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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2016/the-job-of-writer-producer).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. And this is the standard explicit language warning for this episode of Scriptnotes. There’s some heavier language than most episodes, so you may want to save this one for later on if you’re driving in the car with your kids. Thanks.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

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

**John:** And this is Episode 238 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today, we have a special guest. We are joined by Dana Fox.

**Craig:** Ah!

**John:** She is a writer and producer whose credits include The Wedding Date, Ben & Kate, What Happens in Vegas, and the new How to Be Single.

We are going to try to talk about the transition between being just a writer and being a writer-producer like Dana is. And we’ll also get into other stuff about her life and her career. She’s one of my favorite people. Dana Fox, welcome to Scriptnotes.

**Dana Fox:** Hi, I’m so happy to be here. You two are my favorite human males besides my husband.

**John:** Aw. That’s so sweet.

**Craig:** I don’t really — I know your husband. I don’t think you need that qualifier.

**Dana:** [laughs] I’m really excited to be in this sandwich. Thank you for having me.

**John:** Her husband is Quinn Emmett who is a writer and an all-around good guy, who often comes to our live shows. So, it’s nice to have you here, live in person with us.

**Dana:** I’m so happy to be here.

**John:** Before we get into your career, your life as a writer and producer, we have some follow-up from previous episodes, so we’d love your opinions on these topics as we just go through them. So, last week we talked about tipping. We talked about tipping in two different ways. Questions about whether you should tip the valets at studios. Because you know how like Paramount has a valet?

**Dana:** Oh, that’s interesting.

**John:** Or Sony does, too. Dana, what’s your opinion? Should you tip those guys? Do you tip those guys?

**Dana:** Wow, that’s bumming me out big time, because I have literally never thought of tipping them, and I’m going to immediately commence tipping them right now. That makes me feel really sad inside my soul place.

**Craig:** [laughs] Wow.

**John:** What I was saying last week —

**Dana:** Thank you for laughing so hard at me, Craig. I really appreciate that. I’m so glad this is such a safe space for me to share.

**Craig:** It’s not. At all.

**Dana:** It’s really starting this off nicely.

**John:** So, one of my points last week was that normally when you’re parking a car, when there’s valet parking, there’s already cash being exchanged, so the tipping feels like it’s just part of that whole cash exchange. Whereas on a studio lot, there’s not a natural transaction happening there, so it feels weird to sort of suddenly pull out money and give.

**Dana:** That’s exactly right. It does sort of feel like you’re saying something is happening there that isn’t necessarily happening there. I always sort of thought it was like, oh man, now I just hate myself. I don’t even want to talk about anymore.

Here’s my problem. My problem is not about tipping. My problem is about ATMs. I never have cash on me, because I feel like the second I have it in my wallet it just like shoots out of wallet at great, great speeds. And so I don’t keep cash because I spend it instantly when I have it. So, that’s a bummer.

And then also Uber has kind of kept me from needing money for tipping valets. Because valets was sort of the only reason I needed to tip. So here’s what I do at the SoHo House. Spoiler alert: I may be not a good person at the end of this story as well.

I don’t ever have any money on me, so I never tip them. And they’re so nice to me. And I actually love those people who work there like family. Like, I was more excited to tell them about the birth of my third child then like anybody who is my actual friend. And so what I do is I give them like $60 one day and then I don’t tip them for like a month.

**John:** Okay.

**Dana:** That’s how I do it. Because I can’t — it’s every day, I can’t have the money in the wallet. I can barely get myself out of bed in the morning. I have 17 children. I can’t pull it together.

**Craig:** I feel like you’re not the person we should be talking to about this.

**Dana:** This was not a good follow-up.

**Craig:** Yeah, with that story, you’ve excluded yourself.

**Dana:** Can there be like a drinking inappropriately to fall asleep follow-up like right now? Because I could talk about that at length.

**Craig:** No one needs that follow-up. We all know how to do that. There’s no decisions to be made. We got into this thing last week about this, and I mean, I love what you just said about Uber, because I got in a little bit of trouble. So, I do — I tip those valet guys at studios. I just — I said last week, sometimes I just worry like is this insulting somehow. Do you feel like — ?

**Dana:** That’s what I’m saying. Yeah, exactly. It’s like sort of saying like, well, I’m assuming you’re getting paid a decent salary by this studio. But I should not assume that, because I am often not paid a decent salary by the studio —

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

**Dana:** — so why would I assume they would be?

**John:** So, we asked our listeners to write in, both on Twitter and on Facebook, with their opinions about tipping, both tipping studio valet people and tipping Uber drivers, which was another thing that came up.

**Dana:** What did everybody say?

**John:** So, let’s start with Mike from Huntington Beach. He wrote, “As a former valet during my teens and 20s, I can assure you in almost every circumstance a valet prefers a tip. There are two circumstances I can think of that a valet may reject a tip. Number one: When a valet’s employer issued a wholehearted threat to fire any valet on the spot who will accept a tip. Even then that valet might be coerced into accepting the tip if the amount is sizable enough and gifted with enough finesse.

“Or, number two: When the tip is change that amounts to less than a dollar.”

So, that’s from Mike from Huntington Beach.

**Craig:** But Mike, I mean, thanks, but this was not an issue. We know to tip regular valets. This wasn’t the question. We all tip valets. I mean, nobody doesn’t tip.

**John:** I think Mike is saying any valet at any place on earth will take the tip is what I think he was saying.

**Craig:** Okay, well, and look, that may be true. And I default to that. I do tip those guys. It’s the Uber thing opened the whole can of worms.

**Dana:** So, are people being expected to tip their Uber drivers? Is that a thing?

**John:** Yeah.

**Dana:** Oh my god, you guys, I am an extra triple horrible person.

**John:** Dana just Ubered to this interview right now.

**Dana:** I literally just Ubered to this house.

**Craig:** Well, this is the question. Because we discussed this last week. And my understanding was that, no, the whole deal with Uber is you don’t tip. It’s built in somehow. And the whole point is Uber says don’t tip your driver. And it’s a non-cash transaction deal.

**Dana:** But maybe it’s built into the way that Uber is boning their Uber drivers. And that’s what we don’t know about. Ah, man.

**Craig:** Well, here’s the situation. We got a lot — so a lot of people tweeted at us. And part of the thing that’s confusing is Uber is confusing about it. They used to be clear. Now they’re less clear.

The other thing is there’s a lot of different kinds of Uber. So I don’t use Uber a lot, because I love to drive. But, when I do, I use I guess what you would call Uber Standard, which is usually a sedan, you know, like the black car.

**Dana:** Say sedan again.

**Craig:** What’s that?

**Dana:** I just liked the way you said sedan.

**Craig:** Sedan?

**Dana:** Sedan. [laughs] I don’t know. Keep going. Keep going.

**Craig:** I feel like you’re trying to bring out Sexy Craig. [laughs]

**Dana:** [laughs] I love Sexy Craig.

**Craig:** Sexy Craig is the best. He loves to — yeah.

**John:** I’m pushing for our Whole Foods Craig. Whole Foods Craig is not a [crosstalk].

**Craig:** No, he’ll show up soon enough.

**Dana:** Wait, who is Whole Foods Craig? I need him so bad. Where is he?

**Craig:** He’s about to show up.

**Dana:** Does he work at the checkout at Whole Foods, or is he in like a specialized area giving out samples?

**Craig:** You know what? It’s like, yeah, I work there, if you want to call it work. Wherever man. If they tell me to go there, I do that. The whole thing is doesn’t really matter, you know.

**Dana:** Oh my god. I love that Craig.

**Craig:** It’s a label. It’s not me.

**Dana:** [laughs] I do love that guy.

**Craig:** So, there’s Uber X, which is sort of the more affordable Uber. And I guess the deal is some of those drivers aren’t getting paid that much. So, a lot of people are like, “No, you have to tip them.” I mean, when people are lecturing you about tipping, it’s so hectoring. Somebody wrote something at me in all caps and I just wanted to punch my computer in the mouth. So, you know, there’s a lot of confusion about it.

And I said, I mean, to this date I’m like, no, I didn’t think that that was the thing you did. John was like, no, I always tip my Uber driver. So I’m glad that you’re here. Because you’ve been aggressively not tipping.

**Dana:** Okay. So, for me personally, what I think Uber needs to do, because I think of Uber as the whole entire reason I take Uber is because I have entered my credit card once into a thing and I never have to deal with it again. For me, it’s like on Postmates, I’m tipping like a crazy lady on Postmates. I’m tipping like I’ve got all the money in the world, because all I have to do is click that button baby.

**John:** Exactly.

**Dana:** I just click it. And if there was an Uber question at the end of it, where it was like, “Do you want to do 15, 10, whatever,” I would just hit it and I’d crush it. I’d be 20%-ing it.

**John:** So, Lyft lets you do that. And Uber doesn’t. So, here’s what Carrie T writes, “You should tip. I drive for both Lyft and Uber and sometimes we average like $9 an hour. That sucks. Especially if you’re going to the middle of nowhere. Leave a big tip because your driver will take a big loss driving back to civilization without the possibility of picking up another passenger.”

**Dana:** Oh my god. Yeah.

**John:** Bradley Dennis writes, “As a Brit, my view is that if you want more money, raise your prices. Giving a lowball figure and expecting people to just give you more out of some form of expected guilt is just bizarre and sneaky. It’s anything but genuine.”

**Dana:** Well, and that’s what makes me so uncomfortable if I ever get the luxury of traveling to Europe, is I feel like there’s this emotional transaction that occurs when you’re tipping. For me, obviously tipping is like just about psychology. It’s just about how do I feel. What weird power dynamic did I get into with this waiter? Like how much did I learn about their personal life? How sad do I feel about the job I know that they lost? Whatever it is, I get way too involved in everybody.

And in Europe, it’s just like you just pay the thing. They bring that weird little credit card thing over to your table. Like you don’t even — nobody goes in — they just come over to you and you swipe it and then you’re done. And you’re walking out. But if I can’t have that weird emotional/psychology moment at the end of it, I don’t quite know what tipping is about. That’s what it’s about for me.

**Craig:** This is weird. The whole tipping — look, I understand the tipping economy for waiters and bartenders. The whole deal there is that their management is allowed to pay them less than minimum wage or something like that, some crazy deal. But like, you know, I was talking about tipping — like here’s the insanity of tipping. You go to a restaurant and you sit down and you’re at one table, Dana, I’m at the other. Okay?

**Dana:** Interested. Listening.

**Craig:** Same restaurant. We have two different waiters. My waiter does a fantastic job. Your waiter does an okay job. The only difference is that I happen to order the sandwich, you got the steak. Your waiter gets more money.

**Dana:** That’s really interesting. I’ve never thought about that.

**Craig:** It makes no sense. It makes no sense.

**John:** So, I think people will write in to Craig to let him know that in restaurant situations, tips are generally pooled, so they’ll be shared among the waiters, so there’s some way it averages out.

**Dana:** So sandwich guy and steak guy have to put their money together.

**Craig:** Okay, well then let me extend then. You’re at the restaurant next door. Okay? I’m at my restaurant. My restaurant just happens to charge more for food. It’s fancier food. The fancier the food doesn’t mean that the waiter somehow has to work harder, right? In fact, sometimes the lower end restaurants, the waiter is working even harder because there is families in there and kids screaming and dumping their sippy cups. Meanwhile over at Café Swank, everyone is sitting perfectly quietly eating their $20 piece of tomato. Why do those waiters get more?

**John:** I don’t think it’s fair.

**Craig:** It’s not fair.

**John:** It’s not fair. And it’s not reasonable. And yet this is the system that we’re in. And so I think what’s been good about sort of the feedback we got was that a lot of people who are actually doing the job of driving cars for Uber or for Lyft or who are parking cars for valets at studios are telling us like don’t assume that we’re getting paid really well for our job. And so tipping is appreciated and is not an affront to be offering them a tip.

**Craig:** So the people that make money off of tips —

**Dana:** I appreciate this new information, honestly. I feel like I’m going to change my ways. Did you guys hear that thing — I feel like it was on something I listen to with my ears. So, it was something that I got to believe it was like This American Life or something. They talked about tipping and they were saying that you assume that waiters who are nicer to you and who are more friendly make more money, and actually it’s the ones who like grumpier and more withholding. And what they think it’s about is because the people who act happy and pleasant, the person having the dinner seems like, “They like their job. They’re having a great time. They’re just doing this for fun. They’re just bringing me that sandwich for fun.”

Whereas the people who are like very clear that it is a job, and they are doing it for a job to give you your food, and because they have to for their job, you tip them higher. I thought that was kind of interesting.

**John:** That’s why I like what you’re saying about like if there’s an option for like, you know, 10, 15, 20 percent, I would just click the button, and it would always happen.

**Dana:** I click the button every time.

**John:** It would always happen.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Dana:** Give me the button.

**Craig:** Yeah, I would click it, too. I don’t know how accurate it is for people that would benefit from tips saying, “You really should give us more tips.” I’m still — here’s the deal. Uber needs to be really clear about this, and they’re not. And they need to smarten up and just solve this once and for all.

Because, yeah, look, if they were okay with the tipping culture, first of all, there never would have been this whole thing of you don’t have to tip your driver. They used to have a thing that said, “Don’t tip your drivers.” And then instructed their drivers, “If you are offered a tip, decline it.” Right? So that’s how that whole thing started. That’s what —

**Dana:** And was this an effort to differentiate them from taxis? Was that sort of part of the idea?

**Craig:** Yeah. The idea —

**John:** But if you look at how Uber has evolved, I mean, Uber was just the sedans for a while, just the town cars who had availability. And the way it’s become, my perception of Uber is Uber X. it’s the only thing I ever take. And that is a low end and those people aren’t making a lot of money.

**Craig:** I don’t take Uber X because I’m just concerned that I might get assaulted.

**John:** So, I will tell you a great Uber X story. I was going to Kelly Marcel’s party a couple weeks ago. And happy birthday, Kelly Marcel. And we took Uber. And I was talking with the driver and he had a fascinating accent. And I said like, I’m so sorry, but what is your accent, because it’s fantastic. And he’s like, “Oh, I am from Czechoslovakia.” Or specifically, “I’m from Czechoslovakia, not Czech Republic, but Slovakia.”

I was like, so the character I wrote in this last script was supposed to be Slovakian. And like I’ve had the hardest time finding an English speaker with a Slovak accent. And so I’m like, would it be really weird if I like got your information and I Skyped with you and like recorded your accent? I really need it as a language reference.

And it was great. And so we had an hour-long conversation with Elan about his history, his backstory, and I have this great footage of his accent for down the road.

**Dana:** Ah, that’s amazing. And I’ve read that script and I love that script.

**John:** Yeah. So she knows exactly who that person is.

**Dana:** I know exactly what you’re talking about and I am into it.

**Craig:** Honestly, that’s my nightmare. Talking to a driver for an hour?

**Dana:** Craig, what kind of an assault — is it like your ear’s assault? Like your ears are going to be assaulted with like a story? Or is it like you actually think you’re going to be sexually assaulted?

**Craig:** I’m always worried about sexual assault, you guys. [laughs]

**Dana:** [laughs] You think everyone is trying to sexually assault you.

**John:** Well, when you’re as sexy as Craig Mazin, it’s going to —

**Dana:** He’s a very, very sexy man. I get it. I totally get it.

**Craig:** You guys, you can’t be too safe.

**Dana:** As we all know, sexual assault is a crime of hotness, right?

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Let’s open a can of worms. Would you like to open that one?

**Dana:** Yeah, I just opened that for everybody. God, I hope everyone knows I’m kidding.

**Craig:** It’s a crime of hotness for me.

**Dana:** Oh.

**John:** Craig basically doesn’t want to have any interactions with people that he can’t completely control. And it does — I will grant that starting a starting with your Uber driver does feel like, okay, this could go a lot of different ways. It could go terribly.

And so most times I’ll just stick to the pleasantries and not go any further. But when I heard this guy’s accent I was like, you know what, we’re going to have this conversation.

**Dana:** You know what I do also is I have a little convo in the beginning, and sometimes I get really involved and I talk to them the whole time. And other times I don’t. But I always ask permission to make work phone calls. That’s how I do it. Because I think it’s a polite factor where it’s like I’m in your car. If you were just a person I was in the car with, I would ask you if it’s okay with you if I make a phone call. So I always do because I like to be polite about it.

**Craig:** You’re paying them to drive you somewhere, and you’re asking them permission?

**Dana:** I’m a human being, Craig. I have a heart.

**Craig:** I don’t understand this.

**John:** But I think the social contract with Uber is just a little bit different than it is with sort of a normal taxi. Because like, yes, you’re paying them to do it, but also you’re getting into their space, and you’re sharing it in a weird way.

**Dana:** It’s also like everybody you talked to that drives for Uber honestly has another job or is trying to be something or has an interesting story for you. And so I always get the sense that like I assume that anyone who is driving a car is like a doctor in the country that they came from and like can’t do that here. And that’s like my baseline for who I think is driving me. [laughs] So I usually have like just a lot of respect for those people.

**John:** So, most of the Uber drivers, I would say at least half are screenwriters. And so I’ll talk to them, “So what else are you doing?” It’s like, “Oh, I really like this because it gives me time to write,” and blah, blah, blah. And I’ll just shut up.

**Dana:** You shut down. And I’m out.

**John:** It’s like I’m not volunteering any more information.

**Craig:** It’s an absolute nightmare. It’s a nightmare. So I’ve never used this version of Uber. Ever. I’ve only used like the kind where, you know —

**John:** Fancy.

**Dana:** The fancy guy.

**Craig:** But it’s not Uber limousine. It’s just like, you know.

**Dana:** I’m just not comfortable unless the car is a little bit like my car, where there’s like so much stuff in the backseat that shouldn’t be in there. Like then I feel right at home.

Although I have to say, I got into a car the other day on my way home from — I went to London for the premiere of How to Be Single. And the guy that drove me home, god bless him, I loved him so much. That was one of the guys I got very involved in — P.S. emails were exchanged. I like emailed him honestly like the second I got home, because that’s how much I loved him.

**Craig:** Oh my god.

**Dana:** I know. I’m you’re worst nightmare, Craig. This is why we’re not married and you’re married to Melissa.

**Craig:** Ah, thank god.

**Dana:** But he had like a little tray on the floor. And there was like Kleenex and like lotion. And then like hand sanitizer. And I’m like does he just assume like everyone is jerking off in the back of his car?

**Craig:** Yeah, man.

**Dana:** Because it was just like a jerk off tray. It was really interesting. And then there were like mints for afterwards for yourself.

**Craig:** So you could kiss yourself.

**Dana:** So you could just like freshen yourself up. I don’t know. I don’t know what was going on.

**Craig:** Listen, do you mind? I’m asking you permission. I’m going to be making business calls and jerking off back here.

**John:** [laughs]

**Dana:** Yes. I’m just asking your permission to jerk off while making a business call.

**Craig:** Yeah. Is that cool? [laughs]

**Dana:** Oh, lord.

**John:** Now we have to put the explicit —

**Dana:** You guys, this is amazing. You got to put the explicit thing at the beginning.

**John:** — warning on this podcast.

**Craig:** We knew that was coming.

**Dana:** There was a zero percent chance we were not going to need that with me.

**John:** All right. So you’re on your back from your premiere of your movie, How to Be Single, which you produced. I was so happy to see the little PGA after your name when the credits rolled by, so you’re officially the Producers Guild producer on this movie. But when I first knew you, back when you were my assistant, you were just a writer. And so how did this transition happen? Like what was the process that took you from, oh, I’m going to write movies that other people can make to I’m now making these movies.

**Dana:** Back when I was your assistant, you forgot to say I was just a really bad assistant. You were the world’s most amazing boss. And every day I would be like, “I just don’t know exactly when to take my nap.” I was like, “John, could you help me figure out when to put a pillow on my head and have your dog sleep on me, because I’m going to need to do that at some point today?”

You were literally the world’s greatest boss. So, how did I do that? I think what happened was the transition for me really crystallized around the TV experience. I was working as a screenwriter in movies, and getting treated the way that screenwriters in movies get treated, which is like you’re very disposable. They will fire you without thinking twice about it. And they will hire — I always think of it as like there’s a Crayola box and you’re like you’re the writer that’s like the nude color. And then they pull you out and they do what they need to with the drawing. And then they want a different color, so they grab the different writer out of the Crayola box.

And there’s some writers who are great at doing lots of things, and so they get to stay on longer. But I just felt like after —

**John:** Let’s talk about you being that Crayola. So were you brought in to do the work on like these characters aren’t working, please add a voice to these characters?

**Dana:** I got put into that a lot. I also got put into the “we need the girl voice.” Like we need the woman to sound like an actual human being was a call I got a lot. You know, it’s like there’s these big boy movies and the girls don’t sound like real humans. So I got that call a lot.

And I chose not to be offended by that. I chose to just be like, great, this is work. I need work. This is great.

**John:** And so through that experience you’re building up your quote and you’re building up your experience. You’re building up relationships, so you’re getting employed to do more and more of these things, but they’re not necessarily the jobs that you would dream about. And a lot of times your name is not on them because you were just doing a couple weeks of work?

**Dana:** Right. And what would happen is, you know, the movie would go to get made and then you would be completely blocked out of the process. And that was the part where I always felt really frustrated, because as a writer, you think about absolutely every choice you’re making on the page. And you’re very careful about like why the comma is where the comma is.

And, of course, you have ideas about what clothing the people would be wearing. You’ve thought about absolutely everything else about the character. Of course you know what kind of outfits they would wear. But no one asks you that because you’re just the writer.

So it was always really frustrating to me to just kind of hand it off, and once the process got really good all of a sudden I wasn’t invited to the party. Well, actually, you know, Couples Retreat was the first one where I was on set every day. That was sort of the thing where I was like, “Oh…”

**John:** So Couples Retreat is the movie with Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau and other folks. And you were on an island in Tahiti, right?

**Dana:** I was in Bora Bora for a month and a half staying. And Craig knows because he has stayed there.

**Craig:** It’s great.

**Dana:** In like the world’s nicest over-water bungalow, with like a hole in the floor where you can see the fish. And it’s this whole thing. And it would normally have been like the most amazing experience. But every day I woke up feeling like I was like fighting for my life, because it was just a really tough shoot.

And we were changing things on the fly all day long. And there’s a lot of pictures of me just like standing in knee-high water, like holding a laptop. Just like in a flop sweat.

**Craig:** So you’re movie plays 24/7 on one dedicated channel at the St. Regis Resort in Bora Bora. It’s just, that’s it. It’s just a channel that does —

**Dana:** Oh my god.

**Craig:** Well, there’s two channels actually. One in English. And one in French. And when I was there with Melissa, we used to come back from our day of whatever, you know, petting sharks and —

**Dana:** Snorkeling or like, yeah, rubbing your body up against a sea creature of sorts.

**Craig:** A thing? Or a person.

**Dana:** Or your wife.

**Craig:** And we’d come back. And so like Melissa is in the shower, and I’m just sitting there, and there’s not anything to watch except Couples Retreat. So the two of us watch Couples Retreat like 100 times in bits and pieces.

And I remember I wrote you and I was like, “We’re here and we’re in St. Regis and we’re watching your movie. This is the best place ever.” And you were like, “Oh, that’s nice. All I remember about it is typing and crying.” [laughs]

**Dana:** That’s all I did the entire time I was there. I remember one night I was in the fetal position sobbing saying, “Vince Vaughn is my father.” And Quinn, who was my lovely husband at the time, who was I swear to god 25 years old, was like, “I think I’m in a little bit over my head here.” I was like, “I can’t do it anymore.”

No, but Vince was actually really, really a great sort of graduate program on having tough skin, because he is a very, very hard worker and he just demands that everyone around him is working as hard as he is. And he taught me that work ethic, which is I guess great.

But, yeah, a lot of crying. And then a lot of very, very small croissants. And like eating so many chocolate croissants that were miniature size that I could make like a giant croissant inside my stomach with them. I did that a lot.

Yeah, Bora Bora was kind of hard core. It was amazing. And I look back on it and I think how did I not enjoy that.

**John:** So was that your biggest onset experience?

**Dana:** That was my biggest onset experience. Yeah. And I was there pretty much every day of that whole shoot. And it was a really long shoot. So, I got a lot of experience with that. And I started to just sort of discover that for me the writing almost begins onset as opposed — you know, most people feel like that’s the destination and once you’ve gotten there you’re done. But for me, that was like the start of the real writing. And I felt like so much changes when you’re there with the actual actors and they’re saying the actual words. And you see stuff. And you go, “Oh my god, well this could be better.”

And I loved sort of challenging myself to imagine what the editing problems were going to be later, and then fixing them in the moment so that we wouldn’t have those problems later. And then that experience kind of made me really sort of hungry for the onset experience.

And so then I decided to do a television show. My friend, Liz Meriwether, was doing New Girl. And she was just like, “It’s amazing. They actually think writers know what they’re talking about.” And she sort of encouraged to meet this woman, Katherine Pope, who is this incredible executive/perfect human being. And Katherine just kind of slow played me and talked me into being in television.

And then that was when I really understood like, oh, this is what I want to do. I want to be the person that gets to answer the question what is the person wearing, and what color should the wall be. And all that stuff, because I had the answer for all of that. I knew what the answer was and no one was asking me that.

And so then I just decided, okay, I think I have to start producing things in movies to stay close to the process while it goes all the way through to the end.

**John:** So Ben and Kate was a really quick rise. I remember meeting up with you in New York, because Quinn was running the marathon, and we were racing around the city. And I think you had shot the pilot, or you were about to shoot the pilot. And it was like sort of last minute. And like, “Well, we’re doing this thing. We’ll see what happens,” and suddenly you’re on the fall schedule. And you have this giant spotlight on you. Were you ready for it? Is anyone ever ready for it?

**Dana:** You know, it’s so funny. I don’t think anyone is ever ready for network television. It is so bonkers insane how many hours of TV you have to reduce in such a short amount of time. It’s like making a movie over, and over, and over again without stopping. And you’re making like three movies at once.

And so I would have a to-do list board up on my wall, because I had to be able to visualize it, otherwise it just felt infinite. And it would be like pitch, you know, writer’s room on this episode, pitch document on that episode, outline on this episode. There’s a script on this episode. There’s a cut on this episode. I mean, it was like there literally were like ten episodes going on at any given time. And so it was really hard to kind of keep all that stuff straight. I had some really great writers on the show who were just amazing, helping me and Katie Silberman I met on that show. And she was just like a killer. She was so awesome and so great at helping me kind of keep stuff straight.

But, yeah, I was as it turns out completely ready. And I felt like finally I felt like a fish in water. And it was weird. I think it was partly because Katherine Pope and also Liz Meriwether were just kind of like, “Of course you can do this. You’re awesome. Go.” That was really helpful.

And I just — I guess I just had spent so much time kind of as a woman, and I hate to get kind of feministy about it, but doing the tap-dancey, like I am a scared little girl and I don’t know the answer, but maybe the answer is this. But it’s your idea, and you just thought of it. And I had done so much of that. And I realized I always had the answer, I just was giving it to other people and pretending that they had thought of it. So then I was like, oh look, I can just take credit for the answer and I don’t have to be ashamed of it.

And then that was an amazing moment where I feel like I came into my power and I felt like, oh, I don’t have to ask for permission anymore. And when you know that you don’t need permission, that’s when you really don’t need permission anymore.

**Craig:** I mean, I love that. I love that you’re taking that additional capacity on. And we’ve talked a lot about this idea of the writer plus. You know, even if you don’t necessarily have the title of producer, a lot of times in features you can work yourself into a position where you’re the writer plus. I mean, for instance, like you were on Couples Retreat, you were more than just a writer, even if you weren’t producing that movie.

And then you kind of take on this additional thing where, okay, now I am in fact the official producer of this movie. And my question for you is, so, there’s one thing that producers that I — because I’ve thought about this a lot, but generally I shy away from doing any producing whatsoever. And part of it is because there is this thing I think really good producers that aren’t you, and that aren’t writing, can sometimes service this wonderful buffer between you and the outside world.

Some of them are bad and all they do is take what’s in the outside world, amplify it, and then shove it in your face. Those are the worst ones. Frankly, those are the more common ones. But occasionally you find ones that shield you. Did you feel more exposed as the producer because there wasn’t any kind of buffer between you, and the studio, and all the politics, and all the baloney?

**Dana:** Yeah. Well, that was what my question to you was going to be. Is the outside world like the studio and all the actors being crazy? What do you think of as the like stuff that it’s all that stuff?

**Craig:** It’s everything that’s not in my head in the screenplay, or sitting with the director and blocking a scene. Anything that’s not making movie, but all the other stuff around it, which is a lot.

**Dana:** Yeah. That was tricky on this one. I mean, to compare it to the TV experience, I had a whole crew of people who were there to support me in the creative endeavor on the TV show. And then on this one, on How to Be Single, like I was the person supporting everybody else, but I was also sort of expected to be able to do all the scene work that you’re expected to do as the writer onset. And that was really a huge challenge. And I have to say, like, thank god for Katie Silberman, because she was with me onset every day. And she kind of would have the script. And she would come up with all these great alts. And I had some good alts in the moment, but a lot of times, you know, I spent a lot more time dealing with the political stuff and just all the stuff that you’re talking about than I normally would as a writer on set. And so, yeah, it was really, really difficult to juggle and to manage.

But, I think when you sort of have that super power, which is the like I can talk to the studio. I can talk to the actors. I can talk to the director. I can talk to everybody. It’s hard to sort of put the super power away. You know what I mean? It’s like —

**John:** Let’s talk about the relationship with the director, because that seems like that would be an interesting and challenging shift in dynamics. Because in television, of course, the showrunner is ultimately responsible for the show. It’s this ongoing process, so the director is there for an episode. And so whatever that director does, well, you’re going to sort of decide what makes it through the edit.

You’re ultimately going to be picking that director and picking what’s going to be shot. It’s your show. But with a movie, that’s not traditionally how it works. And so as we look at the people who are like you, the writer-producer, so I think you, Chris Morgan, Simon Kinberg, there’s a growing number of these people who are doing that job of I’ve written the screenplay and I’m going to shepherd the screenplay through production. It changes your relationship with the director, doesn’t it?

**Dana:** Yeah. And I think I get away with it a little bit more because I’m like brutally honest. I’m not afraid of conflict. I’m not afraid — I’m super nice, but I get to the point. And I’m not afraid of stuff. So, I think I have like a personality that’s kind of built for it. But you’re right, it’s a really complicated — you do sort of have to walk on egg shells a little bit at certain moments, because the director is absolutely the boss in the movie business.

And so I was very lucky on How to Be Single in that I had a director who liked me and thought I knew what I was talking about. And so he and I were good at working together. The actors and I all got along great. And so we were all good at working together. It just — I don’t think I’ll ever do a movie again and not direct, honestly.

**John:** Oh, that’s the question.

**Dana:** And that’s the sort of weird twist of I guess this podcast which is that I think I will either just write it, and I will hand it to someone and be like, “Good luck. Have fun at 3am on the streets of NYC without me. I’m going to be in bed,” or I’m going to be directing it. Because it is very hard to feel like you kind of have the answer and feel like you could be the person the way that you are in television and then all of a sudden you’re like, oh no, wait, I’m not the boss-boss.

**John:** I described it, when I Jordan Mechner was writing the script for Prince of Persia, I was just a producer on the film. And I would see these things happening in the script and say like, “I know how — just let me fly the plane.” It’s like you’re in the cockpit of a plane, and you know how to operate the controls, but you’re not allowed to touch the controls. And it was so bad to not be able to use the controls.

**Dana:** You actually used that analogy with me. A long time ago you told me that. And I have quoted it a million times, because that’s exactly what it feels like. It feels like you’re in a 747 and you’re going through turbulence and everything is kind of crazy. And you’re like, “Press the red, oh god, can you just press the red button — no you’re not pressing the red button. You’re putting the, oh, god, you’re pressing the green one. Okay.” It drives you nuts.

**Craig:** It’s worse in a way because sometimes if you’re going to make the analogy really accurate, the person flying the plane is doing a poor job. You are a much better pilot than they are. Not only are you not allowed to touch the controls, somehow it’s considered rude to suggest that maybe they do something else.

**Dana:** By the way, you’ll get kicked out of the plane sometimes.

**John:** Yeah.

**Dana:** If you suggest that you should, yeah. 100%.

**Craig:** That is so nuts. And I’ve found that the better directors aren’t like that. You know? Just looking at all the directors I’ve worked with, it’s the ones that are insecure and frightened who turn you away and get super weird about that old school auteur baloney nonsense. And the new ones aren’t like that as much. And the good ones aren’t like that as much.

**Dana:** I’m so happy to hear you say that, because I guess I can amend what I was saying before, which is that if I found the right directors who really wanted a collaboration, I would 100% do it again, because I absolutely love it and I know I’m good at it. It’s so funny that you should say that, because when I was on my television show I had a really moment with some people that worked on the show and they sort of suggested that I was losing my power because I was deferring to other people who I thought were smart. And instead of sort of taking that bait and being a dude and saying, “You’re right, I have an ego. And I’m not going to listen to you. And I know the answer,” I actually said, “I think it’s what makes me powerful is that I pick the right people to listen to, and that I know that there are creative people here who can give me better ideas than even I can think of.”

And to me those are the really exciting sets to be on are the ones where everybody sort of feels like if you have the right group, you know, the contributions are welcome. And to me it’s like if the idea can’t withstand a little bit of criticism, then it’s not the right idea.

So, how could you get panicky about somebody else telling you they think they might know the answer? I take it all in. And I don’t take it — if I don’t agree with it, I just don’t take it. I filter it out and I go on to the next thing.

But, you can take it in. You know, that’s not an ego jab. I don’t know.

**Craig:** I agree.

**Dana:** It’s interesting.

**Craig:** I agree. I mean, the people that said that to you, this was the show you were running, correct?

**Dana:** Yes, it is. And I’m happy to know that, Craig, you’re experiencing it, too. Because sometimes I feel like I’ve gotten into slightly more feministy/sexism-y place lately because I’ve experienced some more examples of that that are kind of shocking. And I hadn’t really experienced it before.

But it’s like I wish I was almost at like an all-girls school in Hollywood so that I could just say like, “Oh yeah, there are still the bossy women who want to talk all the time and — ”

**John:** All right. Because Craig and I could never talk knowledgeably about this, because we don’t experience it, can you give us some examples of the things you encounter — and so obviously you can change the details around it, but what are some things — because no one is doing more better movies than you are for this kind of space. Like you have big movies that open with big movie stars, but what are you encountering?

**Dana:** You know, I think it’s like there’s a sense that any time you get emotional about something, you’re being an emotional, hysterical woman, as opposed to I’m being passionate. That’s how I get when I really believe in something. And it’s not like I cry at work. Like, of course I’ve never cried at work. I’m like basically a dude, but I just — I think that if you say something that’s emotional, and a lot of times actors are very emotional people. That’s why they’re actors is because they’re super empathetic — or not all of them, but many of them are very emotional. And so I’m interested in psychology. I mean, my mom is a psychology professor. I’ve talked about psychology. I used to read the DSM-3R, you know, mental health case book when I was like 10 years old as like a bed time story.

**John:** Oh, Craig is so excited to hear that. Because he loves his psychology.

**Craig:** You said DSM-3?

**Dana:** It was the DSM-3R, I believe, is the edition that was out when I was growing up. What was your edition?

**Craig:** Well, you know, I prefer 4 or 5 is really interesting. Five is good. Five is good.

**Dana:** I love that you’ve read all of them. That makes me so happy. But, Craig, you can back me up on this. Those books were like my first access to — they would have a little example of a person who was whatever mental illness they were talking about. And they would tell a little story about them. They’d be like, “Sally, name changed, age 35, has blah, blah, blah.” And you’d read these little stories and I think it was like my first access to sort of character types and people who behaved in certain ways.

And I was really interested in that stuff. But for me, when that — that is a part of what we do. You know, this is a business, but it’s also emotional and it’s kind of a little bit art. And it’s kind of a little bit all these things. It’s very organic. It’s very living and breathing.

And I found sometimes that when I would talk about like an emotional thing, like I’d say, “Hey, this is actress is having trouble because she feels blah, blah, blah,” there was definitely a lot of male executives around me who were like rolling their eyes at me. And it’s like, you know, and that was a little bit frustrating because I kept trying to explain to them like this is a business conversation. Because this emotional thing is affecting our business. And so we need to address this emotional thing.

**John:** Yeah. It’s a bunch of trying to make art, which is by its nature an emotional experience. And trying to make it in a very difficult way. But to expect that everyone is going to behave rationally and sort of clinically cleanly at all times is unrealistic.

**Dana:** Yeah. Absolutely unrealistic. And, you’re getting together a group of people who all are probably slightly different pages in the DSM-3R case book, including myself. And I’m sure I’m like page 68, you know, OCD and this, that, and the other.

But, you’re getting together all of these different sort of personality types, and then you’re kind of putting them into a war zone type situation where there’s so much money at stake and everyone is kind of in their most heightened behavioral state. And that’s why you sort of need a person like me that kind of dives — I take my body and I just like dive on grenades left, right, and center every day. That’s sort of what I would do.

**Craig:** I’ve been watching these discussions online. A lot of times there will be these Twitter battles between screenwriters. And a lot of times the fights are about these issues — issues of sexism, perceived sexism, and how it’s working in the workplace in Hollywood.

And it strikes me that part of the disconnect that’s going on is women will say, “Look, this is how I’m treated and this is no good.” And then guys will say, “Well, hold on. I’ve been treated that way.” Because, you know, all writers are treated poorly to some extent.

And so there’s this interesting disconnect, like, “Oh, you think that’s just because you’re a woman.” The problem is that it is worse for women. We know that there’s just facts. Right? So there are these facts.

**Dana:** Yeah, there’s just numbers. There’s like actual data. Yeah.

**Craig:** There’s actual data. And so, you know, on your DSM thing it’s true. We’re all worried about our own emotional well-being. Our emotional well-being is the most stark and salient to us. So, we come home — so you’ve got some guy who comes home, he’s just been beaten up by his producers, belittled, made to feel like he doesn’t belong. Told that he was being difficult, and emotional. And then he gets online and someone is like, “This is how they treat us because we’re women.” He goes, “No! It’s because we’re screenwriters!”

And that doesn’t help. [laughs] It doesn’t help at all.

**Dana:** Yeah. It’s so funny, because I’m sort of bummed that I even have to engage in these conversations about sexism, because up until now I feel like I kind of ignored it, just because I’m bored with it. I don’t want it to be a thing. And I feel like, you know, the film business is so hard. It’s so hard to be successful, whether you’re a woman, or a man, or any of it.

But the place where I feel like it does actually come into play, again, going back to like weird psychology stuff, is I think that women are afraid of failure in a way that men kind of grow up not being as scared of screwing up. We’re told that like you’ve got to be a good girl, and you’ve got to get the A-plusses. And you have to be a good girl, do it right.

And so we aren’t taught by society that it’s okay to screw up at stuff and be bad at stuff. And this is a business where you have to mess up over and over again and you have to get your — like you were describing, Craig, you have to get the shit peed out of you over, and over, and over again, every single day. And then you have to get up and dust yourself off and just start over again. Day in and day out. And day in and day out.

And I don’t know that that’s the way that girls are socialized in our culture at least.

**John:** Well, talk about the failure. The first cut of every movie is going to be terrible. It’s going to be just awful. It’s going to be unwatchable.

**Dana:** Yeah. Your skin is going to crawl.

**John:** But I could definitely imagine if you are delivering that first cut to the studio, there’s a different reaction because it’s like, “Oh, she really screwed up that cut. That cut sucked.”

**Dana:** Right. Yeah.

**John:** Versus like if it’s a guy who delivered it, it’s like, well, every first cut sucks.

**Dana:** First cuts always suck. Yeah. 100%. And I think that is the place where it’s actually real and actually damaging. Which is I think that women don’t get as many chances as guys do in this business. And I think Diablo Cody said it really well at one point. She was talking about how like if you fail once as a woman, it’s like you’ve failed for all women kind. Whereas guys fail all the time and they get second, and third, and fourth, and fifth chances.

Women fail once and they never get another chance. So that’s a little tricky. And, you know, I do think that — again, Lorene Scafaria had a good point to me the other day about like financiers. It’s like, all of this is all about — it’s all about money. It’s always about money. Which is why I always urge people, like if you want to see more movies like this, you have to go to the movie theaters on that opening weekend and use your money to vote.

Because if you don’t go see them, Hollywood is going to stop making them. They’re just going to follow the money. So, Lorene mentioned like all the financiers are male. You’re looking to try to make a movie and then you also have to get involved in a conversation with a guy who is looking at you as either his wife, he ex-wife, or his daughter.

And that’s tough. Again, like critics also are tough. Because critics can make or break a movie, and I would say the majority of critics are males, probably age 50. Would that be sort of a fairish thing of saying?

**John:** That sounds about right.

**Dana:** And those people don’t like our kinds of movies.

**John:** Yeah.

**Dana:** So, you’re going to get bad reviews if you make a movie about a female journey. The same movie with a male protagonist that’s dealing with relationships, like they would never have called 40-Year-Old Virgin a romantic comedy. They just called it a comedy. But it was about a guy and romance and relationships. That literally all that movie was about. But that’s a comedy.

**John:** Yeah. So any of the Apatow movies are just comedies, but any movies that have more than three women in them are romantic comedies.

**Dana:** Exactly.

**John:** And so your movie, How to Be Single, got lumped into the, oh, it’s a romantic comedy, even though the romance of it is not a big factor. It’s like an Apatow kind of movie, but with girls.

**Dana:** Yeah. Exactly. And that’s frustrating because, you know, again, it’s not an ego thing. I don’t’ read reviews because I think it’s really self-flagellating and weird. It’s like don’t go to that place. Because if a tree falls in the forest and you didn’t hear it, it’s like I don’t have that in body. I don’t have that horrible thing that that person just about me in my body, because I didn’t read it.

But, you know, I occasionally dip in because I sort of have to know what are people who are trying to go to the movies this weekend reading, so I dip in a little bit. And, yeah, it’s frustrating because you get marginalized by being called a rom-com. And the truth is nobody goes to theaters to see romantic-comedies because they want to see them on their TVs at their houses.

So, that’s messing with my business, dude. It does actually affect the business, which is a bummer.

**John:** I hear you. So, you mentioned their names before, so we should talk about Diablo, and Lorene, and Liz, and the four of you, the Fempire. What was the genesis behind that? So, these are four young writers who have sort of set out and were going to kind of work together to make projects?

**Dana:** It wasn’t really that we were ever working together. It was just there was a New York Times article written by the great Deb Schoeneman, who is now a writer in her right and doing awesome. And it was back in the time when the four of us had just kind of become friends. And we were all doing our own stuff, but somehow we got called the Fempire and it kind of seemed like it was the group.

We would more sort of casually help each other with our stuff, so like I would read Lorene’s script. She would read my script. We would give each other notes. And I would read Liz’s stuff. And she would read mine. So it was a little bit more casual like that. But what I liked about it is I liked that it kind of said, you know, this is a group of women who are all trying to do the same thing, and we’re not being catty to each other. We’re being good to each other. We want to help each other. We want to watch each other succeed. And that’s the thing — like I have absolutely no patience for women who don’t like other women. Like I think there’s a very special, delicious place in hell for women who are mean to other women.

So, I just liked that it was like these chicks are all trying to do the same thing, and we’re all really proud of each other. And it could have been like this story about these four people who kind of never ended up being friends, or staying together, but we all are still really good friends. And we still love each other and we still support each other and come out for each other. So, it’s just like kind of a cool thing to have.

**John:** But seeing you guys work, you guys would help each other out on things in ways I’ve never seen guys help each other out on things, which I thought was really laudable and great.

**Dana:** That’s cool. Like what? I love that.

**John:** There would be times where it’s like, “Oh, I got to help Lorene with this thing that she’s writing.” Or, I just feel like reading other people’s stuff is one thing, I feel like you guys were kind of in the room helping each other out in ways —

**Dana:** Yeah. And —

**John:** And ultimately you went through New Girl, which I know actually you got paid to work on New Girl, but like I felt you were a very important part of the early years of New Girl.

**Dana:** Yeah. And Lorene actually directed a bunch of New Girls. Because, you know, we would just convince Lorene. And she directed a Ben & Kate. Like, we would just convince — Lorene is mostly just a feature director, and she only really directs her own stuff, but we would just kind of convince her like, hey, come be with us on TV for a second because we thought she’s so talented. And we tried to convince her to get over there.

But, yeah, there was some formalizing of it. Like I would watch cuts of New Girl and kind of like help Liz out. But, I mean, I think it was — now that I’ve been in television and I understand that sometimes, for some people writing is a very solitary thing. I imagine for you, you like to get into a hermetically sealed train and get sent to space on your space train and do it there or something.

And, Craig, I don’t know if you’re the same way. But, for me, I think by talking and so I needed other people around me to kind of like figure out what my ideas where. Because I sort of — by pitching stuff out loud over and over again, that’s how I kind of land on it. And so, yeah, like Lorene and I would tag in to help each other just sort of stand there — a lot of times it was literally just an emotional support animal. Like, you know, like Lorene would just stand there and be like, “You can do it. You’re okay. Breathe. Have another coffee. You can do this.”

And a lot of times it was emotional support. And other times it was tagging in with actual, you know, she would come up with a great line for me, or I would come up with a thing for her. And now that I’ve been in television and I see how fun that can be, and how collaborative that can be, that’s what I’m trying to bring into features in a weird way as well, is just a little bit more of like a TV sort of collaborative environment in features.

I think in television, I can name off the top of my head a lot more female boss ladies. So, I think that means it’s better in television. But I think it’s getting hard across the board because the business is contracting so much.

I feel like when I started out, they made 30 movies a year that were the kinds of movies I could have written. And now I see maybe eight of those every year that get released. And you sort of look at it and you say I wonder where I would fit into this new marketplace. I’m so impressed with what Deadpool dead, even though they kicked me in the dick and stole probably $5 to $10 million from me last weekend. God bless you, Deadpool. I’m so happy for you.

I am happy because it’s an original movie that people were excited by because it was original. So that makes me happy. And then I go, ooh, like should I be trying to get into the Deadpool tent pole business? And, you know, I talk to people about it and I start floating that idea, because it’s like I’ve got ideas that are big like that. I’ve got huge super hero ideas all the time. It’s just not my genre, so I haven’t really pursued it. And the response I tend to get is like, “Oh yeah. We’ll look and see if there’s a Cruella de Vil, or like a female super hero thing.”

And I’m like, but, oh, so I get it. You would never in a million years consider me for the male job.

**Craig:** Out of curiosity, who is giving you that response? Your agents? Or — ?

**Dana:** I mean, just anybody I talk to about it.

**Craig:** But who are these dummies? Honestly, like —

**Dana:** How many women do you know though, Craig, seriously, like I love you. You’re my favorite, because you’re a total feminist. You guys both are. But like how many women do you know that have written on those big movies? The Marvel movies?

**Craig:** No, no, I’m not questioning that it’s happening. What I’m questioning is who are these people saying this? Like I want to know who they are. I want to know —

**Dana:** Do you want to key their cars for me? [laughs]

**Craig:** Well, I just feel like it’s just so profoundly dumb.

**Dana:** It’s a little backwards looking.

**Craig:** And you know my whole thing is I decry all of the isms, but those are all underneath the thing I hate the most which is dumb.

**Dana:** Dumbism?

**Craig:** It’s dumb. It’s just dumb. I don’t understand it.

**Dana:** Yeah, it’s dumb.

**Craig:** Why would you — what?

**Dana:** It’s because they don’t want to do the hard thing. And what I’ve learned —

**Craig:** Well, let me ask you this question.

**Dana:** Yeah, please.

**Craig:** Is the dumbness, because I’ve gotten this kind of dumbness before, too. Is the dumbness, they look and they say, “Well, here are the movies that you have done, which of course we’ve been allowing you to do. So we look at what our filter has allowed you to do and we’ve decided that must be the only thing you can do.” Is that — are they giving you any rationale for this, dumb, dumb thing?

**Dana:** I think it’s exactly that. But, to bring it back to I think the point that you guys were making before about maybe it’s just because we’re writers, I think that either of you guys if you wanted to do something that was so far outside of your genre, you would have to do the same thing that I would have to do, which is you have to write your way into it.

So, you have to either take a really deep pay cut to do something outside of your genre. Like if I wanted to do a period piece on television, like some of the weird British stuff that I like, you know, I would have to just write it, and prove to someone that I could do it, so that I just took the question mark out of the equation.

And I’m assuming you guys would have to do that, too, right? Or would they give you the benefit of the doubt?

**Craig:** No, no.

**Dana:** I don’t think they would.

**John:** I think they give us more benefit of the doubt than they might necessarily give you.

**Craig:** I don’t feel like I get any of it. I mean, I did — I’m working on something that is definitely — like characterized I think the way you just said, something that’s really outside. And, yeah, I just said, let’s not even bother. Money doesn’t — we’ll just do it. I’ll do it for scale. I don’t care.

**Dana:** Right. So you have to do that, too.

**Craig:** Just let me this. Let me do this. There are times I think where —

**Dana:** And that’s how you had to win that job.

**Craig:** Yeah. But, I think that where there’s this pernicious thing is that people may say, hmm, well this guy is saying that he’s willing to do all that. Wow, he’s really passionate and he’s really aggressive about it. I admire that. And I wonder if when a woman does it they’re like, “Desperate.”

**Dana:** Oh, 100%. Because, again, the dating stuff, and the psychology plays into all of it. It’s like no guy ever wants a woman who is coming after him, because they’re biologically programmed to want to chase after the cheetahs because the cheetah is the meat and they’re going to survive if they catch it. So, like if I’m a woman, and I stand there right in front of you and go, “I’m available,” it’s like, ew, gross. I don’t want her. They need to actually see the other cavemen trying to fuck me.

**Craig:** I’m okay with that actually.

**John:** It’s such a weird metaphor. I’m trying to visualize it.

**Dana:** It got a little confusing there.

**John:** Are you eating the cheetah? I don’t know.

**Dana:** I think we’re eating — yes.

**Craig:** Does anyone eat cheetah?

**Dana:** We’re both fucking and eating cheetah.

**John:** I mean, I hear cheetah is delicious. So, I mean, I don’t want to — it’s a specialty.

**Dana:** But it was like a sexual eating of the cheetah.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Dana:** So there was some of that in there, too.

**John:** [laughs] Sexual —

**Dana:** It was like a really weird picture.

**John:** Dana Fox and Sexual Cheetahs.

**Dana:** This is why they hire me for the writing.

**Craig:** [sings] Sexual Cheetah. Sexual Cheetah.

**John:** So, Elizabeth Banks directs Pitch Perfect 2 —

**Dana:** The greatest.

**John:** She’s the best.

**Dana:** Love her.

**John:** And that movie is a giant hit. And I think her really valid frustration is why are you not offering me this Marvel movie or this other giant tent pole thing when she did a kick ass job directing that movie.

**Dana:** I’m not speaking for Liz. I love Liz to bits. And I think she’s amazing. And I’m not speaking for her here, but I do think that a lot of the time when women direct stuff, they think it’s like a fluke or something if it’s successful. It’s like look at that accident that lady tripped on and fell into.

**John:** How great was that, yeah.

**Dana:** How did she fall into all that money by accident? Like if you think about it, I had never heard that the person who directed Mamma Mia, which made like a bazillion dollars worldwide, I did not know that was a woman. I don’t know her name. I don’t think she’s been allowed to direct anything until she’s about to direct Bridget Jones 2.

I mean, like why? That’s super weird, you know.

**John:** It is super weird. Because I would say that, my personal opinion, I didn’t think Mamma Mia was especially well directed —

**Dana:** Didn’t see it. Making lots of comments about it, but never saw it.

**John:** Made lots of money. But I do agree with you that like any man who made a movie that made a gazillion dollars, their next movie is easy to make.

**Dana:** Gets another chance. Yeah. They get another chance. The next one is immediately green lit. Or whatever they want to do is immediately green lit. I do think that’s interesting. And I think, you know, with Liz, there’s probably a little bit of a sense of like, “Well, she had that property before, and she was part of that property all the way along, so maybe she… blah, blah, blah.”

And it’s like this is the thing that happens to women is that they’ve got to prove themselves over and over and over and over again.

**John:** Well, they explain away the success, rather than sort of celebrating saying how do I get a piece of that.

**Dana:** Yeah. Exactly. And I personally kind of thrive on the energy of needing to prove myself over and over again. I, much like Hamilton, am young, scrappy, and hungry. And I think if I remain young, scrappy, and hungry, like my country, I’ll be okay. So, in a way I sort of get excited —

**Craig:** It worked out for Hamilton just perfectly. [laughs]

**Dana:** It worked out for Hamilton you guys. Oh, that makes me sad. It didn’t work out.

**Craig:** I’ve imagined my death so many times. Just like a memory.

**John:** I get to see Hamilton next week, and I’m going to be so excited.

**Dana:** Wait, have you not seen it?

**John:** I haven’t seen it yet.

**Dana:** Oh, god, John. I can’t even —

**John:** No spoilers.

**Dana:** The spoiler is zero. Zero spoilers.

**Craig:** He dies at the end. He dies, he dies.

**John:** I can’t believe it. History is the worst.

**Dana:** I mean, he does.

**Craig:** History has its eyes on you.

**Dana:** The magical thing is I have — I’m so proud of my education. You know, went to Stanford. Went to USC Film School. Like super educated. Sort of a blank spot where all of American history is concerned for me.

**John:** It’s really not that important.

**Dana:** Like just didn’t really, I don’t know, either go to that class, or pay attention in that class. So, Hamilton to me, the whole time I was like, “Oh my god, what? America?”

**Craig:** Slavery? We had slaves?

**Dana:** Wait, what was Britain doing in this whole thing? I mean, the whole thing to me was like a shocker. The plot of that thing. It’s the first time in forever that my own ignorance has created like an incredibly magical viewing experience.

**John:** You managed to avoid all spoilers.

**Dana:** It was amazing.

**Craig:** You were kind of in suspense to see if we won the Revolutionary War.

**Dana:** Oh yeah, 100%. I was like, did he play golf?

**Craig:** That’s spectacular. John, you’re going to love it. It’s the greatest.

**Dana:** John is literally going to have to take like a Hamilton vacation for a week and a half afterwards to like reevaluate who he is as a person. I felt like a different human being. I felt like I was born during that show, and I came out of it and I didn’t know who the new me was.

**John:** I’m really glad you’re not trying to set expectations too high for it.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s a little absurd. That’s just crazy. That’s your DSM acting up.

**Dana:** I don’t, man, I had a really emotional reaction to it. I really DSM’d it. I DSM’d it hard.

**Craig:** Yeah, you DSM’d it. I mean, it’s an amazing show. The one thing that I actually had to do was take a break because I couldn’t sleep. Like I would keep cycling Hamilton songs in my head. It was bad.

**Dana:** I know. I have been doing a thing where I just had a baby three months ago, and I’m trying to lose the last of my baby weight. And I’m tricking myself into running by only allowing myself to start at the beginning of the Hamilton soundtrack, so I only get as deep into the Hamilton soundtrack as I can run, as far as. So I keep getting to like My Shot or like the Skylar Sisters. And it’s like, that’s like a 20-minute chunk. And I’m like, I can’t go further.

**Craig:** You should start a little bit later, because I would imagine Wait For It would be a great running song.

**Dana:** Oh, god, it would be so good. But I got to earn it, dude. I got to run that far so I can hear that song.

**Craig:** I get it. I get it.

**John:** Bringing up your baby is actually a perfect last bit on this topic of, oh, why are women not more successful in Hollywood. Oh, they have to stop and have babies. You have three kids under three.

**Dana:** I have so many babies. They’re all babies. I just have babies. Three of them.

**John:** You have nothing with babies. And you were pregnant with your first child while you were creating Ben & Kate.

**Dana:** That’s absolutely right. I mean, I actually had sort of a dark — this is dark. I don’t know if your audience can handle this.

**John:** We love dark. We love dark.

**Dana:** But I actually had like a ton of trouble getting pregnant. I had to do seven IVF cycles and I had two miscarriages. And the first miscarriage I had, or the one that was really tough for me, which was like about 11 weeks or so, I found out that it was not going to work out. I found out the baby was dead the morning of my Ben & Kate pitch.

So, I had to go into the network and be like the funniest person in the entire world with like a dead baby inside me. And as much as that’s like just sort of a horrible story —

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah, it’s the best story ever.

**Dana:** Everybody said, “We have to cancel the pitch. We have to cancel the pitch.” And I was sort of like, why do you think I have a sense of humor? Because comedy to me has been what has saved my life throughout my whole life. I mean, comedy for I think so many people who are in comedy is a defense mechanism. It’s a way to survive. It’s a way to kind of like make the world okay if you feel like the world isn’t going to be okay.

I had a pretty great childhood. I love my parents. It’s all cool. But, you know, it’s hard. And so I made people laugh as the way to kind of make everything okay. And so everyone kept saying, “We got to cancel this pitch. This is so creepy. This is so dark.”

And I said, no, I need this pitch. Like I’ll kill myself if I don’t go to this pitch.

**Craig:** Good for you.

**Dana:** So I went and I just like crushed it.

**Craig:** Love that. I love that.

**Dana:** And I was really glad I did it.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know what? Cry later.

**Dana:** Cry later, man.

**Craig:** Go do your job. Cry at home. I think that’s amazing.

**Dana:** But that sort of set the tone for my —

**John:** Definitely. You’re going to have three beautiful kids and a kick ass career simultaneously, and you’re going to make it work.

**Dana:** And for me personally, I never stopped while I was pregnant or having babies. I went back to work three weeks after the first baby. I went back to work two weeks after the second baby. And I think I was like working while cranking the third baby out of my body.

**Craig:** Unbelievable. I mean, not to — listen, I don’t judge any woman and how she behaves after a pregnancy, and particularly I don’t judge my own wife because, you know, I don’t think like —

**Dana:** Your wife is the most awesome creature.

**Craig:** She’s the best.

**Dana:** That’s the thing.

**Craig:** She was like, after those babies were born, she was like, “Okay. I’m going to sit here as still as I can sit and you’re going to help me.”

**Dana:** I think her stillness was my work.

**Craig:** Got it.

**Dana:** Like I think people are just different, people are just built differently. And the way I was built was, you know, for me, working is my passion. I love it so much. It keeps me going and also the more I keep moving, the less I have to deal with things that are scary, or sad, or I don’t want to deal with.

So, and the first one, I was having weird post-partum depression, but I don’t think I realized it was that at the time, because I’m such a chipper motherfucker most of the time. So, I was like, wow, this is kind of weird. I can’t seem to stop crying. Wow. Boy am I crying a lot. Is anyone noticing how much I’m sobbing? This is pretty weird.

So, I was like sort of positive about my depression. And then I went back to work and I was around people and I was doing what I loved and it made me feel like everything was going to be okay. So, you know, I think all women should do exactly what their body and their brains are telling them to do to make them feel like their happiest, best selves.

**Craig:** You only have three kids is the way I say.

**Dana:** Craig, stop tweeting babies into my body. Stop getting me pregnant, Craig.

**Craig:** I’m going to tweet another baby at you.

**Dana:** Don’t tweet that baby at me. I can’t have four babies.

**Craig:** Done. It’s done.

**John:** One more plug for How to Be Single. It has the best baby I’ve ever seen in a movie probably.

**Dana:** Oh my god, that baby was incredible.

**John:** It’s a scene with Leslie Mann and this baby, who is just the most angelic perfect baby. And their conversation, which is a good like — it felt like two minutes of conversation, a one-sided conversation with a beautiful baby, is just delightful.

**Dana:** I cry every time during that scene. I cannot pull it together. I almost have a fourth baby every time I watch that scene. It’s so bad. I’m like, where is Craig when I need him while I’m watching the scene. It’s such a beautiful scene.

**Craig:** I’m here.

**Dana:** And I hope everybody goes to see How to Be Single because I’m really proud of this one. And I really love it. I think it’s different. I think it’s interesting. I think we sort of casually do some kind of interesting stuff that I don’t know if we’re getting credit for. But like there’s an interracial relationship that we like 100% don’t comment on. It’s like not a big deal. It’s just like people get together sometimes and they aren’t the same race.

**John:** There’s an ex-boyfriend who is actually very sympathetic. And you can completely understand the movie from his point of view and sort of why he is doing what he’s doing. And in any other movie he would be a villain.

**Dana:** He would be vilified. Yeah. He would be vilified. And we have an incredible amount of respect for the men in our movie. We don’t sort of make them into the typical arm candy characters that women are sort of relegated to in movies where the main story is about a guy. We really tried to give those people respect. And like most of the dudes in the movie, I mean, they’re flawed just like the girls are, but they’re good guys. Because I didn’t want to —

**John:** I feel like Jake Lacy is a really good guy.

**Dana:** Jake Lacy is like the greatest guy of all time. He’s my favorite. My favorite line that Katie Silberman came up with on the day was, “My Halloween costume when I was in sixth grade was the stay-at-home dad.” Like how much do you love that guy? He’s like of course I want to be the daddy of your baby. What are you talking about?

But, yes, please see the movie, because I’m really proud of it, and I love it.

**John:** Hooray. It’s time for our One Cool Things. So, every week on the show we talk about One Cool Thing. So, Dana, you can go third so you can figure out exactly what your One Cool Thing should be.

**Dana:** Okay. I’m going to think about it. I think, for me, my One Cool Thing —

**Craig:** She doesn’t understand what third means.

**John:** She doesn’t understand the idea of you go third if you want to.

**Dana:** I can go third. I can go after you guys? Wait, but I’ve got to really think about it, you guys. I don’t have a cool thing.

**Craig:** That’s why he said you could go third. And then you were like, “Okay, so my One Cool Thing — ”

**Dana:** Okay, I’m going to say my One Cool Thing and I’m going to alienate every single one of your listeners. It’s going to be amazing.

**Craig:** Do it.

**Dana:** Okay, you do your stuff first.

**John:** Okay. So I’ll go first. My One Cool Thing is this great article I read about cow tipping. So, going back to our tipping discussion, here’s a great article about cow tipping. I’m going to poll both of you. Is cow tipping a real thing or a made up thing?

**Craig:** That is a made up thing.

**John:** Dana, what do you think?

**Dana:** I am going to go, because I’ve seen the movie Heathers, it has to be a real thing. And I think it’s offensive and creepy.

**John:** Okay. Cow tipping is not a real thing.

**Dana:** Oh, thank god.

**John:** So, this article by Jake Swearingen for Modern Farmer gets into the realities of cow tipping, which never was a thing and is actually almost impossible to do. So, for many reasons, like cows don’t actually sleep standing up necessarily. It would take so much force to push over a cow. You couldn’t do it. Cows would run away before you could get anywhere close to them.

So, it’s the movie Heathers, which I love the movie Heathers, that sort of kind of first put it in popular culture as a thing, like, oh, that’s a thing —

**Dana:** Did they make that up? But it sort of popularized it?

**John:** They popularized it.

**Dana:** Oh, that’s interesting.

**John:** It was already sort of a meme that was out there, but they sort of like grounded that meme. And so you see it in all of these movies and it’s like a thing that never actually happened.

**Dana:** That gives me great relief. I really worried for those cows.

**John:** You don’t need to worry for those cows.

**Dana:** I’m like upset about the cow tipping. Do you think the guy that wrote that article plays huge on that all-farmer dating website? Have you seen the commercials for that?

**John:** He’s the star of the all-farmer dating website. I think he’s going to be great. My question is, if you tip a cow, do you have to tip them afterwards? Do you have to give them like 20% if there’s —

**Dana:** If there was a button I would do it, but not if I had to do with cash. Zero percent on cash.

**John:** If there was an app for it, that made it really simple?

**Craig:** Wait, I’m sorry, there is a dating app just for farmers?

**Dana:** You’ve never seen this commercial? There’s a commercial on weird television programs. I don’t know. I watch a lot of like weird stuff. Just sometimes I’ll end up on like a weird — I’m in like a weird Steve Harvey place right now. I’m just really into Steve Harvey. And then you’ll get there, and you’ll be like what’s the demographic. Who is watching these shows?

And then you see the commercials and you’re like people who want to date farmers, apparently. There’s an all-farmer dating website. You should look it up, Craig. You could play huge on that, too, because you’ve got that beard going that’s pretty sexy.

**Craig:** I’ve got the beard. I know, I feel like a pair of overalls, I could kill it.

**Dana:** Oh my god, you would crush it. Also in the gay community. Careful.

**Craig:** What? Why? At this point, who cares? Do you know what I mean? It’s enough already. You know what, man, it’s like gay/straight — those are words from like my grandpa’s time.

**Dana:** Oh my god, I love that know that we’ve circled all the way back Whole Foods guy, and Whole Foods guy is not going to be labeled gay or straight.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Why should I be? Why should I be?

**Dana:** I love that guy.

**Craig:** Like Hector is like, okay, you either work in produce or not. And I’m like, wrong Hector. Wrong. I don’t care what it says on my sheet.

**Dana:** I work in the chocolate bar. You know, don’t you feel like that’s going to be the next thing? It’s just going to be like what percent cocoa there is.

**Craig:** I mean, the word cocoa gives me dick shivers.

**Dana:** It upsets me so much.

**John:** Dana, I see the look in your face. I think you have a great One Cool Thing figured out.

**Dana:** Okay, so my One Cool Thing is the Spectra S1 breast pump. It is a new breast pump that has literally changed the face of my earth. And nobody is talking about it, and so I’m going to alienate every single person in your entire audience, except for the one pregnant/potentially nursing lady in your audience.

**Craig:** Oh, no, I think we’ve got quite a few I would imagine.

**John:** So tell us what makes this breast pump better than other breast pumps?

**Dana:** It’s special. It comes out of Australia.

**John:** We like everything that comes out of Australia.

**Craig:** I’m not impressed by the way.

**Dana:** I like all Australians.

**John:** Do you watch The Katering Show? The Katering Show is great.

**Dana:** Oh, no.

**John:** We’ll send you the link.

**Dana:** Wait, what? Oh, John, you know that’s right up my alley. That’s going to work.

**John:** You’re going to be so excited. It’s Australian. But tell us about this breast pump.

**Dana:** I have like a really deep hole where The Great British Bake Off is. Like I need new Great British Bake Off. Oh wait, can I change my One Cool Thing, or do you want me to do the breast pump?

**John:** Stick with the breast pump. Everyone knows about The Great British Bake Off.

**Dana:** It’s an Australian breast pump. And they created, you know the Dyson guy who talks about vacuums in this really creepy way? I feel like maybe that guy created this because they’re basically like, “The sucking mechanism of the breast pump,” is much more like an actual baby. And so you get — the long and short of it is you get like twice as much in half the time, and it has literally changed everything. And it doesn’t hurt. And it’s kind of incredible.

**John:** That’s great.

**Dana:** So, I’m just going to urge all women to throw their creepy Medela things out the window, because they hurt and it’s a bummer. And go to this weird Australian one.

**Craig:** My wife had that. She had the Medela one. And, honestly, the thought of more coming out, you know, my job was to save it all and put it in those bags and stick it in the freezer.

**Dana:** Yeah. Every good man.

**Craig:** My wife, it’s not like — you know, you know her, she’s not like super chesty or anything, but oh my god. I mean —

**Dana:** Really? That’s awesome.

**Craig:** It was crazy. I was like we need to open a store or do something. Because it was like our freezer was just overflowing. Yeah, it was crazy.

**Dana:** Black market Mazin milk.

**John:** So when Stuart does the show notes, will he be able to find this breast pump online?

**Dana:** Spectra S1. You got to get the S1, because that one has a battery involved inside it. So you just plug it in. The battery is all charged up. You can cruise around town with it. All good. On my way over here in the Uber — I really should have tipped that guy — because I was pumping in the car on the way here.

**John:** [laughs] Absolutely. So you got your lotion. You got the breast pump thing.

**Dana:** I can jerk off, and pump, and sanitize myself afterwards. It’s perfect.

**John:** It’s good stuff. Craig Mazin, try to top that.

**Craig:** Can you use the breast pump to jerk off with? I mean, describe the sucking action on this thing?

**Dana:** There’s probably like an online hack that would allow you to do that.

**Craig:** Someone has hacked it.

**Dana:** You should look on YouTube. I imagine it exists.

**John:** Or a board that you sort of solder and you put together.

**Dana:** Definitely.

**Craig:** Well, you know, that’s what we do. When it comes to jerking off —

**Dana:** John August will have like a brain trust on this and it will be solved by next week for sure.

**Craig:** I have no doubt. Well, my One Cool Thing is nothing at all to do with nipples. Weird. It’s called Sky Guide. And there are a lot of apps for your phone where you can hold it up to the sky and it tells you what you’re looking at. You know, oh, that’s Venus, or that’s a constellation.

What I love about this one is they track the schedules of passing satellites, of the space stations that go by. And the deal is at times when things are going by, they will reflect the sun from the other side. So like at night, like for six seconds, literally six seconds, they’re reflecting sunlight from the other side just because of the angle that they’re at. And then it’s gone.

And so you’ll get like a little ping. Go outside. It’s a minute away. And you stand out there and it tells you like look over here. And you look there and it counts down and then you see it.
**Dana:** Like a little flair?

**Craig:** You see like a shooting star because you’re catching a piece of satellite or something. And I don’t know, it just reminds me of the big, big beyond.

**Dana:** That’s really romantic. I like that technology can be romantic and can bring you back to something that’s so sort of primal and outdoorsy, even though it’s very computer-y.

**Craig:** And then I also have that breast pump on my dick while I’m doing it.

**Dana:** [laughs] Oh my god. Can you edit out the fact that I just spit water all over when you said that?

**Craig:** No. Are you kidding me?

**John:** All spit takes have to stay.

**Dana:** All spit takes.

**John:** You have a recurring spit take in your movie.

**Dana:** I do. I have a spit take call back, no less.

**John:** Well done.

**Craig:** The best.

**John:** We have a tiny bit of news here at the end of our show. So, listeners will know that we were supposed to have Lawrence Kasdan on our show, on our live show, and he couldn’t do it for that night. And we were very lucky to have the Game of Thrones guys fill in for him.

But, we’re going to do our Lawrence Kasdan interview live with an audience on Saturday April 16 at the Writers Guild Theater. It’s a joint program with the Writers Guild Foundation and Academy’s Nicholls Fellowship.

So, this is not a normal Scriptnotes live. This is actually their event, but we’re going to crash it and do the interview with Lawrence Kasdan there with an audience. So, if you’d like to come to see us talk to him live, there will be a link in the show notes. So, you can join us for that.

And that’s our program. So, most of the things we talked about, including the breast pumps, and the international space station tracking app, will be compiled by Stuart Friedel and put in our show notes. You can find them at johnaugust.com.

You can find me on Twitter. I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. Dana, you are?

**Dana:** @inthehenhouse.

**John:** Very nice. Oh, because you’re a fox.

**Dana:** Uh-uh. Fox in the hen house. Everything with the word Fox was taken by like some porny weird stuff. So, I had to get creative with it.

**John:** That’s nice. We like it.

If you have comments for us, you can join us on Twitter, but you can also leave comments on our Facebook page, which we actually checked this week, so that was kind of cool.

**Craig:** Wait, we have one of those? [laughs]

**John:** We have one of those.

**Craig:** Oh. Wow.

**John:** And so the things we talked about today, those were from the Facebook page, Craig.

**Craig:** Uh…yes. Of course.

**John:** Of course.

**Craig:** I knew that.

**John:** You can write in with questions to ask@johnaugust.com. That is a good place for the longer things we sometimes address on the show.

If you would like to subscribe to Scriptnotes podcast, join us on iTunes. Just click subscribe. And while you’re there, please leave us a comment. That helps other people find the show.

We also have the Scriptnotes app there. That lets you get access to all the back episodes of the show.

We also have a few of the 200 episode USB drives that have all the back catalog of Scriptnotes which you can get. So, if you’d like one of those, just go to the store. It’s at johnaugust.com. There’s a link in the show notes.

Our outro this week is by the same guy who did our outro last week. His name is Adam Lastname. I don’t know what his last name actually is. It just shows up as Lastname.

If you have an outro for us, you can write it to the same address, ask@johnaugust.com.

Our show is edited by Matthew Chilelli. It is produced by Stuart Friedel. And thank you for listening. We’ll see you next week.

**Craig:** Thanks Dana.

**John:** Thank you, Dana. Bye.

**Dana:** I love you guys.

**Craig:** Love you, too.

Links:

* Dana Fox on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Fox), [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1401416/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/inthehenhouse)
* [DSM-III-R](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders#DSM-III-R_.281987.29) and [DSM-5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5) on Wikipedia
* The New York Times on [The Fempire](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/fashion/22fempire.html)
* [How to Be Single](http://howtobesinglemovie.com/) is in theaters now
* Modern Farmer on [Cow Tipping: Fake or Really Fake?](http://modernfarmer.com/2013/09/cow-tipping-myth-or-bullcrap/)
* [farmersonly.com](http://farmersonly.com/), and [their YouTube page](https://www.youtube.com/user/FarmersOnly)
* [Spectra S1 breast pump](http://www.spectrababyusa.com/#!products/cjg9), and [on Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DBKFFJM/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* [The Katering Show](http://thekateringshow.com/) is fantastic
* [The Great British Bake Off](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b013pqnm)
* [Sky Guide](http://www.fifthstarlabs.com/#sky-guide)
* [Get tickets now](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/wgfestival-2016-craft/) to see John and Craig interview Lawrence Kasdan as part of WGFestival 2016
* [USB drives with the first 200 Scriptnotes are available now at the John August Store](http://store.johnaugust.com/)
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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2016/room-spotlight-and-the-big-short).

**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August. And this is Episode 231 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the program we will be looking at three movies that are getting a lot of attention this award season — Room, Spotlight, and The Big Short. And we will discuss how they work on a story level. We’re also going to discuss what we learned in 2015 that we’ll be carrying with us into the New Year.

Craig is off on assignment. He’s in New York finally seeing Hamilton, so he can stop talking about Hamilton. So to fill in today we have two special guests from previous episodes of Scriptnotes. First off, Aline Brosh McKenna is the co-creator of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and the screenwriter of so many movies, including The Devil Wears Prada.

Welcome, Aline.

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** Woot-woot.

**John:** Next up, Rawson Marshall Thurber is a writer and director whose credits include DodgeBall, Mysteries of Pittsburgh, We’re the Millers, and the upcoming Central Intelligence. Welcome back, Rawson Marshall Thurber.

**Rawson Marshall Thurber:** Thank you, happy to be here.

**John:** I have to use all three of your names because —

**Rawson:** [laughs]

**John:** Aline, do you always use your three names?

**Aline:** Professionally, I do.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** Me too, professionally.

**John:** You do, too? Yeah.

**Rawson:** Yeah.

**John:** I was always surprised when I heard that Marshall part of your name.

**Rawson:** It’s strange. It’s definitely strange. I didn’t realize how strange it was until I did it for the first time on DodgeBall and then I got made fun of a bunch and I think it was too late and so I just sort of stuck with it.

**John:** Do you ever say Marshall aloud or only as a printed credit?

**Rawson:** Almost only as a printed credit. But I do use my initials, RMT, when I’m signing something off or stuff like that.

**John:** Sounds good.

**Rawson:** Yeah.

**John:** So before we get into these three movies, I wanted to talk through some stuff about the year that just passed. So we are now in 2016, which seems impossible. So a bunch of movies came out in 2015, but a bunch of movies came out in 2014 and I thought we might play a little game where I’m going to ask you the title of a movie and you can tell me if it came out in 2015 or 2014.

**Rawson:** Oh, wow, okay.

**John:** Do you think you can do this, Aline?

**Aline:** Hmm.

**John:** All right. So do you want to start? I’m going to ask you.

**Aline:** Sure.

**John:** The Cobbler.

**Aline:** It came out this year.

**John:** All right, you’re correct.

**Rawson:** Wait a minute now.

**John:** Yes.

**Aline:** Because I think Adam —

**Rawson:** You mean this year, you mean 2015?

**Aline:** ’15, yeah.

**Rawson:** Okay.

**Aline:** Because I think Adam Sandler had three movies come out this year.

**John:** Yeah, he did. And this was one of them.

**Aline:** Cobbler, the nine whatever — what’s that movie? The Magnificent Nine — the Ridiculous 6.

**Rawson:** Ridiculous 6.

**Aline:** The Ridiculous 6.

**John:** Ridiculous 6 and then he also the Drew Barrymore one, or was that the year before?

**Aline:** No, there’s one more and it was —

**John:** Oh, Grown Ups 2. Yeah, so it’s all confusing.

**Aline:** Okay.

**John:** The Cobbler is also directed by Tom McCarthy who directed Spotlight, so that’s part of the reason why it’s so interesting to have that movie come up.

**Rawson:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** So we’ll answer ’15 or ’14.

**Rawson:** Okay.

**John:** All right. Focus, Will Smith.

**Rawson:** Oh, ’15.

**John:** Right. Horns. Aline Brosh McKenna, do you remember Horns? That’s the Daniel Radcliffe grows horns movie.

**Aline:** Never heard of it.

**John:** Rawson, do you know the answer? Can you steal this one?

**Rawson:** I think I know that movie. I believe it was — I think it was ’15.

**John:** It was ’14.

**Rawson:** Ah!

**John:** Oh! Black or White with Chris Rock. Rawson Marshall Thurber.

**Rawson:** I don’t know this one. Aline?

**Aline:** That’s not the movie that he did that was —

**John:** I think it was Julie Delpy who directed it.

**Aline:** Oh, I don’t know that one. The last Chris Rock movie I saw was the one with Rosario Dawson. And that was ’14, I think.

**John:** Yeah. Black or White was 2015. Yeah. Or it could be I’ve got the title completely wrong and it’s not even the right movie.

**Aline:** [laughs]

**John:** The Boy Next Door. Rawson Marshall Thurber.

**Rawson:** The Boy Next Door?

**John:** Jennifer Lopez.

**Rawson:** Oh, that was my — just a guilty pleasure. I knew this one. Yeah. [laughs]

**John:** ’15 or ’14?

**Rawson:** The Odyssey. Right, ’15.

**John:** ’15 is correct. Ouija, Aline Brosh McKenna?

**Aline:** ’14.

**John:** You’re right.

**Rawson:** That was good one.

**John:** Stick with you with Horrible Bosses 2.

**Aline:** ’14.

**John:** Correct.

**Rawson:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** Rawson, The Hundred-Foot Journey.

**Rawson:** The Hundred-Foot Journey, this is the —

**John:** Helen Mirren.

**Rawson:** Yeah, Helen Mirren. It’s not the hotel one, right?

**John:** No, it’s not —

**Rawson:** It’s essentially the same —

**John:** Essentially same idea.

**Rawson:** I’ve got a 50-50 shot, right? I’ll say 2015.

**John:** It was ’14.

**Rawson:** Am I winning?

**John:** I don’t know. We —

**Rawson:** I think I’m losing. I think I’m down at least a point at this point. Wait, you’re not even keeping score? [laughs]

**John:** I’m not really keeping score.

**Rawson:** Why are we doing it then?

**Aline:** We’ll have to go back. We’ll go back.

**Rawson:** Why are —

**John:** We’ll go back and check the transcript and figure out who —

**Aline:** I’ve seen the prize. It’s really good.

**Rawson:** Have Stuart figure it —

**John:** It’s pretty amazing.

**Rawson:** Because I want to win.

**John:** Aline, Hot Tub Time Machine 2.

**Aline:** ’15.

**John:** You’re right.

**Rawson:** That’s a good one.

**John:** Was it a good movie?

**Rawson:** No, no, I mean it’s a good question.

**John:** It’s a good question.

**Rawson:** That’s really —

**John:** Yeah, it’s really on —

**Rawson:** Because when you asked Horrible Bosses 2, that’s a tough one because that came out Thanksgiving 2014.

**John:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** So that’s like right in the danger zone of —

**John:** That dangerous pocket.

**Rawson:** Yeah.

**John:** Rawson, Annie.

**Rawson:** Oh, 2014.

**John:** You’re right. Aline, you worked on Annie, so you —

**Aline:** I did.

**John:** You would know that one, so I gave it to him. Final one, Run All Night. Do you know it?

**Rawson:** Yeah, I know it. It was 2015.

**John:** It was 2015. What is that movie?

**Rawson:** I don’t want to say it’s a Taken knockoff. But it is essentially that. I think it does have Liam Neeson in it and I believe a very sort of talented director whose name escapes me. And I think he’s not an American. And it’s a thriller chase piece where Liam Neeson needs to, I believe, clear his name and/or rescue someone. And it’s at night time.

**John:** Oh, because —

**Rawson:** And there’s a lot of running. I saw pieces of it. And it’s beautifully shot.

**John:** All right. According to Wikipedia, Run All Night is a 2015 American action gangster crime thriller written by Brad Ingelsby and directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, starring Liam Neeson, Joel Kinnaman, Common, Ed Harris. It was released on March 13th, 2015.

**Rawson:** Wow.

**John:** Wow.

**Rawson:** Okay.

**John:** So before we get into these movies —

**Rawson:** I won, though.

**John:** I think Rawson may have won. I don’t know.

**Aline:** No. I think I was just in there going ’14, ’15.

**Rawson:** [laughs]

**Aline:** ’14.

**John:** All right. So we’re going to have Stuart check the transcript and figure out who won that game.

**Aline:** Okay.

**John:** Before we start with our movies from this past year, I want to talk over sort of general lessons we may have learned from 2015 or things we’ve noticed in the industry or the business that we are in and sort of what they might indicate about where 2016 is headed.

And so, something I noticed from my side is I feel like we may be nearing the end of sort of classic studio development. So when I started as a screenwriter, it was common for a film studio to have a big slate of things in development. And there might be 30 projects that were in different stages. I just don’t know that that’s going to happen or continue to happen anymore because as I go in and pitch on projects, granted there’s some selection bias, it’s the kind of things I’ve being brought in to pitch on, feels like they’re not even going to bother developing these movies because they have no spot to release them.

You look at, you know, the Disney label, it has all the Marvel films, it has all the Star Wars films. There’s no more spots to develop for. And I feel like, increasingly, all the studios are going to be in a similar situation. Aline, Rawson, do you notice anything like that?

**Aline:** I mean, I remember around the time of the strike people were saying the whole movie business is going to move towards branded entertainment and, you know, theme park kind of movies. And I was always the person saying that’s ridiculous, that’ll never happen.

The people that we know, you know, who we came up with, our school of screenwriters, by and large are working on some kind of branded entertainment. It’s much more difficult to get things through now that not that that are original scripts. The ones that are getting through that are originals are writer-directors like Rawson’s movie, you know, some other people that we can name. And, you know, now that business is dominated by your David Russell, your Alexander Payne. You know, writer-directors, I think, are developing the kind of character-driven, smaller movies that I came up writing, you came up writing.

But I often think about my friends who are so brilliant, so many of them are taking their genius and kind of using it to really elevate these genre pieces and these branded pieces. And that’s great in certain respects because those movies now are much better than they have any business being. But I miss the movies that those men and women would have made if they were focusing on or at least alternating those movies with the more personal original pieces.

**John:** Rawson, I see you setting up projects left and right. And you probably, at least since We’re the Millers, at least six new projects got set up someplace.

**Rawson:** Yes, it’s in that ballpark, yeah.

**John:** So it is still happening. You’re the kind of person who’s getting these things set up.

**Rawson:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** And We’re the Millers was a long time development project.

**Rawson:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** I just wonder if right now We’re the Milllers would have sold and if it would have gotten made.

**Rawson:** That’s a great question. I don’t know. I mean, it’s been a while since I’ve been on the spec market in that regard. So I really don’t know who’s buying and necessarily what they’re buying. I think your take on it is pretty accurate, that each of these studios sort of following — I mean, frankly, following Marvel’s lead, are desperate to create what they would call a cinematic universe, even where one doesn’t quite exist.

And you look at Disney of course and they’re buying cinematic universes, right? They buy Marvel, they buy Lucas. And even like Universal, right, they’re trying to do that with their monsters, right, with Dracula and Werewolf, the Mummy, et cetera. And Warner Bros. is playing a little catch-up in the DC cinematic universe. So I think you’re absolutely right. Like the opportunity, the slots, I think is what they call them, available for a true spec or something that’s not based on IP, I mean, that bull’s eye is getting smaller and smaller and further and further away.

You know, I just had a really interesting meeting at this sort of new insta studio called STX, run by Adam Fogelson and a few other smart folks. And their whole model is we don’t develop, right? [laughs] Their whole model is, “Bring us a script that you love and if we love it, we’re going to make it. And we’ll tell you how much we’ll spend on it and we’ll tell you how we’re going to market it and we’ll tell you what we’ll put in it or who we need to put in it.” But, yeah, the sort of traditional, “Hey, I got an idea for this or what about this script,” I’m not sure that exists in the same way that it used to.

**Aline:** Well, it exists in a very different way. You know, when we’ve been getting the screeners and we have two piles, we have the Fast and Furious pile and the Infinitely Polar Bear pile.

**Rawson:** [laughs] Yeah.

**Aline:** And those are the two kinds of movies now. And it’s shocking how much you get a screener and they go into one of those two piles. It’s very rare, you know, those movies like The Martian, Argo, a few years ago, which are big studio movies that are character-based, not IP-driven, very, very small pile.

**Rawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Aline:** Very small pile.

**John:** Well, if you want to look at whether it would be The Town or Black Mass, like Warner Bros. makes one sort of like Boston crime thriller a year.

**Aline:** [laughs]

**John:** That’s a slot. I mean, it’s basically like it’s either Ben Affleck or somebody like Ben Affleck making that movie.

**Rawson:** Right.

**John:** They’re going to do one of those per year. And so they’re sort of done. They’re not going to make another big character drama that’s going to, you know, go in the fall. That’s their one thing.

**Rawson:** Right. And they’re not making that movie without Ben Affleck. And they’re not making that movie without Johnny Depp. So, you know, it’s not a big roll of the dice for them. I mean, they’re paying, you know, a reasonable number by their estimation for a movie with a big star that could break out. I mean, that’s not chancy.

**John:** But let’s talk about the things you set up recently —

**Rawson:** Sure.

**John:** Because were they all based on IP or were some of them just ideas?

**Rawson:** Well, let’s see. A couple of them were IP and one was an original idea. And I think it does help when, like on the one that was an original idea, I had a very experienced producer, Scott Stuber. I had a great screenwriter named Pete Correale and we had a really commercial sort of high concept idea. And I was — am and was attached as the director, so we sold that to Lionsgate.

So when you come in with sort of your bases loaded like that, it’s an easier thing for I think a studio to say yes to. And we weren’t trying to sell something that was obscure or difficult. You could kind of, as they say, sort of see the poster on it. So it was an easier sell there.

The other thing I sold, it was based on a very kind of obscure tabletop game. When I was eight years old, I used to play like this and I think the people I was selling it to felt the same way. And it was a relatively inexpensive purchase on the rights side for them. But at least it had some IP, which I thought was kind of interesting because it’s not an IP that most people know, and yet it still has value.

**Aline:** And if 10 years ago I told you that you were selling movies based on tabletop games —

**Rawson:** [laughs] It would be hard to believe. Hard to believe.

**Aline:** Yeah. I’m taking out a Cribbage pitch. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. It’s going to be great.

**Rawson:** My favorite games.

**John:** Yeah. Like don’t get pegged. I mean, you know, is one of the characters named Peg?

**Rawson:** Yeah. [laughs]

**John:** It’s going to be good. It’s going to be a race.

**Rawson:** Yeah. You’re going to get skunked.

**John:** You’re going to make your 15s, your 5s and all that, yeah.

**Rawson:** Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it was a combo. But I think your earlier point on the We’re the Millers, because that was a script that existed — it was sold 10 years before I came on, roughly, eight or so. And I think there’s still room for high concept comedy on the spec market and on the pitch market just because it’s something that you’re essentially selling on the pitch side that you’re selling a knock-knock joke, right? You’re selling a clean premise that you get with what’s funny about that or what the friction is in the pitch.

And those aren’t particularly expensive to make. You know, if I was starting now and I wrote some sort of galactic space opera as a spec, not based on an IP or a YA novel, I mean you’re sliding uphill. I mean, that’s a real, real tough one.

**John:** I agree. Speaking of sliding uphill, one of the classic ways to get one of these movies made is to have a big star attached. But this was also the year where a lot of movies with big stars in it didn’t do anything. And we’ve always had some, you know, big star vehicles that didn’t work but it was surprising to me this last year how many movies came out that’s like, wow, I can’t believe that person can’t open that movie.

So you see that with Bradley Cooper in Burnt. You see that with Julia Roberts and Billy Ray’s movie, Secret in Their Eyes, a few other examples. I mean, Mortdecai —

**Rawson:** Mortdecai, you have it with Our Brand is Crisis. So the same weekend, right, Sandra Bullock in Our Brand is Crisis, right, and Bradley Cooper in Burnt, both came out the same weekend. They both did not perform as hoped for. And I was baffled. I asked everybody, like what is the lesson from this weekend. I asked, you know, the smartest people I know. And the response that I got was really interesting. It was like, “Oh, it doesn’t matter. That doesn’t count.” And I was like, “Well, why doesn’t it count?”

**Aline:** Well, I think it goes back to the William Goldman thing of, you know, the picture is the star. And I think, you know, some of the stars I’m, as a fan, desperate and hungry for them to make the movies that they made their names on, but as we’ve been discussing, it’s harder to get those movies made. So those character-driven dramas and comedies which, you know, a lot of the people you mentioned, you know, be it an Edward Scissorhands or an Erin Brockovich or The Proposal or, you know, those movies that those stars made that we loved, so much harder to get those made.

So again, I think those movies that we’re talking about that didn’t work were a little bit more in the Infinitely Polar Bear grouping of the, you know, smaller, more prestige movies. They went up for that ball because the big studio films are largely dominated now by superheroes. So the stars who don’t have a superhero franchise tend to not be in the bigger movies.

So this is particularly acute for women now because they’re just not making the movies that women became stars on. Jennifer Lawrence or Scarlett Johansson are really, you know, in my mind to be admired and rewarded because they are stars in interesting genres and are seeking out interesting work and — but it’s just difficult now to mint these stars in these movies I think when people do movies that are sort of in the shape that we enjoy seeking them in, then, you know, it does work.

**John:** Well, Our Brand is Crisis, when I saw the trailer, it’s like, “Oh, that’s totally going to work.” I mean I saw the materials for it. It’s like that’s a Sandra Bullock in a good Sandra Bullock role where she is the smartest person in the room but sort of overwhelmed. It felt like the right kind of movie. And the reviews didn’t help it certainly. And the reviews didn’t help any of these movies.

**Aline:** But it’s still, it’s a small political satire. So it’s in the small genre. I don’t think it was trying to tick the boxes of the — it was trying to tick the boxes of the kind of prestige, political —

**John:** A George Clooney kind of movie.

**Aline:** The George Clooney kind of movie. And so that’s just a very narrow needle to thread. And I think that people who are hardcore Sandra Bullock fans are kind of waiting for The Blind Side or The Proposal.

**Rawson:** Yeah. I had the same reaction that you do when I saw the trailer for it. I thought it looked good. I wanted to go see it, then the reviews certainly didn’t help. And that’s a David Gordon Green who’s a fantastic director. And then you also look at In the Heart of the Sea, right? It’s Chris Hemsworth and Ron Howard who’s, you know, First Ballot Hall of Famer. And that didn’t work. I loved that movie. I went and saw it with my family and just loved that picture.

But I think what Aline said is right which is — and it’s this sort of this cop out and kind of the answer that I got from the, you know, I asked a studio head and I asked a big fancy producer like what’s the lesson from this weekend, right? Our Brand is Crisis and Burnt, both underperforming significantly with two big stars, two of the biggest stars. And they both said essentially what Aline said which is like, “And those aren’t the right movies for them.” Like they’re stars in the right movie. If you put them in the right “vehicle” and the thing that we want to see them do, then they’re stars.

**John:** Yeah, but see I would say — I don’t think that’s fair. Because I think if you were to describe Bradley Cooper in that movie, Burnt, it’s like a comedy about a burnt out chef who’s like trying to get his business back together. It’s like, yeah, I could see Bradley Cooper’s charisma carrying that movie. And it didn’t seem to work that way. I feel like Ryan Reynolds gets slammed a lot for like, “Oh, he wasn’t able to open that movie.” It’s like, well, lots of stars aren’t able to open certain movies.

**Rawson:** Right. But yeah, what’s the old saying about stars, right, they’re parachutes where you pay them to open. And if they don’t, then what are they?

**John:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** You know. And so then you look at someone like Chris Pratt who’s super, super talented and really funny and he’s in two of the biggest films, you know, of recent memory.

**Aline:** But again, I would say and I adore Chris. I adore Chris Pratt, but the picture is the star.

**Rawson:** I guess that’s what I’m saying.

**Aline:** And so he’s in movies that, you know — but if you put Chris Pratt in the movie about the charismatic chef —

**Rawson:** Right.

**Aline:** What’s your result? So I think the audience is still looking for the movie to excite them. But I do think because we’re missing those kind of mid-range movies where — I mean if we go down the list of the biggest stars, Tom Cruise and Julia and Sandra and Brad Pitt, they all broke in these mid-range movies. I mean the first time I remember seeing Brad Pitt is in Thelma & Louise. And, you know, we just —

**Rawson:** Tell me about it.

**Aline:** [laughs] And we just are not — it is hard to mint these. And now the place we mint them is in the superhero movies. And so if you’re a star who doesn’t want to do that — I mean the other thing about stars I think is interesting is that they now have become products in a way that they weren’t before having to have a franchise, having to have some sort of corporate deal, you know, all the — they’re all modeling watches and, you know, expensive products and face creams because they are now sort of businesses in a different way than when they were our people.

**Rawson:** And what’s interesting about that is a star as being brand as opposed to actors, right? But I think that’s even become a bigger element I suppose now with Twitter and with Instagram that that connection, a star’s connection with his or her fans is so much more direct and such a big part of their connection with their audience and also how they sell a movie. Like sincerely like I’ve got Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson in Central Intelligence which is the movie that —

**Aline:** And Dwayne is one of the biggest, most famous.

**Rawson:** They both are.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** They both are.

**Aline:** All right, they both are the top 10 for Instagram and Twitter.

**Rawson:** Yeah. Yeah.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** And it’s amazing what they do to kind of connect and communicate with their fans. And that’s a huge, huge thing. And I think that speaks exactly to what you’re talking about of actors now becoming — movie stars becoming more willing to openly sell product. I’m not sure exactly what that connection is, but I think there is one in terms of like I’m not just an actor that you pay, you know, $13 to go see twice a year. You also get to interact with me every single day. And now I’m a human being with you and now you get to see me at my house. You get to see me, you know, walk my dog, et cetera, et cetera. Therefore, maybe that barrier to selling is less.

**Aline:** Well, it’s interesting because it’s also in the area of era of reality television.

**Rawson:** Right, that’s a really good point.

**Aline:** We’re expecting 360 access to these people.

**Rawson:** Yeah.

**Aline:** I then become a little nostalgic for the days of, you know, Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman —

**Rawson:** Right.

**Aline:** And Al Pacino and Sissy Spacek and, you know, showing up to the movies with this wonderful mystery about people.

**Rawson:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And I think that might swing back.

**John:** I think it may swing back, too.

**Rawson:** But I think that’s a really, really good point because the actors of yesteryear as it were, they kept mystery about them, right? So that when you went to see them in the theater, when you went to go see them perform, they could be somebody else. They could transform into a different character —

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** Because you didn’t know anything about them.

**John:** Well, look at Oscar Isaac who’s been in so many great movies this last year, but I don’t know anything about Oscar Isaac. And so the reason why I think he looks — he seems so different in every movie is because I just don’t know anything about him, so I have no baseline for sort of what he normally is. And so I can’t tell what’s acting and what’s actually him.

**Rawson:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s a really useful thing about the actors who we don’t know who they are, is that they can be just — we can project anything on to them.

**Rawson:** That’s an excellent point.

**John:** Any last observations from 2015 that you’re carrying with you into the New Year?

**Aline:** About the overall movie business?

**John:** The movie business, television.

**Aline:** I mean I was — you know, I think we got to say from our point of view is that everyone we know has migrated to television in some way, shape or form.

**John:** But this was your big year of television.

**Aline:** Yeah. I mean it was for me —

**John:** You have one of the most critically acclaimed shows and Rachel has a Golden Globe nomination.

**Rawson:** Congratulations.

**John:** It’s really amazing.

**Aline:** Thank you.

**Rawson:** Well earned.

**Aline:** But it was — you know, I was the last person to get on that bus because I had done TV early in my career and I kind of knew what it entailed. I didn’t gravitate towards it, but, you know, every screenwriter now that I know pretty much has some kind of television in development. And those sophisticated character-driven dramas and comedies by and large now are on television. And so it’s not surprising that a lot of writers are migrating there because they can tell the kinds of stories that movies used to tell routinely. And now you just struggle to get them made. And the TV business is hungry for those kinds of stories.

And one thing I’ve noticed which I think is interesting is that the difference between film executives now and television executives is that film executives are approaching their job much more like corporate executives. My husband works at a big mutual fund. And I’ve noticed that when I talk to movie people, they’re much more conscious of their stuff as product, how it’s going to work in the marketplace, how it’s being marketed, how it’s being monetized.

And television because there is so much niche stuff going on because people can go and make an excellent show on a streaming or cable in particular where they don’t have the same kind of financial exigencies, the executives in those businesses are much more driven by love of material, we’re doing this, I know this is outside of the box. I mean we’ve certainly benefitted tremendously, our show, has from people who just love the story, love the show. And that has been I think kneaded out of movie executives because they have to think now in these more corporate product terms. So in a funny way like the ’70s have moved from movies to television.

**John:** Something that I think you’re going to hear more about much more about this coming year is the reality of television, you kind of can’t lose money. And so one of the reasons why you see some low rated shows that stay on the air is because —

**Aline:** We’re trying to prove that wrong.

**John:** All right. [laughs] So your show is critically acclaimed but it’s not a big giant hit. And I think in another year, it would be much harder for you guys to have kept your back nine.

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** And just keep going.

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** But I thing which some much smarter people than I sort of showed the numbers on is that your studio and your network, they’re making money off your show even though it’s not a giant hit. And, you know, it’s worth it for them to sort of —

**Aline:** Well, we’re still in the network business so we have some of these exigencies really still pressing on us. But for the streaming and the cable things, I mean what’s interesting is that particularly for streaming, their programming is, you know, can function as a loss leader because it’s not their core business.

So it’s almost like a — it’s marketing. You know, it markets the rest of their business. And that comes from cable, but that’s particularly true in streaming. And so those show creators are really left to do what they want to do and what they’re encouraged to do is things that are provocative and —

**Rawson:** Make noise.

**Aline:** Make noise and nobody really looks at the numbers. I mean in the case of Netflix and Hulu, we don’t really even know what the numbers are.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** That’s just really a seismic sea change. I can’t point to anything like that in the movie business because the studios are so squeezed with trying to make these kind of big IP movies and then if you’re trying to make an independent movie which was the path I was kind of going down before the show happened, in a funny way, that’s a more money-driven business even in the studios because those people need some assurances. They need cast, they need the budget to be low, low, low. So, you know, if you’re talking about making a prestige-driven or character-driven or, you know, something that would have been a Sydney Pollack movie, you’re now making that movie for $11 million with financing that you’ve cobbled together from six different entities and you’re shooting it in Croatia.

And so the TV business now has that thing of sort of, you know, people wanting to take chances and spend a little money on that. So that’s why you’re seeing this giant migration of people over there. That is just I think just an enormous trend for our business, as somebody who really only wrote screenplays for, you know, the majority of my career.

**John:** One of the things I’m curious about for 2016 is whether we’re going to finally just break and there’s for me like there’s so much television that you couldn’t possibly catch up. And so I feel like on a weekly basis, someone will bring up a new show or something new that I need to catch up on. And I have to just basically decide like, “Is this going to be part of my life or not part of my life at all?” because otherwise I just can’t — I just have to acknowledge I’ll never be watch that show because it’s not going to happen.

Most recent thing is Making a Murderer, the Netflix show which is apparently brilliant and I really want to watch it. But it’s a choice between watching that and watching —

**Aline:** But how great — I have to say, I totally, and the FOMO is insane.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And it’s, you know, you feel like I can’t — I didn’t watch that show. I have to opt out of all these conversations. But how great is it that we walk around with people saying, “You have to got — oh my god, you haven’t seen this? You have to — oh, stop what you’re doing. You have to watch this.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And I just want to stop for a moment and think about the last time there was a movie that felt like that where everybody you knew was talking about it and saying you have to — now, obviously the Star Wars movie. But it’s just rare to have people saying, “Oh, I can’t — you got to go, stop what you’re doing. Run out and see this movie.” And with TV shows, it’s just this like —

**Rawson:** It’s endless.

**Aline:** it’s endless and it’s just — you know, look at the list of the sort of the top 30 best reviewed TV shows, that could be your whole life.

**Rawson:** Yeah. I have the exact same feeling that you have, John. Like it’s — you know, Making a Murderer, I heard the exact same thing.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** I’m dying — ha-ha — to see it. And there’s just no time. Like, you know, I’m so far behind on everything else. Like The Man in the High Castle which was my favorite Amazon pilot, so excited. Watched the pilot. I wanted to binge watch all of them. It wasn’t even made, right? And a year later, I was waiting, waiting, waiting for it to come out. It finally comes out, I still haven’t watched it.

**John:** Oh, Rawson.

**Rawson:** It’s terrible. It’s terrible.

**John:** But it’s not terrible because like —

**Rawson:** I could do a whole list of shows —

**John:** Yes.

**Rawson:** Starting with Friday Night Lights that I have not seen that I’m dying to see. There are truly, truly not enough hours in the day.

**John:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** But I agree with Aline that it’s — what a wonderful time to live in.

**Aline:** But I just want to circle back to, you know, there’s — when I think of, you know, John’s breakthrough movie was Go and your breakthrough movie was Dodgeball, which is the McKenna family movie, and my sort of breakout movie, Devil Wears Prada, tough going man now to get those through. I mean if you came to me with Go, I would say that’s a Netflix show. If you came to me with Dodgeball, I would say that’s an FX series. If you came to me — somebody came to me with — the Devil Wears Prada was a pre-established — you know, it was a hit book, so maybe that would probably go the movie route again.

But, you know, other things that I’ve written like 27 Dresses, I think I would say try and get $5 million and shoot that, you know, in New Orleans and hope for the best. Those movies are really tough to get through. And if you’re in a movie meeting and you’re saying, this is totally out of the box and insane and doesn’t make any sense, and if you’re my friend and you’re telling me you have that kind of idea, I would recommend, you know, five or seven cable, streaming and in some case broadcast network places that, you know — I think of Ridley’s doing American Crime, and he’s doing it on a big network, wouldn’t that have been a movie 10 years ago? Wouldn’t that have been like a big Oscary movie? So aren’t we going towards the thing also where my kids don’t care so much what platform it’s on, you know?

**Rawson:** Yeah, I think they’re platform agnostic.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** From what I can tell. But John back to, not your kids specifically, but the kids today, the Millenials. But yeah, but John, to your point, the sort of glut of gold, right, of the television gold, you know, we have to be at some point hitting peak drama, right? There’s just too much. Too much great stuff, you can’t keep up.

So on the TV side, that feels like what’s going on. On the feature side, it is cinematic universe is robust, right? Everything else can take a hike. And it’s a really strange difference between the two, right, where one is — we’re creating an interlocking set of $150 million movies that all feed each other and inform each other and make $100 million on the opening weekend. And we don’t really care about anything else.

**John:** And there’s FOMO to those movies. Like that’s why, you know, you have to see Star Wars the first week or else it’s all going to be spoiled for you.

**Aline:** Right.

**Rawson:** Sure. And then the other side to what Aline is saying is on the television side, it’s just be interesting, we don’t really care. We don’t even know what the numbers are. If it’s kind of cool and different, that’s great. So it’s a very — like it’s so —

**Aline:** I think it depends also what drew you into the business. Because a lot of my friends who were big genre writers or producers, like the stuff that drew them into the business, you know, was Star Wars, were these kind of bigger, you know, it’s like Star Wars, Die Hard, you know, those kind of early, big franchise-able things. You know, for me, personally, I was — I was drawn into the business by — this is really quaint — movies from the ’30s and ’40s. And Sydney Pollack and James Brooks —

**Rawson:** That’s adorable.

**Aline:** Elaine May. Yeah, it’s really — it’s like saying, you know, you grew up playing with the dolls with the real hair and the lace dresses. It’s like I didn’t grow up playing with collectible. In fact, some of the stuff I’ve not heard of. Like people will say, “We’re working on this line of toys from the ’70s that was like cool robots who are, you know, like” — and I’ve never heard of it, you know. And it is also very male-driven by and large.

So I think the way we’re wicking people into the business now is different because of the kind of things that we’re making. And I think if I were starting out again and I came to myself for advice, I’d probably say, “Go try and get a job writing, you know, You’re the Worst or something.”

**John:** Yeah. Good shows. All right. So we’ve been talking about how much great TV there was this year, but there’s also been a lot of great movies. And so we want to focus on three of those movies that are up for awards this season. We’ll start with Room.

So Room tells a story of five-year-old Jack who has spent his entire life in a single room because his mother was kidnapped at age 17. The movie tracks her life inside the room and their attempts to escape and reintegrate with the world outside. It was written by Emma Donoghue, based on her best-selling novel.

Rawson, you just saw this movie last night.

**Rawson:** I did. And I loved it. I had — I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know what you just said about it. I didn’t watch a trailer.

**Aline:** That’s great.

**Rawson:** I knew nothing. And I was blown away. I wonder if I would’ve liked it as much if I had known anything. Because when they were — I guess there will be spoilers in this episode.

**John:** There were be spoilers. We can’t avoid it.

**Rawson:** So I had no idea why they were in that room. You know, I was like, you know, is it — is this a post-apocalyptic thing? Can she not go outside because of radiation? Is it, you know, is she hiding? Did she kill someone? And, you know, obviously, as it goes along you kind of puzzle it together.

So that, just the opening experience of just sort of being drawn in and trying to figure out what the puzzle is or what the reasoning is for them not having left the room was fascinating and unlike anything I’ve seen in a long time in the theater. And then, of course, as it — as it unfolds, you know, the escape sequence was — I haven’t felt that way in a movie theater in a long time. I was writhing in my chair and so nervous.

**Aline:** I was sobbing so loudly. I was barking.

**Rawson:** Oh my god. [laughs]

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** Yeah. It was something else. And then the other part that was so interesting to me, which I guess I wouldn’t have expected was, we have to talk spoiler again.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** So after they escaped through the — after they escaped the room, I guess I just — because I’m, you know, a studio hack. Like I was just like, “Oh, well, that’s the end of the movie, they get out and they hug, it’s a thing.” And that’s the midpoint. Like the — some of the most fascinating stuff is what happens after that and sort of recalibrating and what is the world like if you’ve never ever, ever experienced it. And I just thought it was a beautiful piece of cinema and expertly told. And some of the best performances I’ve seen in a long time. Man, what a fantastic picture. A-plus.

**John:** Yeah. On a story level, what was so striking to me about it is that it doesn’t sort of follow any normal rules. And so in terms of like who’s the protagonist, who’s your antagonist, that it’s three acts. It’s really a two-act sort of movie. And the two acts are very, very different. And you sort of think like, “Oh, she’s the one who’s going to change, and she’s going to have to save this kid.” But it’s not really that.

And it was — I found myself frustrated in the second half of the movie where I was like, “Well, where did the mom go?” There’s moments where she disappears from the story. And it wasn’t until, you know, the credits rolled that like, “Oh, wait, it was actually the boy’s story.” And so —

**Rawson:** Oh. Oh.

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** Yeah. And so if you look at it from the boy’s point of view —

**Aline:** Yes. That makes perfect sense.

**John:** Like some of the moments that didn’t actually make a lot of sense to me in the second half I think were because it’s really based on what the boy’s understanding of what these adults are actually talking about and how these are working. Like William H. Macy’s character, I didn’t really believe or buy, but I think I buy it more if I see it from the kid’s point of view. And it’s like —

**Aline:** Yes. Great point.

**John:** He has no idea what the — why this man is saying these things.

**Rawson:** Yeah.

**John:** And it makes more sense with that.

**Rawson:** Yeah.

**Aline:** I mean, it’s by far my favorite movie that I’ve seen this year. And it’s probably for me the movie I was most excited about since Frozen, which sounds strange, but remember I had like a big freak out over Frozen.

**John:** I did. And you can listen to that episode in the premium feed of Scriptnotes where Aline and I talked with Jennifer Lee about Frozen.

**Aline:** I mean, I’m obsessed with this movie. I think it’s a clinic. I think it is — I don’t know why everyone’s not talking about it. It feels like to me the movie everyone should be talking about it. I will say that a lot of people I’ve talked to have a weird idea of what it is. Like even Rawson was saying, “Is it really scary? Is it going to upset my life?” And I just keep saying to people, “It’s just good.”

I just want to say two things. One is, as a writer — and this is one of the reasons I love Frozen so much — you know what’s hard and what’s not hard. You know what things are difficult writing-wise and what things are not. And there’s just sometimes I see a movie and I think, “Well that’s wonderful, but I know that the level of skill it took to do that is not that high.”

The level of skill that it takes to pull off Room is extremely high, extremely high degree of difficulty. You’re telling such an intimate story, such a character piece. But it’s also a thriller. It’s also like a great propulsive story. It plays with genre. It upends genre. I just thought from the point of view as a craftsman looking at a table, you know, as someone who makes tables examining another table, I was really effing —

**Rawson:** It’s a hell of a table.

**Aline:** Impressed.

**Rawson:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And then the other thing I want to say is that, you know, it’s a story about a woman and a child, and her mother, primarily. And I got to say, you know, there’s a lot of great movies out that are getting a lot of attention, but part of me has to think that if it wasn’t about women and children it would be getting more acclaim. And I’m kind of turning into this guy. I’m kind of turning into this person as I get older and I see what happens in the world. I just think stories about women and children, which is really all this movie is and what this — it’s the best movie about parenting I’ve seen ever.

**Rawson:** Oh, yeah.

**Aline:** And their relationship is so real and so gritty and so interesting. I just think — I just want more people to see it. I’m desperate for more people to see it because I think we’ve seen a lot of terrific movies this year but the level of achievement here in terms of storytelling, character work, and performances. I mean, the very last moment, when Brie looks back at the room and she says goodbye to it and she whispers, she doesn’t say it, she doesn’t make any noise, it’s — I think it’s stunning.

**John:** So this is Emma Donoghue’s screenplay based on her book, and that to me was a really fascinating thing to look at because we’ve had other novelists adapt their own books. Gillian Flynn did a great job adapting Gone Girl.

**Aline:** That’s who I thought of, too.

**John:** But what struck me about this is that, you know, looking at the book Room, you have the ability to have character introspections, so you get to know what the characters know, you get to see inside their thoughts. She had to do this without any voiceover, without any sort of ability to sort of get out what’s happening inside these characters’ heads other than dialogue.

**Aline:** Which is, again, why I say clinic.

**John:** Clinic. And so this first half of the movie, you feel like, “Well, that could be a play.” You theoretically could stage that first half of the movie as like a play. And then when it actually breaks out, it clearly has to be a movie, because the only way you get that suspense and that tension is by going outside in that world and, you know, it was brilliantly directed and really brilliantly shot. And then just keep going to these new environments, it really did ultimately become a film. But to able to understand both like how to do all the very small chamber character work and then break out and do the suspense was remarkable.

**Aline:** You know, for some reason, one of the moments that has stuck with me so much is the moment where Joan Allen’s boyfriend builds this bridge to the kid. And, you know, he’s not a major character. He shows up two-thirds of the way through the movie.

**Rawson:** In kind of a creepy fashion, by the way, just standing in the hall.

**Aline:** Right. And he’s sort of — yeah, you don’t really know what to make of that.

**Rawson:** He did a great job.

**Aline:** But you really — it’s such a testament to the power of human connection that these two characters reach out across each other. And it’s exactly what you said, so smart. It’s the boy’s story and it’s about how he learns to start making connections in the world that are not his mother. And so I think that’s the reason for me that is such a big victorious moment, that you feel like this kid’s going to be okay because he can learn to trust somebody. And it’s really great that it’s not his grandfather, it’s somebody else.

**Rawson:** I think that’s an excellent point. And like — and it is surprising that that character, Lee or something, I think, is the one who sort of connects with Jack, right? And he’s the only one who doesn’t have, doesn’t carry any baggage with him toward Jack, right? He is essentially a stranger. And I thought that was surprising and wonderful.

But John, back to your point, like she does use — Emma does use voiceover. And she uses Jack’s voiceover in the picture.

**John:** You’re absolutely right.

**Rawson:** Throughout, right?

**John:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** And so like to me. And then what was interesting about what you said of, you know, whose story is this? And to me, really early on, it seemed like it was really clearly Jack’s story because he’s the one explaining what room is, right?

**Aline:** Yes.

**Rawson:** And then when Nick — Old Nick shows up, he — Jack goes into wardrobe and stays there —

**Aline:** And we see it from his perspective.

**Rawson:** And we’re in there with him.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** So something that you talk a lot about, which I steal all the time when I’m writing and thinking is like who do you give the storytelling power to, right?

**John:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** That’s so critical, and something I learned from you. Really, I thought it was — as I think Aline might say, you know, a master class in specifically that, right? This is only Jack’s story. It clearly is his and we only see it through his eyes and from his perspective. So when he’s rolled up in the rug and taken out, we don’t — we never see Brie Larson again until —

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** Right.

**Rawson:** Until she comes running out toward the cop car. Which heightens the tension, right?

**Aline:** Yes, so much.

**Rawson:** Because we don’t know what’s happening.

**Aline:** We don’t know what’s happening there. I just want to say one more thing about the movie which is —

**Rawson:** Sure.

**Aline:** If we’re talking about trends for me in 2015 is that it’s the best movie I’ve ever seen about rape and the aftermath of rape and how confusing and damaging it is. And this is the year where I watched The Hunting Ground which I cannot recommend highly enough. I watched it with my kids who are teenagers.

**Rawson:** Is that the CNN documentary?

**Aline:** It’s not CNN. But yeah, it’s the people who did the documentary about rape in the military, did a documentary about rape on college campuses, and it is blistering. I also read the Missoula book, Krakauer’s Missoula book about the college rapes in Missoula. And then, obviously, we have the Bill Cosby thing.

I am hoping that as a culture our view and our understanding of rape and rape victims and what happens to them starts to change now, has to change now. And this is the best microscopic examination of what a rape survivor goes through and, you know, her triumphs and her defeats, and what’s complicated and how it’s imprinted on her and how it affects her mental health and how she becomes suicidal.

**Rawson:** Absolutely.

**Aline:** And, you know, you can be brave and you can, you know, work through these things, but it damages you forever. And I think we still don’t understand that as a culture. And so I really have to applaud the movie for depicting that in a way that’s not homework. It’s not spinach. It’s not vegetables. It’s just human.

**Rawson:** Yeah. I thought Emma Donoghue did an incredible job adapting her own work. I haven’t read the book but I can only imagine the challenge. And it seems like it would be even more difficult if you were the author of the novel to be — to sort of what I can only assume is to hack and slash your own work up to make it fit into 120 pages. But —

**Aline:** Yeah. Hats off to her.

**Rawson:** Yeah. But then the last thing I wanted to say about Room was — and it’s connected, Aline, to what you were saying, which is this sort of clean line, the clean premise of a 17-year-old girl who gets abducted and kept in a shed. She’s raped. She has a son from that rape and loves that son, right? The clean idea of a mother who loves her child even though that child was the offspring of a horrific and violent act is so ripe for drama and ripe for investigation. Like, you know, there were very few times in my life where I’ve sort of stumbled across or come up with a clean dramatic construct like that that you just get so excited. I mean, it’s — I mean, I can almost picture Emma Donoghue when that idea struck her. I feel like, “Oh my god, of course. What a great idea to explore.”

**Aline:** It’s funny it’s in the same year that Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt came out.

**Rawson:** I was going to say that. [laughs]

**Aline:** Which is sort of, you know, it’s sort of — it is a great idea. It’s a gonzo weird comedic take on Room that —

**Rawson:** Yeah.

**Aline:** That they’re a great double feature.

**Rawson:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And it’s, you know, Kimmy Schmidt is so intelligent and bizarre.

**Rawson:** It’s fantastic.

**Aline:** And it takes a completely, you know, through-the-looking-glass view of the same topic. But I could really go on and on about Room just as a craftsperson. I really —

**Rawson:** Not as funny as Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

**Aline:** Not quite as funny, no. But it did have some great moments of humor I have to say.

**Rawson:** It does.

**John:** So while Room was a very small story with a very tight group of characters, Spotlight is a much bigger story. It follows this team of journalists working at The Boston Globe, working to expose widespread sexual abuse, again, of children by Catholic priests in the Boston area. It’s written by Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer. It was listed on the 2013 Black List of unproduced screenplays and now it’s a movie up for a lot of best pictures.

What struck me about Spotlight, and I — again, I really enjoyed Spotlight. It’s almost exactly the opposite of Room. It’s like where Room was so detailed and charactery and it’s all about sort of these very intimate feelings like silent moments, Spotlight was sort of all talk all the time. It’s all business.

Aline, I heard you describe it once as sort of like The Martian but like with journalists. And so it’s very sort of technically detail-oriented.

**Aline:** Yeah. That’s something I wanted to talk about and see how you guys felt. Because I have noticed, you know, that both of those movies — and it’s something I’ve noticed in movies more and more is the characters in both of those movies, they’re really work procedurals. And the character development is, you know, is — I think they deliberately underbaked the buns there, you know. They kind of pulled it out of the oven without overdoing.

Like in The Martian, you really don’t know a lot about the backstory of this guy who you’re spending a lot of time with. When he talks about his parents, I thought, “Oh gosh, I don’t really know anything about his home life.” And then in Spotlight, each character has like one little scene, you know, going to the neighbor’s house, eating pizza for Mark Ruffalo, loading the dishwasher for Rachel McAdams. I mean, they have little, tiny character grace notes, but they really work procedurals about characters whose function in the movie is to do things and not to kind of exhibit character behavior.

And I think it’s really interesting in light of what we’ve been talking about with TV. You know, TV is all about these interesting, naughty, complicated characters where you’re really delving into them. And I feel like it’s interesting to have a movie where you have two prestige films that are excellent and I think are going to get a lot of awards, where the character stuff I think is deliberately a little, you know, pencil drawn, maybe to make the functioning of the work stuff more prominent in a way.

**John:** So you’re talking — that these two movies being The Martian and Spotlight. In both cases, we don’t know a lot about the characters’ backstories. But even when the movie begins, they’re not given a big arc to sort of — to conquer. There wasn’t a like there’s a thing which they as a character couldn’t do at the start of the movie that they can do at the end of the movie.

**Aline:** Their arc are obstacles.

**John:** Yeah. And so they just like, stuff gets in their way and they have to keep knocking down these things that get in their way but it’s much more sort of — it’s procedural. It’s just like, are they going to be able to unscramble this puzzle that will get them out of this movie successfully?

**Rawson:** Absolutely. I mean I think the only real sort of character quandary or challenge is from Michael Keaton’s character, right? Because in that picture, in Spotlight, he gets sent the box of like, “Here’s the damning evidence, do something about it,” and he ignored it for whatever reason, right? It’s the right choice for that story, right? Because what’s most important in Spotlight is what these guys did, what these priests did, what the Catholic Church did. And I think the choice of telling the story that way of just the facts ma’am and not delving into character backstory or tropes as you say, is precisely the right choice because that’s not what’s important about that story. What’s not important about the story is —

**Aline:** Exactly.

**Rawson:** Oh, gosh, the relationship between the journalist and her boyfriend and are they going to make up?

**Aline:** Right.

**Rawson:** Like, who cares?

**Aline:** Right.

**Rawson:** That’s not what it’s about, it’s about —

**Aline:** This is what happened in the world.

**Rawson:** That’s exactly right.

**Aline:** And in Martian, it’s about science and it’s about the importance of iteration. You know, I think it’s — if you don’t process emotions very well then you’ll really enjoy the Martian because [laughs] —

**Rawson:** I really did.

**John:** There’s not a lot of emotions there.

**Aline:** Because — no. Because it’s such a great tribute, to — I mean, I thought it was a great movie for my kids to see because it’s like try again, try again, try again. It’s a really great movie for writers, too, because it’s “How do you skin this cat?” You go back, you try again. He tries everything.

**Rawson:** Yeah.

**Aline:** I mean, I never thought I would be so excited about seeing plants sprout in a hothouse.

**Rawson:** Yeah. I mean, yeah, The Martian was — I mean, Drew Goddard did an incredible job.

**Aline:** Incredible.

**Rawson:** What was so — one of the things I love about The Martian, though we’re not really talking about that, is the way that Ridley and Drew use humor in that film.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** Humor throughout and how important that is to keep — at least to keep me and I think the audience, engaged in the story, because it could have been a really bleak, hopeless slog.

**Aline:** And also Spotlight. I mean, you know, Keaton, Slattery, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo —

**Rawson:** Liev Schreiber.

**Aline:** They’re all — Liev, yeah. They’re all great dramatic actors but they all can be funny. And they bring — there’s a kind of lightness to that movie in a funny way.

**Rawson:** Stanley Tucci, also.

**Aline:** Right.

**Rawson:** Right. Kind of stealing the show.

**Aline:** Yeah. So exactly, kind of steal — yeah.

**Rawson:** I want to say one thing about Spotlight which is my friend Blye Pagon Faust produced it, and I didn’t know she produced it until I saw her name on the screen.

**Aline:** Wow. So you guys are close then?

**Rawson:** Well, we’re not that close. But I know her pretty well and I sent her e-mail. I didn’t realize until — well, actually I saw. I knew before I went to see the movie but I didn’t realize until I think she posted on Facebook, “Go see my movie,” and I went “Oh my God.” And I was — it’s always kind of fun when someone you know, a friend of yours, even lightly, kind of comes out of nowhere and has a big, big success. It’s just like exciting.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Well, let’s take — let’s take a look though at Spotlight and, I guess, The Martian as well. Both these movies have a noticeable lack of conflict, and generally, like if your movie doesn’t have a lot of conflict between the characters, I’m just not going to care. And what both of them do have, which I think is maybe a very new kind of thing, they have really competent characters. And so this is sort of a thing called competency porn where it’s like —

**Aline:** Totally.

**John:** It’s really fun to see people who are really good at their job, and see people doing a really good job at their job. And so for The Martian, it’s —

**Rawson:** I don’t want you to watch me work.

**John:** Yeah, exactly.

**Aline:** But it’s funny. I actually think this might also be a little bit tinged by reality shows and by the extreme like excitement of watching people cook things and build things.

**John:** Or survive out in the wilderness.

**Aline:** Yes. I think there’s a thing now where, you know, some character work can seem — backstory stuff just can seem corny, tropey, and so —

**John:** Mark Ruffalo had a couple of corny tropey moments for me in this movie. There’s sort of one moment where he blows up at Michael Keaton and it’s like I didn’t really kind of buy it. And there are a few moments where it’s like I felt like he was getting angry to get angry because it’s a thing that a character in this movie is supposed to be doing, is getting angry. But no one else in the movie was doing that, and so it felt a little strange. It was so fascinating for me to see like Stanley Tucci or Liev Schreiber, actors who generally can get kind of big and kind of emotional, be really tamped down.

**Rawson:** Yeah, it’s my favorite performance from Liev in a long, long time.

**John:** Yeah. It’s exciting. All right. Let’s look at our third and final movie. It’s The Big Short. It’s based on the non-fiction book by Michael Lewis. The Big Short tells the story of three groups of investors who foresaw the collapse of the US Housing Market in 2007. It’s written by Adam McKay and Charles Randolph.

This is, again, a movie with a zillion people in it and a lot of talking, but also, structurally, just bizarre, and point of view, bizarre. It breaks the fourth wall consistently. Characters will turn to the camera and speak and then resume their scene. It took a lot of really ambitious narrative choices. And I really dug what it did.

**Aline:** I loved it. I mean, I think Adam McKay is kind of interestingly one of the most subversive brains in Hollywood. I don’t know that he totally gets credit for it because even his mainstream comedies have some crack going on in them, all of them. He’s so super smart and it comes across.

And I just — I loved what he did formally with this movie in terms of being so free and the way they shot it and the way it was edited. I mean, it’s a long time since I’ve seen a movie edited in a way that I was like, “Wow, we’re holding here. We’re hanging out here,” you know. So I thought, formally, it was — it was fantastic.

I had two thoughts about it that maybe prevented me from like completely immersing myself in it. And one was that it’s about people who are trying to exploit the crash, but you root for them. And they see that it’s all screwed up, but they’re still all betting against the common. Now it’s kind of a genius move on the part of the movie that it was able to get you to root for and care about people who are playing against everyone and playing against the system, so that’s — but that’s a tricky inside out kind of thing it’s doing.

**John:** Yeah, it has the structure of a heist movie in a way and like “Are they going to be able to get away with it?” And yet you know that the end result is a really negative outcome for the universe and for all humanity. So it’s a strange sense. And to McKay’s credit, I thought he did a nice job of letting you both feel some victory in that it happened and the characters themselves acknowledge the very bad thing that happened. So Steve Carell, his character, you know, really feeling despondent even as he’s become a billionaire.

**Aline:** As he becomes a billionaire.

**Rawson:** Yeah. And that — yeah. Look, I love the movie, I loved the book. I thought McKay did an incredible job. But you know, just as someone who makes comedies myself, to get to see someone who’s a titan of studio comedy work creating the opportunity for himself to do something that isn’t that and doing such an exceptional job was just really heartening and exciting for me.

**Aline:** Yeah, it’s great. And it was interesting because it’s funny but it’s still — so it’s still — I felt like it had the DNA of an Adam McKay movie in some ways, but obviously it was going off into these other directions.

**Rawson:** Sure. I mean especially with what John was saying, breaking the fourth wall, like I think it’s three separate times where McKay uses that device to help explain a very complicated idea. And it seems like there’s two real big challenges going into the adaptation of that book. One is, of course, the complexity of the derivatives market, right? Which Michael Lewis does a brilliant job of explaining in the book, a fantastic book if you want to get angry. And McKay I think chose a really McKay-like way of doing that, right? Margot Robbie in a bubble bath, Anthony Bourdain, I think it’s Vanessa Hudgens —

**John:** It’s Selena Gomez.

**Rawson:** Selena Gomez, my fault. Selena Gomez at a blackjack table, which I thought were all super, super clever. So one challenge is the complexity of that.

And then also, like you were saying John, like it is a heist picture, so trying to keep all those dishes spinning and keep that tension going. And heist pictures are incredibly difficult to write and execute, but the last piece of it is the most important which is, “How do you root for these guys? How do you root for these guys who are essentially profiting off of the corruption of the system and making those billions of dollars that Johnny and Jane taxpayer are going to have to foot the bill?”

**Aline:** Yeah, that’s what I was saying. Yeah, and the people who are going to get wiped out by these things are satirized.

**Rawson:** Yes, right.

**Aline:** Right? Like the boneheads in the, you know, who sell the —

**Rawson:** Yes, Max Greenfield. Fantastic. [laughs]

**Aline:** Yes, amazing. And the stripper and, you know, they’re sort of depicted as yahoos on the other hand, you know, they’re victims. I actually thought, you know, the guy who’s been paying the rent but the landlord hasn’t been —

**Rawson:** Yeah, that was so sad.

**Aline:** That was so sad and he appears again later in the movie —

**Rawson:** And he’s okay.

**Aline:** Yeah. And that was the most kind of humanized thing. It’s interesting. It does go back — it goes back to sort of what we were talking about.

**John:** Well, let’s talk about how he actually did make you feel sympathy for our lead guys who theoretically could be schmucks for, you know, what they’re doing to everybody else. You create bigger assholes around them, and so like they’re standing up to bigger assholes who are openly mocking them.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** So when he’s going in to try to pitch the portfolio like —

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** “Will you sell me this thing?” And they’re like snickering. “Oh my god, we’re going to make so much money off this idiot.” That’s the way to sort of make our guys feel like the underdogs.

**Rawson:** That’s right.

**John:** And we’re going to root for the underdogs.

**Rawson:** That’s exactly right.

**John:** And consistently with all three storylines, we’ve let them be the underdog, so like —

**Aline:** Yeah, smart.

**John:** Our young guys aren’t even allowed to go upstairs and so they have to sit in the lobby and they get talked down to you by an assistant.

**Rawson:** That was a great scene.

**Aline:** That’s my favorite guy.

**John:** Yeah, the guy who plays the —

**Rawson:** The little guy is so good.

**Aline:** That little guy is the greatest.

**Rawson:** Whoever he is, good job little guy.

**John:** That’s one of the moments where you break the fourth wall and they pick up this prospectus and one of the actors turns to you and is like, “This isn’t actually how it happened — I didn’t get it here.”

**Aline:** It’s great.

**John:** And it was such a smart choice because it reminded you like, “Oh this is a real story.” So even though we are playing fictional characters, this really did happen to a degree. It reminded you like, “Oh, that’s right. This is all real.”

**Rawson:** I loved that scene because as soon as they picked up the prospectus, I’m like, “This is bullshit.”

**Aline:** Right.

**Rawson:** And I was like grabbing my pitchfork, and then he turns to the camera and I’m like, “Oh, bless you heart, Adam McKay.” But you’re exactly right, John, that you create bigger assholes and you make our heroes the underdogs, which is almost impossible not to root for. And then there are two other critical scenes in that film that very clearly are there in an attempt to make you like our heroes, right?

One is when they’re leaving, I think it’s Vegas, and the two young whipper-snappers who couldn’t get past the lobby just placed their bet and they’re super, super excited and they’re dancing. And Brad Pitt, of all people, right, the biggest star in the picture, turns around and says “Don’t dance.”

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** “This is what this means, this is what you’re betting on,” right? And it’s fine, but don’t dance, right?

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** Which is precisely the right tone and note to hit for the audience to go, “Okay, I’m glad you acknowledged it. Now, we’re cool. We can root for your guys.” And then of course the end piece where Steve Carell, who does a beautiful job in the film, you know, hems and haws, and is tortured about becoming a billionaire.

**Aline:** Well also, he’s been given — Steve Carell has been given what we would think of a more traditional thing which is that his brother committed suicide. And so that’s something that would be a more traditional piece of scene where —

**John:** I could have lost all of that. I don’t know how you felt about that.

**Aline:** Although the scene where he was in the support group and just comes in as really disruptive and leaves, I just thought it was amazing.

**John:** If you we’re going to lose —

**Rawson:** I loved that scene.

**John:** If you’re going to lose that plot line, you basically lose Marisa Tomei, you lose sort of any other woman you recognize, which is a challenge, but —

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** But that scene where Steve Carell’s character sort of talks to Marisa Tomei about it, the way that that’s edited, I thought was just beautiful.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Rawson:** And really one of the few moments in the film where I felt pathos, right? I felt really attached and understood his struggle. You know, I was angry at the bad guy — you know, at everybody.

**John:** Yeah, yeah.

**Rawson:** But like that was the one time where I felt like an emotional connection. So I can understand very easily cutting that scene out because it’s sort of, you know, off book a little bit. I think it does what it’s supposed to do which is make you understand that this is a person who has gone through real trouble in his life and that you care about him and want him to come out the other side of that. And I guess this sort of vindicates —

**Aline:** I mean, you know, it’s a good kind of segue into one other thing I wanted to say kind of in general about this time for me every year when you look back on these movies is, you know how you can judge — they say you can judge a country by how it treats its women, that that’s a good hallmark of how free it is and how much democracy it has. I feel the same way about movies, and I feel like every year there’s movies that I really like but I wish they had drilled down a little harder on the women. Because I will judge a movie differently if they managed to get in an interesting complicated female character.

And there’s a thing which I didn’t realize was a thing until last night which is there’s this thing where there are leads in movies now, particularly in these genre pieces, where the women just are spunky and they have moxie, but they don’t have characters. And you know what I’m talking about.

**Rawson:** Yeah.

**Aline:** So this is a thing. I was talking to someone about this at a party last night because that is the overwhelming in the genre big movies, these women who are like defined by — they just have a lot of spunk and pluck but they don’t really have flaws or things to overcome. And if they don’t have flaws, if they’re not 360, or if they’re not just frankly in the movie at all, a lot — some of these movies, just if you look at the, you know, best reviewed movies of the year, some of them just don’t even have female characters in them or have very minor ones.

You know, to me, I just — it’s harder for me. And again, I told you, I’m turning into this guy, this lady. If you can’t invest in, you know, all genders in the same way and you can’t invest the female characters with the same kind of humanity, it’s just tougher for me to fully embrace the movie.

**John:** One thing I’ve noticed about all three of these movies, and I think part of the reason why they all succeed, is in each case the writer has great sympathy for all of the characters in the story. So looking at The Big Short, there’s an African-American woman who’s Steve Carell’s —

**Aline:** Yeah. She was the best female character in that movie. Also because she was just wrong.

**John:** She was wrong, but also, the movie had sympathy for like when everything was falling apart, you really could see like, “Oh, everything is falling apart for her, too.” And the movie allowed you to have sympathy for her.

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** So you understand her both being angry at the start and sort of being, you know —

**Aline:** Yeah, I preferred in a fun way — I mean, I love Marisa Tomei, but Marisa Tomei’s character was a thing we’ve seen before.

**John:** It’s just functional.

**Aline:** Which is, yes, functional. Whereas that lady was, she’d also gotten like opened the door and the snow had fallen in on her.

**John:** It’s such a great example of like Steve Carell like at the very start acknowledges that she’s pregnant and sort of says nothing more. And then it’s like, all this time has passed and now she has a baby and all that stuff. And it was a great recall on the character.

Another examples of sort of sympathy for characters, in Room after the boy escapes, just the police officer, the cop, who like figures out like where it is, and like, had such sympathy for like that’s a character who only has a very limited window of time but like just drilled down and exactly nailed who she was and sort of why she was the right person to be in the backseat of the car with him, just brilliant and genius.

And then sympathy, I think even in Spotlight, where you get to like Jamey Sheridan’s character, who has been protecting the church. And you know, we suddenly are showing up at his doorstep and sort of ruining his Christmas. I still had sympathy for why he was doing what he was doing. And so it’s so easy to make terrible villains, but to have sympathy for these villains too in some of these cases is a huge achievement.

**Rawson:** Yes. I mean I agree. The one thing — I mean on your point of, you know, not having fully-baked female characters in these pictures. But if you look at like The Big Short, I guess my question would be, that’s a non-fiction novel. And so the characters in that novel are all men. Do you think that McKay should have made one of them a woman? Or is that — or I guess that’s like what are you supposed to do when the story is about dudes doing these things?

**Aline:** Yes. I mean but then we’re just pointing to the fact that he invented a female character. Or I don’t know, maybe that character exists.

**Rawson:** I can’t remember.

**Aline:** But, you know, he created some. So that’s, you know, obviously some stories are that. Again, those tend to be the stories that we’re telling more and that we’re privileging. So if you make more movies with just a more of a diversity of characters, gender-wise and frankly race-wise.

But I’m just, you know, I’m sitting here again with you guys, like your movies always have female characters that are interesting and weird and Go is — and you do, too. I mean, you’re also, you do a thing which I enjoy and which Craig does, too, which is, you’ll write female characters who are just kind of assholes.

And that’s, you know, we deserve to have — I mean, my favorite thing about Identity Thief is that she’s an asshole. And then she’s not, of course.

**Rawson:** Right.

**Aline:** And she’s that great. But men get to be assholes, men get to be flawed, men get to be messes, men get to be complicated. And I sort of feel like, you know, for women, we just — between the genre movies and the smaller movies, I think we’re restricting ourselves a little bit in that regard.

Obviously, if it’s a movie where, you know, it’s about men — if it’s, you know, if it’s all about the — you know, the basketball championship. But I still think that to really depict a 360 world, you have to include their voices in it and do a good job with them.

**Rawson:** Yeah, absolutely.

**John:** All right. It’s time for One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is a gift that my daughter got for Christmas. It’s called Compose Yourself and it’s these clear plastic cards that have measures of music on them, just like simple notes on them.

And what’s smart about it is, because they’re clear, you can flip them over and turn them around and look at the measures different ways. And it goes to a website and you punch in the code number on each of these cards. It builds a song both into sort of simple note melody, but also like full orchestration. And so it’s a great way of sort of like looking at this is what notes look like on the card, this is what it actually sounds like when you put it together.

So for, you know, anybody who’s interested in sort of music theory, or sort of like sort of the call and response of measures, it’s really, really cool. So I really dug it.

**Rawson:** What’s it called?

**John:** It’s called Compose Yourself. It’s by a guy name Philip Sheppard and there’ll be a link to that in the show notes.

**Rawson:** Cool.

**Aline:** Great. What do you got?

**Rawson:** I have a game that I love that is not out yet, it’s called The Division.

**John:** All right.

**Rawson:** Tom Clancy’s The Division. It’s for Xbox One. It will be PS4 and PC platform. It comes out in March. I played the Alpha. December 9th to the 12th is a very small window. I’ve been waiting for this game for about three-and-a-half years. I’ve been going to E3 and playing it and waiting and waiting and waiting.

And it is fantastic and super fun. It’s a third person RPG shooter, set in kind of post-viral outbreak Manhattan. And your job with your friends, up to three friends, is to get services back online — electricity, water, paramedic, police, et cetera, et cetera. And it’s a super fun game to play. But it’s so beautiful. The light and weather effects are incredible and some of the best I’ve ever seen.

And if you like video games at all, The Division, Tom Clancy’s The Division, comes out in March.

**Aline:** Wow! Can I just take this moment to say I’ve never played a video game?

**Rawson:** Oh. Aline.

**Aline:** Never.

**John:** Never even on your phone?

**Rawson:** Never once?

**Aline:** No, on my phone. But I never like sat down with a remote.

**John:** With Xbox controller.

**Aline:** Yes. My kids do it constantly and I wouldn’t even know where — so I guess I did Wii back in the day and I can do some Guitar Hero. So that counts.

**John:** My daughter first learned how to play NBA 2K14 from your sons playing that game.

**Rawson:** NBA 2K16 is supposed to be the best sports game ever made.

**John:** I completely agree. I remember watching your kids playing it with Amy and I thought they were just watching basketball. That’s how good it looks like.

**Aline:** Yes. The graphics are insane. You know I often think they’re watching basketball, too.

I’m going to do again because I’m turning into this guy. I’m just going to beg everyone to go and see The Hunting Ground. I know it’s been out for a while but they just aired it on CNN again.

It’s so good. And it’s so important. And it’s so infuriating. And it’s so interesting. And it’s super well-made. And I would really just go see The Hunting Ground and then go to the website. And they’re talking about something that was, you know, I went to Take Back the Night marches when I was in college and it’s still going on. And it’s time to do something about it. And it’s just so worthwhile.

**John:** Cool. Great. That’s our show for this week. So as always, our show is produced by Stuart Friedel. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli.

**Aline:** I don’t see Stuart Friedel anywhere here.

**John:** Stuart Friedel is off on assignment. No, he’s off — just —

**Aline:** Stuart?

**John:** Stuart — where’s Stuart? We’re recording this on New Year’s Day, so Stuart has the day off.

**Rawson:** Happy New Year!

**John:** Happy New Year to everyone. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli who also did our outro this week. A reminder that we are doing a live show on January 25th with guests Jason Bateman and Lawrence Kasdan who wrote a little movie called —

**Aline:** Well done.

**John:** Yes. Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and The Empire Strikes Back, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

**Aline:** Where are you doing that?

**John:** We’re doing that downtown in Los Angeles. So you should come see it.

**Aline:** Fantastic.

**John:** It’s a benefit for Hollywood HEART so you guys — we can get tickets for you. But if you, as a listener, would like tickets, there’s a link in the show notes where you get them. You can also just go to hollywoodheart.org/upcoming.

Our show is available on iTunes. So click and subscribe in iTunes so everyone knows that you’re subscribing to our show. Leave us a comment because we like to read through those comments.

If you’d like to listen to one of our back episodes, like the Frozen episode with Director Jennifer Lee, you can go to scriptnotes.net. There’s also an app which you can listen to all those back episodes. On Twitter, I’m @johnaugust. Craig, who’s not here, is @clmazin. Rawson, are you on Twitter?

**Rawson:** I’m at Twitter. I’m on Twitter @rawsonthurber.

**John:** Aline Brosh McKenna is not on Twitter but she’s on Instagram but not even publicly.

**Aline:** No.

**John:** You’re secret on Instagram, too. No. She’s unreachable.

**Aline:** I live on a desert island.

**John:** But if you have a question for any of us, you can write to ask@johnaugust.com and we’ll try to answer your questions. And thank you all very much and thank you Rawson and thank you Aline.

**Rawson:** Thank you.

**Aline:** Thank you.

**John:** All right. Bye.

**Aline:** Bye.

**Rawson:** Bye.

Links:

* [Rawson Marshall Thurber](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1098493/) on episodes [100](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode), [101](http://johnaugust.com/2013/101-qa-from-the-live-show), [123](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-holiday-spectacular) and [124](http://johnaugust.com/2013/qa-from-the-holiday-spectacular), and [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/RawsonThurber)
* [Aline Brosh McKenna](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0112459/) on episodes [60](http://johnaugust.com/2012/the-black-list-and-a-stack-of-scenes), [76](http://johnaugust.com/2013/how-screenwriters-find-their-voice), [100](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode), [101](http://johnaugust.com/2013/101-qa-from-the-live-show), [119](http://johnaugust.com/2013/positive-moviegoing), [123](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-holiday-spectacular), [124](http://johnaugust.com/2013/qa-from-the-holiday-spectacular) [152](http://johnaugust.com/2014/the-rocky-shoals-pages-70-90), [161](http://johnaugust.com/2014/a-cheap-cut-of-meat-soaked-in-butter), [175](http://johnaugust.com/2014/twelve-days-of-scriptnotes), [180](http://johnaugust.com/2015/bad-teachers-good-advice-and-the-default-male), [200](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-200th-episode-live-show) and [219](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-one-where-alines-show-debuts)
* [Room](http://roomthemovie.com/#/) on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3170832/) and [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_(2015_film)), and [the novel](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316098329/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* [Spotlight](http://spotlightthefilm.com/) on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1895587/) and [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_(film))
* [The Big Short](http://www.thebigshortmovie.com/) on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596363/) and [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Short_(film)), and [the book](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0393338827/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* [Compose Yourself](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W3SREPG/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* [Tom Clancy’s The Division](http://tomclancy-thedivision.ubi.com/game/en-us/home/)
* [The Hunting Ground](http://www.thehuntinggroundfilm.com/) on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4185572/) and [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunting_Ground)
* [Get your tickets now for Scriptnotes, Live on January 25](http://hollywoodheart.org/upcoming/) with [Jason Bateman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Bateman) and [Lawrence Kasdan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kasdan), a benefit for [Hollywood HEART](http://hollywoodheart.org)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-batman-in-the-high-castle).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 226 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the program, we will be discussing epic world-building, from Gotham City to Narnia, and why screenwriters need to be careful when building out whole universes. This topic was suggested by Rawson Marshall Thurber who is a friend of ours and a former guest. He was a guest on our 100th episode of the show and also on the Christmas show.

**Craig:** I just like hmph-ing him.

**John:** Yeah, absolutely. As a, “How he dare suggest something like this.” But you’ve actually found yourself doing some world-building recently. I was thinking I saw the trailer for The Huntsman which felt like it was a build-out of a fantasy world.

**Craig:** Yes, very much so.

**John:** And apparently, Charlize Theron has bitten into something very black because her mouth is very black in that trailer.

**Craig:** I got to tell you, she’s so good in the — ooh, she’s good in that movie.

**John:** Oh, that’s good.

**Craig:** Yeah, she’s good in it. She’s good.

**John:** Before we get to world-building, some follow-up. On December 9th, we have our live show. There might be tickets. I think they’re releasing a few more tickets that we’d held back, so you should go check it out and see if there are still some tickets available for our live show because we’ve actually added an additional guest, Alan Yang of Parks and Recreation.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And more recently the Aziz Ansari show, Master of None on Netflix. He will be joining us to talk about that show and other awesome topics. We may even have a musical guest because in previous shows we’ve had — well, Craig has sung. We’ve had Rachel Bloom sing, from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. So it wouldn’t be a Christmas show without a little bit of music. And I think we have the music guests figured out for the show.

**Craig:** I think we do. I think it’s going to be awesome.

**John:** It’s going to be great. So you should come join us for that. So in addition to Alan Yang and Craig Mazin and myself, we will have Natasha Leggero and Riki Lindhome from Another Period. And who else is on our show? Oh, Malcolm Spellman.

**Craig:** How can you forget?

**John:** You can never forget Malcolm Spellman. He will not let you forget that he’s there.

**Craig:** Nope.

**John:** Nope. Segment bit of follow-up, NaNoWriMo, the National November Novel Writing Month, is now drawn to a close. So people have asked, “Hey, John, how did you? You were going to write a book during November.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And I did not finish the book but I got at about like 13,000 to 15,000 words done and I’m really, really happy with what I wrote.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So it qualified as a success for me.

**Craig:** That’s a full Derek Haas novel right there.

**John:** [laughs] Indeed. As long as I put up my font pretty big, it’s going to be a great book.

**Craig:** [laughs] You’re funny. How many words is a novel? Like 100,000 words or something?

**John:** No. Actually, a 50,000 word novel is a small novel but Derek’s is probably between 50 and 60. That’s my guess, his most recent one.

**Craig:** Okay. So you got a good third of a novel there almost or fourth.

**John:** Yeah. I think I probably will finish it at some point. There’s going to be discussion about sort of when the best time is to finish it. And depending on some stuff that may or may not happen in the next week or two, people will understand why I had to sort of stop. But it was good. It was actually a really great process.

**Craig:** Good. Good.

**John:** Hooray. We have a question from the mailbag. Daniel wrote in to ask, “When it comes to an established writer, what is better for their career — a movie loved by critics that bombs at the Box Office or a Box Office smash that is ripped to shreds by critics? Which scenario helps the writer’s reputation with the studios and helps the writer be considered for more work in the future?” Craig, what’s your thought on that?

**Craig:** I have seen this question asked so many times. This is like everyone’s favorite party question for screenwriters. The answer is yes. That’s the answer. If you’re an established writer, I’m presuming that the premise of the question is you’re working. But even if you’re not, it doesn’t matter to me. If you have a Box Office smash hit, that is wonderful for you in terms of your reputation with the studios because of course their main goal is to make money. They don’t care if critics don’t like a movie. If the audience likes the movie, then they’re happy and they’re happy, so that’s always good.

If you write a movie that is beloved by critics but bombs at the Box Office, that can still also be very good for you. I think it’s more important that the people who see the movie who — I mean, because the question is framed what’s better for you at the studios. The people at the studios need to also like the movie. There are movies that critics love that I’ve talked about with people at studios and they’re all like, “We don’t think that’s a good movie at all.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But a lot of times, there’s overlap. And if there is, then, yeah, they would very much consider that person for other work at their studio. It would be different work. It wouldn’t be work that probably is of the kind of critical, darling Box Office bomb. But all of it’s good.

I think if you write a good script and the movie connects somehow, you’ve done a good job. These questions are I think more important for directors in a weird way than for writers. More often than not, the biggest thing that we’re judged on is did you write a script somebody agreed to produce? That’s the big one.

**John:** Yeah. Everything Craig said is exactly right. I think what is interesting about Daniel’s question is it supposes that the studios have the same information that someone who’s looking up stuff online has about the writer and how the movie turned out. And the studios actually have much, much more information. So the studio knows whether that movie which was a disaster was a disaster because of the writer or it was a disaster because of things that happened along the way. So the studio has information about what that process was. The studio also has a real sense of who really wrote that movie. If there were multiple writers, where the bad things came to be.

By the same token, if a movie is a huge success and this writer is the person who wrote it, that won’t necessarily guarantee them a chance down the road to write the next thing because they also know sort of like it was a success despite the writing or it’s a success despite sort of the involvement of those people. And so there are people who have, you know, $100 million movies who, as screenwriters, do not necessarily have the strongest careers because they’re not given a lot of credit for having taken that movie across the finish line to $100 million.

**Craig:** It’s a really good point. There’s so much going on that people don’t know about. And so for instance, one of the big things that determines whether a movie is a success or not is who’s in it. Simple as that. Who’s cast in it? Well, the writer is not casting the movie. When is the movie released? How was the movie marketed? What is the title of the movie? There’s a lot of things that can go wrong. Was there a similar movie that came out that sort of stole the thunder? All these things can happen.

When we write a movie and the movie is green-lit, it means we’ve done a very good job. And when I say we write a movie, yes, there may be multiple writers in the chain of things. But ultimately, one writer, sometimes two, will get the bulk of the inside baseball credit. And they’re the writers that convince the movie studio to make the movie or convince the big actor to sign on or big director to sign on.

And when that happens, you’ve won. You get the credit for doing a good job. Everything that happens after that is, to some extent, placed on the shoulders for better or worse of the director and the cast. The star and the director are the ones that take the hit or get the most uplift from the movie succeeding one way or the other.

**John:** It’s important to remember that your jobs that you get as a writer are not rewards for previous successes. They are bets on whether you can write the next movie that is going to turn out very, very well. And so they’re basing those bets on, “Well, what has that writer done beforehand?” And so, did that person write a really good script? Did that person write a script that was able to attract this kind of talent and able to make a really huge movie?

Those are the reasons why you are getting hired to do a job. So, from my own personal example, my first movie that got produced was called Go and it was successful. It wasn’t a huge Box Office hit but people really, really liked that movie. And that got me a lot of jobs on things down the road. And so Charlie’s Angels was my biggest hit sort of after that time but I had a lot of other work before then because of that first movie, Go, which people could see whatever they wanted to see in that movie. And it was very, very useful for me. And that was a case, an example of a movie that had good critical reaction, but more importantly, had good reaction in the town and people wanted to like that movie.

**Craig:** I think that when people ask this question, the unheard argument that’s going on behind the scenes is two people debating, “Should I write something that people will want to go see? Should I write a franchisee kind of movie? Should I write this little tiny movie?” Someone’s saying, “Stop wasting your time with little tiny movies,” and someone’s saying, “Stop selling out on these big, huge soulless tent poles.” And the answer to those people is, “Shut up. Shut up and write what you want to write.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Nobody is going to make or break their career based on the genre choice of their first screenplay or how they’re trying to get in. Write the thing that you will write best. For a lot of people — I would argue for most people — that’s going to be genre fare, popcorn fare, mainstream studio fare because that’s the bulk of the movies we consume as human beings. And that’s a lot of what inspires us.

For some people, for fewer but a significant amount, it’s going to be quirkier fare, independent fare, or more narrow-focused fare that is perhaps a lot more meaningful to them emotionally. And that’s what those people should write. I think that people want an answer and the answer is there’s no answer, stop having that argument.

**John:** Only the corollary I put with this is that I think having a produced film is incredibly valuable. And so, you could have a script that was a Black List kudoed script, you could have a script that people really love in town but having a movie that actually shot, even if it wasn’t quite as good as that script, it will be incredibly helpful. There’s something about having your movie produced for the first time that makes it feel like, “Okay, you’re a real produced writer,” and that people have a faith and a trust in you that your words can actually be shot, that they may not if you’re an unproduced writer.

So the follow-up question for this might be, is it better to have a good script that never shot or a good script that turned out poorly? It’s better to have the good script that kind of turned up poorly because then at least you have a movie made.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t know which is easier. I don’t know if it’s easier to get a mainstream studio film made or to get a smaller, narrower focused movie made. I actually suspect it might be easier to get the smaller movie made just because there are more avenues in smaller budgets and there just seems like there’s a lot of them. They just, you know, aren’t necessarily seen the way that studio films are.

It’s harder than it has ever been in the history of the planet to get a studio film made. So if your theory is, “I’m going to write a big studio movie because that’s what gets made,” that’s fine. Just be aware, they make — it’s interesting. Like I was talking to, I shall not use a name, but an individual that runs a studio.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And the individual said, “When you remove the number of films we have that are already in the pipeline because they are based on property we own or sequels to things, and then you ask how many slots left do we have here to make other movies,” this individual said, I believe for — you know, it’s all planned out ahead but for, say 2017, the number is two.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** Two. That’s two movies that they don’t already have planned and know about. And there’s five studios [laughs]. The odds are very, very, very, very low and people say, “Why is that particular person writing a sequel to blah, blah, blah?” Because that’s what they’re making.

**John:** That’s what they’re making.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. That’s actually a great segue to our big topic of the day, which is world-building because the kind of movies that big studios are making are these big constructed universe things, oftentimes shared universe things. If you think of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you think of everything that Disney does, you think of sort of the big superhero movies, they are alternate universes. They take place in a real world that is not our real world. And so I want to talk through that process of world-building and some of the pros and the cons and things to think about if you were a screenwriter approaching that kind of scenario.

So, just defining terms. World-building is generally the process of creating fictional universes in which these stories take place. And so these stories could be novels, they could be feature films, they could be TV series, they could be video games. Increasingly, they’re sort of all of the above. And the work for who actually creates a universe is very different based on sort of how it comes into being. So we’re going to talk about both creator-driven universes and also sort of these shared universes.

The author John Harrison has a great quote. “It’s the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there,” which I think is actually very nice. It’s like world-building is you’re trying to create an atlas for a world that does not possibly exist.

So pretty much everything that a screenwriter writes is going to have some degree of world-building. And back in Episode 135, you and I talked through world-building in the context of comedies and also in the context of True Detective. And so those were scenarios where it’s pretty much the real world, you just made it a little bit more specific. You added a little bit of texture. So it’s sort of like the low-fi version of world-building.

But for today, I really want to talk about these epic big world-buildings where you’re figuring out everything, about the culture of the geography, sort of the physics of your universe, whether there’s magic in your world, and what that means from a screenwriter’s perspective. I thought we might start with talking about a place that we’ve all been but never really been, which is Gotham City.

**Craig:** Yes, the ever-changing Gotham City.

**John:** So this is a great video. This is actually what Rawson had sent through. It’s by Evan Puschak who does YouTube videos as The Nerdwriter. And he does this really good video that’s tracking the evolution of Gotham City, from its start in Detective Comics to where we see it now with the Nolan films and beyond. What did you think of the video?

**Craig:** Well, I thought it was great. I mean, if you are a fan of Batman, and I happen to be, and you’ve followed along, you and I are children of the ’70s so my introduction of Batman was in fact the campy, ridiculous television show. And you see from that through Frank Miller and Burton and Chris Nolan. To me, it’s not a particularly startling point that’s being made here. It’s actually fairly obvious. That doesn’t mean to diminish it. It’s just it’s so evidently true that Batman and Gotham City reflect each other and they change to match each other, depending on how you alter your take on the character.

**John:** What I liked about the video is it pointed out the iterative nature of Gotham City, is that like Gotham City didn’t spring into being all as one thing. Like originally, Batman took place in New York City and then it became its own specific city of Gotham City. And it changed and iterated as new people came on board. And as the needs of what the storytelling demanded, the city changed to reflect those needs.

So you have Frank Miller’s very dark version of Gotham, a city falling apart, which has definitely influenced sort of our modern understanding of it. But if you look at what Tim Burton did, I think Tim Burton, maybe I wasn’t giving him enough credit for sort of his vision that he brought to the Michael Keaton Batman films is that like it’s a city that sort of has no zoning controls. Like everything is built in like this crazy — overbuilt, just crazy degrees.

And so we think of that, “Oh, that’s Burtonesque,” but it’s also very specific and it’s very Batman-ish. It’s the city that’s out of control. And it’s a city that exists so that its hero can exist because without Gotham, there’s no Batman; without Batman, there’s no Gotham. This city has to have this beating heart of crime so that Batman can fight it. And we sort of see that reflected in sort of all the other variations of it.

And so while Gotham City was ultimately created for Batman as it originally stood, it is now this sort of shared universe. So you can sort of see like this is the kind of character that exists in a Batman world. And you could even make a TV show called Gotham which is just about the city and not about Batman itself.

**Craig:** Well, there’s something interesting in the origin story of Batman that I think drives a lot of what happens with Gotham City over time. Batman is rich. Gotham City is necessarily full of crime because it’s a superhero story about a vigilante that fights crime. So, how do you create a world in which you have a billionaire who is so wealthy that he can have both a mansion and a massive underground complex, and an arsenal that kind of rivals any first-world [laughs] power’s arsenal?

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** And also, ghettos and slums and streets teeming with people who are so desperate, they’re going to shoot wealthy people for a necklace and kill Bruce Wayne’s parents. Right there, you have this piece of the puzzle which is a disparity of income.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** And well long before anybody was saying 1% and that was a slogan, Tim Burton, I think, really did the biggest, the most important bit of Gotham design. You know, and I’m not sure how much of it was intentional or not. I know that when he designed Gotham, he was thinking about gothic. And so you have these huge statues, a lot of huge faces and things. But I remember watching it thinking, “So much money. It must have cost so much money to make this city and yet, everyone is so poor and miserable.” And then when I go see New York, I’m like, “It must have taken so much money [laughs] to make this city and everyone’s so poor and miserable.”

And that’s a great aspect of the world. It’s an aspect of the world that is very human and relevant to us all. And all of the iterations of Gotham have some form of that or another in different ways. Tim’s was very gothic, very art designed and very pushed, whereas Nolan’s is a little more a Blade Runner-ish feeling to it. It’s a little more retro future-y. Maybe my favorite Gotham is the Gotham of the Rocksteady video games.

**John:** Oh, yeah.

**Craig:** Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, because it feels the most like an actual city, but then there are these things here and there that are so creepy. That city is like a real city but with a serious mental problem.

**John:** So, I think what you’re hitting on here is that in most of these constructed universes, in most of this world-building we’re doing, we’re trying to create recognizable aspects of a world that we normally would be in, but we’re just pushing them in different directions. And you were citing, what is different about this world and what is the same?

And so, people can use their expectations of a place in a helpful way as they’re experiencing the stories we’re telling there and yet, we can also change some things. So even if we go to Game of Thrones, you go to Westeros, there’s things that definitely feel like familiar parts of our world, but they are assembled in very different ways. And so, we will travel to different countries in Westeros and recognize some cultural things that seem kind of like our world and yet, they are specific to Westeros.

**Craig:** This is going to come up over and over as we go through our various worlds that we all recognize, the notion that we are creating analogs to the world that we live in will happen over and over and over again to the point where it becomes clear that unless your world is an intentional contrast and comparison to our world now, it’s not going to do the trick for us. We need it. We need the relation. And where we find joy in the worlds that we see on screen that people have built is in the connection. Where we intend to feel something between us in it is when it feels constructed to the point that it is not recognizable or relevant.

**John:** Yeah. Well, let’s start our journey talking about another billionaire with an arsenal. Let’s talk about Tony Stark and the Marvel Universe. And so —

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** He is Batman but he’s not Batman. He comes at this universe from a very different perspective and yet he has many of the same toys, his city is an actual city. It’s New York City and it’s designed to be more recognizable. Things are not pushed quite so far, but he as a character, is pushed quite far. And he’s, you know, at least in this Marvel Cinematic Universe, is one of the sort of linchpins of this really interconnected soap opera of characters who we can recognize aspects of modern life, but they are very clearly comic book characters.

**Craig:** Yeah. The Marvel shared universe is fascinating. I was a Marvel guy as a kid. Were you a Marvel guy or a DC guy?

**John:** I was a DC kid as a —

**Craig:** Oh, that’s interesting. Interesting.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know, I like DC, too. I always think of DC as the more religious, mythical of the two.

**John:** The Greek gods.

**Craig:** It’s a little bit more god-ish, yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Whereas Marvel was always, to me, it’s basically a telenovela. It’s absolutely soap opera. It’s cheesy soap opera. Oh, god, I’m going to get letters now. I mean, I love it though.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But the point is, what Marvel does to create their universe is they’re ever expanding the universe but they make everything interrelated. Everybody, ultimately, ends up knowing everybody. Everybody’s sleeping with everybody. People are breaking up. They’re changing their personalities. They’re flipping sides from hero to villain and villain to hero. It’s like professional wrestling. And that’s why so much of it’s so fun. There are very basic mythological religious elements to the Marvel Universe. I mean, they have the infinity gems. I mean, they’re always like creating layers of awesomeness. [laughs] It’s what —

**John:** Yeah. And you look at Thor, you have things that are truly mythological characters.

**Craig:** Correct. You have Galactus who eats planets. And I believe Galactus’ sister is death or time [laughs] or one of them, I’m not sure. And she existed before the universe was even created. So they’re always like upping the ante. Like you have those characters, like The Watcher, all of these guys that are so — the Beyonder. That’s one of my favorite things about the Marvel Universe is that — and we’ll see, this comes up again very clearly in Tolkien in such a different way. When people build successful worlds, they never finish the map.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So if you think of the map of the Marvel Universe, you get to an edge of it and then you go, “There’s something beyond that.” There’s always something beyond it. Whether it is Dr. Strange goes into limbo and all that. There’s always something bigger. So, you never lose the sense of discovery within the characters living in that universe.

**John:** Well, even if the physical geography reaches a boundary, its temporal geography keeps changing because some people will go back in time or there will be alternate timelines, or there will be alternate whole universes in which these characters have a different experience. And so, that is another thing that is true, especially in the comic book versions. But even now in the cinematic versions, if you look at the X-Men universe and they’ve rebooted it and sort of halfway rebooted it so that the characters have some memory of what happened before and what didn’t happen before.

But I think what’s crucial as we look at the Marvel Paper Universe and the Cinematic Universe is that it is iterative. And so, they don’t build it all at once. And there wasn’t sort of one big council meeting where everyone said like, “Okay, let’s figure out everything about our universe and these are the rules and we’re going to stick to the rules.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Instead, they had to figure out what do we need to figure out to tell this story and then what else do we need to do. And as they’re working through comic books, it’s like what are we willing to bend or change or retcon in order to make this whole other thing make sense, to make this whole other thing possible?

And we’re going to be talking about the difference between sort of top-down world-building, where you figure out sort of everything at the start and sort of work your way down versus bottom-up world-building, which is where you start with a character, a story, and just build out as much as you need around that character or story for it to make sense.

**Craig:** It’s very tempting, I think, for people to consume worlds that have been built from the bottom-up and then turn around and think, “I’m going to do that from the top-down.” And it’s really, really hard. I mean, there are some wonderful worlds that have been made top-down and we’ll discuss them, but Marvel is a great example of something that has been built up a little bit like Tim Burton’s Gotham without zoning laws.

So, you start with very simple characters doing very simple things and then everything is piled up on itself until there’s this enormous complexity and inter-textuality and the soap opera is massive. Did you have that book — oh, you were a DC guy. I had the Marvel, I think it was called the —

**John:** Compendium?

**Craig:** Yeah, it was the one that listed every character [laughs].

**John:** Yes. No, it’s great.

**Craig:** It’s awesome. And I just laugh because I got that in, I want to say, 1986. That book now must be like — well, it’s not a book anymore, I’m sure.

**John:** It’s sort of a Wikipedia kind of thing.

**Craig:** I know. I’m sure somebody’s published it as a book because it must be beautiful, but it would be massive.

**John:** Yeah. I’ll put links in the show notes to both DC and Marvel have sort of encyclopedias, like illustrated encyclopedias that I found incredibly useful because a minor character will come up, it’s like, “Who is that?” And when I was doing Shazam!, I had to sort of go through it and figure out like what is this? Who is this character and how can they possibly fit into our universe?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So let’s go from this sort of top-down perspective of Marvel and sort of how everything is constructed to something that did start as being very ground-up, which is Star Wars. Obviously, most people probably listening know that the back story of Star Wars and that it was a very different script originally, but George Lucas sort of kept tweaking it and refining it until the script that became the movie that we all love is very much a sort of from the ground up kind of story. And while there are some big epic forces, not everything was built into the first Star Wars. And he didn’t actually have the answers to all the bigger questions of the Star Wars Universe. He was telling the story of Luke Skywalker and the people around him and the places around him that were important for his story.

**Craig:** Do you think, I have my answer, but do you think George Lucas knew that Luke and Leia were siblings when he made the first movie?

**John:** I do not think he knew that because I —

**Craig:** There’s no way.

**John:** There’s no way. And some people would argue that of course he knew it because I think we want to believe that the creator has the answers to everything at the very first moment. But as creators, I can guarantee you that we don’t know those things.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** The reason why I believe that is like, there are just certain things you would never do that way if you knew they were going to be brother and sister.

**Craig:** Exactly. He certainly wouldn’t have them kiss and do that whole thing. But also, I don’t think he knew that Darth Vader was Luke’s dad.

**John:** I don’t know that either.

**Craig:** I don’t think so. Here’s why I don’t think so, and this is an interesting thing about world-building. You build your initial world and you build it in a way that would make sense for you and the audience. In a galaxy where the Empire is dominating the galaxy, but then the simple farm boy is going to rise up to lead a rebellion, the odds, the bizarro coincidence that the guy running it is the dad of the kid and that he was literally over that planet when the — that just seems crazy.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** But we love the movie so much that it actually then makes complete sense for the second movie.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It makes utter sense. Of course, you do end up with things like [laughs] Sir Alec Guinness saying, “Well, I said that Darth Vader killed him and in a sense, he sort of did. In a sense.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** [laughs] You know, it’s like that’s — to me, I always laugh at that line because it was like, “Uhm, yeah, well, you know, I changed my mind.” [laughs] That’s what happened.

**John:** But on the sense of like a creator needs to know everything about the universe and the world from the very first moment —

**Craig:** We can’t.

**John:** We know that’s not true because of Lost. And like, Lost is an incredibly complicated show that I loved, but everyone involved with it will tell you very frankly that when they shot the pilot, they didn’t know the answers to most of the questions. They were actually just like figuring out like, these are really fascinating questions and then when it came time to actually make the series, they had to figure out like, “Okay, well, what are the answers going to be?”

And so the difference between the pilot and, you know, the series is they actually had to find the answers to those questions. And that’s not a fault on the people who created the pilot, J.J. Abrams and everyone else involved, it was just that’s how you pursue interesting things is to ask a bunch of questions and then figure out what those answers could be.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that when Lucas made the first movie, although he clearly intended it obviously to be situated in a longer series because he called it Episode 4, for god’s sakes, the world-building of Star Wars is again very analogous. For me, it’s very analogous to a western. Feels very much like a western. Mos Eisley is Dodge City. That bar they go into, I mean that’s the bar scene from how many westerns, you know.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Even the guns felt very western. I mean, lasers can be designed in a million different ways that felt western. There were bounty hunters —

**John:** Look at how Han Solo is dressed. I mean it’s all —

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s right. He’s dressed like saloon doors. Like his vest is saloon doors. So it feels very western to me. C-3PO and R2-D2 are classic western comedy sidekicks.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** And then there are even damsels, Leia, at various points, is the damsel in the series. Han Solo was a damsel at one point. You know, like —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Both sides become damsels and have to be rescued. There are scoundrels and the rust bucket-y ship is like the old horse. Anyway, the point is, it was so new and so shocking, and yet, so not new and so familiar. The lightsaber is a sword.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** It’s just a sword. And we love swords. Movies love swords.

**John:** They do just love them.

**Craig:** You know, they love fistfights and swords because that feels like the most human and intimate form of combat. So, it was all new and yet so familiar. A wonderful job of building that world in a way that we can relate to it. And then when it caught fire, a wonderful job of expanding it in such ways so that you realize there were so much more going on than you could imagine.

**John:** Absolutely. So, let’s talk more about some sort of single creator creations. And the most sort of epic of them, I can imagine, is probably J.K. Rowling with the Harry Potter Universe. And so, this is a case where — because she is writing this as a book, she can be incredibly specific about like this is exactly how everything fits together. And you read the first Harry Potter and it doesn’t mean that she has the answers to everything, but she knows exactly what the universe of her story is and it’s a case of like, she can tell you — she has a good sense in her head of what butterbeer is like and how that spell actually functions. And this is a case where novels give the chance to build out worlds in ways that I would say feature films and even television series are a little bit more limited —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Your perspective on this?

**Craig:** I mean, I am obsessed with Harry Potter. I think it’s a true work of genius. I would argue that Tolkien —

**John:** Yes, sure.

**Craig:** Is the king of the thorough single created world because he not only wrote those books, but then he wrote Silmarillion. I mean, the dude literally traced everyone back to the beginning of time. I mean, he created essentially a religion, it’s just that it’s fake, unlike the other religions that are, of course, entirely real. [laughs] But J.K. Rowling’s work certainly is impressive and I think that unlike Tolkien’s work, her work felt as if it was created whole from the start.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That she knew, and I believe this is true, I mean there’s that legend of her riding that train and coming up the whole thing all at once, that she knew essentially here’s the story I want to tell, this is the world, this is the character, this is the bad guy, this is why the bad guy’s the way he is, this is why the good guy’s way is, this is how they’re related, this is how it’s going to end, this is roughly the span of it. She had it all from the start. Whereas a guy like Tolkien began with — well, first of all, creating a language, for god’s sakes, I mean, he was a —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Linguistics professor, but then, built out from The Hobbit and then expanded and then built out from The Lord of the Rings and expanded it even more. He was more of a bottom-up guy. I feel like she top-downed that thing in a way that, honestly, I find dangerous to recommend to anyone —

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** Because unless you are her and she is singular, I don’t know. I can’t imagine that working out so well. I mean, god, she just did an incredible job. Everything worked.

**John:** Yeah. So I think the reason why I share your fear that it’s incredibly dangerous to approach things that way, I think there’s a lot of unwritten books and movies that started top-down and never got finished, because once you start filling out the geography and writing the languages and doing all these other work to sort of create up this whole thing, you may never actually make the product. So, you may never actually finish that work because you’re so busy figuring out like, you know, what is the name of that little city over there on the far edge of the world? It reminds me, I’m not sure if you’ve ever encountered this guy before, Henry Darger. So Henry Darger is this sort of obscure American, I guess you’d call him a writer but he’s really was like a reclusive shut-in hermit. He did In the Realms of the Unreal. And so he built this incredibly elaborate fantasy world for these girls, the Vivian girls, and they’ve been trying to make a movie of his life for a long time because he clearly envisioned this whole other second world, but he never really — he never had an ability to write or connect this with an actual — as something that somebody would want to read.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** He was never able to actually tell it in a way that became something that somebody could sit down and read. So you look at Harry Potter and yes, J.K. Rowling has built this incredibly vibrant detailed universe, but she also could tell the story about one kid going through it. And the Harry Potter universe exists and it exists to tell the story of Harry Potter. And everything else is wonderful around it but it’s meant to be sort of a one-shot through the Harry Potter granted she’s doing some other stuff in the universe right now, but the initial series was for that one character. With Middle Earth, I don’t honestly know the backstory of whether Tolkien created the universe for Bilbo Baggins as the Hobbit and then built out the rest of it or whether he built out the universe and then had to find a character to explore this universe and that’s how Bilbo came to be.

**Craig:** I think that it was a little bit of both. Tolkien’s obsession was with the disappearing English agrarian lifestyle. And particularly, post-World War II, the sense that there was a way of life that had been lost to industry and to destruction. And so, his creation was both to make a world that was the kind of world he wanted to live in, but also to then create characters that represented what he thought was the worst and characters that he thought were the best. It’s not a mistake that — although, it’s a tradition to have the smallest and weakest to be the hero, it’s not a mistake that the hobbits live in these little thatched countryside homes that are very English-ey and very comfy and cozy.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And warm tea and they’re simple people, you know. They’re simple, good, English, countryside folk. There was a connection to something that was human there. When you talk about this guy that made this world, that is scary to me and I feel a tension in me because I know there are a lot of people out there who have an affinity for building a world. It’s fun to create your own language, it’s fun to create your own society and cities and maps and all that stuff is great, but that is a certain part of your brain. I think most people who have that part of the brain don’t have the other part. Which is the part where you have an instinct for what is humanity. And J.K. Rowling has both in spades.

**John:** Well, and I don’t know they’re necessarily exclusive in so many people. What I worry about is the people who are so excited about world-building are the people who sort of want everything to make sense and want everything to be logical, who want to sort of — who want to believe that there’s an alternate cosmology where everything is fixed and sensible. But that’s not necessarily the same brain that is going to be able to tell a story of a character struggling to make its way through this universe. And so I think so often, it’s so tempting and honestly so much easier to build out all of the fantasy stuff because the actual real hard work is writing the story —

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That the character is taking this journey just once and that’s a challenging thing to remember. And also, the danger is, if you built out all that stuff first and then as you’re writing your story, if that character can’t experience all that stuff, well, you feel like you’ve wasted all that other work building out the rest of that stuff. And that’s the danger is sort of overbuilding for what you actually really need. And, you know, if George Lucas had built out everything in Star Wars before he was telling the story of Luke Skywalker, would Luke have gone to more planets? Would different things have happened? Would he have —

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Got the reveal of Luke’s father in the first movie? It would be very tough to limit yourself down just the small things that make sense for your one story if you knew what everything else was.

**Craig:** Well, as I mentioned earlier, Tolkien have this thing about maps and part of what he did very intentionally was not finish the map. So for people that are building worlds, it is tempting to, as you said, essentially dial everything in so that it is perfectly complete. Nobody writes three quarters of software. They write the whole thing and it finishes and it works.

But when you’re creating a world, you need to unfinish it. You need to. There needs to be mystery there, because, ultimately, your characters will need to go beyond the map, at which point, you have the ability to — or people come in from off the map.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And so you begin a sense of discovery. Otherwise, you’re just waiting for your characters to go visit some place that’s already there.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Even in a place like, for instance, Westeros and Essos which is George R. R. Martin is, I think, right up there with J.K. Rowling in being able to both create a full believable, complicated world and also, understanding the way humans behave. Even though it seems like we have seen it, we haven’t seen everything at all. I think we’ve seen what we’ve been able to see —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And one great thing about that show and what Dan and Dave have done so brilliantly is, and you can and see it in the credits —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** As the show expands, the map expands. Go back to the first season, watch the first episode, look at the credit sequence and see how much of the map you see. It’s really important that you just don’t see the whole thing at once. You’ve got to give yourself discovery and exploration and fear.

**John:** So let’s look at how characters experience these fictional worlds that we’re creating and there’s basically two ways you can think about it. There is the situation of like Westeros, where those characters were born into that world and we as an audience are catching up with them just to recognize what’s the same about their world and what’s different about their world. So in Westeros, the fact that winter, when it comes, is incredibly long-lasting. That there was magic in their world, there’s not very much magic in the world. So we’re having to do the work of catching up with the characters who are well ahead of us.

And then, there is portal stories. And portal stories are things like Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, C. S. Lewis’ Narnia books. Those are the ones where they’re like they are normal humans just like us, who crossed through some magical barrier and end up in this strange other world and have to figure out the rules of that world.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** In some cases, those are easier because the characters can just ask the questions to catch us up on sort of what we missed out on. Harry Potter, I think, sort of splits the difference where Harry Potter is a special kid but he’s experiencing the magical world for the time along with us. And so that’s a sort of a halfway in between those two options.

**Craig:** Yeah. The live-in-it world I think is harder, because your ability to deal with exposition is very limited. Everybody is already there.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** So nobody should be asking questions that are obvious. Although again, even when you are creating the I-already-live-in-it world, it’s really helpful to begin with we don’t really know everything about our own lived-in world. Again, I’ll refer to the first episode of Game of Thrones, where the White Walkers appear. Then, they don’t appear again for seasons. But the very first episode, someone goes. “I don’t believe in that stuff, that’s not real.” But we just saw it. So we know that the people living in their own world don’t know their own world as well as they should. Very useful.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** The portal world is the easiest version because it’s a fish out of water story. And you’re supposed to be confused. That’s actually the fun of it. You know, Alice in Wonderland is absolutely baffling. Not only to Alice, but to us. That’s the point. It gets to be baffling and we get to be her. The Narnia world is one that we are supposed to be baffled by it at first, but then ultimately, rings a bell on us because we’ve gone to church a lot.

The Harry Potter world is, I think, it actually deserves its own category. I think you’ve got your I-live-in-it world, you’ve got your portal world and then, I think you have the world beneath our noses.

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** Which comes up quite a bit. It’s actually right here, right now, in our timeline, in our world, we just can’t see it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Did you ever read The Littles when you were a kid?

**John:** I did. I love The Littles.

**Craig:** The Littles were great. So The Littles were a family of tiny people that lived in the walls of a house of people that were I think The Bigs [laughs] who were normal size people. And the idea being everybody’s got those people in their walls, we just don’t know it. And that’s fun. I like that world. And you can see it sometimes it works great in comedies like Night at the Museum is basically the world beneath our noses that we don’t see.

**John:** I think we also see it in dramas and like, in a lot of crime stories. It’s that sense of just right below the surface there is a mafia-controlled universe that you’re not actually aware exists or that there is world of hackers that is just behind that door where everything is very different than sort of how you can imagine things working right now. So, there’s ways in which you’re creating a secondary world that’s existing within our worlds. Basically it’s a cultural world that you’re not aware of because it’s deliberately keeping itself hidden and secret away from us all.

**Craig:** Even when it’s not simply cultural but circumstantial, like for an instance in The Matrix, the ultimate the world beneath our noses because it turns out that the world we see isn’t real and that there’s this other world. Even then, culture is really what it’s about, that the culture of that other world, the real world, is the one that is fascinating to our hero and that’s what our hero has to struggle with and come to grips with to reconcile it with the rest of the world. The idea of a hidden world is to say, when you walk out of the movie theater, look around with maybe a clearer eye.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** At what you see. And that’s fun, too. Like, you know, even Harry Potter. I always felt that at its heart, Harry Potter was really about the world of misfits and people that didn’t fit in. That the world muggle is so useful. I mean, you know, now —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s expanded, so people — like, if you work in musical theater and you meet somebody that is a mortgage broker, well, that guy is a muggle.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** [laughs] You know. I mean, even for us who work in Hollywood, even people I think that are executives in Hollywood, they can, you know, go to Thanksgiving and there’s their, you know — their friend who is a lawyer. And it’s like, well, you’re a muggle, I’m in Hollywood. That’s what to me, that’s why that movie or that series and the books really work is that it was a celebration of the oddball.

**John:** So, when you first described world-building, you said that it often has analogs in our normal, daily experience, but also, it tends to have an allegory. And there’s a reason why you’re building this alternate world because it makes it simpler to discuss some sort of theme or message that you’re trying to communicate that would be very hard to do if you’re just doing it in a normal real world setting.

So obviously, C. S. Lewis and with his Christian themes, goes through that. Harry Potter, as you described with, you know, that sense of the outsider, the nerd, the muggle conflicts. But I also think of like The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. It’s like it’s looking at sort of the commoditization of women’s bodies and sort of what it’s like to be in a society where women are valued only for their ability to reproduce. And so, I think a lot of times, you see people leaning towards these alternate worlds and often it’s science fiction but sometimes it’s just, you know, very small science fiction in order to discuss themes that would be hard to really dig into if you had to have all of the normal real world trappings around it.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that attraction to allegory is what makes religion so effective for so many people. I mean, if an alien came to this planet and I handed him the Bible and The Silmarillion and I said, one these people think it’s fiction and one of this people think it’s real. I think the alien would be at a loss to figure out which one’s which. I think the alien would probably pick The Silmarillion because it actually is more consistent. That’s the power of allegory. That is the power of world-building.

Ultimately, the biggest mistake I think, is to build a world pointlessly. Look at what Lucas ultimately pins all of Star Wars on. The force is your humanity, your human sense of instinct, morality, right and wrong, connection with the world around you and the intangible and spiritual. And Darth Vader and the empire are entirely about technology and yet, Darth Vader also has this dark side of the spirituality. So, it all comes down to the spiritual over the mechanical. And really, I would argue that the hero, protagonist [laughs] here come the letters —

**John:** Uh-oh.

**Craig:** Protagonist of Star Wars episode 4, 5 and 6 is Darth Vader.

**John:** All right. So it’s Darth Vader reclaiming his humanity?

**Craig:** Yeah. Darth Vader is the most at war with himself. He has both this enormous connection to humanity and, yet, has become himself almost completely technological. He is more machine than man. And, you know, Luke definitely goes through changes but, I mean, he’s basically a good guy and then he has to believe and then he believes and then he continues to believe and then he believes some more.

**John:** Yeah. Luke has a very common Joseph Campbell kind of hero story that like he has the trials. He’s the called adventure, the denial of the call, the trials —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. So he did all that stuff. But I would agree with you that it does seem to be a show about a series that tracks a man’s journey from darkness back to light from this fascist, soulless machine to humanity.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, the first movie, if you just look at that one movie and that movie was made unto itself, Luke is definitely the protagonist. But if you take a look at those three movies and you think of them as one big movie, well, who in the third act climax makes a decision to sacrifice themselves in order to save the day?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And the answer is the hero. I mean, what does Luke do at the end? Nothing. He basically says, change.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then, Darth Vader changes and is redeemed.

**John:** So, all this talk of sort of dark, fascists, and their stories, gets me thinking about The Man in the High Castle. Maybe, we can wrap it up here. So The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick’s great, great short book that posits what would happen if the Axis powers won World War II. And so, as the book opens, the East Coast of the United States is ruled by the Greater Nazi Reich, it’s ruled by the Germans. The West Coast is ruled by the Japanese. Hey, have you read the book?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** You’ve ever read the book?

**Craig:** No, I didn’t.

**John:** So, the book is fantastic. And so, true back story here, I actually controlled the rights of the book for about two weeks. And so, there was — I had a discussion with Philip K. Dick’s daughter who was controlling the rights to the book. And I got the rights to the book and I went in to have a meeting at HBO to set this up as a series at HBO and this was seven or eight years ago. And the day that I was supposed to go in to set up the series, they pulled back the rights from me because Ridley Scott wanted the rights to the book. So Ridley Scott is now the producer who has the series on Amazon. And it’s really good. Frank Spotnitz wrote it and so, I feel very lucky because I get to have this thing in the world and I didn’t have to do all the hard work of writing it. But —

**Craig:** It’s very charitable of you. [laughs]

**John:** I’m nothing if not charitable. But here is the thing that is so fascinating about Spotnitz’s version is that he had to take this book, which was really, really good and figure out how he wanted it to be told in a greater, you know, 10-episode series.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And what’s great about this for our conversation is it takes place in an imaginary world. It takes place in a constructed world in which, you know, the what-if scenario, what if the Germans and the Japanese won? But it’s also about the constructed scenario of what if Germans and Japanese won, because this is no big spoiler, the MacGuffin of the series is these films which depict an alternate scenario in which the Germans didn’t win or the Russians won. They basically keep finding these films where different things have happened. And it was just a great exploration of like what it is to construct a world that is sort of continuously being deconstructed around itself.

So, I would highly recommend people take a look at it. Not perfect, but just really, really fascinating. And what you brought up about Darth Vader, you actually see — because you had spent so much time with the Nazis, you actually see that thing kind of happening, where you have a character who seems like Darth Vader at the very start and the journey of the series looks like it will be him finding something to believe in, beyond sort of fascist machinery.

**Craig:** I think that this is where things are going. It feels very modern to me that when we build worlds now, it’s not enough to just go, look, here’s a crazy other world. I didn’t see Tomorrowland, that’s definitely a world under our noses world, or — no, I guess a portal world.

**John:** It is a portal world.

**Craig:** It’s a Portal world.

**John:** They have a little pen and they go through it.

**Craig:** Yeah, and they go through a portal. I didn’t see that. But when I saw the trailer for it, I thought, okay, I get it. But I also understand that there’s not necessarily anything more to it than that’s that other world. And I’ve read many, many screenplays — I got sent a screenplay recently to rewrite and it was a classic sort of portal thing. And it’s getting very familiar. And it’s kind of fun to see now, for instance — I mean, the kings of meta, Lord and Miller and what they did the Lego Movie —

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** Was to say it’s a live-in-it world. Nope. It’s a world beneath our noses world. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And that was fun. So I love the idea that you’re in this alt history world which we’ve seen versions of before and ultimately, here’s the problem with the alt history world: that the fatal flaw to any alt history world is it’s alt history. And so, it’s not real. It’s not our world. That’s the point, is that the Nazis lost here, right? So, how is this relevant to me? Because maybe, there’s more going on than just alt history. And that maybe there’s a connection between the two and a chance to perhaps set history right. Then it starts to feel relevant. It starts to feel — I start to get engaged. So I think that’s very modern. And I like that a lot.

**John:** Yeah, so I’m very excited about the series. And it does definitely have — the things that don’t work about it are I think are largely because of the challenge of world-building where you have to both incorporate the things that were so great about the book and also find your own way to tell your own new stories. And so the characters they actually created and added to it, I think are actually more successful in general than the characters who came from the book because the characters came from the book, they feel there’s a little bit handcuffed by what they needed to do in the book and they’re not necessarily the best characters — the ideal characters you’d want to explore this world, they sort of get a little bit dragged through it and plot sort of overtakes them. And so, it’s not their own inner drive to — their own inner curiosity. The Obergruppenführer — I’m going mispronounce it.

**Craig:** What kind of German are you?

**John:** I should be able to do this. I actually had German, but I can never remember how you pronounce. Basically, the Nazi commander was played really well by —

**Craig:** Obergruppenführer?

**John:** Obergruppenführer.

**Craig:** Ober.

**John:** Obergruppenführer.

**Craig:** I think it’s Obergruppenführer.

**John:** Played by Rufus Sewell is fantastic and it’s fantastic because I think he exists in order to explore certain themes that are very specific to this TV creation, not to the original book. And so, I do recommend it for people and especially, push through our friend Phil Hay, his wife Karyn Kusama directed, I think Episode 8 —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And it’s phenomenal.

**Craig:** Well, maybe what we can do for listeners at home and in their cars is summarize some of our tips on how to be effective word builders.

**John:** And maybe when not to be effective world builders.

**Craig:** Yes, yes.

**John:** So I would urge screenwriters in particular, to start from the bottom-up. To look at what is it about your character that demands the world to be a certain way in order to tell them the most interesting story, because if you’re starting with a giant universe that is completely different, you’re going to end up focusing on the universe more than your character.

**Craig:** Agreed. I would also say to begin by asking yourself the question, do I want this world to exist within and of itself? Do is want to be a portal world? Do I want it to be a world under our nose? Why? It should be important and related to the story — kind of story you want to tell so that you don’t go down one path and then realize you want another one. And I would also argue that when you’re building your world, it needs to be analogous to ours. One way or another, everything needs to be somehow analogous. That’s where the fun of it is.

**John:** I would say, if possible, change one thing. So, rather than changing everything about your universe and your world, just change the one thing. So Harry Potter is a world in which magic is real and that is sort of the fundamental thing on which everything else hinges. So, don’t try to sort of change everything about your world because then people just get kind of confused. And as you’re thinking about this in terms of a project you might be pitching, it’s going to be very hard to pitch something where everything is different. But if one thing is different, that’s very, very helpful. And try to write The Matrix and try not to write Jupiter Ascending. Which is Jupiter Ascending, I felt that they tried to change so many things that you are about three quarters away through the movie before the plot kicked in.

**Craig:** Yeah, I guess my last bit of advice is if you find yourself falling in love with the detail crafting, just remind yourself that that is one part and the less important part and that you have to also be just as much in love with the humanity of your characters and the universally relevant things through which they’re going.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Or what you’ll end up with is what that guy did. [laughs]

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Which is this fascinating series of plans for a city that will never exist.

**John:** Indeed. All right. Time for our One Cool Things. Mine is very simple, but also very fun. It is the EcoLog 590D. And this is a machine that is designed to cut down a tree, strip off all the branches and cut it into logs. And that doesn’t sound so exciting, but when you actually look at this YouTube video of it, you will think it is the most amazing thing because it looks like some sort of construction from like one of the Terminator movies. Like, it basically this big arm that reaches in, saws off the tree and destroys the tree and cuts it into a log. But it does it so incredibly quickly and efficiently. So, it’s like 20 seconds from like this is a tree in a forest to like this is a stack of logs. It’s just remarkable.

**Craig:** [laughs] Why do they call it — the EcoLog is the most ironic name ever.

**John:** [laughs] It just makes it extra good that it’s called an EcoLog.

**Craig:** Oh, my god. You know who would really love that is J.R.R. Tolkien. He was a huge man of chopping trees down.

**John:** Absolutely. If the orcs had EcoLogs —

**Craig:** Oh, my god.

**John:** Everything would be very, very different.

**Craig:** It certainly would have been a shorter movie.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Well, my One Cool Thing is last week’s outro. Who did that? What the — what?

**John:** That was amazing. So Craig doesn’t pre-listen to most of our outros. But this one was just great. Last week’s outro was by Jon Spurney and sort of the meta theme of all of our stuff. And lord, it was just great.

**Craig:** [laughs] Our quirks.

**John:** It felt like — it was sort of our own Too Many Cooks in a way.

**Craig:** It was. It was just — it was so well-done and so thoughtful and I — it’s one of those — every now and then, I’m reminded that people listen to the show. [laughs] And that was one of the moments. I just thought it was great. It was funny and it was really well-done and so, that’s my One Cool Thing for sure. I want to play it again. I know that we have a different outro this week by Rajesh Naroth, but I want to play that one again.

**John:** All right. So let’s just play it again. So, our outro is by Jon Spurney. If you have an outro you would like to us to play on the show, you can send us a note at ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also where you can send questions like the one we had today. On Twitter, I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. Or, you can find us on iTunes. Just search for Scriptnotes and you can find us there. Leave us a rating. That’s also where you can find the app that gives you access to all those back episodes. You can find those back episodes also at scriptnotes.net. Our show is produced as always by Stuart Friedel. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli, who’s doing hero’s work on a Sunday. So thank you, Matthew.

**Craig:** Thank you. Thank you.

**John:** Because Craig was traveling, but we are all back now. There still might be tickets for our December 9th live show with a bunch of special guests, so click right over there now. You’ll find links to the tickets and to everything we talked about in today’s show at our show notes, johnaugust.com. Craig, thank you so much.

**Craig:** Thanks, John.

**John:** All right, bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [The Huntsman: Winter’s War, Official Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W65ndip7MM)
* [Buy your tickets now for the 2015 Scriptnotes Holiday Show on December 9th](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/scriptnotes-holiday-live-show-with-john-august-and-craig-mazin) with guests [Riki Lindhome and Natasha Leggero](http://www.cc.com/shows/another-period), [Malcolm Spellman](http://johnaugust.com/2015/malcolm-spellman-a-study-in-heat), and [Alan Yang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Yang)
* [The Evolution of Batman’s Gotham City](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF-wVFTR0fg) by The Nerdwriter
* The [Marvel Encyclopedia](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1465415939/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) and [The DC Comics Encyclopedia](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0756641195/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* [The Development of Star Wars, as seen through the scripts by George Lucas](http://hem.bredband.net/wookiee/development/)
* [Henry Darger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger) on Wikipedia
* [The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0547572484/?tag=johnaugustcom-20), and [season 1 of the TV adaptation on Amazon Prime](http://www.amazon.com/The-New-World/dp/B00RSGFRY8/)
* [Middle Earth and The Perils of Worldbuilding](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA6MQHNM2yE) by The Nerdwriter
* [EcoLog 590D](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CnAPD39cUQ)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Jon Spurney ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Craig:** Segue Man.

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

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

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

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

**John:** They are fools.

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

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

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

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

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

**John:** Congratulations, Craig.

**Craig:** Thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Craig:** I’m glad you’re here.

**Tess:** Sorry.

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

**Tess:** [Laughs].

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

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

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

**Tess:** My dad’s called Richard.

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

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

**John:** Right.

**Craig:** Yeah.

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

**John:** Yeah.

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

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

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

**Tess:** [Laughs].

**John:** The challenge is how we —

**Craig:** You mean Dick?

**Tess:** You mean Dick.

**John:** Yes.

**Tess:** We don’t know Dick.

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

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

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

**Craig:** Right.

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

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

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

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

**Craig:** Right.

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

**John:** I don’t know.

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

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

**Tess:** Yes. Yeah.

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

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

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

**Tess:** [Laughs].

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

**Tess:** Pam’s regretting it.

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

**John:** Yeah. Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** Ooh, that’s a good one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** Two montages.

**John:** Yeah.

**Tess:** Montage, montage.

**John:** Yeah, montages.

**Craig:** Deux montage.

**Tess:** Montage.

**John:** Deux montage.

**Craig:** Deux montage.

**Tess:** [Laughs].

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

**Tess:** Yeah.

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

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

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

**Tess:** No.

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

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

**Craig:** Wow.

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

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

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

**Tess:** Yeah.

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

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

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

**Tess:** Oh, no.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**John:** Absolutely.

**Tess:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

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

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

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

**Craig:** Yeah.

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** Yes.

**John:** They could get shots —

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

**John:** It’s very cool, yeah.

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** It’s a long question.

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

**Tess:** Yeah, it’s a good question.

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

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

**Craig:** Good word.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**John:** Yeah.

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

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

**Craig:** Always. Always.

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

**Tess:** Oh, yes.

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

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

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

**Tess:** I overwrite so much.

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

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

**John:** So everyone clapped when —

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

**John:** “He said the title.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** I’m obsessed with that.

**Craig:** Oh, it’s the greatest.

**John:** Man up.

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

**Craig:** Man up is the —

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

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

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

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

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

**John:** Absolutely.

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

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

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

**Tess:** That’s true. Okay.

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

**Tess:** Exactly.

**Craig:** Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** Spoiler alert.

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

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

**John:** Leave the room immediately.

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

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

**Tess:** Yeah, exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** Rare. Well, Craig is —

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

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** It’s part of our life.

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

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

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

**Tess:** Yeah, it’s the journey.

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

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

**Craig:** You have no idea.

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

**Craig:** We’re not.

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

**Craig:** Segue Man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

**John:** Yeah, nice.

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

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

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

**John:** Fantastic.

**Tess:** To purchase.

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** She did.

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** We are certified Fresh.

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

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** Exactly.

**Craig:** My review.

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

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** Yes, I did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** Yeah, yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Craig:** Good anger. Anger.

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

**Tess:** Can you feel it?

**Craig:** Umbrage. Umbrage.

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

**Tess:** Vengeance.

**Craig:** Vengeance will be ours.

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

**Tess:** Yes.

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

**Tess:** He’s great in it. Yeah.

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

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

**Craig:** No. It’s crazy.

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

**Craig:** Because you’re right.

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

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

**Craig:** Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** Or a Marvel movie.

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

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** Exactly.

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

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

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

**Tess:** Kristen Wiig, yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** Do it.

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

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

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

**Tess:** Do it.

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

**Tess:** Correct.

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

**Tess:** All together. Yeah.

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

**Tess:** Correct.

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

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

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

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

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

**Craig:** That’s nice.

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

**Craig:** Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Craig:** Yeah and you did.

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

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

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

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

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

**Craig:** You know what? It’s like —

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

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

**Tess:** That’s my exhibit A.

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

**Tess:** Yeah and hide them.

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

**Tess:** I know

**Craig:** All of us.

**Tess:** Exactly.

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

**Tess:** Oh, let’s talk about that.

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

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

**Craig:** The relationship.

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

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

**Tess:** Yeah.

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

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

**Craig:** Yeah.

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

**Craig:** Say it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** All right, don’t rub it in.

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

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

**Tess:** Yeah.

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

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

**Craig:** You’re terrible.

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

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

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

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

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

**Craig:** Thank you.

**Tess:** Fear of what?

**Craig:** Fear of pleasure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** That’d be nice.

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

**Tess:** Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** He does, yes.

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

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

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

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

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

**Craig:** Right.

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

**Craig:** Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** Any movie, yes.

**Craig:** Yes.

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

**Craig:** Me too.

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

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

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

**Craig:** Sweat pants.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** Did you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** Yes.

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

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

**Tess:** What?

**Craig:** That dog’s a dick.

**Tess:** He’s a dick. [laughs]

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

**Tess:** Oh shit.

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

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

**Tess:** Kevin Spacey?

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

**Tess:** Liam Neeson may be more —

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

**Tess:** Yes.

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

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

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

**Tess:** I’m with him. I’m with him.

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

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

**Tess:** Some good science.

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** Yes.

**Craig:** We’re not real either.

**Tess:** No.

**Craig:** End of discussion.

**Tess:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Did you say, “Thank you?”

**Tess:** Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**John:** You’re enjoying it, Craig?

**Craig:** A little too much.

**Tess:** Is this a game?

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

**Tess:** Thank you.

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

**Tess:** Is it shooting?

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

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

**Craig:** Like the what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**John:** No.

**Craig:** Goddamn it.

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

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

**Tess:** It’s the A-Team.

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

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

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

**Tess:** What would you say?

**John:** I say Los Feliz.

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

**Craig:** You did it right.

**Tess:** Los Feliz!

**Craig:** Never that.

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

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

And then they brought out some folding chairs for us.

**Craig:** Oh, how nice.

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

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

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

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

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

**John:** Fantastic.

**Craig:** What a great guest.

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

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

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

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

**John:** The buckets confuse me.

**Tess:** Yes.

**Craig:** John can’t handle it.

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

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

**Tess:** I won’t allow for this.

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

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

**Tess:** I am @thetessmorris.

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

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

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

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

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

**Tess:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Thanks, guys.

Links:

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