right now. But no one in this room should do that because we are going to draw one ticket and that person is going to get a free lifetime subscription to Scriptnotes Premium.

**Craig:** Lifetime.

**John:** Craig, that box is right behind you.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Take a seat and draw one of those cards.

**Craig:** The price will go up yearly. So, ultimately this will be worth millions of dollars.

**John:** Now, technically I should say that this has no cash value. I think it’s something about a raffle, you’re not supposed to say–

**Craig:** I said a million dollars.

**John:** A million dollars.

**Craig:** It has absolutely no value. That’s a weird thing to say. We’re raffling off something that is absolutely valueless.

**John:** Worthless. Last four digits maybe?

**Craig:** Last four? Got your tickets out? 3-2–

**John:** Yeah, people sweating there.

**Craig:** You guys are going to walk out and leave. Raise your hand if you’ve got 3-2. Who has got 3 and 2 so far. Oh god, we’ve got to winnow this down. 7. I know. Who do we have left now?

**John:** Stuart Friedel has his hand up. If Stuart Friedel wins we’re drawing again.

**Craig:** Really? We so are. Stuart, with your fingers what do you have? You lost. Again. 1. Yes.

**John:** Sir, what is your name? James. After the show find me or find Megana and we will sign you up. All right. Hooray. That is the introduction of all this.

Now it is time for our actual show. We are so excited with our guests. We’ve had amazing guests in previous episodes. I’m sort of especially excited by this group of people we have. We have acclaimed writer-directors. We have acclaimed writer-actors. We have a person who created a whole cinematic universe. This is going to be good.

Our first guest is Lorene Scafaria. She is an actress, writer, producer, and director, best known for Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, The Meddler, and most recently for writing and directing Hustlers starring Jennifer Lopez, Constance Wu, and Julia Styles. Welcome back to the program Lorene.

**Lorene Scafaria:** Thank you so much. Appreciate it. This is very nice and overwhelming.

**John:** Overwhelming in a person who has had a movie that has played everywhere that has gotten huge acclaim.

**Lorene:** Yes.

**Craig:** Still overwhelming?

**Lorene:** Yes. You guys are going to use big words and I’m not going to understand half of them.

**Craig:** We won’t be sesquipedalian I promise. Oh my god, I’m so sorry.

**John:** Lorene, I’m going to take a chance here.

**Lorene:** Oh god.

**John:** So April 2018 I was in the backyard of Dana Fox’s house. There was a benefit dinner thing. And I was talking with you about a movie that had just fallen apart. Was that this movie?

**Lorene:** Yes.

**John:** This is Hustlers. It had just fallen apart. You were really frustrated and heartbroken and I felt so bad for you. And now I’m so happy.

**Lorene:** That’s very nice.

**John:** That it got back together again.

**Lorene:** Yeah, thank you.

**John:** So Hustlers is an amazing achievement. On the show often we talk about How Would This Be a Movie. And this is something that’s based on and inspired by an article. Can you talk us through the How Would This Be a Movie for you? What was it about this story that was the first impetus of like, oh, I see how this could be two hours of amazing entertainment? What was the click for you?

**Lorene:** I mean, it was an incredible story. It was really compelling. I read the article that it was based on in the summer of 2016. And it just felt like a world that we haven’t really seen through a certain group’s eyes. We haven’t really followed dancers in a strip club in this way before. So, I was really just taken in by the world and the story and these characters who I think are often misunderstood.

And then there was a crime drama. And a friendship story. And it touched on so many themes I was really excited to talk about. Gender as it relates to the economy and women under capitalism. And all that good stuff.

**Craig:** And when you’re going through that article, the article is just facts. I mean, they create a bit of a narrative but mostly it’s facts. Do you instinctively start to go I’m going to use that, I’m going to use that. That I can’t use. This I got to change. How fast does that happen, that engagement as a writer?

**Lorene:** I would actually look back at the article every now and then just to see if I could read between the lines, if I missed something. You certainly have to embellish a lot. Have to add a lot. It’s obviously creating scenes and dialogue. But that central relationship between the two characters, in real life I think they were more like business partners and it didn’t run that deep, and it wasn’t that mentor/mentee dynamic.

**Craig:** Mother/daughter kind of.

**Lorene:** Yeah, mother/daughter. Whatever kind of love story that is being told. So, yeah, there’d be a sentence that would talk about Christmas. And I would think I can’t wait to see what Christmas looks like for these women. And then my own research, obviously, talking to strippers. Going to clubs. And speaking to people. That all informed a lot. But, yeah, it always felt like the crash, the financial crisis was kind of the end of act one and where to go from there. There is a rise and fall story. There are a couple different timelines. It jumps around. And it’s kind of a reflective story that Constance Wu’s character is telling to this journalist played by Julia Styles. So, there’s some back and forth there. And that was in my original pitch actually for how I would adapt the article.

**John:** Talk us through that original pitch. So is this an article that you found or someone came to you?

**Lorene:** No, it was sent to me by the producers, by Gloria Sanchez and Annapurna who was the studio at the time that was making the film. And they sent it to me. It was certainly not my job yet. And they wanted to know what my take was and how I would adapt it to the screen. So I went in for that meeting and, yeah, gave them my whole pitch and talked about why I thought it was an event movie at the end of the day, even though I thought there was a really nuanced conversation to be had and a very specific way to kind of see their world it felt like at the end of the day. You know, we were going to bring the club to the theater.

**John:** So in that original pitch how closely does that resemble the movie that we saw? So in terms of its central protagonist/antagonist relationship between the Jennifer Lopez character and the Constance Wu character, and in terms of the flashback structure. Did you have all of that when you walked into that room with those producers?

**Lorene:** I had a lot of it. I mean, I look back at my old notes and we stayed pretty true to what I originally set out to do, so that was certainly nice to realize with a large group of people. So, yeah, it was pretty similar. I knew that the journalist was a really compelling, important part of it, not just a device, but a very integral part of the relationship and the dynamic and the judgment that the audience sort of imposes on these women. There was a lot of that in there. And certainly a tone that I think that the tone was what was shifting a little bit. I think the concentration on that central relationship, that love story between them, that changed a lot.

There was an unreliable narrator in the article that I kind of hung onto for a little too long that no longer felt important at some point. So that was different.

It felt more like a story being told by these two different characters. And it was kind of pitting them against each other in a way. So I did a million drafts. The movie fell apart. We lost a home. We brought the script around town to everybody who hated it. [laughs]

**Craig:** Hollywood. Always with their finger on the pulse of America.

**Lorene:** Well, I think maybe a lot of them identified with other characters in the movie.

**Craig:** Huh. Do you mean Lizzo?

**Lorene:** Yes. That’s exactly.

**Craig:** Of course.

**Lorene:** So, yeah, it took a minute to find the right home and we were certainly questioning a lot. I kind of did this page one rewrite after we found this new home and kind of just smashed the script on the ground and opened up at title page and changed it to Destiny and Ramona, the two main characters. And then wrote this love story, this relationship. And, yeah, it was different. A lot of scenes came out of it. The training sequence that’s there. The sort of dynamic between them. That came out of it, that mother/daughter relationship.

But it ultimately wasn’t the right movie, so had to kind of smash it on the ground again and start from scratch.

**Craig:** And you get it to a place where you feel like you got it right. You do have a home. They have given you the funding. You have this great cast. And now I’m always fascinated by writer-directors, how did director Lorene handle her relationship with writer Lorene on a day-to-day basis?

**Lorene:** I did refer to the writer often as—

**Craig:** An asshole?

**Lorene:** An asshole. Yeah, painted us into a lot of corners. And wrote really something too ambitious. It was a $20 million budget which sounds like a lot but it’s not. It grew.

**John:** Oh. For listeners at home she was pointing at Kevin Feige at that moment.

**Craig:** Kevin earlier asked me if the budget for this was $20 million. So he has no sense whatsoever. None.

**Lorene:** And shooting in New York for what it was, so we had a seven-week prep, a 29-day shoot, and an eight-week director’s cut. It was all pretty brutal. Don’t recommend it.

**Craig:** That’s actually a great way to think of it. On any given day you had a plan. And when your writing your plan is perfect. That’s my perfect plan. And now you’re short on money, you’re short on time, you’re dealing with weather I assume occasionally here and there.

**Lorene:** Yeah. Actually out of those 29 days it rained 26 days.

**Craig:** Of course it did.

**Lorene:** Because it was April.

**Craig:** Yeah. So on those days how do you adjust without losing maybe the heart of what it was that you needed to do that day for that moment between those characters?

**Lorene:** I mean, it was certainly a race every single day to finish it, but those fights happened in prep. The cast wasn’t fully on board other than Jennifer and Constance before we got there. So that whole journey I remember there were days where they said like, “Well you don’t need to shoot anything on Wall Street.” And I was like I don’t know about that. I think that’s actually a pretty major part of this, something that we really need to see. So you make compromises here and there. But I think part of it was to go in with a really strong plan and to shot list everything. And to sort of continue to make the arguments that we wouldn’t need much in order to achieve this. We need these locations. We need this amount of hair, makeup, and wardrobe. We need to create a period piece. We need to capture the authenticity of this place. We need a real strip club. We need 300 extras.

**Craig:** Extras are surprisingly expensive.

**Lorene:** They’re really expensive.

**Craig:** Bob Weinstein, true story, once looked at a tent full of extras and then turned to me and said, “Do we pay them?”

**John:** No, Craig, they’re just there for the fun of it.

**Craig:** No, they’re slaves, Bob. Sicko.

**Lorene:** I’m sure they were.

**Craig:** Yeah, they’re expensive.

**Lorene:** They are. They are. And, I mean, yeah, dressing them is expensive. And dressing them in 2007 clothes requires its own truck. And that truck costs money.

**Craig:** You could have just come to my closet. That’s what I’m in right now.

**Lorene:** Well that was just it. Eventually we kind of had to ask these guys to bring your own bad shirts.

**Craig:** No problem.

**John:** Now, Lorene because you’re here I get to ask you a question that struck me the moment I saw your film. Which is the moment that Constance Wu comes up on the roof and she sees Jennifer Lopez there in the fur coat is iconic. As you were filming it did you know this is the movie? This is the moment when people will gasp and recognize I’m in the hands of a master.

**Lorene:** Yes.

**John:** You knew it at that moment? You knew as you were shooting it?

**Lorene:** Yeah, Jennifer Lopez is in that outfit underneath that coat sitting on that rooftop.

**John:** To stipulate it’s absurd and absolutely marvelous. It’s such an iconic thing.

**Lorene:** Oh that’s nice. I mean, I say yes, obviously, just because we were in the throes of it and it was so exciting to finally get there. It was the first scene that I wrote in the whole script. I think the last thing we shot. Or second to last thing we shot. So they had already come full circle their relationship. They were so close by then so there was just that magic in the air. But, you know, a lot of thought went into it because I had thought this was the scene. This was the crux of the whole movie. The moment that Jennifer invites Constance into her fur coat. That really is the moment that everybody’s lives is changing.

So, yeah, it felt really, really important. The rooftop felt important. We built that sky light. That fur coat was a journey to find and to convince people that it was something that we needed. You know, just making sure they sat in the right position. I remember there was a moment where they were sitting next to each other and I was like crumbling inside going like, no, it’s not what I was imagining all this time. So, you know, we just found that rhythm. And, yeah, it felt magical.

Honestly, when she reclined with the cigarette that was not something that I had fully envisioned. That was something that just happened in that moment and I thought, yes, we need to cut to this. We need to – when we found that in the edit we first played it for people, it was this laugh out loud moment. And sometimes an applause break.

**John:** Oh yeah. In my theater people did applaud. That’s magic.

**Lorene:** That’s wild. That’s, obviously, but I credit Jennifer Lopez with half of that certainly.

**Craig:** And I’m going to bring up something from your past slightly.

**Lorene:** You guys.

**Craig:** No, but it’s – years ago when they would talk to you, they meaning the press, there was probably something that would come up a lot. Do you remember a name? A special kind of name that would come up frequently? Fempire. Do you remember the Fempire?

**Lorene:** Yeah, yeah.

**Craig:** Back in the day female screenwriters were so rare that they had to give you a special name, like Seal Team 6. And it seems like without saying that we are where we should be, as one of the women that was there in the beginning for me, you know, where I was beginning you were beginning, how do you think it’s going in terms of progress? Bad, good, steady?

**Lorene:** Oh, it’s definitely not steady. I think it’s good and I think it’s muddy. And I think it’s like soup that we’re all kind of sitting in right now and trying to figure it out. So, I don’t know. I think a lot has improved. Obviously the last few years have shed light on a lot of bad behavior and we’ve rooted out some of that. But I think there’s work to do at the root, you know. I think there’s something to just speak to and have nuanced conversations about what the root cause is of all of this and how much of this is unconscious. And not just the broader strokes and the numbers which are important to speak to. But I think also there’s something about female stories and viewing them cinematically. And what does that mean? So there’s something to talk about, the percentage of female directors and all of that, but I don’t know. It’s like I want to get into it a little bit and get a little more nuanced about it. And not just that kind of black and white story.

**Craig:** Cool.

**John:** All right. It is time for a game.

**Lorene:** Oh, good.

**John:** We are going to read you a list of award shows. You need to tell us if it’s a real award show or if it’s a fake one that I made up.

**Lorene:** I’m so happy about this.

**John:** Now, here’s the twist. Several of these you’ve been nominated for.

**Lorene:** Oh, that’s torture.

**Craig:** So don’t screw those up.

**Lorene:** That’s bad.

**John:** We’ll start with the Gotham Award. Real or fake?

**Lorene:** That was real. I was really there.

**John:** Yeah, Hustlers was nominated. Marriage Story won. Chernobyl lost.

**Craig:** Lost. I like that she got nominated and I got lost. It was the same thing.

**Lorene:** I didn’t win. You lost. I just didn’t win.

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly. I lost hard. Viewfinder Award.

**Lorene:** Fake.

**Craig:** Fake. It’s so fake.

**John:** The Hollywood Film Award.

**Lorene:** That sounds real.

**John:** It is real. Kevin Feige and Victoria Alonzo won this year for Avengers: End Game.

**Lorene:** Hey, congrats. That’s awesome.

**Craig:** How about National Film and TV Award?

**Lorene:** You know what? This, I’m not kidding, I am so confused because I saw one tweet, only one, that said Jennifer Lopez won.

**John:** You’re right.

**Craig:** She did.

**John:** It is from the UK and she did win.

**Craig:** It’s real.

**Lorene:** OK. But I only saw one tweet so I was like this could be someone just playing a trick on all of us.

**Craig:** That’s a pretty generic name for an award, I got to say.

**John:** Hollywood Critics Association Award.

**Lorene:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. You are nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Female Director.

**Lorene:** Oh, thank you guys so much.

**Craig:** Houston Online Film Critics Association Award?

**Lorene:** Yes.

**Craig:** No.

**Lorene:** Oh.

**Craig:** No, there is no online critics association.

**John:** They merged them. So it’s all one critics association, online and print in Houston.

**Lorene:** What do you mean? Now what is it?

**Craig:** It’s just Houston.

**Lorene:** Houston. Just the city of Houston.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** The Golden Globes.

**Lorene:** Oh, I am wracking my brain. They are very real.

**Craig:** Deeply real.

**John:** Jennifer Lopez is nominated. Craig is nominated, Chernobyl for four Golden Globes.

**Lorene:** Oh my gosh. Craig! That’s amazing. Four.

**Craig:** Well. Golly. The Rose Door? The Golden Rose?

**Lorene:** Why are there are two names.

**John:** It’s French.

**Craig:** I’m just translating it for you. The Rose D’Or. D’Or. Door. The Golden Rose.

**Lorene:** I mean, it sounds real just because of all this fanfare. But I’m going to say no.

**Craig:** It’s absolutely real. Chernobyl won two of them.

**Lorene:** Congrats.

**Craig:** I got two Golden Roses, my friend. I’m a double-roser.

**John:** The Satellite Award.

**Lorene:** That’s real. And that was the only thing I’ve ever been nominated for before Hustlers.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** Nice.

**Lorene:** We got one of those somewhere.

**Craig:** OK. The Palm Dog Award. Palm Dog.

**Lorene:** No. No, no, no.

**Craig:** It’s real.

**Lorene:** No.

**Craig:** Yes it is. It’s a yearly alternative award presented by the international film critics during the Cannes Film Festival. And this year it went to Sayuri for her performance as Brandy in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

**Lorene:** So it’s for dogs?

**John:** It’s an award for dogs.

**Craig:** It’s for dogs.

**Lorene:** We had a great dog in Hustlers.

**Craig:** Not great enough.

**John:** Something to shoot for, Lorene. Something to shoot for.

**Lorene:** You have no idea.

**Craig:** Step your shit up, Lorene.

**John:** Lorene, the Annie Award?

**Lorene:** Real.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** Animation.

**Craig:** Animation. AARP Grownups in Film Award.

**John:** That’s AARP.

**Craig:** I say AARP.

**Lorene:** Hell yeah. It’s real.

**Craig:** It’s totally real. Jennifer Lopez nominated for an AARP award, which should be pronounced the R-P.

**John:** The Spotlight Award?

**Lorene:** Yes.

**John:** Yes, real. Jennifer Lopez won for Hustlers. Palm Springs International Film Festival.

**Lorene:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** The Dorian Awards.

**Lorene:** I mean, that can’t be real.

**Craig:** It is.

**John:** Location Managers Guild Awards.

**Lorene:** No, no, no.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Chernobyl won.

**Craig:** Yeah, we won.

**Lorene:** Really?

**John:** They did.

**Craig:** Our awesome location manager, Jonas Spokas. Great job, Jonas.

**Lorene:** Wow. I might have to boycott, because we had a great, great–

**Craig:** Not great enough. Saturn Awards?

**Lorene:** Yes.

**Craig:** Yes. Of course.

**John:** Aladdin was nominated for a Saturn Award.

**Craig:** Well done Aladdin.

**John:** Finally, the last one here. The BRAs.

**Lorene:** It’s real.

**John:** It is real. It is the Black Real Awards. An annual awards ceremony hosted by the Federation for Augmentation of African Americans in Film. Hustlers is nominated.

**Craig:** You got a BRA.

**John:** Congratulations.

**Lorene:** I didn’t know that. I got a BRA.

**Craig:** You got a BRA nom.

**John:** Lorene Scafaria, congratulations on your film. Congratulations on all the nominations and the awards.

**Lorene:** Thank you. It’s been nice.

**John:** I’m so, so happy for the journey that’s come from that backyard at Dana Fox’s house. I’m so happy your movie is out there in the world. It’s so damn good. Lorene Scafaria.

**Lorene:** Thank you. That’s very nice.

**John:** Craig, introduce our next guest.

**Craig:** Oh, I’m so excited. I was lucky enough to meet Shoshannah. We were doing a panel at the Television Academy, a place that up until recently would have had me removed by security. Shoshannah is fantastic. She is an actress and a writer, known for her roles in Jericho, Weeds, The Hammer, and Supernatural. You left off my favorite, Another Period. Spectacular on that show.

She currently stars in This Close, a dramedy series about two deaf best friends navigating their 20s in Los Angeles. Shoshannah co-created the show with her actual best friend and fellow deaf writer-actor Josh Feldman. Spectacular work. Shoshannah Stern, come on up.

**Shoshannah Stern:** I’m disappointed that you have the mic because I want to make – drop the mic. I never actually used a microphone in my whole life, so I wanted to drop it once.

**Craig:** It turns out they’re expensive actually.

**Shoshannah:** I’m sure it is.

**John:** Shoshannah, a thing Craig and I were talking about this afternoon, your show is fantastic. And impossible to watch.

**Craig:** Not because it’s hard, because you can’t find it.

**Shoshannah:** Mm-hmm. Yep.

**John:** So your show is made for Sundance Channel, but it’s hard to find on that. Sometimes you find it on YouTube. Is it frustrating to have made something–?

**Shoshannah:** It’s on YouTube?

**John:** Sometimes.

**Shoshannah:** I mean, I hope it is. I hope it is.

**Craig:** It is not.

**John:** So my question, so many of us are making shows for streamers, for other places, and I’m so happy they made your show, but it’s frustrating that you don’t know if someone is going to be able to watch your show. As you’re writing this, as you’re putting it together is that a worry for you?

**Shoshannah:** It was. I think I’ve made my peace with it, so there’s only so much you can really do – that’s really in your control. And I think it’s like as a woman and as a deaf person creating a show, you know, we’re just reminded that there is no precedent for it. And you sort of have to prioritize what you have to worry about and sometimes you can’t because you just kill yourself over it. So, one of the things that I, you know, unfortunately yes it’s impossible to find the show. But the reason why that happened is because we actually made it for Sundance Now, which is a streaming service for AMC. And then we re-aired it, the first season on Sundance TV while we were shooting season two. I guess we just showed up and we were shooting it and they said your show is doing better than anything. So, we’re like, great, all right. So they were like we’re taking it. And I said, oh, OK, cool, great.

And I thought it would be cool because then I thought people would be able to find the show by just clicking, flipping through their channels, and they might happen across it, and they would find it. Because on Sundance Now you had to buy it, you had to purchase it, in order to find that show.

So, apparently it is now just impossible to find.

**Craig:** It’s very upsetting to me because I – so you said, “You got to watch my show.” And I said, you’re right, I do have to watch your show. And there’s one episode of the new season that’s available online for free. And so I watched it and I was like this is a great show. I mean, I legitimately got into it immediately and I want to watch the rest of it. So, I kind of did ask you to bring me a USB of bootlegged episodes of the show.

**Shoshannah:** You said that like I know how to do that.

**Craig:** I know.

**Shoshannah:** Biggest Luddite ever.

**John:** A question for you. So we were talking with Lorene about how she was pitching Hustlers. What was the pitch for This Close? When you were describing the show to people how were you describing it?

**Shoshannah:** We kind of had to pitch it three times, but in three different iterations. First of all, the idea with my writing partner Josh was about a deaf woman and her hearing gay best friend. And I think I was just so conditioned to seeing a deaf person on screen with a hearing person, a hearing scene partner, a hearing foil, really. You had to have a hearing foil. A deaf person always had to have in order to explain this is my life and it’s different than yours. So really that was what we were used to seeing on the screen.

So we pitched the show that way. And with one production it seemed like it was going pretty well, better than it had in the past. And then finally at the 11th hour they came to us and said, “You know, it’s a great show but we don’t really get why your character has to be deaf. Does she have to be deaf?” And I was like, well really I tried to explain the rationale and I couldn’t tell them. I needed to show it to them. So, I was like, OK, fine, cool. That’s where we’re at.

And we decided just to do it ourselves. It was in that hour that we made a decision over happy hour. We were just like we should just do it ourselves. So we decided to do that. And then just like why don’t we just go balls to the walls and make both of the characters deaf. Because we felt at that point like no one is going to do it anyway. So Josh said to me, “But who is going to play Michael if we do that?” And I just looked at him like, um, and he gave me an expression like, o……kay. And I looked at him and said, ah-ha, that’s who is going to play it.

**John:** Now, Shoshannah you are an actor. You’ve been acting for years. But Josh was not an actor. He was just a writer. And so he does great on the show. And you guys have a wonderful chemistry. Did you know it was going to work from that initial moment? Was there any fear whether the two of you together could work onscreen?

**Shoshannah:** No. I didn’t know. We were just drunk.

**John:** All right. That’s perfect.

**Shoshannah:** I think I just knew that if the show were going to work that it would have that chemistry. And I just felt like we needed to see two deaf people on the screen and if we’re going to have two deaf people and at the heart of show it’s about a friendship and my friend is sitting right here across from me at happy hour. So yeah.

**Craig:** That story kind of mirrors I think in a way the tone of the episode that I watched. The only episode that is available.

**John:** I watched the first season.

**Shoshannah:** Because it’s impossible to watch. Yes, I am aware of that.

**Craig:** Correct. We will keep re-traumatizing you about that.

**Shoshannah:** Thanks Craig.

**Craig:** No problem. But the show does a beautiful job of tone shifting. It is funny and it is also very, I don’t want to say serious, it’s earnest at times in the sense that it’s real. It’s not a sitcom but it has no problem with somebody fainting and dropping out of screen, which is hysterical in that particular moment because it’s set up beautifully. So, I’m just curious how you guys maneuver that – it’s a very difficult thread to maneuver. You don’t get too broad. You don’t get too sugary. You find this interesting way to move back and forth without feeling like the tone is jarring and the shifts are jarring.

**Shoshannah:** Mm-hmm. I don’t know.

**Craig:** You got drunk again?

**Shoshannah:** Well, yeah. Sure. That’s the answer. We’re drunk pretty much every day during filming. No. I think we just wanted to write things that felt real to us. And we also knew what we didn’t want to write. What we didn’t want to see. I think we knew more about what we didn’t want to show than what we did initially. We wanted to show characters that are centered, not have it be about them being deaf. I felt like that was my problem with the characters that I’d seen before on the screen. Characters that I’ve played to be honest. But the reason why I started writing with Josh is because I had an awful, awful audition and it’s hard to find truth in a character that’s written from somebody else’s perspective about what they think your life is. And you’re trying to find truth in something that’s actually not truthful. So, especially it’s hard when the character is written as a mantle, you know, to carry, you know, like Jesus. You know, Jesus you’re just carrying. I represent all deaf people in the world. It’s impossible.

You can’t write one female character that represents all of the women on the planet. And so there are characters that are underrepresented, misunderstood, and that often happens – it happens more often than we know. So we wanted to write situations that were messy. You know, that were in the gray areas. Deaf characters are messy, too.

**John:** Can I ask you about process? Because we’ve talked to other writing teams who write stuff together. What is the process with you and Josh? Are you in the same room together writing? Do you write an outline and split up? What is the process for you guys going through a script?

**Shoshannah:** Josh and I have a very odd process. You know, it’s sort of what the fuck are they thinking is the process. And that works for us. So we sit in a room and we outline it together. And once we have the outline we go off and we write our own version, each of us, of the script. On our own. Separately. Completely. A complete version. A to Z. And people are like, wait, a complete version on your own, separate from one another? Uh-huh. Yeah, that’s what we do.

So we go off and do that. And then we merge together again, which just means that one of us sits at the computer and the other person is breathing over their shoulder pretty much and says, oh, I like this line better than that line and we kind of merge our two versions together and we submit that. And we get 5,000 notes on it. And then we do it again.

**Craig:** Do you have some epic fights because, man, that sounds like it’s good fuel for arguing?

**Shoshannah:** You know what? Never.

**John:** That’s what a gay best friend will do.

**Shoshannah:** There you go.

**Craig:** It’s true.

**John:** Now, we have a game to play and we would love for the two of you to help us out with this game. So this is something that Craig actually introduced at the last show and Craig set us up.

**Craig:** OK. So this is a game that I originally – it was originally a puzzle that I included as part of a puzzle hunt that I did with David Kwong at the Magic Castle that you attended. And Lorene were you at that one? You were at the one before. Shoshannah, are you a big puzzle solver/crosswords? Oh, OK.

**John:** She’ll be good at this.

**Craig:** And we’re going to have you come to the next one then. So the idea here is – well each of us, we’ll all do this in turn, we read a movie quote and we have a contestant trying to figure out what the quote is.

**John:** We actually have two contestants. So we pre-drew the contestants. Can you come down here to this microphone and re-introduce yourself?

**Craig:** Come on down contestant one and two.

**John:** Hi Zoey. I remember you from before. I’m sorry I forgot your name.

**Zoey:** It’s OK.

**John:** Do you watch a lot of movies?

**Zoey:** I watch some.

**John:** You watch some movies. That’s probably all you need for this competition. And behind you is another person coming up to the microphone. So Lauren and Zoey. Here is what’s going to happen. We are going to read a quote aloud from a movie, except that Craig has–

**Craig:** I’ve basically just created literal versions of these quotes. You’ll get it from the start. Shoshannah is going to do number one because she said earlier that she liked it, so I’m going to let her do number one.

**John:** Fantastic. All right. So Shoshannah is going to give a quote and you need to figure out – so whichever one figures it out first raise your hand and then you’re going to say what the actual real quote is. All right.

**Craig:** OK. So you’re ready to do number one.

**John:** No one yell out in the audience.

**Shoshannah:** I am finished in a good way as a result of our relationship.

**John:** I am finished in a good way as a result of our relationship. Do either of you – Lauren or Zoey, can you name this famous movie quote?

**Female Voice:** I’m really bad at this.

**Craig:** You complete me.

**John:** You complete me. That is what we’re going for. You complete me, from Jerry Maguire.

**Craig:** You got it. This is going to be bad.

**John:** This is hard, Craig.

**Craig:** I mean, that was the easy one.

**Shoshannah:** We have to work together.

**John:** Craig, try the next one.

**Craig:** I’ll do the next one. Strike it from your memory, JJ, or whatever nickname you go by these days. This neighborhood is largely populated by immigrants from Asia’s largest nation.

**John:** Any – all right? Yes, Zoey.

**Zoey:** Forget about it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.

**Craig:** Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.

**John:** All right. One to nothing right now. We will say first to four.

**Craig:** Malodorous tokens of authority. None are in our possession, nor are they necessary. Therefore I’m not obligated to display them as such.

**John:** Do either of you know this?

**Craig:** Audience?

**John:** It’s the we don’t need any stinking badges.

**Craig:** The audience is pretty good. I got to say. All of them together are a little bit better than the two of you.

**Female Voice:** Yeah, this is embarrassing.

**John:** Lorene.

**Lorene:** OK. None of us came ashore on this famed Massachusetts boulder. Rather we were injured by the boulder metaphorically.

**John:** Well let’s try it one more time. Laughter was high.

**Lorene:** None of us came ashore on this famed Massachusetts boulder. Rather we were injured by the boulder metaphorically.

**Female Voice:** Just give it to the audience.

**Craig:** Audience. That’s your Malcolm X right there. OK, Shoshannah do you want to do number five?

**Shoshannah:** The primary directive of this melee association is that the existence thereof must be denied.

**Craig:** The primary directive of this melee association is that the existence thereof must be denied.

**John:** So melee – it’s a very D&D word.

**Craig:** Is it?

**John:** It is a very D&D word. It’s a melee round.

**Craig:** I think of it as a French word myself.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** It means fisticuffs. Nothing?

**Female Voice:** Sorry.

**Craig:** Audience?

**Audience:** First rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.

**Craig:** Again, the audience a little bit better than you guys, I got to say.

Female Voice: It’s pretty obvious afterwards. It’s like you’re standing up here, but then when they say it you’re like, yes, it makes sense. But they’re not standing.

**Craig:** We’re not accepting your excuses. No, no, no.

**John:** No, no, no. Zoey and Lauren, what you guys can’t see is I see a lot of people are like moving their mouths as if they’re talking with the crowd. They really didn’t know.

**Craig:** All right. How about this one. You got this one. They got this one. Ready? Don’t turn away.

**Female Voice:** I want to watch.

**Craig:** No, that’s called cheating. Look at me. Here we go. You’ve got this. Early salutations, country once known as French-Indochina. Early salutations country once known as French – oh, they’re just blatantly cheating now. Go ahead. Go ahead.

**John:** Go ahead. Say it.

**Female Voice:** Good morning, Vietnam.

**Craig:** Yes, good morning, Vietnam. Yes! Yes! I do love this one. Lorene, do you want to do number seven, or the next one?

**Lorene:** Explain your grave nature. Explain your grave nature.

**John:** I have the answers and I kind of don’t get this one.

**Craig:** It’s a hard one.

**Lorene:** Explain…

**Craig:** The speed with which you just gave up was remarkable. Audience? Why so serious? OK. Shoshannah, would you like to do this one?

**Shoshannah:** Man whose last name is synonymous with sharply defined, my condition is unwell.

**Craig:** Hmm. Man whose last name is synonymous with sharply defined, my condition is unwell.

**Female Voice:** Oh.

**John:** One person got it.

**Craig:** Audience? Yes, just you?

Female Voice: I don’t feel so good, Mr. Stark.

**Craig:** Yes, Mr. Stark I don’t feel so good. OK, you guys are dismissed. You did a great job.

**John:** Hey, hey, thank you very much for playing.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Craig, I think this was actually a really good moment for everyone in this room in defining sort of like what you’re like and what I’m like. Because you picked something that was wildly too difficult for this.

**Craig:** No, I’ll tell you what’s too difficult. It’s the bonus question.

**John:** All right. Bonus question. See if the audience can get the bonus question.

**Craig:** Audience, this is for all of you. And this is a TV quote. And I’ll help you out. It’s from a show currently on the air.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** So I’ve limited it to 14,000 television shows.

**John:** Including This Close.

**Craig:** Weirdly that one is not, because we can’t find it. OK.

**Shoshannah:** Oh, you’re killing me. Oh, my heart. I’m stomping on it.

**Craig:** Sanctified female parent splitting in two like a road. Clothing for a torso. Round objects. Sanctified – you got it? Holy mother forking shirt balls. Nice work.

**John:** Well done.

**Craig:** That’s my kind of guy right there.

**John:** From The Good Place.

**Craig:** From The Good Place.

**John:** All right. Thank you for participating in this game. Craig, thank you for putting together this game.

**Craig:** No, no, the hell with them. I’ll make it harder next time. I’m going deeper.

**John:** All right. Our next guest, Kevin Feige, has been the driving creative force behind the Marvel cinematic universe. In his current role as producer and president of Marvel Studios Feige is hands-on producer who oversees Marvel Studios’ feature film productions, whose 23 films released have all opened at number one at the box office. And collectively grossed – that can’t be right – $23 billion worldwide.

**Craig:** $23 billion dollars. That’s the same budget – oh, no, you said million. I’m so sorry.

**John:** $23 billion dollars. And you have Black Widow coming up next. Kevin Feige, you are the person who has been mentioned most on Scriptnotes without ever actually appearing on Scriptnotes.

**Kevin Feige:** Is that true? Why is that true? I want to know.

**John:** Tell him, Craig.

**Craig:** We actually like you.

**Kevin:** Oh, phew.

**Craig:** It would have been weird if it had been like, here we go. You’re like the Final Draft guys. Oh, that was a great one. Kevin, we were talking earlier, and I have an interesting question. I think it’s an interesting question. And maybe you don’t have the answer, but you have such a unique job. And I’m sure that while you have your own kind of definition of what it is, is there anybody else in Hollywood that does the job that you do? Or is it separate and apart from what everyone else does? Because that’s how it seems to me.

**Kevin:** I produce movies and I oversee movies. And I think there are a lot of people that do that. I think there are a lot of creative producers out there, many of whom I work with at Marvel Studios, who do what I do which is try to shepherd projects to the screen. The nature of the Marvel element of it, which is fun, and which gets a lot of the attention is the interconnectivity of them which is fun and which early on – I’ve been at Marvel almost 20 years. August of 2020 it will be 20 years, which is almost half my life, not quite.

And for the first six years at Marvel we worked with – we were the IP holders that didn’t have a lot of contractual control, but on the other studio films, on the Fox Fantastic Four films and X-Men films and Daredevil films on the Sony Rami Spider Man films. But I was around and wanted to be in the room where it happens as they say and be a part of the brain trust.

I’ve forgotten what the question was now.

**Craig:** This happens all the time.

**Kevin:** Oh, nobody does it. Yeah.

**Craig:** You’re different, right? I mean, it feels like you run a studio of a kind.

**Kevin:** Yes.

**Craig:** But you’re also a producer. But you’re also planning all of the movies. You are kind of an interesting hub it seems.

**Kevin:** I’ve been a part of maybe ten Marvel movies by the time we became Marvel Studios. And we knew with Iron Man 1 one of the things that could set us apart, because we didn’t have the “A-list” characters, was that we could start interconnecting them. Like the comics did.

**John:** We talk a lot to showrunners on our show, and your job is kind of analogous to a showrunner in that you have a bunch of things that have to continue. So it’s not just this one episode, it’s how it’s going to fit into this greater pattern. The knock we sometimes hear when some of our showrunner friends come on is that like, oh, but you didn’t know what you were doing, or you were vamping, you were making up as you were going along. To what degree as you’re starting Iron Man 1 did you have a sense of where you wanted to be three movies in, six movies in, nine movies in? And how much could you anticipate what the plan was?

**Kevin:** It’s a nice balance. It’s a nice combination of knowing exactly where you want to end up, but changing the ways, being open to changing the ways that you get there. And when we started Iron Man 1 the goal was very simply make Iron Man 1, and also the Incredible Hulk which we were doing at the same time. Go from being fully responsible for zero movies a year to we have to deliver two by summer of 2008. And that was an amazing experience of being like, you know, you take it for granted. I think people still take it for granted that when you see a poster in a movie lobby and there’s a release date on it the movie is coming out on that release date. That is not a given. There are a lot of people that have to work to make that happen.

And there was one terrifying moment during Iron Man 1 where I went that’s us. We’re the ones responsible for making that happen. And the dream was always because we’ve got thousands and thousands of comic books that you make a movie that succeeds and the reward is you get to make another movie. That’s always been the viewpoint that I’ve had. Let’s succeed so we get to do another one. And that was very true with Iron Man because we would not have been a studio if Iron Man didn’t work. And Marvel would have lost the film rights to ten of its characters.

So, we knew midway through Iron Man 1 around the time Sam Jackson agreed to come do a little cameo for us in a tag that we wanted to get to Avengers. That we wanted to do those first five, six films in phase one. After Avengers we started building out towards what became End Game.

**Craig:** So you have this interesting combination of fear that you won’t even be able to hit a release date for your one movie, but you’re planning for like five movies. And I like that combination. But you did have, of course, the benefit – I was a Marvel kid growing up. There’s Marvel kids and there’s DC kids. I guess there’s some kids that are bi-comical or whatever. But I was a Marvel kid. And there was this big book that was like the Marvel compendium of characters.

**John:** Oh yeah, it’s great.

**Craig:** I would just flip through it and there were so many. There’s so many. And so you have this interesting possibility. But I want to read you something. This is I think the first time we brought up, this is without even mentioning your name, but the first time we kind of brought you up. This is all the way back in Episode 44. July 6, 2012, Ah. Remember that?

**John:** Oh my gosh. What a different world we lived in.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** Back then Craig didn’t have an Emmy.

**Craig:** I would trade everything.

**John:** [laughs] Yeah.

**Craig:** Everything. OK. So John said, we were talking about Avengers I believe had just come out at that point. And John said, “Joss Whedon was kind of a risky director to pick for that movie. The director hadn’t made anything of that size and that scale. But other studios aren’t going to learn that lesson. They’re just going to learn that it was big and therefore it’s good. Whereas Marvel is smart. Marvel is smart. But that’s not the only lesson to take from that.”

And I said, “No, the lesson to take from that is hire a director and a writer, in this case it was the same person, with a specific point of view and a proven track record with an audience. And have him deliver the goods as best he can. That’s a risk worth taking. It doesn’t always pay off. But to me that’s so much more interesting of a risk and so much more potentially rewarding than the other way of thinking about it with I guarantee you is going on right now where people are sitting around going, ‘OK, please list for me at my studio here all the various heroes we have, create a team for them to be on, and do our version of the Avengers.’ And I guarantee you that that is going on.”

And John says, “Yeah.” And then I say–

**John:** I say yeah a lot.

**Craig:** And I say, “And all those movies are going to be annoying. And people are going to smell it.” It does seem like people have tried to copy the model of what you do. Is there any hope for any of them? I mean, legitimately would you say to them, “Please, no, you’re never going to get there. Or yeah, there’s actually a way for you to do this with any of your stuff?”

**Kevin:** Well, first of all I compliment the transcript because it clearly comes in handy that you do that on every podcast. That’s impressive. The truth is as I just said we set out to make a movie. We didn’t set out to make a universe. We happened to be making movies based on our comics and our comics are an interwoven universe thanks to Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and the whole team there that came up with what may be the longest running fictional narrative ever. So it didn’t seem revolutionary to me that I worked at Marvel Studios and wanted to try to emulate what was in the comics. But I wanted to do it slowly because I wanted to make movies. And I wanted to make a lot of movies. And make a lot of different kinds of movies, which is why our first ones were a technological thriller/sci-fi Iron Man film and a crazy outer space Norse god film and a WWII film leading up to – and a monster movie – leading up to The Avengers.

Because what was always cool about Avengers to me in the comics wasn’t that it was a bunch of heroes together, that it was a bunch of heroes that I cared about from other stories interacting with one another. So, I always say we never set out to make a universe. We set out to make movies. And that’s still true today. We set out to do individual stories that have the fun of, a bonus sometimes, of interconnectivity. But we spend as much time going it’s too much. The movie has to stand on its own more, in the development process. The movie has to stand on its own more.

**Craig:** I mean, essentially your advice is stop doing the thing that you people are doing. Because what they do is they start by saying here’s a bunch of our IP, which is a phrase I hate anyway, and let’s make a universe out of it. Absolutely backwards.

**Kevin:** When I started working at Marvel people used to talk about IP and I slowly got the nerve to ask what is IP.

**Craig:** Good for you.

**Kevin:** What are you talking about?

**Craig:** It’s sad. People talk about IP – the first time I heard it I was so depressed. But I think of this as art. And you guys are talking about it as intellectual property, like a product. Same thing when I heard franchise. I was like, ugh, now they’re like McDonald’s now. Now everyone says franchise they’re like, yay, it’s our favorite franchise.

**John:** You will have writers, directors, there’s filmmakers you want to work with. People are coming in to talk with you about doing movies based on your characters, based on movies you want to make. What is it that clicks with you about a certain person to do a certain project for you? What is it that you say when that person comes in the room that makes you say like, OK, that is the right person for me to bring onto this project? What are the things that work for you?

**Kevin:** It varies. I mean, we always start – we don’t have open auditions, so to speak. We don’t have people coming in and going here’s this character, would you make a movie about this character, would you make a movie about this character. We internally at Marvel Studios decide what movie we want to make, kind of what the movie is. So Thor, we decided we wanted to do a third Thor film because we love the character and we love Hemsworth and we thought there was great potential there.

But we knew we wanted to break the mold a little bit. And I was on the set of Age of Ultron talking to Hemsworth and he was in his full regalia for a big sequence. And he was saying, “May – what are we doing for the next one, May? What are we doing?” And I said, well, the truth is on the first Thor, Thor was blond hair, a red cape, and a hammer. Now Thor is you, Chris Hemsworth. So we can smash the hammer, we can rip off the cape, we can cut off the hair. So that started leading us into a general direction of what we wanted to do with it.

It was Taika Waititi that turned it into what we all know and love as Thor: Ragnarok with those elements. And we wanted to put The Hulk in it. And so we have these discussion documents that we call them, share them with writers or filmmakers, and then have them come in and pitch us a better version of it that sometimes is very similar and is sometimes totally different but way better. And that begins the then two to three year process of working together intensely.

**Craig:** You guys are drawing from this enormous base of what I consider to be literary work. I mean, comics are drawn, they’re illustrated, but I always read them. No one says I looked at a comic today. I read it. And because we’re writers and this is a show about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters, you know, I’ve had this interesting experience in television and I know you guys are getting into television in a huge way where as a writer they say you are the author here, go and create something. In features, traditionally, the writer has just sort of been a widget. And then the director is viewed as the author.

At Marvel because you seem to be kind of in the, like I said, the hub, in the middle, how do you – and this is not a trap. Don’t worry. They won’t attack you. Feel free to, by the way, if he answers wrong. But how do you balance the authority of the writers and directors that you employ because you do employ a lot of the same ones over and over like Marcus and McFeely and the Russos, etc.

**Kevin:** Yeah. That’s the perfect case example. And, again, it varies person to person of course. I don’t think writers are widgets. I think that they make the whole thing possible. And when you find great writers like Marcus and McFeely who are willing to dedicate their art and their talent to projects you love and want to do, it’s amazing. And that’s why we got to Infinity War and End Game is because of those two.

You know, we were in either post on Iron Man 1 or prep on Iron Man 2 when we were taking meetings and first met Marcus and McFeely to do what became the first Captain America film. And the relationship with Marcus and McFeely and Joe and Anthony Russo is great. Yes, the Russo brothers are the directors of that film, but the authors of the film are the four of them, myself, Trinh Tran, Lou and Victoria from my team at Marvel who spend years together in a very relatively small conference room with more index cards than you’re ever seen in your entire life, putting together those movies. So it does vary.

When you find writers that are as authorial as Marcus and McFeely you keep them around and the directors will listen to them. When you have writers that you’re just starting out with and it doesn’t work, then you find another writer. That can happen with filmmakers, too.

In television, though, it is different as we’re learning. Because we’re trying to do our shows as close as we can to the way we did our films, which is to say it’s one filmmaker on the entire series. And one head writer on the entire series. They have a room because there’s so many–

**Craig:** So many scripts to write.

**Kevin:** Yeah. Although that was the understanding going in. There have been a few moments where that needs to be clarified that in the writer’s room the writer is overseeing much of it. On the set, the director is overseeing it. We haven’t gotten to post yet on those two projects.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** That’s going to be fun. I would like to just come by to watch that. I don’t want to watch what’s on the screen. I just want to watch the people in the room.

**John:** So you’re now moving into a new phase of things. At the end of Avengers: End Game a lot of the characters and the relationships we built up are done and now we’re moving into a new phase. Is it weird for you that you’re both in this moment, but you’re also many years ahead? So is it hard for you to sort of flip back and forth to like, oh that’s right, the rest of the universe doesn’t know that this is a thing that’s happening? Do you find yourself–?

**Kevin:** Only when I’m speaking in public like this is it hard to realize, oh, it’s not 2023 yet so I can’t talk about that. But when you’re in it, no. And, again, like with Iron Man 1 the movie that comes out next gets the most attention. Because sort of nothing else matters. So in that case right now it’s Black Widow. And the primary focus is Black Widow, even though we have another film in production, another film about to go into production, two series in production, another one about to go. What comes next is the focus.

**Craig:** I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up Scorsese-gate. But I don’t want to just—

**Kevin:** Is he here?

**Craig:** Yes. Huge fan of our podcast.

**Kevin:** How many times have you mentioned him?

**Craig:** Way less than we’ve mentioned you.

**John:** That tells me a lot about our show.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly. Which kind of feeds into this question. Because it’s not so much what he said, but rather what I find interesting is that the movies that you guys make have—

**Kevin:** What he said. And what he said again. And what he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about. And what he said again.

**Craig:** I see you’re not at all sensitive about it.

**Kevin:** OK. I understand.

**Craig:** That aside, so you’re not the only one that I traumatize. I like to do this to everyone. Except Lorene. So, your movies occupy an outsized place in global culture from the time that you started with Iron Man to now. They have made an impression on the world. And they are now interwoven with just our global culture. And I’m kind of curious, rather than talk about what’s cinema and not cinema, because I don’t even know what that word even means. I’d rather just ask you where do you think Marvel films sit in our culture. What do you think they actually mean to people?

And is that what you want them to mean? Or are you airing for a kind of changing place in our culture?

**Kevin:** I think in ways that are both flattering and not flattering over the past decade the word Marvel has come to mean blockbuster movie. Blockbuster movies, “blockbuster movies,” that have a genre spin to them, or have action to them, or have visual effects to them have been the dominant form of box office entertainment my entire life. And that’s why I wanted to make movies. Those are the movies – I’m going to listen to your Die Hard episode on December 25. That movie I loved. And I remember thinking this is the best regular movie I’ve ever seen. And what I meant by regular was there was no time travel, there was no space, there were no aliens.

Because that was my primary – there were no super heroes, no super powers.

**Craig:** Best regular.

**Kevin:** Best regular movie ever. So those have always been the dominant, or maybe just to me, maybe just to my focus. In terms of place in the culture I never, ever think about it. I think about making movies that I always wanted to make with people that I’ve always wanted to work with. And make the movie that we would want to see.

And we have eclectic tastes. And the great thing about the Marvel comics is you can sit down and go, yes, we want to make an Iron Man movie, we want to do another Hulk movie. But we could also say I want to do a WWII movie. We want to do an outer space adventure. I want to do a time travel movie. I want to do a heist film. We want to do a ‘70s political thriller. We want to do a story, which is shooting now, about immortals who have been on earth for years.

All of those genres exist within the Marvel comics. And you can find them and flesh them out. And, again, Black Widow is our 24th film that Marvel Studios has produced in my almost 20 years. We want to keep doing different things. Disney+ has allowed that with the series that are also very different than things we’ve done before. So having the platform to continue to do lots of different types of movies that are shared by two things. One, they originated at some point in our comics. And, two, they have a genre element/sci-fi element to, which I enjoy in movies.

**John:** Kevin, will you come back on Episode 800 and talk us through how the next couple phases went?

**Kevin:** We will see. We’ll see if the references go down between now and 800. Yes.

**Craig:** I think you’re saying you want to keep being mentioned.

**John:** That’s what we’ll do.

**Craig:** Not a problem. Keep making those movies and we will keep praising them.

**John:** All right. We also do a thing on our show called One Cool Thing where we talk through small recommendations. Craig, did you remember One Cool Thing?

**Craig:** I do. I have a One Cool Thing. I’m an enjoyer of the Twitter. And lately a little bit of an issue with Nazis. Just I encounter them and I say things to them. And they get upset. And so I find myself getting into arguments with Nazis, which is generally bad. But one of the upsides is you start to figure out who the Nazis are.

**Kevin:** Nazis are not your One Cool Thing?

**Craig:** No.

**Kevin:** To be sure. Sorry.

**Craig:** Not since forever. But every now and then you run into a head Nazi, like the head vampire, and just like in movie mythology if you can kill the head vampire – if you can kill the Night King all – all – of the dead people go, right? So I encountered a head Nazi the other day and I was like I’m going to block her but I also want to block every one that follows her.

And there is a way to do it.

**John:** Oh, tell us.

**Craig:** It’s called Block Chain. Ah, amazing. So, it’s an extension that you can use in a Chrome browser. So, you know, that’s the only thing you use Chrome for. That’s fine. And you put in the person’s name that you want to block and you also want to block everyone that follows that person. And it’s smart enough to know that it shouldn’t block any of her followers that you follow, because sometimes people follow weird people to see like I’m going to keep tabs on that Nazi, which is fucking bizarre, but regardless. And this particular Nazi had about 80,000 followers.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** Well, she probably had 400 humans and a whole bunch of Russian bots. But regardless, they all got blocked. I just watched the number – it was incredibly satisfying. So, if you do manage to run into a Nazi here and there, block chain. Spectacular.

**John:** Nice. My One Cool Thing is a very simple little thing. It’s called AI Dungeon. Some people here may have tried it. It’s an AI thing that generates, sort of like a text-based adventure like Zork. Did you ever play Zork? Ah, yes, you played Zork.

**Craig:** I played ever InfoCom game there was.

**John:** And so what’s clever about it is you’re doing the same things like, you know, look at door, pick up thing, but it’s all using AI. And so you can tell it to do anything and it will change whatever is happening around it to sort of fold that in. So if you said teach Craig to dance it will generate stuff like, you know, you start playing some music and Craig starts dancing.

**Craig:** So if I said pick up knife it will just say, ah, there’s a knife there.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Great game. I’ll play that.

**John:** Tonight. Kevin Feige. Do you have a One Cool Thing to share with us?

**Kevin:** I was given this question early and just did nothing but give me anxiety and go what am I going to give – what’s one cool that that’s going to be interesting. Because I knew you guys would have something super cool and interesting. Nazis.

**John:** Nazis.

**Craig:** And AI.

**Kevin:** And I got in my car on the way over here and put on the album I’ve been listening to time and time again and thought, oh, I’ll just say that.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Kevin:** Even though it might not sound like the coolest.

**John:** Was it MMMBop?

**Kevin:** Much more obscure than MMMBop.

**Craig:** That’s Kevin Feige.

**Kevin:** There was a documentary called Bathtubs Over Broadway that has an accompanying soundtrack about industrial musicals. And I like to listen to the soundtrack of industrial musicals from the Bathtubs Over Broadway documentary.

**Craig:** Oh wow. That’s awesome.

**Kevin:** That’s a cool thing that I’m enjoying right now.

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** That’s awesome.

**John:** Thank you very much. Shoshannah Stern, do you have something you would like to recommend to our audience here?

**Shoshannah:** Yeah. I do. But it requires a backstory. So my daughter is four and three-quarters. And I had an unplanned C-section, which I did not want to have. But it happened very quickly. And I asked if in the OR if I could see her. And they said, yeah, sure.

But at the last minute then I was in the OR and I couldn’t see her. This was the first time that I was really responding to having a physical reaction to sound. Because I heard her cry and I knew that it was my baby and I couldn’t see her. And I had some kind of attack of some sort and I was seeing all of the doctors standing around me looking at me. But I could only see their eyes. I couldn’t read their lips. I couldn’t see anything because they were just looking at me with these masks. And there was this sound but I didn’t know who was talking.

And I just was like, I screamed, “Stop. You’re crucifying me,” because of the IVs and I couldn’t sign. So I was just like grabbing at the IVs. So they brought me my baby. Yes, they did. Thank god. But I was like wow, it’s kind of fucked up to be a deaf person in that situation.

So two months ago the FDA approved a brand new kind of a mask where there’s a clear plastic area on the face mask so that deaf people can actually look and see the lips moving of the people who are wearing them.

**Craig:** Awesome.

**Shoshannah:** I won’t have to go through that fucked up situation again. Or a fucked up situation like that ever again.

**John:** Lorene Scafaria, top that.

**Lorene:** Why?

**John:** [laughs]

**Lorene:** Dolly Parton’s America Podcast.

**John:** Dolly Parton’s America. Absolutely.

**Craig:** Almost as good.

**John:** Almost.

**Craig:** Almost as meaningful.

**Lorene:** Humiliating. It’s really good.

**Craig:** Is it that good though?

**Lorene:** Nope.

**Craig:** Nope.

**John:** And that is the end of our show. So we want to thank our amazing panelists. Lorene Scafaria. Shoshannah Stern. Kevin Feige. Our producer, Megana Rao. Megana! Our editor, Matthew Chilelli.

**Craig:** And of course this is all in service of the Writers Guild Foundation and the Writers Guild Foundation has supported us in putting this event on. So of course we want to thank Enid and Dustin and all the volunteers from the Writers Guild Foundation.

**John:** Tonight I want to extend an extra special thanks to our amazing interpreters, Elizabeth and Robby. Thank you very, very much.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Thank you to LA Film School, especially Hunter and Jared for tonight.

**Craig:** And finally we’d like to thank you. Our listeners. And a reminder that you can sign up now at Scriptnotes.net. This is why we’re ad-free. You can sign up now at Scripnotes.net. Scriptnotes.net for the Premium Feed. Happy Holidays and good night.

**John:** Happy Holidays everyone. Thank you all very much.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Thank you.

We have someone lined up here at the microphone.

**Male Audience Member:** Just to say thank you. This is amazing. My question is to Kevin. But before I do I want to say to the ladies thank you. As a writer-director you guys are an inspiration. Thank you.

**Lorene:** Thank you.

**Male Audience Member:** Kevin, last year at the Produced By Conference I asked you about Ms. Marvel movie and you said you’re going to focus on the Captain Marvel and then you’re going to introduce. Now it’s going to Disney+ with Bisha attached to it. I was wondering if you’re ever going to bring it to the movie world or maybe with Wolverine or something. What are the future–?

**Kevin:** That’s two different questions I think for me. We shifted to Wolverine. Ms. Marvel is coming to Disney+. Yes, Bisha is our head writer on that. And, yes, the intention with that character very much is to introduce her on a Disney+ series and then bring her into the films. And everything we’re doing at Disney+ will start to go back and forth between the streaming service and the movies. Some characters like Falcon, Winter Soldier, and Wanda Maximoff and the Vision and Loki will go from the big screen to Disney+ and back. Some characters starting with Ms. Marvel will be introduced on our Disney+ series and then go into films.

**Craig:** I honestly thought he was asking about Lorene. I heard Wolverine, I heard Wolverine. I think he’s suggesting that Lorene direct.

**Male Audience Member:** Why not?

**Lorene:** That’s what you’re here for. That kind of pressure.

**Craig:** Just putting that in the world. Put it in the universe, see what happens.

**John:** Hello, welcome.

**Male Audience Member:** My question is for Kevin as well.

**Craig:** Of course.

**Male Audience Member:** So you said the comics gave you a good framework for the interconnected narrative. But I’m sure there’s some points where you were at a fork in the road deciding to adhere or to depart from what was already given to you. Can you talk about some specific examples and some of the harder decisions you’ve made and how you decided whether to stick or to depart?

**Kevin:** Well it’s always that decision of how close do you stick to the comics. The comics are both inspiration, sometimes very specifically, sometimes generally. Marcus and McFeely had the task of Civil War when I decided that now was the time to do Civil War. And it was a great comic and ten years before we were developing the movie reading the comic month to month. It was published. It was amazing. Going back and looking at it, it did not apply. It took place, as all the comics do, in the narrative of that moment of the comics’ universe. Did not match up hardly at all with what the Marvel cinematic universe was. But the general idea of Iron Man and Cap representing two different sides of a theological argument was the inspiration. And Marcus and McFeely and Joe and Ant fleshed that out based on where we were in the cinematic universe. So that’s one where it was very specific, even taking the title from a comic, storyline, which we rarely do. But really that was a jumping off point.

**Craig:** I don’t want to stereotype the group that’s waiting, but—

**Male Audience Member:** I got you, Craig, don’t worry about it. My question, not actually directed to Kevin at all. I’ve never heard of any Marvel movies. But I know that there’s this whole Pay Up Hollywood thing. And something that’s very new. And the question that I have to John and Craig is where does accountability come into play? Obviously this is a very difficult city to make it in. And everything that we’ve heard is I can’t afford $1,500 rent. OK, well maybe you need a roommate. I can’t afford to put fuel in the car. Well, you have a car. That sounds pretty nice. And I can’t live off $50,000 a year. Well, there’s seven million people who make that happen.

So, where does accountability come into play?

**Craig:** I have an answer for you. Before I ask people who are making $50,000 to be accountable I’d like to ask the people who are making $50 billion to be accountable. I am, listen, I’m a parent. So I’m always thinking about how to make sure that my kids understand the value of hard work and the value of responsibility. But the fact is that the people who do these jobs, and we know them, and we’ve seen them, are not being treated fairly.

You can extend the argument of accountability down to anything. Well, you’re eating. I mean, a sandwich is a good thing. So, if you get a sandwich a day you should be happy. At some point, right, it’s a slippery slope. So the point is it’s not about subsistence living. It’s about being treated just reasonably.

**John:** I have a related question. A related question and answer here. So I say that accountability is useful for thinking about it in terms of you can’t direct it back at the person who is asking to be treated fairly to say like so often implicit in the answer is, well, I suffered when I came up through this scenario so it’s not – it’s the same for you.

There’s two problems with that. First off, it wasn’t the same. Second off, just because it did happen that way doesn’t mean it was ever right. And that’s a thing that we learned out of #MeToo. It’s a think we need to be talking about now.

The second thing I want to stress to all of us, and as we go into 2020 to be thinking about. It’s great news that we have a higher hourly wage happening in some places. You don’t pay rent with hours. You pay rent with dollars. And so we need to always be thinking about what is the dollars that people are making every week that is going to make it possible to live in Los Angeles. And for people who are coming to Los Angeles with this dream of moving to Hollywood and working in this industry, so they know what dollar figure actually they need to be making in order to stay and survive here. Because equity of access is the first step before we get to equity of outcome where the people who can come to this industry can actually afford to work in this industry and go up the ranks and thrive and write movies for Kevin Feige.

**Craig:** Yes. Absolutely. And I would also say that there is a temptation to think that tough love gets results. That deprivation makes people work harder. It doesn’t. As it turns out, treating people fairly and with respect will get more out of them. I do believe that. And this is a general philosophical mistake I think we make.

And so this is something that we’ve been talking about on our show a lot. And we’ve been talking to agencies. Obviously Verve made a big announcement about this. After we stop talking to the agencies I very much want to start talking to the studios about this. So we’ll be coming. We’ll be coming. But not now.

**John:** Not now.

**Craig:** Not now.

**John:** This is a fun night.

**Craig:** Thank you for your question.

**Male Audience Member:** Thank you, John.

**John:** Thank you. One last question. A lot of pressure on your shoulders. You’re wearing the mantle of the final question of the night.

**Craig:** And surely this is for Shoshannah or Lorene.

**Lorene:** The Hustlers cinematic universe.

**John:** Oh, I want to see that universe.

**Male Audience Member:** This is actually for all three of you. I just wanted to ask very simply what when either you’re going to your computer and you’re trying to break a scene, or you go into your writer’s room and maybe you’re trying to break a film, or a TV show, or you’re on set and you get this wonderful inspirational moment from one of your actors and it inspires a story idea, what are some creative rituals that you do before you go onto set, the writer’s room, or your computer just to kind of get those creative juices flowing? What are some places you go to to get some inspirational ideas from?

**Craig:** Shoshannah, you want to start?

**Shoshannah:** Sure. It’s really simple, but I just put my feet on the ground just to carry my weight evenly on my two feet, fold my hands. I’m not so much praying but I’m just feeling the flow. And I just try to remind myself that I’m grateful to be in this moment, right here, right now, doing what I love really. I just center myself and then do it. You know, whatever is blocking me or whatever I feel might block me I let it dissipate. I just let it go away. It’s not a very interesting answer. Sorry.

**John:** Oh my god, that was fascinating. That’s your ritual, too, right?

**Craig:** I mean, she’s kind of better than all of us.

**Shoshannah:** Say that again. I didn’t quite catch that. I didn’t hear it.

**Craig:** You heard me. I liked your first answer better which was I go with Josh to a bar and we get drunk. I think that’s truer.

**Shoshannah:** Maybe.

**John:** Lorene, do you have any go-tos?

**Lorene:** Yeah, I mean I think in my soul I think trying to reframe things like instead of saying I have to do something it’s saying I get to do something. So trying to remind myself of that at the beginning of a day, or a task. On a set I try to have three or four beverages first thing. I have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before lunch and then a peanut butter and jelly sandwich after lunch. And no lunch.

**Craig:** That is so weird.

**Lorene:** It’s so weird. They got me a big cake on my birthday on Hustlers. It was shaped like a giant peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Humiliating. 41. So, yeah. Those are silly rituals, too.

**John:** Kevin, any rituals for you?

**Kevin:** I have relatively severe OCD that I could give you lots of rituals that utterly a waste of time and worthless and I wouldn’t recommend at all. But the notion that I have to keep in mind a lot is when there’s a lot of pressure, when you can’t think of an idea, when there’s a story problem and it gets very frustrating and I’ve pulled all of my hair out already, but you’re realizing no, no, this is a good thing. I remember being an intern and being jealous of anybody there that was employed. Anybody there that had a job. And I would hear them complain. And there was always stuff to complain about. That’s fine. Nothing wrong with complaining.

But I remember being like if I was there I wouldn’t be complaining. So, wherever I am now if I start complaining or start getting – it’s not even about complaining. It’s about just getting agitated. You realize, no, this is – exactly what Lorene said – that we get to do this and we’re very, very lucky.

**John:** Fantastic.

**Craig:** That’s a great final answer right there. Thank you.

**John:** Thank you.

Links:

* [Sign up for Scriptnotes Premium](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* Thank you to our incredible guests: [Kevin Feige](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0270559/), [Lorene Scafaria](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1032521/), and [Shoshannah Stern](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0998074/), for joining us! And thanks to Robbie Sutton and Elizabeth Green for interpreting the show.
* [Scriptnotes, Ep 44: Endings for Beginnings](https://johnaugust.com/2012/endings-for-beginners)
* [Twitter Block Chain Extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/twitter-block-chain/dkkfampndkdnjffkleokegfnibnnjfah?hl=en)
* [AI Dungeon](https://www.aidungeon.io/)
* [Bathtubs Over Broadway Soundtrack](https://www.bathtubsoverbroadway.com/)
* [FDA Approves Transparent Surgical Masks](https://www.theclearmask.com/product)
* [Dolly Parton’s America Podcast](https://www.npr.org/podcasts/765024913/dolly-parton-s-america)
* [Kevin Feige](https://twitter.com/kevfeige) on Twitter
* [Lorene Scafaria](https://twitter.com/LoreneScafaria) on Twitter
* [Shoshannah Stern](https://twitter.com/Shoshannah7) on Twitter
* [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) and Intro by Matthew Chilelli ([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/scriptnotes_ep_431.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2019/professionalism).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 419 of Scriptnotes. Craig, what is Scriptnotes?

**Craig:** Scriptnotes is a podcast about things that are interesting to screenwriters. And screenwriting.

**John:** Everything is mixed up today.

**Craig:** Yeah. I love it. It’s a Backwards Day. I like it.

**John:** This is the grab-baggiest of episodes. We’re going to be talking about everything from Emmys to elections, professionalism, to patronage. Lots of stuff, so let’s get into it.

Craig, this Sunday were the Emmys. I can’t believe this day has finally come. The Emmys were on Sunday. Unfortunately this is Friday that we’re recording this so we have no idea what happened on Sunday.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, I want to propose something.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Let’s record both versions. Let’s record the versions where you had a spectacular Sunday where you won a bunch of awards, and then we’ll record the one where you didn’t.

**Craig:** Got it. We actually should record three. We should record Chernobyl wins an award for something, but I don’t win. I win, Chernobyl wins nothing.

**John:** Great. So let’s do the big sweep where you win and Chernobyl wins. You were there for two awards. You picked up both of those statues. I was so excited to see you up there on stage. I thought your speech was fantastic.

**Craig:** Aw, thank you.

**John:** I was just beaming with pride because listeners like me have been following this whole journey. And you were away from the show for a while and you made this thing. And it was great closure to see you up there on that stage. I’m so happy and proud for you.

**Craig:** Boy, John, it’s weird up there. It’s so surreal.

**John:** Well, I saw you took a beat.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** I saw you took a beat and just took it all in.

**Craig:** Yeah. I was thinking of you during that beat. And then, yeah, it’s just so weird. Boy, that room is so big and the lights are really bright in your eyes. And of course you’re worried that you’re not going to have enough time. They’re going to play you off the stage which they did/did not do. And, yeah, a great night. It didn’t matter. Win or lose you’re just happy to be there amongst your peers. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. You can’t take away the fact that you made something amazing and to be just celebrated up there on the stage for it was just icing on the cake.

**Craig:** Well golly.

**John:** Next version, so you don’t win the writing award but you do win the limited series award. Craig, it’s hard to even call this a mixed outcome because like Best Limited Series, congratulations.

**Craig:** Sure. Thank you. You know what? At this point you try and parse the achievement of making a show into individual awards just doesn’t even make logical sense anymore. So, you just have to go, you know what? We were nominated for lots of stuff and we’re super proud of that. If you win anything that’s amazing, especially in a year like this where we had such incredible competition. Congrats to Ava DuVernay and When They See Us for all the awards that they picked up. I think that’s a pretty good prediction right there.

And but to all of the great shows in our category. I mean, what a year. So, you know who the real winners were John? Television watchers. [laughs]

**John:** Well absolutely. And I think the Best Limited Series acknowledges the fact that this thing would not exist if you had not had the idea – if you had not been surfing Wikipedia and finding this information about the Chernobyl disaster, thinking like this is potentially a show. So that award is your award and it all came from the writing.

**Craig:** Well, listen, that’s the wonderful thing about television is that the writers are in charge, which is probably why television is so much better than movies right now. You know, movies, take note.

**John:** Yes. And I thought you saying that in your awards acceptance speech was absolutely appropriate.

**Craig:** Pretty crazy, right? Like what a weird axe to grind.

**John:** At the Emmy Awards. All right, third option. So Sunday were the Emmys. You got to go and see all the celebration for your show which was nominated.

**Craig:** See other people win.

**John:** So, while I was disappointed not to see you up there on that stage, I love when they do the cutaway shots to the people in the audience as their names are called. And to see you there with Melissa was just great. And I was just really proud to see you there, honored for what you have made.

**Craig:** Well, John, as you know I got into writing so that I could be on television. Actually, you probably noticed, I don’t know if they cutaway beforehand or not, but right when they announced that Ava DuVernay kept winning everything you probably noticed me turn behind me, to the left of me, to the right of me, ahead of me – depending on how it goes – to find Alec Berg and sort of give him a, “Yeah, I get it, now I know what it feels like.” Because, you know, again, poor Alec. 21 nominations. 0 for 21. But side note, that’s a pretty decent prediction. I think, I’m not trying to jinx Alec. I think it’s going to be a tough road to hoe for him. But back to the alternate reality.

Yeah, but you know what? Honestly, we didn’t go in expecting to win anything and we were so proud of our crafts people, our below the line people that won lots of awards the week before. We felt great. And it was an amazing year for television and for limited series. Hats off to Ava. Great job on that series. Wonderful show. So, we’re pleased as punch that the season of awards is over.

**John:** Yes, for sure. But you also had one extra special visit that happened this last week. Apparently you got to meet the President of Ukraine?

**Craig:** I met the President of Ukraine. I visited him. So this is a fascinating thing. There’s a conference in Ukraine, it’s an annual conference called the Yalta European Summit. It used to take place in Yalta, which is in Crimea. It no longer does because Russia has invaded Crimea. So it is in Kiev, Ukraine. And it is attended by all sorts of – you know, John, we run in Hollywood circles, right. So we always feel like, ooh, look at this party. It’s got all of the hoo-ha people.

**John:** Oh, Natalie Portman.

**Craig:** Yeah, ooh, Natalie Portman. Or, ooh, Jim Gianopulos. In this thing the hoo-ha people are like, ooh, look, Steven Pinker, and Fareed Zakaria, and the ambassador from a country to another country. It’s very fancy.

So I went there and Fareed Zakaria interviewed me on stage about Chernobyl. And then I was heading to the airport to come home and the man who runs this whole thing said, “Oh, by the way, the President of Ukraine would like to meet you if you could delay a little bit.” And I said, yeah, I want to meet the President of Ukraine. And so I went to the President of Ukraine’s office, in this very large building that used to be the Party Headquarters back in the Soviet Days. This beautiful building.

I’d never met a president before. I’ve never gotten to say, “Well hello Mr. President.” It was very cool. And here’s the cool thing about President Zelensky. He’s just been elected. And he’s one of us, John. He’s a writer-performer-comedian-entertainer. He comes out of the entertainment business in Ukraine. And it was a great conversation. We talked a lot about film production and how to help bring film production to Ukraine. They really want to get more shows shooting there, which I thought was great. And in no way did I involve myself in any kind of weird whistleblowing scandal.

**John:** Did you make any promises to him that were listened in by intelligence officers? None of that stuff happened?

**Craig:** No. In fact, quite the opposite. At one point during the conversation we were talking about some ideas and things and he said, “You know, just to be clear we’re just talking.” I said, oh no, we’re not making the laws or anything. [laughs] I’m an idiot. You know that, right? I’m stupid.

He was great. He’s a terrific guy. At least that was my impression of him. I can’t necessarily speak to how he – I hope for the sake of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people that he does a great job. He’s got an excellent – currently he’s at like 80% popularity. Do you remember when our president got an 80% popularity?

**John:** That was a different universe.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** I do fear that the transcripts as people look back on this episode, you know, five years down the road something could go terribly wrong. But for this moment it was neat that you got to meet the President of Ukraine.

**Craig:** So you’re saying like there will be some crazy war or genocide and then we’ll have the equivalent of me on tape going, “Yeah, so Hitler, he seemed like a great guy. We had a great conversation.” No.

**John:** He’s really a film person. He’s an entertainer.

**Craig:** He’s an artist. He loves to paint. You know, he’s adorable. He’s cute. He’s got a great mustache. No, I’m very hopeful for Ukraine that President Zelensky does a great job. I don’t know anything about politics. At least Ukrainian politics. I know nothing. I’m mostly just optimistic and hopeful for them. But, yeah, that was weird.

**John:** Yeah. It’s also – stepping away from the President of Ukraine, it’s cool you got to travel in the circles of big thinkers who write big books about the future of the world.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So that’s nice.

**Craig:** I felt highly unqualified. There were some really impressive, very famous historians and thinkers and politicians and people. So, but it did remind me that we actually do have quite an impact on the world around us. It’s like this podcast. You know how we’re always surprised – or maybe you’re not, but I’m always surprised when people say they listen to the podcast, like Chris O’Dowd. I was so surprised that he listens to the podcast. I’m endlessly surprised that anyone listens to it. But they do. And similarly with television you make a show and you put it out there but they might tell you, oh, this many millions of people watched it, but the number doesn’t connect in your mind to reality. And then you realize, oh yeah, these people all watched it and they have feelings about it, you know. And happily for us the overwhelming opinion of folks there in Kiev was very positive towards our show which was huge, wonderful.

**John:** The show where it’s set. So, yes, good to hear.

**Craig:** Yes, very good.

**John:** So the Emmy season is over but also another important season is over. The WGA election season, which was endless.

**Craig:** Aw. Too soon. [laughs]

**John:** Too soon. Oh god, not a moment too soon. I don’t know why, it’s probably there’s a constitutional reason why the voting period has to be so long, but Craig it was too long. It went on forever.

**Craig:** The reason is that the constitution that governs these things was written in the ‘40s I believe, you know, back when people had to vote by mail only and all the information you got came by mail.

**John:** True.

**Craig:** Or meetings that you had to go to. There was no Internet. There was no social media. So what’s happened is let’s say there was X amount of political content to which you would be exposed as a writer. Now there is 1,000 X political content that you are being exposed to as a writer in this election. It’s too long. They should shorten it because the amount of information that we’re bombarded with is insane. And it’s just too much.

**John:** It is too much. But let’s talk about the end result of this before we get into process and–

**Craig:** It was great.

**John:** [laughs] So in the East Beau Willimon was reelected along with some other folks who are supportive of the agency campaign. In the West a total of 5,809 valid ballots were cast which was 58% of eligible votes, which is a nice round number. It’s about 10,000 voters, people who could vote. So that was record turnout in the West. And more than doubles the turnout of the 2018 Board of Directors election. So David Goodman and the incumbents were reelected along with the four newcomers who I endorsed by a lot. So Goodman won 3-to-1. Everybody else was at least 2-to-1. So it was a significant victory for that group of people who are sort of a steady line from where we’ve been.

**Craig:** Yeah. No question. And I think this was essentially a foregone conclusion almost from the start. I mean, I didn’t think it would be otherwise. There’s some interesting things that come out of this. By the way, and one of them is that also just to be clear in case people were wondering, if I had been able to stay in the race I also would have lost. There’s no question. It’s interesting, the most important thing I hope that our membership takes away from this, particularly the people that did vote for the people who won, is that the election was not damaging to our union. That this kind of open discussion and debate did not destroy us. Nor did it topple their preferred candidates to the ground.

There was almost, I want to call it like a paranoia, or a fear that something that they loved very much or cared about very deeply was going to be destroyed by people from within. And that did not happen. Point being you can survive elections, and I’m saying this especially to guild members who never really saw one of these before because unfortunately and anomalously the last three presidential elections have essentially been uncontested, which is not the traditional WGA way. This is the traditional WGA election.

So, good news is we can survive these. They’re very good for us. They’re good to discuss. And the other thing that’s important to note for people like me who are questioning the way the leadership is going about pursuing a conclusion, a potential conclusion, to our agency campaign is that the amount of people that seemed to dissent from the way the leadership is doing this has roughly quadrupled since we took our first vote on it back in whatever it was, March or April. Back then it was 95%, about 400 people said no to that. I was not one of them. I was like you, I said yes.

About ish, averaging around 1,600 people voted against leadership, so something is happening. It’s worth noting. Those people are not in power. The people who are in power are in power. But there is a trend. So I’m hoping that leadership has taken notice of that and will consider it as they now go about, I don’t know, doing what they’re going to do.

**John:** I would say at all of the membership meetings, and I don’t know if you’ve listened to any of the audio from the membership meetings, the current leadership was very up front about the fact recognizing that five months into this dissent has grown. There’s folks who are unhappy with how all of this is being conducted. And sort of worried about the outcome of things. And so I think that was reflected in some of that voting there. But I think a probably more crucial takeaway is that there was this worry I think that in the fatigue and in this thing going on that people would just start tuning out. They would start paying attention and just kind of want to be done or just shut it all out.

And I think the fact that there was record turnout, that Goodman was elected by a huge majority than even he was elected when he was uncontested speaks to a support for a resolution with the current people in place.

**Craig:** You mean he got more votes this time.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** I mean, he can’t do better than 100%

**John:** It is hard to do that math. At least in a democratic system, yes.

**Craig:** Correct. The turnout was very encouraging. You want to see writers engaged. And this is my point to everybody that was kind of freaking out. I’m sorry. They kind of were. I was shocked. The worst possible instinct we could have as a union and as a membership polity is to be against free and open elections and campaigns. And I love to see that people were engaged and got engaged and voted. I think this is exactly the way it should go. I’m thrilled. And I hope that the people take some sort of – now that they’ve gone through it maybe they’ll feel a little less insecure about it the next time through.

**John:** The one thing I do want to bring up because this is a thing I’ve seen and grousing on the edges of the Internet is like, “Oh, those folks who voted for it aren’t even really working writers.” And that is not accurate. I mean, in order to be a voting member people should know it’s not that you sell a script and then 20 years later you’re still a voting member. You’re not. You have to sort of keep working in order to maintain your current status. And so for 2018 there were 6,057 who reported earnings. So there are a lot of working writers who are the voting membership of the WGA.

**Craig:** Yeah, you hear this a lot. I mean, yes, technically you can have people – well, there are two kinds of writers who can vote who are not working writers. Your initial membership period is seven years. So, when you become a WGA member you have seven years to vote before you’re going to have to show some additional employment. So, yeah, some people theoretically are on year six of their seven without working. And there’s also quite a few people that are what we call lifetime current members. So you and I would certainly qualify. Once you have – I think it’s 15 years.

**John:** 15 years, yes.

**Craig:** Yeah, of being current active you become lifetime. 15 years is actually not that much. So there are a lot of people who are current lifetime members which means they’re going to vote forever until they die. And, yeah, so sure. But the truth is, OK, we don’t know how they vote. I mean, it’s tempting for some people to say, “Well, some people, they’re not working so it’s easy for them to vote for a strike or to vote to fire your agents.” I guess, but I think a lot of people who aren’t working also feel like, no, it’s important that the guild to not go on strike or not fire their agents. There’s no science to that is my point.

**John:** I would agree.

**Craig:** But I will say if I could, if I could wave a magic wand, I would, I don’t know about this lifetime – I don’t know if people should be voting forever. I actually worry about that. Because we’re getting older longer. Right? And there is a world in which you have more people voting in a union who are lifetime current members than current active members, which would be a disaster. That’s not what you want. So I wonder about that sometimes.

**John:** Yeah. And so this is not a thing that I’ve been spending time thinking about, so I’m just going to wonder aloud. Perhaps a reason why lifetime current members should be able to vote is that the actions of the guild now still have a bearing on their income and sort of their ability to do things. So, the degree to which leadership of the WGA can set broad policies that would affect – I mean, pension is a separate thing. So I’m trying to think the degree to which elected leadership would have a bearing on a person who is essentially no longer employed is interesting. I don’t know.

**Craig:** You’re right. It’s a tricky one. Because most unions do not have this. I mean, most unions it’s like if you’re not working, you’re not working you’re not voting. I’m pretty sure. I don’t think this is a common thing where you get to vote for the rest of your life even though you haven’t worked in 30 years which is the case for some people.

I don’t think when you and I first started in the union I don’t think it was as big of a deal because, well A, people didn’t live quite as long as they do now. And there were fewer people that had been employed up to that point. And also the guild was a little bit more homogenous in its thinking. But as things polarize a little bit, which seems to be the trend everywhere in the world. Thank you social media. And as people live longer I can see a potential issue on the horizon. And I say that as somebody who would be a beneficially of being a lifetime current member. That maybe, you know, maybe after – cap it. Like if you haven’t worked in 10 years maybe no more. Maybe you should stop voting.

It’s a thought. I can see the gray army – the art militia is marching to my house. But, hey, guys, I’m old too.

**John:** This feels like one of those questions where if this was debate team you could argue either side and have really good arguments to list either side. So maybe that’s why it’s an interesting debate question.

The one thing that probably every member can agree on is that there were a lot of emails and sometimes those emails that came from the WGA [unintelligible] which basically candidates and sometimes even non-members can spend some money and send out an email blast to all WGA members. People got frustrated by that. I would say it’s part of the democratic process. I don’t want to limit that. I think structurally I don’t think anything should change. I just recognize that as it got later into the voting season people got more and more annoyed by those. And I think it did not help the people who were sending those emails late in the process.

**Craig:** Well, everybody was sending them so if it didn’t help people it didn’t help people equally. But I agree with you. It’s part of the process. Communicating to the membership is important. What I think would help us is what you suggested right off the top, just shortening the season.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, it’s one thing to get bombarded with emails for a month. It’s another thing to get bombarded with emails for three months, or whatever it was. Right? July, August, September. Ish. 2.5 months. So, I saw people complaining about it and I just found it absurd. Like, aw, you poor baby, you had to see an email? Aw, you had to press delete? Aw. You were born in 2002. Yeah, that’s right. I just took a shot at millennials like every other old, cranky dick. I don’t care.

**John:** Craig, do you know who is not going to fix this problem?

**Craig:** Who?

**John:** Me. I’m not on the board anymore.

**Craig:** By the way, we’re both free, right?

**John:** We’re both free.

**Craig:** We’re both free because you’re free-free, and now I can be even more of a jerk than I already was because I don’t have to worry about including you in people I’m yelling at.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because I love you.

**John:** Aw, Craig, I love you, too.

**Craig:** I don’t give a shit about the rest of these people, so gloves are off.

**John:** All right. Let’s move on to our next topic. So this past week Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, the reporters who originally broke the Harvey Weinstein story for the New York Times back in 2017 released their book She Said. Revealed new information about the secret settlements and non-disclosure agreements that allowed Weinstein and other powerful men to get away with what they were doing.

A lot of the tension this past week was focused on the celebrity feminist mother-daughter team of Gloria Allred and Lisa Bloom. And this was an area of the story that I wasn’t really aware of. And reading it and listening to it I was struck by a couple things. First off, it’s always good to check in and see sort of where we’re at in this post-Weinstein era in terms of how we’re dealing with just terrible men doing terrible things.

But this new wrinkle in it very much felt like a How Would This Be a Movie kind of twist to it because it was such a fascinating lens to be looking at this story through of these women who were known as crusaders for victims’ rights for women who were – in the case of Bloom working for the other side. There’s a letter we can link to which is especially damning in terms of outlining the strategy for how she would protect Weinstein.

**Craig:** I haven’t had a chance to read this but it does strike me that in all likelihood this is our generation’s All the President’s Men. I mean, it feels like this is a great story of two heretofore unknown journalists blowing open a story that changes our culture permanently. And so we have heroes.

**John:** And I would add Ronan Farrow into that, too, in the sense that there’s a whole collection of folks who are trying to do things and other journalists along the way who were frustrated that they weren’t able to get anyone to go on record.

**Craig:** Exactly. And so you have your protagonists in that sense. And there is an achievement at the end that is undeniable. And I think it’s, well, it’s just great to see stories again where people achieve and change the world with their minds and not with their jet-packs and super-serums and laser eyes. Because that’s real. And I’m thrilled that it happened.

I, like you, was not prepared for the arrival of new villains. Right? So you think the villain is Harvey and Les Moonves, et cetera, et cetera. And then you get this letter from Lisa Bloom that is just jaw-dropping.

**John:** So Megana our producer was asking at lunch, you know, to what degree was all of this an open secret. Because I see that term in quotes “open secret” in a lot of the coverage about this. Like, “Oh, Harvey Weinstein’s behavior was an ‘open secret.’” And I was having a hard time answering her because it depends on sort of what you mean what was the secret. I would say that through my Hollywood career I knew that he was an asshole. I knew that he was abusive. And I think I had a sense that there was a casting couch but I’m putting that in air quotes here because how did I think that this was a benign consensual casting couch. As we’re looking for villains, as I’m looking at myself as a villain, I think to have so misframed that in my head is one of the things I’m going to be sort of reckoning with and I think a lot of folks will be reckoning with as we take a look at these powerful men being brought down.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, I’m currently writing a book about you as the villain. [laughs] You’re at the center of all of this.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Well, listen, and I can answer Megana’s question as best I can from my perspective, because I worked for the Weinsteins for a number of years. Almost exclusively for Bob which I can assure you was not a delight by any stretch of the imagination. But I had my run-ins with Harvey. I had no idea, none, zero that there was any kind of non-consensual sexual activity going on. The rumors that I heard were that certain female actors had engaged in a quid pro quo with Harvey, where consensually there was an agreement. I will sleep with you and you will put me in this movie. Which is gross. It’s not illegal. It’s unethical. It’s gross. It is a kind of abuse. There’s no question of that. It’s an abuse of power. Not to mention – also forgotten that he’s married to another woman. There’s a billion rules he’s broken but not a law.

So, it seemed scummy but it didn’t seem like a criminal thing that made you want to hurl. That was what I thought the open secret was, and even then I kind of didn’t really believe it. I’ve got to be honest with you. I thought it felt like a rumor mill thing that seemed a bit misogynistic. Like, oh, so and so couldn’t have been an actor unless she slept with Harvey. And the names that were being thrown around I thought, um, no, I think they would have been just fine. They’re good at their jobs. And they’re beautiful. And they check a lot of boxes for what a star should look like in the year say 2003.

So, that’s about as much as I knew. I would imagine other people, well certainly people inside. We know now from this book for instance, from the Kantor and Twohey book that certainly Bob knew. He claims to not know. But he knew.

**John:** Yeah. I think it’s always worth asking what’s happening right now that is analogous that we’re not paying attention to. Like what are the things that five years, ten years down the road we’ll be asking, hey, was that an open secret? How were you letting this go on? I think it’s always worth doing the introspection to look around and see what is happening in the industry right now that will seem shocking down the road.

And I don’t have an answer for that but I think it’s always good to be asking that question.

**Craig:** Oh, yeah. That is a good one.

**John:** That can be a thinker. I don’t know that we’ll have an answer today.

**Craig:** I’ve got to be honest with you. I’m the last person who will come up with the answer to that. I’ve always felt quite sheltered. I don’t know, like self-sheltered from – like I’ve never been to a Hollywood party in 25 years where I’ve seen people doing drugs. Do you know how hard that must be to do? [laughs] You know?

**John:** I’ve never seen anyone do cocaine. I’ve never done cocaine. I’ve never seen anyone do cocaine. And yet I see it in movies all the time.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So people are doing it. But I’ve never seen it.

**Craig:** Have you ever seen cocaine?

**John:** I’ve never seen cocaine.

**Craig:** I’ve never seen cocaine either. This is why you and I are perfect for each other. We’re the only two people I think in Hollywood and possibly in the world that have never seen cocaine. I’m not sure it’s even real. [laughs] It may be a thing that they’ve just invented for movies. It’s fake. I’ve never even seen it. So, we’re not – you and I will be the last people to know is my point.

**John:** Yeah. We’re just off playing D&D while everyone else is doing drugs.

**Craig:** Doing the drugs.

**John:** All of the drugs.

**Craig:** All the drugs.

**John:** So that might be an invitation to listeners. If you think that there is a thing that we’re not paying attention to that could be thing ten years from now. Like how the hell were you not paying attention to that? Write in. Tell us that. Because I’ll be curious what you guys think.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I also need your opinion some bit of housekeeping here. So Scriptnotes has always been and will always be free every week. It has no ads so we don’t make money in sort of the traditional podcast ways.

**Craig:** I don’t make money.

**John:** I know. But we do have expenses. So, mostly salaries. We pay for Megana, our producer. Matthew Chilelli who is our editor. And John who does our transcripts. We also pay for the servers. So there are some costs. To allay those costs we have the premium feed, so that is all the back episodes of Scriptnotes and the transcripts, the Scriptnotes app. More than 3,000 of you out there are premium feed members so thank you very much for doing that. That’s $2 a month.

But there’s some issues. And so right now we’re doing our premium stuff through Libsyn and they’re the hosting company. And they do a good job sort of getting stuff out there, but the app is not great. We’ve had some problems with the app. And Megana has being a lot of work with the Libsyn folks to try to get the app fixed up. We don’t actually make the app. We just brand it.

And if you go on their website it looks like it’s from 1999. And that shouldn’t be a big thing but I don’t have great faith in parts of it. So as I look at other podcasts out there, a lot of them are on Patreon. We’re considering moving over to Patreon. But I would love to hear folks’ opinions on should we make a switch over there. Are they happy enough with sort of what we have?

If we move over to Patreon the Scriptnotes app would eventually stop working. Is that a big deal? So I need listeners to tell us what you think about moving over to a different place.

**Craig:** You know, I think we should. I’m a listener. I’m actually not a listener as you know. I’m just a talker. But I love change. Before you laugh at me, I do like technological change. I do like every now and then taking a look at what you’ve gotten used to technologically and then saying let me do a little bit of research and see if there’s something better out there. Because generally speaking there is.

So, I think we should change. No offense to Libsyn. I say let’s do it. Let’s go and do it.

**John:** All right. So I will say, we’ll get your feedback. If we do make the switch we’ll keep both things running for a while. So it’s not like Libsyn will suddenly get shut off and Patreon will take over. We’ll figure out some way so that if you’re currently burning through your catalog on the app the app will keep working for a while. And if we transition there will be a grace period hopefully moving between the two of them. So, just letting people know that there might be a change in the offing here.

**Craig:** I’m excited. Change is good.

**John:** Cool. All right. So this year at the Austin Film Festival you will be there, but I will not be there because I’m going to be giving a speech that I promised to give. It’s a prestigious speech back at my alma mater. And I want to talk a little bit about what my topic is because it’s a speech that I gave way back in 2006 and I’m giving an updated version of the speech. And it’s on professionalism. And it feels like a good topic for Scriptnotes overall because the original topic for the speech was professional writing in the rise of the amateur. And sort of that weird tension between what it means to be professional and what it means to be an amateur.

In my initial speech I argue that professionalism has five basic characteristics. First is presentation, AKA giving a shit. Accuracy. Consistency. Accountability. And peer standards. And what I was trying to do is distinguish between professionalism from getting paid for it, because we tend to think of pro as being like a pro athlete who gets paid and an amateur athlete who doesn’t get paid. And I was arguing that much more important is how you’re perceiving your own work and how you are – the standards you’re holding yourself to and the standards that others are holding yourself to that determines professional from unprofessional.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Craig, are those characteristics useful metrics for you for whether someone is acting professionally?

**Craig:** They are. I think there is a – I’m going to add one. And it’s humility. And here’s why I’m adding it. Because we’re in an interesting time right now where a lot of people – in a fantastic way a bunch of fake, bad barriers to entry are being dismantled. And a lot of cruel pointless downward pressures are being eliminated. And I think a number of people are saying, “Listen, one of the things that’s really important to do is not be shy, not be self-deprecating, stand up for yourself, self-promote. Don’t be afraid to talk about what you’ve done well.” All those things are true.

But what I sometimes see is it’s being done – because it’s sometimes an unnatural thing for people to do. So what ends up happening is it’s done in a kind of calculated way and what’s missing therefore is an honest element of humility.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I think that professionals should – and typically do have a certain kind of humility that comes with understanding that no matter how good you do, no matter how well you do, no matter how much you’ve learned, no matter how much experience you have there’s somebody who is better than you. And that’s a wonderful thing. It means that there is room to grow.

And it keeps you I think – it keeps your feet on the ground. And it prevents what I would call healthy self-regard and self-promotion from becoming a kind of braggy, almost insecure kind of promotion. So, I think humility is really important. I try and – well, I don’t have to try. I wake up in the morning feeling terrible [laughs], so that’s easy. But I honestly as a professional when I meet another professional who I think is really good who is humble in a kind of honest way without being self-deprecating or self-damaging, it really matters. I notice it and it means a lot. And I love that.

**John:** You and I can both think of some screenwriters who are really good at their job but they are lacking any humility. And —

**Craig:** Oh god.

**John:** And they – you marginalize them because of their lack of humility. And so – and I think it’s great that you’re drawing a distinction between – you can be proud of your work, you can be proud of your presentation, you can really be focused on the hustle that gets you forward, but always having the humility to ask what if I’m wrong. Or, you know, to acknowledge that there’s others out there who are doing great work as well. I think it allows sort of a self-correcting aspect which is really crucial.

**Craig:** Correct. And I will also say that when a writer talks about something they love, let’s say I’m reading a line and there’s a writer, she’s saying, “I read this script by this person. I think it’s amazing and here’s why.” My heart just pops open. Because that to me – that’s when I go, OK, you are – I love what you’re saying and how you’re thinking. I love the fact that you’re talking about someone else. I think it’s amazing when people do that. That to me is where I really actually come to respect the person doing the praising, even more than perhaps the person they’re praising.

It’s when people start banging their own gong kind of without any sense of context or humility that I just go, OK, well you know what would be really cool? If somebody else said this about you. That would be amazing. Right? And so I love saying great things about other writers online that I love and respect and admire. I think it’s a really healthy part of being a professional. Again, I’m not saying you have to stop saying that you’ve done something good. I’m just saying maybe every – just pare it. If you’re going to sort of talk about look what I did, isn’t that awesome, hire me, pay me. These are good things, right? Also, take a look at what that person did. And hire them and pay them, too. That’s a helpful thing.

**John:** Agreed. So I’m going to put a link in the show notes to the existing speech which was back in 2006. But part of why I’m bringing it up here is that I feel like there’s a lot that needs to be updated just in terms of what’s changed in the world and also I think some of my assumptions or my – I was writing for a slightly different world but also I think my views have changed a bit.

So clearly some things have changed. As I wrote this initial essay I was talking about websites. And now of course websites are social media. And so, you know, writing a blog post is a bigger effort than sending off a tweet. And so I think a lot more people are public-facing enterprises in ways that they weren’t back in the day. And so what does professionalism mean in a tweet is a different thing. It’s not just about – it’s not the grammar but it’s looking at how are you engaging with the wider world. Are you being fair to the people that you are calling out? Call out culture in general. The cycle of outrage is something that is very different.

And I see writers piling on in ways that are just not helpful or good or professionalism. And certainly doesn’t show any of those five or now six characteristics that we’re looking for in a professional.

I look at #MeToo and the degree to which I think sometimes professionalism can be used as synonymous with keeping your mouth shut. And that wasn’t good.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm. No.

**John:** That didn’t work out. I look at Donald Trump and breaking all norms and having no shame. Having no humility whatsoever.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so I think we have to acknowledge that it’s tougher to argue that the only way to be successful is to be professional when you have the most unprofessional person I can imagine running the country.

**Craig:** Is he? [laughs] Is he running anything?

**John:** I don’t know.

**Craig:** Don’t you just think that they just give that baby a rattle in the morning and then tuck him in at night with a hamburger.

**John:** Yeah. I mean, somehow he got there.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** We can parse all the things that happened but it makes it tough to aspire to the highest standards when you see that the person who got the highest office has none of those standards.

**Craig:** Yeah. This is when it’s the hardest – it’s easy to be a professional when it’s not hard to be a professional. And it’s hard to be a professional when it’s hard to be a professional. And when you’re surrounded by amateurs and when it is amateur hour and when you are tempted to stand up and say, “Does anyone in this room understand how stupid you all are and how under-qualified you all are and how over-authorized you all are?” Those are the moments where it’s really hard to maintain your professionalism. And yet generally speaking when you blow it you blow it. You know?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You just have to kind of be patient. It’s the worst. And it’s not fair and it’s particularly not fair to people who have historically been excluded to finally arrive and then be told, “Oh, and also now you have to be patient again because for this, and this, and this.” And I understand why people don’t want to be patient. And in some circumstances they shouldn’t. You know, I know I’m old school. I know that. But by and large being professional in the long run will accrue to your benefit. I believe that as an article of faith.

**John:** Yes. I would say that part of being professional is sort of peer standards and I think we have to acknowledge that for a very long time those peer standards were set by, you know, straight white men.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes.

**John:** And so what was professional was their expectation. And so they could use unprofessional as a cudgel against anybody who didn’t match those things. And so we always have to be questioning and challenging what those things are. And so code switching as an example of using different speech with different people that’s a natural thing. And so that we don’t recognize that people who are working for us are going to do that is ridiculous. And we have to sort of broaden our expectations of what is appropriate in different places. And that people’s backgrounds are going to influence how they are presenting themselves and that’s natural.

And that you sort of want people working for you that reflect a wide range of experience because that’s the only way you’re going to be getting all the information that you should be getting in.

**Craig:** Yeah. And to be clear, being professional doesn’t mean that suddenly solomonically you know exactly what the answer to every conflict is. We are now in a space where we are running into conflicts that we weren’t expecting or hadn’t previously defined and we’re not quite sure what to do about them at times. I’m speaking about people that are in authority and have the ability to make decisions or set policy. We’re all learning to some extent together. And negotiating together. And, of course – and this is the big secret – people are individuals. So we can come up with policies and conventional wisdoms but for certain individuals they just don’t agree. I mean, it’s hard, right? You can’t just say, “Well, in general the way we should treat this group of people is blankety-blank.”

90% of those people will say, “Yes, thank you.” And 10% will say, “I hate that.” So now what do you do if some of those 10% are in your room working for you? It’s really – I think we have to give each other a little bit of a break while we figure this out.

**John:** Yeah. And on the topic of figuring stuff out, like a thing that came up recently was Walter Mosley, a great writer, who left the writers’ room of Star Trek Discovery because he used the N-word. Walter Mosley is black. And so is it fair for Walter Mosley to use that word in the room? Is it appropriate for Walter Mosley to use that word in the room? I don’t know. I don’t have an answer for you. But that was an issue. And so that’s a thing we have to figure out.

I see staff writers on Twitter who are asked to promote their show or to live tweet show but are also called out for having their own opinions at times. And that’s a thing we have to figure out. We have influencers whose whole – who make their living–

**Craig:** Blech.

**John:** –seeming like they’re just normal people or whatever, but it’s their authenticity that is selling a brand, but they are the brand. That’s a weird thing. It makes me really uncomfortable.

**Craig:** Yeah. Why don’t we just replace the word influencer with sociopaths? Isn’t that what that is? [laughs]

**John:** I know two influencers who are genuinely great people. But is challenging to know sort of like, OK, are you actually having fun or are you having fun for a brand? And that’s, yes.

**Craig:** You know, the Walter Mosley thing is fascinating. The only details I know were from the story I read, but it seems like there was an African-American writer on staff who complained to HR and then Walter Mosley – I don’t know if he was just immediately terminated. I think they kind of had a discussion with him. And from what I sussed out he said, “Yeah, no, I’m not going to apologize for that.” And then they said, OK, well you’ve got to go.

Whenever I see these things, these stories of this sort I think please remember, Craig, that you weren’t there and you don’t know everything.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** I don’t know – do you know how many times you think you understand something and then somebody comes up to you and says, “Oh, let me just tell you what actually happened and the way it happened.” And you go, “Ooohhh.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So there are times where I think like, what, they did what? And then you find out everything and you go, oh yeah, I totally get it now. We just don’t know. But oh my god, does that not stop us from yapping our judgments out there into the world. Like we are Galactus ready to eat the planet for the crime of whatever outrage we’re currently simmering over. We just don’t know. And by the way, you and I – one thing we both are sure of is that in general the entertainment journalism industry not great at reporting full facts, context, et cetera.

**John:** Yep. Context is tough. And I would say but at least entertainment press might have a thousand words to dedicate to something. A tweet doesn’t. So a tweet has almost no context. You’re sort of creating context around the outrage storm that’s there. And that ain’t healthy.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** But another thing which is worth noticing is that sometimes what’s professional can feel artificial. It can feel not real or authentic because like, oh, you’re trying too hard. And that’s a weird thing that we’re at now, too. Where just like using full sentences, you know, proper punctuation, things are changing but there’s still an expectation of sort of how things are supposed to be working.

So, just recognizing that I think the core characteristics of professionalism are probably enduring. And I’m going to probably add humility as one of those. But figuring out how those apply to a quickly changing world is the challenge we’re always going to be wrestling with. Which is why I can give this speech in October and then a few years later I’m going to have to update it again because things will have changed.

**Craig:** I think that’s the most important thing. And that is what’s going to keep you from being cranky old man. I mean, look, I was born a cranky old man. But what I’m trying to avoid is a cranky old man set in his ways. As long you are keeping tabs on the way the world changes and you’re listening to people from a wide range of ages and races and orientations and beliefs then you should be able to adapt as the world changes. You will not be young ever again. You will not be current in the way that a 25-year-old is current. Not possible. Nor should it be.

But what you can avoid is being ignorant, stuck in your ways, blinkered, whatever word you want to come up with for somebody that’s just decided I’m checking out. Like, look, I know somewhere along the line I just said I can’t keep up with new music anymore. It’s over. Right? It’s over. That’s fine. No problem. I’m OK to let that go and just live with the 70 years of music that that I know and I feel good about. Fine.

But when it comes to the way our society functions and in particular the way our business functions and the way professional writers function it’s incumbent upon me to listen – and again be humble – and not immediately go, “Wah, these kids,” even though I did take a shot at millennials earlier, because sometimes they are dicks.

**John:** All right. Let’s answer some listener questions. We have two questions here about credits. Craig, you know a ton about credits so maybe we’ll ask you these questions. Tim writes, “On When They See Us I notice that Ava DuVernay has a strange story credit. Can you shed some light on to why she’s on there twice?” And the credit he’s linking to is “Story by Ava DuVernay and Ana DuVernay & Julian Breece.” Craig tell us.

**Craig:** Sure. It does look weird. And here’s how that functions. When you write as a team with somebody you are considered a unique writer for the purposes of credit determination. So Ava DuVernay & Julian Breece. They wrote together as a team. That is considered a writer. Ava DuVernay also clearly worked on this on her own. That’s a different writer. So Ava DuVernay on her own is considered a discrete writer from Ava DuVernay and Julian Breece.

Now, you go into an arbitration if there is – in this case I don’t know if there was an arbitration.

**John:** I suspect it would have to be because she was a producer on the show. She was a production executive on the show.

**Craig:** Yeah, so there was an automatic arbitration. And so what happens is they look at all the material. They don’t see names. What they see is Writer A and Writer B and Writer C and Writer D. In this case let’s just say there was Writer A and Writer B. Writer A was Ava DuVernay. Writer B was Ava DuVernay and Julian Breece. The arbiters look at it and they go, “You know what? Story seems to be Writer A. Deserves Story credit. And so does Writer B. That’s what it is.”

Now, I believe – I could be wrong – I’m pretty sure that as a writer you have the option in this circumstance to collapse the credit down. So you don’t have to have your name twice. In this case, I don’t know if she chose to have her name twice or if she wasn’t aware that was an option. Or, third possibility, I’m just wrong about this. But I don’t thing I am. I think you can collapse your name down and it just would say Ava DuVernay & Julian Breece.

But, the Writers Guild would understand that you actually do have more of a percentage of that credit for the purposes of distributing residuals. Because residuals are based on the credits. So in this case – like in features Story is worth 25% of residuals. So if you are Story by Ava DuVernay and Ava DuVernay & Julian Breece, half of that 25% would go to Ava and half of the other half of 25% would go to Ava, and then the rest would go to Julian Breece.

So you can collapse your credits down to avoid this weird syndrome of double naming. But you would not lose your fair percentage of residuals as a result.

**John:** Yes. So the crucial take away from that is this was probably a result of arbitration and the folks who were assigning those credits they didn’t see names. They just saw Writer A and Writer B. And you wouldn’t think twice about it if it was just Writer A and Writer B. It’s just a weird situation where Writer B is a team that also includes Writer A.

**Craig:** Yeah. I believe – and I believe this collapsing down thing is possible because I think I’ve done it.

**John:** OK. Cool. Nick from Sydney, Australia, who lives in LA, asks, “Can a Created by TV credit be taken away in the same way that a writing credit can in cases where subsequent writers make substantial changes to a screenplay? For example, if I secure a Created by credit on my contract for work on a pilot script and series bible, but then another showrunner takes over the project and makes substantial changes. Can I have the credit taken away? Is there arbitration for such an action?”

Craig, talk us through Created by.

**Craig:** OK, I have an answer. I looked it up. So, a Created by credit comes from an original series and there are two ways you can get – you become eligible for a Created credit. You write a format for the series. I think in that sense what it means is an outline or bible. Or, and/or, you receive Story by or Written by credit on the pilot episode of the series.

Generally if no format has been written, so that would be the equivalent of a treatment in features, then the Created by credit will go to the writers who receive the Story by or Written by credit on the pilot. And that’s how that works. So it is a function of the WGA making a determination. You can’t be guaranteed it. There must be a final determination of credits on the pilot episode of the series.

So, what I would say to Nick from Sydney, Australia is if you wrote the pilot script and the series bible, the series bible in and of itself should guarantee you a Created by credit. Somebody else could add on if they receive a Story by or Written by credit on the pilot, then they too would be eligible for a Created by credit.

**John:** All right. It’s time for our One Cool Things. This is the fall. So it means that I have to have one of my One Cool Things be the Flu Shot.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** A good friend of ours was felled by the flu this past week. So, guys, get the flu shot. It’s basically like the cheapest insurance you can get for like not being sick for a week to ten days. Just get your Flu Shot.

**Craig:** Get it.

**John:** It’s good. It’s helpful.

**Craig:** Get it.

**John:** I can also recommend that if you are using Highland2, the pro upgrade on Highland2, there’s a new item underneath the help menu for the Highland2 Slack Channel. So if you’re a Pro member you can join on Slack where we are discussing features that are coming to Highland and you get an early look at things. So if you are a person who uses Slack or a person who might want to use Slack we have a channel now for those pro users. And you should come join us there and we can talk about the future of Highland because there’s some really cool things coming down the pike.

**Craig:** Fantastic. It is fall. And so I feel like if they could only come up with a pumpkin spice Flu Shot.

**John:** Oh. That would do it. Sell a thousand of them.

**Craig:** Right? [Crosstalk]

**John:** I have last request of listeners. One of the things we’re working on in Highland is support for scripts that are written right to left, so Arabic and Hebrew and some other languages. What we’re really lacking is examples of scripts written in those languages. And so I’ve seen scripts written in most of the Roman languages, like European languages. I’ve not seen scripts in a lot of other languages. And so I know some people use Word or other places. But if you are a listener who is working in screenplays in languages other than English and you feel like sending us a copy, just a PDF so we can take a look at what it looks like, that would be great. So just send it through to ask@johnaugust.com.

We just would love a bigger corpus of scripts from outside the US and Europe to take a look at sort of how we can do a better job working with those languages.

**Craig:** I’ve weighted my whole life to just look at you pouring over a Hebrew text.

**John:** Absolutely. What’s the name of the stick you use as you read the Torah?

**Craig:** You know, that’s a great question. I don’t know. Well, the deal with the stick, traditionally it’s a silver rod with a hand. It’s a little bit like the hand from the hand of the queen or the hand of the king in Game of Thrones. So it’s a pointer in the shape of a hand and finger. And the purpose of that is you’re not supposed to touch the Torah because you’re desecrating it with your stupid human finger or something. Because it’s so important.

God, I’m such an atheist. But, yeah, I used that thing. I used the stick when I was a young bar mitzvah boy.

**John:** Craig, I’ve never asked. What was your bar mitzvah passage? Like what were you assigned?

**Craig:** Do not remember. But I will tell you that it was from Jeremiah. I remember it was from Jeremiah. Not one of your more popular chapters of the Old Testament. But here’s the weird part. This is actually kind of bizarre. So the Jewish calendar is not like the January to December calendar that we use. It is a lunar calendar. This is why for instance Easter is constantly shuffling around. Because Easter is based on Passover. And Passover moves around per the Jewish calendar.

So, when you are a bar mitzvah boy or a bat mitzvah girl you get assigned what’s called a Haftarah which is your portion of the Torah that you’re supposed to read, AKA memorize blindly because you don’t speak the language. And the Torah is read from beginning to end throughout the Jewish year. And there’s a holiday called Simchat Torah which is, yay, we get to start over again and read it again. So, over the course of the year every Saturday or Friday and Saturday there is a chunk that you read to progress your way through. Meaning your birthday will roughly coincide with a general section, depending on what year it is.

Here’s the weird part. My birthday is in April, early April. My father’s birthday is in early June. That’s two months apart. My father’s parents were so proud of him, because they were so Jewish, that in 19 – he was 13 in 1955. They took him to a small recording studio in Manhattan and made him do his Haftarah thing into a microphone which was pressed onto a vinyl 78 RPM disc.

**John:** That’s amazing.

**Craig:** And he had it. And he took it out while I was studying my thing. And he took it out to play it and I said, oh my god, it’s the same one. We had the same one. Isn’t that weird?

**John:** That is great and weird.

**Craig:** It’s great and weird.

**John:** Yeah, so I mean mathematically not impossible, but still great when those things happen.

**Craig:** It was highly unlikely but, yeah, so we both had the same torture, reciting the same who cares paragraph at length. That’s this week’s Jew Corner with Craig Jew Mazin. My One Cool Thing this week is Seven Cool Things if I may. Not this past Sunday when we won/almost won/sort of won/lost everything at the Emmys, the Sunday prior was the Creative Arts Emmys where a whole bunch of our Chernobyl professionals were nominated for Emmys. And seven of them won.

And I am so proud of them. And so I just wanted to say their names and what they won because it was a joy. I was just – can I just be Jewish again for a second. I was kvelling. I was kvelling. I really was. I’m so proud of them. So I’m just going to say who they were because they did such a good job. So, Stuart Hilliker and Vincent Piponnier, our rerecording and production mixers won for Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Limited Series or Movie. And this was a great one. Outstanding Production Design for a Narrative, Period, or Fantasy program one hour or more, we won, Luke Hull, production designer, Karen Wayfield, art director, and Claire Levinson, set director. And on that one we even beat Game of Thrones.

**John:** How nice is that?

**Craig:** I mean, it was pretty good. I was sitting right behind Dan and Dave, so on that one we were kind of giving each other [unintelligible], but you know what? It was good. They won like 10 Emmys that night. So congrats to them.

We also won for Outstanding Special Visual Effects in a supporting role. And that was – there’s a whole bunch of guys and women, but Max Denison and Lindsay McFarland were our leads on that one.

We won for Outstanding Single Camera Picture Editing for a Limited Series or Movie. That was won by one of our editors, Simon Smith. So fantastic for him.

This was a great one. We also won Outstanding Music Composition for a Limited Series, Movie, or Special. That was Hildur Guonadottir who was our amazing composer. And by the way won an Emmy for Chernobyl. She – I’m predicting – is going to be nominated for an Oscar for Joker. So she’s having one hell of a year. I mean, oh god, I love her so much. So I’m so happy to see that.

And we also won Outstanding Sound Editing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Special. That was Stefan, Joe, Michael, Harry, Andy, and Anna.

And we won Outstanding Cinematography for a Limited Series or Movie and that was Jakob Ihre, the amazing Jakob Ihre, who was our director DP.

So congratulations to all of our winners and also we had I think six other nominees and so we are just so proud of all of them. I couldn’t be happier with that result. It was a fantastic night. And the best part was I didn’t even have to worry. I didn’t have to be nervous. I didn’t have to think of a speech or any of that nonsense. So, that was the best part of this whole thing.

**John:** Absolutely. Congratulations again to all of them and to you, Craig, or–

**Craig:** Or not. [laughs]

**John:** Or not. [laughs] Congratulations on the show regardless. And that’s our episode for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It was edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by John Spurney. If you have an outro, and we’re kind of running low on outros here folks, please 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. But on Twitter, of course, Craig is @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust.

If you have thoughts about professionalism, if you have thoughts about the switch from Libsyn over to Patreon or some other stuff like that hit us up. Tell us on Twitter or send us an email. Because we want to know what you think.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts. You’ll find all the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. You need to sign up there in order to use the Scriptnotes app for iOS or Android, neither of which is quite up to snuff and I’m sorry about that.

You can also download 50-episode seasons at store.johnaugust.com

Craig, thanks and congratulations. Next week is going to be a big show for a secret reason that people don’t know yet.

**Craig:** Ooh, I’m so excited. I don’t think I know it either.

**John:** You know who the guest is.

**Craig:** Oh, I do. Yeah, it’s pretty great. [laughs]

**John:** Cool.

**Craig:** Have a nice week. Bye.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [The Emmy Award Winners](https://www.emmys.com/awards/nominees-winners) Congrats Craig!
* [WGA Election Results](https://www.wga.org/news-events/news/press/wgaw-announces-2019-officers-and-board-of-directors-election-results)
* [She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement](https://www.amazon.com/She-Said-Breaking-Harassment-Movement/dp/0525560343) by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
* [Why I Quit the Writer’s Room](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/opinion/sunday/walter-mosley.html) by Walter Mosley
* [Professional Writing and the Rise of the Amateur](https://johnaugust.com/2006/professional-writing-and-the-rise-of-the-amateur)
* [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 Jon Spurney ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_419_professionalism.mp3)

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2019/mushroom-powder).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 414 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast it’s How Would This Be a Movie with four terrific stories in the news that maybe, just maybe, could become feature films. Plus we’ll be answering some listener questions about narrators, personal crises, and song titles.

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** And Craig I thought we would do the questions up front because I always feel like we push the questions to the end and we may rush a bit. So we’re going to lead with the questions with the questions this week.

**Craig:** Yeah. We can really milk the answers. I love it.

**John:** That’s what we’ll do. But, I have news and a favor to ask of all our listenership. So, I’ll post a link here in the show notes, but I am trying to direct a feature film. I think I said this on the podcast before. Part of the reason why I’m not running for the WGA board again is I’m hoping to direct a feature film in these next two years. That film is called The Shadows. The central character in it is Abby. She is 15 years old. She’s smart, resourceful, anxious, and blind. That means I need to find a blind actress who is 15 years old-ish to play this role.

That’s not going to be easy. There’s not just a list of teenage blind actors who are ready to make feature films. So, if you follow through the link you’ll see I have a casting notice up that describes what I’m looking for. It has audition scenes. My hope is that we’re going to find someone who has probably never had the opportunity to act in a feature film before or television who will self-tape and present herself as the possible actress for this role.

But if I cannot find this actress I cannot make a movie. So, if you know an Abby or you think you might know an Abby the place to check out the information is johnaugust.com/casting. That’s where you go to see all the information and the audition scenes and stuff about self-taping of yourself to possibly be cast in this movie.

**Craig:** Good URL. Appropriate. So traditionally the way this would work is casting directors would be sent out into the world and they would cast a wide net and show up in malls and things, trying to just pluck out some diamond from the rough. But now we have these things. We have podcasts and Twitter and social media. So this is a great way to get the word out that you’re looking for somebody like this and I have to presume that there are tons of kids across the United States who are acting, or acting in school productions, or community theater who are blind who will hear this and say, yeah, what about me, John August.

**John:** Yeah, what about you?

**Craig:** What about me?

**John:** So classically the casting director would send out this notice and you might do searches in malls and such, but that’s not going to work for this very specific part. So ultimately there will be a casting director to help do all the other things, but if I cannot find this person it is sort of pointless to do anything more about trying to make this movie. So, this is not the first step. The first step was writing the script. But the second step is trying to find this actress, so that’s what I’m trying to do right now.

Ryan Knighton who was on the show once or twice, a fantastic writer, actually the reason why I met him was because I was writing this script. So that’s how long I’ve been working on this. This predates the Arlo Finch books. But now is the time where I can actually make this movie. So, if you can help me find this actress I’d be much obliged.

**Craig:** Now, here’s a question for you. Let’s say you don’t. Do you scrap the movie?

**John:** We scrap the movie.

**Craig:** You scrap the movie.

**John:** I don’t think you can make the movie kind of any other way. I’ll say that as I started writing this movie it was a real concern. Like is this an idea worth pursuing knowing how hard it will be to find the right person for this part. And I decided to go for it because it’s something I’d never seen before on screen and that’s really interesting to me. I want to make the movie I want to see most, and this is kind of the movie I want to see.

So, that’s why I wrote it and that’s why I’m hoping to be able to direct it.

**Craig:** Well, I think you will find someone. I can’t imagine that you won’t. That doesn’t seem possible. Sight is not required for acting talent. It’s just not. You know, I think of all the things that we do in our business and acting is so interestingly internal. In many ways I would imagine that there’s probably a lot of acting exercises where if you are sighted you close your eyes anyway and try and relate to somebody without the extra cues. So, I would be shocked if you don’t find not just one person but a lot of people. I think you will.

**John:** I hope so, too. And I do think it will be a process of working with this person to figure out a language for how we’re going to do the things we need to do and how to sort of best make this movie happen. If this were a supporting character we might not have the time and resources to make this all possible, but this is the central character and so it’s all going to be about figuring out the best way to make this movie. So, it’s going to be a very collaborative process.

**Craig:** No question. I mean, I’m just thinking ahead to the day you’re there and you’re shooting. I mean, other than figuring out how to assist the actor with hitting a mark. By the way, people probably don’t even know – a lot of people don’t know why this whole thing of the actor has to hit their mark even exists. It’s because film cameras and even the video cameras that we use now like the Alexa and so on and so forth, they don’t have automatic focus the way your iPhone does or an old school video camera because those auto focuses are actually very slow. I mean, you’ve probably noticed that when you’re shooting things that sometimes they’re blurry and then they get – well you’re not allowed to have any blurry ever when you’re making a movie.

So there is a focus puller whose job is to constantly adjust focus depending on how far away from the lens the actor who is being filmed is. So they measure where they are and if there’s a scene where they’re moving then during rehearsal we’ll watch them and then there is an assistant camera person, the camera assistant, who watches them and where they stop that person comes over and puts a little piece of tape down or a little bean bag. And the actor now has to reliably stop there each time because that’s a distance that the focus puller is relying on.

So I could see where if somebody was not sighted you would need to have a little extra assistance there to make sure that they didn’t fall short or go too far depending on their motion. But beyond that I think it’s probably the same as everything else, right?

**John:** Yes. So focus is one small issue. I’m sure they’ll be other things that come up. But I’m mostly just excited to meet this actor and see what she can bring to the part.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** Now, Craig, you actually had an unexpected bonus episode of the Chernobyl podcast that just came out today as we’re recording this. Tell us about this episode. And I especially liked your little prologue to it.

**Craig:** Oh, thank you. Surprise episode. So this is my Lemonade. It’s a surprise. Well, we were talking and so the podcast was surprisingly popular. We didn’t necessarily imagine that Chernobyl itself was going to be quite as viewed as it was. And I really didn’t think that the podcast would be quite as listened to as it was. But it was. And that’s very gratifying. And Jared and I were talking and he suggested kind of a little bit of a bonus, OK now that the show has come and aired and has been viewed and occupied a space could we/should we discuss it.

And so we got Peter Sagal back and Jared joined us. And I think maybe a day after or two days after we recorded it all of a sudden there was this news story and, huh, a nuclear explosion in Russia that they weren’t telling us about. Well that’s familiar. So I did a quickie solo prologue and, yes, that is available this morning. So if you subscribed to the Chernobyl podcast you got a little ding on your phone this morning. But if you don’t it’s available on all podcast platforms in the known universe, including YouTube and Stitcher and all the other ones that John knows I don’t know.

**John:** And we’ll also put a link to it in the show notes so people can follow through there. Because sometimes people are meticulous and they delete subscriptions just so they don’t have old things sitting around.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So you can follow through there. One final bit of news. There’s been an issue with the app, the Scriptnotes app for the premium listeners. Folks both on the Android side and on the iOS side have written in with some problems. So, if you are having problems with the app the general advice I can give you is make sure you’re using the most recent version of it. If you’re still having a problem write into the ask@johnaugust.com account and Megana can help steer you towards some resources or at least get reported to the actual folks who manufacture those apps to make sure that we get those bugs fixed. Sorry for anybody who is having problems.

**Craig:** Was the bug that somehow some of the money was going to me?

**John:** No. It was not a money flow issue. It was simply an authorization token.

**Craig:** So that bug remains is what you’re saying? The bug of money not going to me.

**John:** That bug – that is a feature not a bug.

**Craig:** [laughs] I am a feature not a bug.

**John:** You are a feature not a bug. Some follow up. Why writes in, “As a longtime fan of the show I believe you guys have made me a better writer. But that sadly cannot be empirically proven. My body weight however is easy to accurately measure. A few months ago I listened back to Episode 50, How to not be Fat. And John’s diet, slow carb, sounded really simple and easy. Having never attempted a diet before I went in with no expectations but the change was instantaneous. Now some four months later I’ve already lost over 30 pounds. So this is a thank you for helping me to not be fat at the very least.”

Craig, can you even remember back to Episode 50?

**Craig:** No, I thought we started at Episode 51. I don’t know if we even did this. What are these first episodes? They might be other guys.

**John:** I think this was like a random advice episode. I think this was maybe not a traditional craft and character arcs. But we did talk about it. I remember discussing it and back at that time I was doing this slow carb diet which is like the Atkins diet. It’s like all these things where essentially you eat fats and proteins and not a lot of carbohydrates. And it works. And at that point I was eating a lot of black beans and eggs. And you will lose weight if you do that.

I’m not doing that right now, but I’m sort of mindful of those things and I try not to eat a lot of carbs that I don’t need to eat. So, if you want to go back and do that, great. But we’re not really a good diet and health advice podcast.

**Craig:** No. Not at all. There are four billion of those. Listen to one of those waste of times. Because we would like to waste your time in different ways.

**John:** Yeah. But Why I’m happy for you that you‘ve lost this weight. I would encourage you to find other ways other than just a diet to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Because just eating alone is not enough.

**Craig:** Yes. Meth is not recommended. You will lose a lot of weight. A lot of weight with meth.

**John:** A tremendous amount. Because teeth – teeth are heavy, too.

**Craig:** Just the teeth alone.

**John:** Those last ounces, just pop them out one by one.

**Craig:** Yeah, man.

**John:** Tic-Tacs.

**Craig:** Meth. I mean, who doesn’t know not to do meth still?

**John:** My hunch is that some people who do meth – this is me talking with absolutely no expertise.

**Craig:** I like this. Go for it.

**John:** My hunch is that people who find themselves doing meth often don’t know they’re doing meth when they start doing meth or they’re coming from some other drug and when that drug is no longer available that’s how they’re ending up at meth. That’s just a guess. I’ve done no research or Googling before saying that.

**Craig:** Your theory is that no one is really sitting down and going, right, so I don’t have drug problems and I’m aware that this is meth. Let’s go. You’re saying that’s probably not happening.

**John:** I think that’s probably not the default pathway into meth abuse.

**Craig:** Well, meth. How about some questions. Should I start with Alison from Atlanta?

**John:** Go for it.

**Craig:** Alison from Atlanta asks, “I’m in the planning phases of my screenplay and I’ve come to fork in the road about whether or not to use a narrator. I’ve heard the argument that it’s lazy writing as you’re telling instead of showing, which I understand, but some of my favorite movies or TV shows use narration really successfully. I feel like it could be especially useful when there is significant dissonance with how a character feels inside versus how they are behaving. Do you have any advice for when the narration is useful or when it detracts from the story?”

John, what’s your advice for Alison?

**John:** The only project I’ve had that I think has a narrator – I take that back. Two projects I’ve used narrators for. The first is Big Fish. The second is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In both cases they were really, really helpful. But let’s take a look at why. In Big Fish that narrator is sort of the voice of Edward Bloom, the storyteller who is bridging between the real world and the fantasy world. It starts kind of in the real world and drifts into the fantasy world. Helpful for that. Could you do the movie without the narrator? Yes. But it is useful.

Second movie is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which is very much a fairy tale, a storybook telling of this boy’s quest and Willy Wonka. In those cases, useful.

Those are situations where I think the narrator is helpful. Unfortunately we encounter so many movies and scripts where voiceover or narration has been applied in post. It was not part of the initial conception of the storytelling. And, wow, you can tell.

**Craig:** Yeah. Narration sometimes is a Band-Aid. But I want to say, Alison, when you say some of my favorite movies or TV shows use narration really successfully, that’s the answer to your question. Anybody who makes the argument that narration is inherently lazy writing, as you “telling instead of showing” is wrong. And you should tell them to their faces that they’re wrong. And that probably everything else that they say after that should be considered invalid. Because it’s the most ridiculous thing to say. Narration is a perfectly good tool if it’s used properly.

Like you, John, I have not written a lot of things that have narration in them, but I remember the first thing I wrote with narration was a movie based on a Philip Dick short story. This is many, many years ago. And it’s one of my favorite things that I’ve written, so of course it didn’t get made. But the hero was an immigrant who did not speak English. He was an Italian immigrant. He didn’t speak English. And the story itself had a kind of romantic fairy tale quality to it so a narrator felt appropriate. He was able to kind of fill in some things when the character was alone and wouldn’t necessarily be speaking in his own language. And if he did why would we subtitle. There’s a lot of weirdness in there. But it was mostly the fairy tale-ness of it that seemed to call for a narrator.

Similarly when you talk about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it is kind of a modern fairy tale. It is clearly taking place in a world that is a pushed version of our own. So the storybook aspect of it feels worth honoring and acknowledging. So, go for it Alison. If it feels right then do it. And if you’re doing it because it’s just convenient, or solving some problems, maybe not.

**John:** I would encourage people to think about the movie Clueless without Cher’s narration. It would be unwatchable. You would not like Cher in that movie if you did not have the ability to see inside of her head. And that’s really what it is. It’s honestly kind of like giving that protagonist a song in a musical. It’s allowing you to expose what they’re not saying to everybody else in the scene. So that may be another situation where you need to use it.

**Craig:** Correct. And if you think about Fleabag which is spectacular, all of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s little discourse to camera to us, that’s narration. That’s what that is. The fact that she’s filmed doing it but talking to us doesn’t change the fact that it’s narration. And we don’t mind it, we love it. Because it fits. It makes sense.

Goodfellas needs narration. Narration – probably the same exercise worth doing. Watch Goodfellas and every time the narration starts hit mute. It just won’t work. Or it won’t work as well.

**John:** All right. Nicole asks, “I live in one of the cities that was recently devastated by a mass shooting. As I’m sure you can imagine you the depth and breadth of emotion in the aftermath is sometimes overwhelming. I have an appointment with my therapist and we’ll work through it with her, but in the meantime I’ve got a draft due to a producer I’ve never worked with before. Normally I’m super responsible about hitting deadlines, but it’s really hard to get my head into writing comedy right now so I’m struggling to get pages out and I am falling behind. How do you overcome your personal life crises when you have to get your work done? Should I let the producer know that the draft might be delayed or wait and see if I can get back on track soon? The draft is due in about two weeks.”

Craig, what advice would you have for Nicole?

**Craig:** Well, first of all fantastic question. And I’ve been there. Happily I haven’t been there a lot. But when it happens it happens. And I think Nicole your sense that this is not mentally doable for you needs to be listened to and respected. Yeah, you could soldier through it but would it be good? And is it good for you?

When this has happened to me, when there have been incidents in my own life – I just went through one myself again with my family – where either someone is ill or there is a crisis or trauma that befalls you or around you or you just on your own without any cause slip into a clinical depression or an unmanageable state of anxiety it is absolutely fair to call people up and say I need two weeks, because I need two weeks. This is where I am. This the page I’m on. This is why I need the two weeks, without getting into super-duper detail. I will be back after those two weeks and then I will finish.

There are not many things that will work as well as a break. And what you don’t want to do is turn your work, your writing, the thing that you love and that you rely on into a burden or more fuel for dysfunction and misery. John, what do you think?

**John:** Your advice is absolutely correct. And what I would caution Nicole to do is not to wait until the actual due date to lob in that email or that phone call, because then it just looks like, oh, you just ran out of time and now you’re telling us.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, this is the time to reach out to that producer, even if it is a person you’ve not worked with before, and explain the situation. In this case you have – I don’t want to say the advantage – but because it’s a public event that everyone can see it’s pretty clear that there’s a basis behind this. That you’re not just making an excuse.

It can be tougher when it’s just your own thing. When it’s something in your own family that you don’t want to discuss. When it’s clinical depression coming up. When you’re having problems that can’t be sort of externally verified I know it’s scarier to reach out and make that call, but you got to reach out and make that call. And you need to do it before the time is up.

If you have an agent, manager, lawyer, someone else who is also on your side, a different producer if it’s about the studio, it’s worth clueing them in to just so that they have a sense of what you’re going through so that they can back you up a bit.

**Craig:** And you are working in a business that’s full of people that have all sorts of emotional issues and mental health issues. And after all you’re also working in a business that pedals emotion. That is our product. So the fact that you are a feeling person, that you have a sensitivity – that isn’t a bug, that’s a feature right?

You don’t have that thing that actors have where they can use their crisis to pump out tears on film or if they’re having a terrible, tragic day it theoretically could be turned to their advantage. Writing requires a lot of mental energy. It requires focus and attention. It’s spinning 12 plates at once. There’s a lot of logic going on. And then also all of that emotion. I think in general you will be met well by people. They will not say to you, “No, I want you to finish it anyway. You can’t take two weeks off.” Because at that point they’re kind of shooting themselves in the foot. What are they going to do, complain to you then when they get the script and don’t like it? You told them. You warned them.

Also, there’s really nothing they can do about it. You can just get sick for two weeks. If you feel, by the way, this is for anyone, that you’re working for people who truly will not get it, then lie. If somebody is so miserable as to not understand the validity of an emotional crisis then just tell them or having your agent or representative or manager tell them that you have a physical illness that is going to last two weeks. Because they can’t argue with that.

It’s a shame that sometimes you have to do that. But if somebody is going to be a total jerk about it then they forfeit their right for you to be completely honest and forthcoming.

**John:** I think that’s all true. The last thing I want to say is that just making that phone call or that email and telling them that this thing could come in late in my own experience has relieved so much anxiety on my side about the fact that I’m worried that I’m going to be late that it made the writing a lot easier. So some of what you’re actually feeling is the panic over a what if I can’t actually deliver this on time. And so by tipping them off that you may not be able to deliver this on time you’ve lowered the stress on yourself and you may actually be able to do the work that you need to do and be happy about the draft you’re turning in.

**Craig:** No question. Sometimes you say I need two weeks and they say sure. And then two days later you’re like I’m good. What you really needed was two days. And that’s the thing. You’re right. The worst feeling for writers is feeling that they have to write and yet they can’t do their best work. That’s a terrible feeling.

So, whatever you need to do to not have that feeling, do it.

**John:** Do it.

**Craig:** OK. So we’ve got one more question. This is from Seth who asks, “My question is about using a song as the basis for a movie. For example, if I decide to write a quirky rom-com about a grungy mechanic from the Lower East Side who meets a beautiful society girl from Central Park West and I call it Uptown Girl, do I owe Billy Joel a credit or money? I know that if the song is licensed that will cost. But what about the concept?” Well that’s an interesting question. Hmm, John, any thoughts on that one? We’ll be pretend lawyers for the moment.

**John:** We’ll be pretend lawyers. I think you’re in real jeopardy if you call that movie Uptown Girl. Uptown Girl is a title that everybody knows. It’s very clear that it’s inspired by that song. No, Seth, no. Don’t do it.

So, if a song inspires you, so if you wanted to do a movie about a mechanic and a society girl, you could do that probably pretty safely because it’s going to be generic enough that like there’s nothing in the song that you’re actually taking from that. But you call that movie Uptown Girl and you just put a giant crosshair on your back.

Honestly, if your movie has nothing to do with the song but you call it Uptown Girl you’re probably going to be getting some heated emails from some people who are not too happy about that. I don’t think that’s a safe choice. Craig, what do you think?

**Craig:** Yeah, I agree with you. I’m not sure where the legal line is per se, but you actually don’t want to find out. They’re going to make a problem for you. The point is that usually speaking the stories of songs in and of themselves aren’t really copyright – I mean, they’re copyrightable. Of course, lyrics are copyrighted. But the story inherent to those can be duplicated without fear of infringement.

For instance, I’m thinking of a good old story song like the Pina Colada song. Escape (The Pina Colada Song). So most people know the story of that ridiculous song. A guy gets tired of his marriage to his wife, so he is looking for singles ads, or I guess he writes a singles ad. Yeah, that’s what he does. He puts an ad looking for somebody who likes the following things, including Pina Coladas in the rain, and then somebody responds back and says, “I love all those things. Let’s meet.” And so he goes to a bar to meet up with this new woman that he’s going to cheat on his wife with and lo and behold it’s his wife. And then they laugh weirdly, which would not actually happen. In real life it would be a rocket ship to divorce.

But regardless, because it’s just bizarre, but the story of somebody looking to cheat on his wife and swiping right and ending up with his wife, anybody could do that. That idea is not intellectual property. If you call it The Pina Colada movie and he’s talking about Pina Coladas in the rain then oh yeah you’ve got a problem.

So I agree with you. I don’t see the point. I don’t really think the title Uptown Girl is so important to that concept anyway. If it’s the only attractive thing about that idea, well then you kind of are leaning on the Billy Joel-ness of it all and I would think he’d have a reasonable argument to make.

**John:** So titles we talked about before are – the whole process of getting titles cleared is complicated and there’s a whole division that sort of approves which movies can have which title. But it is complicated by songs. And I’ve been through several situations on movies and other projects where a title we would have wanted is a famous song. It becomes arguable like are we using it in reference to that song or not. It becomes complicated. Don’t call your movie Uptown Girl unless you’re making a Billy Joel related movie I would say.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** Agreed. All right. Let’s talk about movies we do want to make. This is a segment we do every once in a while called How Would This Be a Movie where people send us stories that are in the news and we talk about them the only way we know how to talk about them is how do we turn these into narrative feature films or perhaps TV series. This time we have four of them because there were four really good ones and I just couldn’t winnow it down.

Different people sent in different things. I’m not going to credit who sent stuff through because in some cases it was multiple people. But they’re all compelling in different ways.

So let’s start with a podcast I listened to this past week. It is by Willa Paskin for Slate’s Decoder Ring podcast. She is a terrific writer and these are really well-produced episodes. I really loved listening to the whole podcast series. The one this week was about the soft serve wars. So the Mr. Frosty trucks both in Midtown, Manhattan but also in China and sort of the war of turf, of different companies competing, and break off groups, and the history of soft serve ice cream. I thought there was a lot of compelling stuff here. Craig, how did you feel about this as story material?

**Craig:** Well, it’s an interesting world. And it occurred to me you probably didn’t have this, right? I mean, where you were growing up in Colorado?

**John:** No, we didn’t have soft serve trucks.

**Craig:** Yeah. We had them everywhere. So on Staten Island, and this extends throughout New York in every part of New York, you would have these trucks. And there were two trucks that would come by. One was the Good Humor man. So he had the Good Humor brand of ice cream.

**John:** And Good Humor was hard ice cream?

**Craig:** It was. It was incredibly hard. It was the hardest of ice creams. It was so hard. And then there was the Mister Softee truck who would come by, and that was the soft serve. And frankly I did prefer the Mister Softee. It just didn’t come by as often. And they would play their songs. They had their little jingles. And we would get very excited and run after the truck.

So, right off the bat I think one of the issues with this is that it’s not necessarily a universal experience. The notion of this kind of turf war over this particular kind of product. It does feel a little niche to me. Obviously when people are trying to do it China studios get very excited when something may appeal to a Chinese audience, because they’re greedy. But I’m a little concerned about that.

The story though that this brought to mind, when you were a kid, John, did you ever read a book called The Push Cart War?

**John:** Called The Push Cart War. Yes!

**Craig:** Do you remember that one?

**John:** We said it at the same time. I do absolutely. And they had little pea shooters and they were shooting out the truck tires I believe.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** I do remember The Push Cart War. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes. It reminded me a lot of that.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, The Push Cart War is basically a classic story of the little guy versus the big guy. And the little vendors versus the big trucks. And in this case I could certainly see a kind of comedy – I think it would have to be a comedy – of competing ice cream vendors who are at each other’s throats scrapping over the last nickel and dime. And then they have to face a common enemy which is, I don’t know, suddenly a Starbucks or some massive corporation is taking over by sending their new things in which is better and bigger supposedly. So it becomes mom and pop, little guy versus the big guy, and maybe there’s a little bit of an allegory of the way that capitalism gets people on the lower rungs to beat each other up and leave a space for the big guy to just waltz in.

But I’m not sure – I’m a little worried about the whole ice cream aspect of it because I just don’t know if people in like you say Boulder or Denver are going to say, oh yeah, ice cream trucks. I think they might go, “Ice cream trucks?” That’s a problem.

**John:** Well let’s talk about that universality. Because even in the intro here I said Mr. Frosty rather than Mister Softee because I didn’t know that as a thing.

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** That’s how little I knew about that. But I don’t know that this lack of universality really is necessarily a problem because I think, you know, I could imagine the start of this story very quickly setting up important it is for this community and really establishing the worlds. Because so many movies we see, like I don’t know anything about sort of how baseball mathematics works, but the movie is going to teach me how to care about that.

You know, there’s so many movies involve characters who are experts in things I don’t know anything about and that’s part of the experience of watching the movie. So I’m not so worried about the lack of universality in the sense of like places that don’t have ice cream trucks as long as I can establish why it’s important for these people who are selling ice cream and these people who are buying ice cream.

There were three kind of main threads and I think you’d have to pick one of them to make a movie. There’s the guys who are trying to start a Mister Softee business in China. And so that’s – you can picture that one. You’re trying to build something within a bureaucracy which is really complicated and you’re trying to explain to people what it is that you’re doing.

It was fascinating in the podcast talking about how McDonalds and I think KFC were the only places that were serving soft serve at that point and they had separate walk up drive-thru windows for just soft serve ice cream because it was so new and unusual there at the time they were launching. So China is one possibility and the rise and fall of that company.

Then the tension between the Mister Softee trucks and the competing brands within Midtown Manhattan. It’s probably a comedy. It’s probably like Adam Sandler is the godfather. Sort of a turf war kind of thing and it seems silly but these people are taking it really seriously. That section of the movie, I don’t know about you, but I got sort of PTSD trying to think about the logistics of shooting in Midtown Manhattan and how you’re getting all these trucks in Midtown Manhattan. The filming of it freaked me out.

**Craig:** By shooting in Toronto, of course. [laughs]

**John:** That’s naturally how you would do it.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But they’ll get the New York City tax credit. And finally the single character who is probably the most compelling and interesting is a woman they interview. She’s the ice cream woman who took over her dad’s route. He was a Good Humor man who then had a soft serve truck. And so she’s the – actually she doesn’t have a soft serve truck. She’s still selling traditional ice cream in Brooklyn.

She had a fantastic voice. She just felt like a really compelling character. For a single protagonist this woman trying to defend her father’s route feels like a through line. But I don’t know if any of these are compelling enough movies that I’m rushing out on a Friday night to see them.

**Craig:** No. I think it would require – I think you probably got closest with the idea of Sandler. Of a comedic star taking something that’s small like the Water Boy and making it into something epic. I mean, Tim Herlihy is a genius at doing stuff like that and I could easily see Tim writing a really funny movie that’s centered around Mister Softee versus Good Humor, which is just already I’m kind of giggling at it. It sounds like a funny idea.

So that’s probably the closest I would think to actually getting it made. I mean, this other last little component of this is that there is – for those of us who grew up in New York – there’s a lot of nostalgia to it. There’s a strange kind of connection to the past with those trucks when I see them walking around, even as an adult, and I would see the Mister Softee. The logo is like a cone that’s got soft serve but he’s got a face like in the cone. And just his face warms my heart. It just does. His dumb, stupid cone face makes me happy.

**John:** Yeah. I also got thinking about sort of what’s the color scheme, what’s the world, like what’s happening in the day. It got me thinking back to Do the Right Thing which is an incredibly hot day and sort of what it feels like to have an ice cream truck on that hot day and sort of like passing through these neighborhoods. What would it feel like and what does it feel like to be the guy on the truck? And it’s a cash business and so you’re always vulnerable that way. The staking out of corners. Even if it’s not done as heavy drama, it felt like there were dramatic moments in there. There were reversals. That felt interesting and I think doing it – probably knocking it back a few years and setting it period is helpful for that way, just because you get the benefit of nostalgia and a simpler time when we didn’t have Uber and Postmates and all the other things that got you your ice cream. You might be waiting for that truck to come.

**Craig:** All right. So we’ve decided. This is going to be set in the ‘70s or ‘80s. Tim Herlihy is writing it. Sandler is in it. It feels like it’s going to Netflix. Sandler has got that huge deal at Netflix. I’m in. I’m watching that movie. What do we get for – do we get money for this? Do you we get money when they? Yeah, you know what? They’ll have to send us money. Yeah. Money.

**John:** Yeah. We’ve made a lot off this.

**Craig:** Cool.

**John:** All right. So our next story is about Zimbabwe’s female rangers. It’s a story in the National Geographic by Lindsay M. Smith, photos by Brent Stirton. So this talks about an all-female wildlife ranger team, the Akashinga. And so they are the defenders of the animals within this region. It’s a non-profit international anti-poaching foundation. The Phundundu Wildlife Area is 115-square-mile former trophy hunting tract in the Zambezi Valley ecosystem.

We’ll summarize some stuff in here, but it’s worth clicking through for the photos because I thought the photos were actually one of the most fascinating parts of this. Craig, what did you take from the female ranger’s article?

**Craig:** Well, I thought that this was a chance to do something more than what it was. I actually – the value here to me is that it can be allegorical. And I do like these stories where it seems like, OK, this is pretty straight up. It’s about women who are fighting off poachers to protect animals. That’s a very nice thing. Who cannot like that? That’s very sweet. But in and of itself there’s the problem. It feels a little just saccharine. Right? Like, ah, cool, women are doing that. And they’re beating poachers. And everyone hates poachers. And they’re saving animals. Hooray.

But I think there’s probably an interesting story to be told underneath where these characters who are doing this are in their own way reclaiming something about their lives that was taken from them. This is not easy. Living in Zimbabwe isn’t always easy. That country has been under the thumb of Robert Mugabe, a dictator and a thug, for decades. And that part of Africa is a tough area to live. And being a woman in any part of Africa seems like it’s an additional challenge.

And so there is a chance to tell the story where it’s not just well-minded women go, you know what, we’re defending these elephants, but rather it’s women who have lost a certain kind of power or have been traumatized or who have been marginalized finding a way to reclaim some power and defend something of great value. And ideally – ideally – have a really positive portrayal of Africa, because we don’t get it a lot. We get a lot of Blood Diamonds. We get a lot of Ghosts in the Darkness or whatever that movie was with the lions. We don’t get a lot of this. And I think that’s really – that’s what you’d hope for.

And they do hint at this in the article. They point out that a number of these women have suffered trauma. They either were orphaned by parents who died of AIDS. Or they were victims of sexual assault or domestic abuse or abandonment. And so I think that’s where I would kind of come at it. And I do think actually this could be pretty cool. I could see this being a movie.

**John:** I could see this being a movie, too. And I agree with you that focusing on the women is clearly the way to tell this story. You want to see why they are doing this and why they are better suited for this task than men would be. And so the article does talk some about that in the sense of when they’re trained to do this they just do a better job, because they’re better able to work with the community. They have these automatic weapons but they don’t turn to those automatic weapons as sort of the first way to get a problem solved. And they work well together as a community, so that is crucial. I think that’s really the center of the storytelling.

In this short story we meet Sgt. Vimbai Kumire. So she’s one of the main women we follow in this story. But Enterprise World also meet Damien Mander. So he’s described as a “tattoo-covered Australian and former special forces soldier who has trained game rangers in Zimbabwe for more than a decade.” And he’s one of those characters who seems kind of interesting and compelling at the start, and yet I kind of don’t want him in the movie. My concern is that no matter what you try to do with this character he’s going to feel like the white savior guy. And that’s the thing I want to see least in this movie is the outsider who tells people how to do something.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So in focusing on this I’d want to find a way to tell the story honesty but that focuses on the women themselves and feels like it’s them solving this issue and not some outsider telling them how to solve this issue.

**Craig:** An alternative way to approach that is to accept the truth of it and then use that to address the white savior-ness of it. Meaning in reality this guy I assume was very useful and he helped trained them. But he’s not the one out there doing it. He’s not the one putting himself on the line. He’s not the one who is going to stay. This isn’t his country. And pointing that out I think is reasonable.

There is a limitation to the value of those people. But there is also real value to them. And that’s interesting. I think even a relationship – and I wouldn’t have it be a romantic relationship in any way, shape, or form – but a relationship between one of the leaders or a leading character of the women and him which is a relationship of mistrust and concern specifically for that reason. Because remember Zimbabwe was not always Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe was Rhodesia not so long ago. And the idea of addressing certain aspects of colonialism and asking how do we move forward and how do we live or work together with this behind us is an interesting one.

So there’s an alternative point of view to embrace it and face it head on. But I agree the one thing you can’t do is this old school thing of white guy shows up, teaches black people how to be better Africans, and then leaves. That’s – we don’t do that no more.

**John:** That’s not going to work.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** So I think what we’re both saying is neither of us want this guy to be protagonist or antagonist in the story. He can be a character in the story. He can serve a function, but he should not serve one of those primary functions because that is something we’ve seen a lot and it becomes – I just get the bad kind of goosebumps when I see that.

**Craig:** Bad bumps. Nobody wants bad bumps.

**John:** Nobody wants bad bumps.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Where does this movie go? Where do we see this kind of movie happening?

**Craig:** Well, this is a movie that if done at a certain level and a certain way could earn a theatrical release because it theoretically could be quite prestigious. I could see it being an award-y kind of movie depending on how it’s done. It could also just be a very down the middle obvious treatment of this material. With all of these movies it’s always more likely that they’re going to be done on a streaming platform because that’s the world we live in. There’s no superheroes in it. Nothing blows up.

But, there is still a space for independent film and even for major studios releasing independently made films that address issues like this, have really interesting casts. I think you can cast this really well. Now more than ever there are some awesome actors of African descent, both American and Caribbean and British. And, of course, African. So there’s a lot of really cool opportunities. I think it could actually be a theatrical movie, but it would need independent love I would think.

**John:** I think you’re right. I could see a Participant or sort of an outside financier being a key player in this to make it happen at a budget level where you can sort of get the production values you really want to see there.

I would say of all the movies we’ve done on a How Would This Be a Movie before it reminded me somewhat of the California firefighter story we read.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** About the female inmates who were California firefighters. In which you a have a setting and a world but you need to pick very specific characters within that story to follow. And we don’t have them quite yet. We have sort of a sense of placeholders for people who could be there, but we don’t have actual characters with journeys. And so any writer who is approaching this is going say like, OK, here is the backdrop, here’s the world. I need to create an entire story. I need to import a story into this or do the firsthand research to figure out what are the stories I can tell that actually have beginnings, middles, and ends and characters who go through transformations. Because we’re not seeing that in this story so far.

**Craig:** Yeah. And this may just be a matter of personal preference but I think I would rather see this movie than the firefighter movie, just because I find the subject matter more interesting and I get to see somewhere I don’t know and learn things I don’t know and be with people that I don’t know. And it’s not that I know those women, but I know California, I know brush fires, I know firefighters. A lot of this we have experience with it. It’s not foreign to us. And I’m attracted by things that are foreign because you learn more. I just do. I mean, it’s one of the reasons I wanted to do Chernobyl. It was not American. It seemed like an opportunity.

**John:** Here’s what’s also great about this story is that as you’re watching this you are aware that the danger to these women could come from any direction. So it could come from other humans in the world. It could come from animals. It could come from gunshots. It could come from poachers. There’s a lot of things that could happen and stand in the way or endanger any of the characters we care about in the story.

In the firefighter movie we’re afraid of the fire mostly.

**Craig:** Fire. Yeah.

**John:** And so we can see that coming. Where we can’t always see bullets coming. Or we can’t see that dangerous panther or tiger or anything else that’s potentially out there. So that’s an interesting difference with this movie. Our last How Would This Be a Movie comes from an advice column in The Cut as well. It’s the Ask Polly advice column written by Heather Havrilesky. This one is about a woman with severe mushroom allergies who becomes convinced that her in-laws are maybe trying to kill her. So it’s not just that they are insensitive to her food sensitivity. They seem to be finding ways to introduce mushrooms into things that have no business having mushrooms in them.

I loved the letter writer’s description, but I especially loved Heather’s response to how nuts this situation was. And she actually says that this feels like the pitch for a dark comedy on premium cable. And, yeah, it kind of does. It’s that idea of like are my in-laws trying to kill me. Maybe they are.

**Craig:** Yeah. Heather went ham, which I love. And she was right to do so. And the letter writer was so weirdly sweet about it and kind of underplayed the insanity of what’s going on here.

Now, look, we live in a world where people will say, “Look, I have this allergy to this thing,” and maybe there’s a little pushback kind of in the air, like a little silent pushback which is, ugh, everyone is allergic to something now. You can see people kind of groaning and rolling their eyes sometimes. Or if someone says, oh yeah, if you’re in a restaurant, “I want the surf and turf but instead of the lobster can I have this because lobster makes me slightly itchy.” You know, I understand there’s a certain kind of, I don’t know, self-indulgent griping you could do about people with allergies.

But the truth is that when somebody has a legitimately troublesome allergy it is life-threatening. It is terrible. As a parent it’s got to be absolutely nightmarish to be policing your own child and just every day wondering is this the day that somebody slips freaking mushrooms in. And the crazy part, the craziest thing, is when after it’s been made clear to her in-laws that she has been hospitalized over this and convulsed in an ambulance because of mushrooms they added mushroom powder to mashed potatoes at a holiday dinner.

What is mushroom powder? I’ve never even heard of mushroom powder. That’s literally poisoning. You are poisoning – you’re trying to poison her. And everybody knows it. And they say things like, you know, “Well, everyone except your wife likes mushrooms and we’re not changing what we eat for one person.” Oh my god. It’s not that she doesn’t like them. It’s that they’ll kill her. So, I think the deal is they want to kill this lady. They’re literally trying to kill her.

**John:** The fact that it seems like they want to kill her is what makes this so compelling. And I think it’s easy to feel sympathy for this woman and I find the husband character really fascinating. Like how much of a doormat is he that he’s not willing to stand up to his family for trying to kill his wife? That isn’t good. But it’s easy to imagine who that family is and how messed up that family must be and how tight that family must be to want to do this.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I mean, this woman is an outsider marrying into a thing. It feels kind of great.

Now, this allergy by itself is not a movie. So, I think it’s suggesting a jumping off point for a movie, but there would have to be a lot of other things and this mushroom allergy is just like one sign, like a really clear sign of not just the undermining but the dangerous dislike that they seem to have for her. And that, you know, I think what’s relatable is we all kind of imagine that our in-laws don’t really like us, but to have it taken to the extremes is I think what makes it a movie.

**Craig:** Mushroom powder. So, one thing that I always try and remind myself when I read these things is we’re getting one person’s version. Now, it may be that this woman who is writing this letter and who is describing how her in-laws are trying to kill her with mushrooms, she could be awful. She could be an awful person. I’m not saying she is. But there’s a world in which she’s just a racist, nasty, abusive human being. And everyone reasonably loathes her.

Even then you can’t put mushroom powder in the mashed potatoes. You can’t. You can’t. You can’t mushroom somebody. You’re not allowed to mushroom people. There’s other ways to deal with them. You can’t mushroom them to death. That’s just wrong.

Is this a movie? No. It’s not at all a movie to me. I don’t think of it as a movie. I don’t think of it as a series. I think it could be an episode of something that’s kind of interesting. It could be a B-plot that you find out that somebody you hate is allergic to something and somehow mushrooms get – I don’t know.

**John:** I don’t think it’s a movie by itself. But I think the notion of are my in-laws trying to kill me – I think that is enough of a comedy idea that you could build something around it. I think there’s a tremendous amount more story you need to do there, but I think the mushroom aspect of it as am I crazy could work.

And a movie like Game Night comes to mind, where it’s just like it is funny but there is a real darkness underneath it.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, you could do a movie where a woman marries a man and it’s one of those interesting paranoid things. And Game Night has a similar aspect to it even though it’s a comedy. There’s a certain paranoia to it. Where she discovers that her husband actually has been married three times before that she didn’t know about and all three of those women died. And so now she’s thinking – and we’re all thinking – oh, he’s a serial wife killer. But he’s not. He insists that he’s innocent and she keeps finding clues. And eventually the big twist is it’s not him. It’s his mom. She keeps killing his wives. That could be cool.

I mean, I’ve just given away the ending.

**John:** To me the pitch is more like right from the start you’re worried about the mother-in-law, but of course she’s talked down, well everyone sort of feels that way about their future mother-in-law. And there’s ups and downs, but when it becomes clear like, wait, something really nuts is happening then there has to be a further step there. There has to be something more than just like, you know, oh, she’s trying to kill me. There has to really go to sort of why they’re trying to kill her, or what it is about that.

So, figuring out what that is – figuring out what’s really behind the family – that’s probably the key to what makes this a movie versus an advice column.

**Craig:** I want you to know there is mushroom seasoning. And there’s some mushroom powder. It’s really rare. I mean it’s just not – it’s not really a thing. You’ve got to go way out of your way – way out of your way – to find like dried porcini mushroom powder or something. They’re trying to kill her.

**John:** They are trying to kill her.

**Craig:** Sorry, based on what I read. I am not accusing anyone of anything. But based on what I read it would seem–

**John:** We don’t know the real family’s name, so they can’t libel us.

**Craig:** Correct. It would SEEM that they are trying to kill her with mushrooms.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Craig, of these four things we’ve talked through which do you think will become a movie and which are you most excited to see if it’s not the same answer?

**Craig:** The Zimbabwe female rangers.

**John:** I would agree with you. I would say that’s probably the most compelling story area. I can imagine some version of the comedy soft serve wars thing happening. That feels like the nostalgic space for that. But I’m probably most excited to see the Zimbabwe anti-poaching rangers.

**Craig:** If Tim Herlihy does agree to come onboard and do the soft serve thing, then that one. But only if.

**John:** Herlihy or bust.

**Craig:** Herlihy or bust. That’s my motto.

**John:** It’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is Game to Grow. So it’s this Seattle-based company and they use specially designed D&D experiences, modules and rulebooks, to help kids with anxiety and/or spectrum disorders relate to each other better and work through skills that they can use in real life. It seems great. So I have not met these people, the Adams, but I’ll put links in the show notes to an article about them, what they do. Also a Kickstarter for a thing called Critical Core which are sort of the slimmed down rulebooks that they use to talk through what they’re doing. But you look through this Craig and you’ll obviously recognize so many D&D things you love, but you’ll also recognize some things that are developmentally useful.

So there’s this one to nine scale of developmental capacities which is so true and accurate to sort of how kids process things which is basically how to think critically, how to cooperate going through stuff, how to plan ahead. All the things that you and I do all the time when we play D&D, which I think I probably got a lot out of playing D&D as a teenager, which is so useful and transfers so well to real life decision-making.

So it just seems like a great program, so I’ll tip people towards this and it’s something I’d love to see replicated in other places.

**Craig:** This is brilliant. And I love that the age range is so wide. So they’re looking at kids from ages eight to 20. So, this would certainly be relevant for one of my kids. And, yeah, I’m going to look a little deeper into this. For sure. This looks great.

My One Cool Thing this week is the National Puzzler’s League, otherwise known as MPL. The National Puzzler’s League is, like one hand there’s a magazine, The Enigma, that comes out with lots of puzzles in it. And they also have a national convention. This is not for your casual puzzler. I’m just going to tell you.

So I have friend Dave Shucan who is a brilliant puzzler and puzzle constructor and solver and he goes to the convention and he’s kind enough to say, hey, take a look at this puzzle that I did there. And they are awesome. They are really layered. When I say really layered I mean I tried explaining one to Melissa last night and she stopped me after about 12 words and said, “Please no more. I don’t want to hear anymore.” [laughs]

It’s layers and layers and layers. They’re beautifully done. They’re beautifully constructed. So I’m going to be joining the National Puzzler’s League and the membership for a year is a big whopping $23. I think I can do that. Online-only membership is just $15. So, yeah, I’m totally into that.

So National Puzzler’s League. If you want you can check it out at puzzlers.org and we’ll have a link in the show notes.

**John:** Fantastic. That’s our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Med Dyer. 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.

Short questions on Twitter are great. So I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the casting notice. So, again, if you think you might know an Abby, a blind actress who is around 15 years old, I’m looking for her. So you can go to johnaugust.com/casting to find out more information about that.

You can find transcripts there as well on the site.

You can find all the back episodes of the show at Scriptnotes.net or download 50-episode seasons at store.johnaugust.com.

Craig, thank you for helping me figure out whether these things would be movies.

**Craig:** My pleasure, John. Let’s do it again.

**John:** Cool. Bye.

Links:

* [The Shadows Casting Call](https://johnaugust.com/casting) John is looking for a 15 year old blind actress for the lead role — please help by sharing this link with anyone who might be a good fit!
* [Bonus Episode, Chernobyl Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bonus-episode-with-jared-harris/id1459712981?i=1000446954276)
* [Scriptnotes Ep 50, How to Not Be Fat](https://johnaugust.com/2012/how-to-not-be-fat)
* [Decoder Ring: Ice-Cream Truck Wars](https://slate.com/podcasts/decoder-ring/2019/08/decoder-ring-explores-the-world-of-ice-cream-trucks) by Willa Paskin
* [Akashinga Women Rangers Fight Poaching in Zimbabwe Phundundu Wildlife Area](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2019/06/akashinga-women-rangers-fight-poaching-in-zimbabwe-phundundu-wildlife-area/) by Lindsay M. Smith
* [My In-Laws Are Careless About My Deadly Food Allergy](https://www.thecut.com/amp/2019/08/ask-polly-my-in-laws-are-careless-about-my-food-allergy.html) by Heather Havrilesky
* [Game to Grow](https://www.cnet.com/news/game-to-grow-the-dungeons-dragons-game-rescuing-kids-from-their-social-anxieties/?__twitter_impression=true), support on [Kickstarter here](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gametogrow/critical-core/description)!
* [National Puzzler’s League](http://www.puzzlers.org/)
* [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 Med Dyer ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_414_mushroom_powder.mp3)