Search Results for: hero main character protagonist

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hey, this is John. Today’s episode has even more swearing than usual, so if you’re in a car with your kids, this is a standard warning about that.

[applause]

Craig Mazin: Hi. Hello.

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

Craig: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: This is the holiday live show of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are–

Audience: Interesting to screenwriters.

Craig: Every time they do it, they get more and more bored.

John: Yes.

Craig: Interesting to screen–

John: I know. It feels like an obligation. It feels like a chore, but it’s never a chore.

Craig: It’s a little bit like Christmas.

John: Aww. Do you enjoy Christmas? Do you enjoy the holidays?

Craig: I actually love Christmas.

John: I know you like cooking. You like baking.

Craig: I do, but also, I love Christmas because when I was a kid I wasn’t allowed to have Christmas, because Jew.

John: Yeah.

Craig: That was a real thing when I was growing up. Yes, sure. I wanted a Christmas tree and I just thought, “Oh, we can at least get a Christmas tree.” No.

John: No Christmas tree?

Craig: No, because that meant you were “giving in.”

John: See, last night, I was over at Aline’s house, Aline Brosh McKenna from — you know, our Joan Rivers — and she was having a Christmas tree decorating party. It was really, really fun, so I thought maybe you got to have that joy, but no?

Craig: Does it look like I’ve ever had any joy? That’s not what happens, but I do, I love Christmas time. I love Christmas stuff. I love Christmas music. I love the time of year. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.

John: Yes.

Craig: I’m like a little elf.

John: Yes, and you’ve got some red socks on. One thing I always love about this show is this show is a benefit for Hollywood HEART. Let’s remember what Hollywood HEART is. They are a great charity that provides summer camping experiences for kids who otherwise would not be able to go to summer camp. We want to support them every year, so this is a benefit for them. Thank you everybody who bought a ticket tonight. Thank you for great charity. Thank you.

Craig: Thank you, guys.

John: Thank you, Hollywood HEART for having us.

Craig: It’s great to do this each year, and we give how much? Half of the money to them?

John: We give every single penny out of tonight goes to them, plus we are chipping in on top of that, so we’re matching dollar for dollar. Everything raised here is going to Hollywood HEART. Sorry. Sorry, Craig.

Craig: Okay. Fine.

John: All right. You’re going to have to sell another show or something to make up for what we’re giving up tonight.

Craig: Fine.

John: Let’s talk about tonight. Tonight we have three very special guests. Oh, here’s the thing. The people who are listening to this at home who are clicking through their podcast player, they know who’s on the show, but you in the audience, I don’t think you do. Do you?

Audience: No.

John: Oh, this is pretty exciting.

Craig: Or, they’re like, they just get up and walk out.

John: Like, oh, my God, they’re storming the doors. First off, we have Jac Schaefer, creator of WandaVision and Agatha All Along. She is here to walk us down that Witches’ road. We’ll ask her all sorts of questions about how she put that show together and also why it kind of made me want to become a lesbian. There’s something about that show that just pulled me over in that strange direction.

Craig: How’s it going?

John: It’s going pretty well.

Craig: Great.

John: Looking at Aubrey Plaza and I’m like, yeah, I see that.

Craig: Same. Then we’ll sit down with Brian Jordan Alvarez and Stephanie Koenig of English Teacher. That’s right. To talk about their hit series and how to work with your bestie without killing each other, which I think you and I have done a really good job of.

John: I think we’ve done a pretty good job. We can always get some more help. We can always get some more hints from the experts there. And not intentionally, Craig, but somehow we booked the creators of the gayest shows of the season.

Craig: I’m going to give them a run for their money, I’ve got to be honest with you.

John: All right. Season two, right?

Craig: Yes.

John: All right, and Craig, you have a special game that we’re going to play.

Craig: Yes, we’re going to do a special little Christmas song game in the middle of the show. I’m very excited about it. It’s got a little twist.

John: Craig put it all in the workflow, but he’s like, “Don’t look at it,” so I didn’t look at it. It’s a surprise to me as well.

Craig: You will be a contestant.

John: I’ll be a contestant.

Craig: There will be two exciting guest contestants.

John: Yes. Who just found out they’re going to be a guest contestant. We’re so excited for that. We’re also going to have a raffle, which is raising more money for this incredible charity of Hollywood HEART. Now, there’s three things you can win in this raffle. One of them is a guaranteed audience question.

Craig: Otherwise known as a GAQ.

John: Yes. If you put your name in for the– I hear Megana’s voice laughing. I’m so excited.

Craig: She’s the only one that really loves me.

John: If you put in a thing for raffle, you could get a chance to ask a question of us and this amazing panel. So it’s time to be thinking about what question would you want to ask?

Craig: Yes. you certainly don’t want to flop on the Christmas show.

John: No, you better ask a good fucking question.

Craig: Yes.

John: Yes.

Craig: Whoa.

John: Yes, I just swore. That’s how serious I am about this.

Craig: Oh, my.

John: I know, the vapors. We should not waste any more time. Let’s bring out Jac Schaefer, is a writer, director, and a showrunner who created two very witchy series. Jac Schaefer.

[applause]

[Music: The Ballad of the Witches’ Road]

Jac Shaeffer: Oh, I got a little lost on my witches’ road to the stage.

John: Yes, you got to go follow the arrows.

Jac: There were arrows, it couldn’t have been easier.

John: So we played you out to the Witches’ Road song. I want to start with that question. How early in the creation of Agatha All Along, which is so spectacular, but how early did that you know that okay, we need a song, and the song is not going to be theme music, but it’s actually be a fundamental part of the narrative of the series.

Jac: We always knew there would be music because it was so central to WandaVision. I had sort of a checklist for when we decided to do the Agatha show. Here are the things we need. We need another bop, or bops, plural. We need hair, makeup, wardrobe. We need opportunities to see her conning. We needed a meta piece. We needed to examine some form of tropes. The music piece sort of dovetailed with a larger mantra that I had, which is I wanted the show to be a spell. That was my sort of guiding light. As we sort of worked it in the room, I think it was probably three weeks in that it became that the song is the spell. It started as like, it’s the thing that opens the road. It’s the spell that opens the road. Then as we worked it more, it became it’s actually– I’m spoiling everything if you haven’t watched it.

John: I was just going to say that.

Jac: Sorry. Have you seen the show?

John: If you have not seen WandaVision, leave right now and go home and watch it, then listen to the episode afterwards.

Jac: Yes. It became it’s actually the con. It’s Agatha’s con. It’s the spell she is placing on the characters around her, on witches globally and, this was my big aspiration, on the audience. That it’s, she’s pulling one over on the audience with this centuries-long con that is the song.

Craig: In listening to you talk about it, it just sort of reinforces this question I’m dying to ask you. Because in your show and the way your narrative is structured, there seemingly is infinite possibilities. You could do almost anything. I love that you put these interesting restrictions on yourself. I’m really interested when you said work it, right? You guys can go down so many different witches’ roads. How do which ones feel consistent with some sort of, I don’t want to say rules, but a consistency when the nature of supernatural narrative is that you can kind of do whatever you want.

Jac: It takes so much discipline. And it’s something that I learned on WandaVision. Because Wanda’s power is that she can make anything happen, and that’s too much and too big. So in order for it to hold together and be satisfying for the audience, we have to put restrictions on that kind of in every way. One of the early discoveries on WandaVision was we knew we were going to do Wanda and Vision and sitcoms. It was actually Kevin Feige who early on helped us realize that we needed to limit the sitcoms we were doing. Because there’s workplace sitcoms. We were looking at Cheers. We were looking at Seinfeld. We were looking at Golden Girls. We were looking at all kinds of stuff, but it didn’t have any rigor. There wasn’t any reason.

John: Rigor. Great word.

Jac: Because it was like, what is Wanda after? Wanda is after the perfect nuclear family. That actually then pushed to the side All in the Family. It even pushed Roseanne to the side, because any sort of like larger social commentary or reflection, any political element, we were only entertaining aspirational family sitcoms. That was a revelation to me, what that did for us, because it meant that the themes were so supported and her journey was so supported. Then we applied that same ethos and that same sort of restriction in Agatha All Along. It was all about Agatha’s journey and supporting these characters and truly what is a witch? That’s what we came back to every time.

Craig: Got it.

John: That question of what is a witch is what you went into this writer’s room with. As you assembled your team, one thing I really like about how you set up Agatha All Along, is that it is sort of a heist. You’re putting together a team in order to perform a heist, which is to sort of get down this witches’ road. You were assembling a team of writers for this writer’s room. How much did you know on that first day? What could you tell them about, this is what the show is going to be about, let’s work a way to get there.

Jac: Yes. I like to have a very robust document going in that says, here’s what we have, here’s what we’re missing, here is what I desperately want to achieve. With the Agatha document, at the top, it said, “The show is a spell.” Then it was sort of explaining conceptually what I meant by that. For me, it was like The NeverEnding Story, it was The Usual Suspects. It was these pieces where at the end, there is a twist that feels right, but you realize you have been duped, and it’s expansive.

With The NeverEnding Story, it’s like, the whole thing unfolds and you realize you’ve been a part of it the whole time. That’s a children’s movie, but it turned my head around. It was an ecstatic feeling. That was the aspiration, is how do we pull the audience into our coven? One of the ways you do that is you hire the Lopez’s to write an earworm. The song really did cast a spell, and that is a trick of a lot of really talented people. The document is also very brass tacks of like, here are the characters we’re looking at, here is who– Like the Marvel rules to things, it’s like here’s who’s on deck for us. Should we partake? Here’s who we have to stay away from.

I was desperate to have them do a Fleetwood Mac style performance. I didn’t know how it fit. I didn’t know what it was, but I was like, I have this bee in my bonnet and it’s never going to go away. That ended up leading to, has everyone seen the live performance of Fleetwood Mac in their reunions?

Craig: Silver Springs.

Jac: Yes.

Craig: The greatest moment of all time.

Jac: The greatest moment of all time.

Craig: When she screams her anger in his face. Stevie Nicks is singing this song and she’s just singing it right into Lindsay Buckingham’s face.

Jac: Into his face.

Craig: Because it’s about him. I’ll follow you down and I’ll haunt you.

Jac: I will haunt you.

Craig: I will haunt you.

Jac: The sound of my voice will haunt you–

Craig: Forever. He’s like-

[laughter]

and she’s like, no, no, I’m going to say it again.

Jac: She’s like, “I am currently casting a hex on your face-

Craig: It’s incredible, you’ve got to google it.

Jac: -with my talent, with my anger.” I made the room watch it. I talked to the Lopezes about it. I was like, “This is what we’re doing because I believe I saw a witch.” Every time I watch that clip, I’m like, “That’s a fucking witch.”

Craig: She was known as the white witch. That’s what I think they called her, the white witch. Is that right?

Jac: She’s what– she is still on the planet. She’s somewhere.

John: Oh, no, she’s still here.

Jac: Praise Stevie, don’t come at me. That was in the document, was like a thing that I’m like, this is a dream. If we can integrate this in a way that makes sense, let’s do that. We didn’t know the Witches’ road, that was a missing piece. That’s something I call the container, like I need a container and–

Craig: Go into that a little more like as a practical tip.

Jac: I’m relatively new to television, I’m more of a feature person. What I find like enchanting about TV and also terrifying is that it can go in a million directions. How do you organize your episodes? What makes sense to me, and I also love non-linear storytelling, but like, what do you hang on to? The container for me is the thing that holds it all together. In WandaVision, the container is the hex. She created this hex. We made all the rules to the hex. We made sort of like all the sort of limitations of it and how it works and how she sort of has to understand it.

We had a vocabulary for what the different things were. We called them weirdnesses when something odd would happen. On the page, when we were in sitcom mode, the page would look normal. Then when we were stepping out, it would be italicized and have some bold in it. It needed to be organized in that way. That was my first time working with what I call the container.

Then for Agatha, I knew her character inside and out. I knew this was a story of a liar and that the point A to point B was, she’s a liar, we get to see her truth. I knew we were doing her and Billy and what that journey was and what it meant, but I didn’t know where were they going to be. How do we justify–

Craig: What are we supposed to write?

Jac: Yes. What’s the world and how do we make it big enough for the show, but contained enough where it doesn’t fly off into outer space? The road became that thing.

John: Now, one of the challenges you’re facing as you’re coming up on Agatha, which is after WandaVision, we sort of have an expectation of what Agatha All Along is going to be like.

Jac: Yes.

John: You know that each episode has to do certain things, but that the audience is going to have a discussion and an expectation of like, oh, this is this thing, this is this thing. How much, as you were putting together episodes, were you trying to anticipate this is what the internet is going to think is happening next and here’s how we honor that, stay ahead of that, use that to our advantage.

Jac: I don’t really think about it like the internet. I think about it– I’m constantly thinking about an audience’s experience, because what I want more than anything is I want that gasp. That like the moment where your brain starts to anticipate, “Oh my God, is that what’s happening?” That it is and you were right. Oh my God, and that thrill of that. Then, I also want everyone to laugh and it’s great when people cry and it’s great when people sing, but like that sort of thrill that makes you lean forward. What I wanted with this one, like it was so exciting when we hatched– Megan McDonnell is here, and she was one of the writers on episode four in WandaVision. Episode four where we stepped out of the sitcom.

One of the things that I loved about– I’m talking a lot about WandaVision because they’re–

Craig: You worked on it, that’s fine.

Jac: I did. I sort of diagnosed for myself that a sitcom lulls you, that you get into this place of comfort. I can count on one hand the times when a sitcom deviated and how distressing that was and how it made me– Like in Growing Pains when Carol Seaver’s boyfriend died, played by Matthew Perry. I was like, I’m going to throw up. This is not supposed to happen in this world. The idea that we could lull the audience three episodes of like, we’re moving through time and we’re going to episode style each time. Right? This feels good. This feels good.

Craig: Get people in a rut, get them leaning.

Jac: Yes. Then episode four would be like, just kidding. We’re back in the MCU with a different character. We’re like back in time. I wanted to do that again, but I was like, well, we can’t do it in episode four, so we did it in episode six. I tried to bundle it with the mystery of this team. This time when we get our step out bottle episode and we’re backfilling, we’re getting so much more information that the audience has been craving. It’s sort of– If that answers your question.

John: Absolutely. You’re really thinking about how do you make episode by episode so rewarding for the audience that they’re desperate to see the next episode. You and Craig both have the luxury or not like the way TV should be made, which is that week by week, there’s that weekly anticipation of the next episode. Now somebody can stream it all at once, but if they’re watching it in the real time, they’re part of a cultural moment, like trying to figure out what’s happening next.

Jac: Right. I love the theories. They make me really sick and keep me up at night, but like that audience engagement, it’s incredible.

Craig: Do you ever have that moment where you’re looking through some stuff and it’s–

Jac: It’s a better idea than I had?

Craig: No.

Jac: It happens a lot.

Craig: That’s actually never happened to me.

[laughter]

But people are trying to figure out like, this is what’s going to happen, this is what’s going to happen. The more sure they are, the wronger they are. Then one sort of random person says literally everything correct.

Jac: Tiny little voice.

Craig: They don’t even get told no, they’re just ignored.

Jac: Yes.

Craig: Yes, I’m like, you, a screenwriter.

Jac: I know. I wish I could think of an example of when that happened-

Craig: I want to rescue them, you know.

Jac: -a couple of time. I know. I want to be like, oh, I see you.

Craig: Yes, you got it.

Jac: You’re so smart.

Craig: There was like a guy that was like, here’s how I think every episode is going to start and finish in season one of The Last of Us. Nailed it. Nailed it. I was like, gah.

Jac: Yes.

Craig: Everyone’s like, shut up.

Jac: There’s this incredible TikToker and it’s terrible that I don’t know her name. If anyone knows who I’m talking about, please shout her name, she’s really great. She did a hilarious video. I can swear and say–

John: Yes, we understand.

Craig: You fucking can.

Jac: Great.

Craig: It’s fucking Christmas.

Jac: She did this hilarious fucking thing, where she was talking about like– She was like, “What kind of like cunty theater kid queen made The Witches’ Road? Like, ooh, the trial is we got to down a bottle of Merlot. We’ve got to like all like perform like Fleetwood Mac. We got to get together and be a band.” She was like, “Who’s the queen doing this?” And then it’s Billy Maximoff.

Craig: Yes.

Jac: Yes. I sent it to the room and I was like, “This is too delicious. I hope she feels rad when she realizes that she was right all along.”

Craig: That’s gorgeous.

John: Let’s talk about your room. Let’s talk about the room and who you assembled and why you pick the writers you pick. Obviously, you had that first session where they’re getting this document and your goals and plans for it. How do you like to run a room? What does a room look like to you?

Jac: I love assembling a room. I love running a room. I had no idea that this was– I wanted to direct and it turns out I wanted to be a showrunner. The working with a team of brains who are also awesome, fun, smart, funny, great people. It’s just the best. It’s so great. Don’t tell my children. I’m like the greatest joy of my life is working in a writers room. When I was doing WandaVision, I was terrified and I got some really good advice. One of them was my friend, Chris Addison, told me that it’s not my job to have the best idea in the room. It’s my job to be the keeper of the vision. I was like, I can totally do that.

I look for idea machines. I look for people who just think crazy thoughts, but I have of slots. On Agatha, first of all, there were some POVs that I needed to service that I could not do myself. That was crucial. I had chairs for those perspectives. That was going to be vital. Then there were people that I knew from WandaVision who were really suited to this spinoff show that was quite different from WandaVision. It had a different sensibility. It was about sort of bringing the people that I already knew who had the right dimensions to them.

When I look at a room, the first thing is that the people need to be kind and respectful. That’s always where I start, because I personally can’t work if there’s tension or disrespect or anything unpleasant like that, and it also has to be fun. When I read scripts, what I look for like specs and stuff is I look for audacious ideas. I don’t care if people can stick the landing. I don’t care if the end comes apart as long as you gave a shot. It’s really the like, what is the weirdest thing that someone tried really hard to have it hold water on the page?

Craig: Bravery.

Jac: Yes. I hired Giovanna Sarquis on Agatha because she had a character in her spec who was a mother and I believed the mother. Giovanna is a younger woman. She doesn’t have children. I was like, how did she write this middle-aged mom in a way that felt raw? It’s about that. It’s like once I have– Like I hired Jason Rostovsky and he is like a goth horror guy. I was like, I’ve nailed that piece. Then when I’m looking at the other chairs, like that’s covered, so what do I need over here? It’s a toolbox. It’s so fun.

John: Awesome.

Craig: Do we have time for one more question?

John: One more question.

Craig: One real fast one. Just talk a little bit about the challenges of protagonizing someone, because Agatha wasn’t the protagonist and now she’s sort of. Well clearly.

Jac: She’s a protagonist of her own story. That’s for sure.

John: Anti-hero.

Craig: How do you protagonize a character in such a way that doesn’t negate what came before, because side characters are fun and villains are fun and they’re not accountable the way that protagonists are?

Jac: First of all, thank you for not asking how do you make a character like Agatha likable?

Craig: Fuck that. It’s the worst note in history.

Jac: It’s the worst.

Craig: We’ve talked about that before.

Jac: Of course, as a writer you would never say that. Protagonize someone. It wasn’t hard because Kathryn had brought so much to the role of Agatha, so much more than was on the page for WandaVision. We were like, okay, she’s Mrs. Roper and she’s Rhoda and she’s all these other things. Kathryn can do that in her sleep. Then we wanted her to be this like scenery chewing centuries old witch. We’re like, Kathryn can do that as well. Kathryn brought all this texture about what she really wanted, what Agatha wanted. To protagonize, to use your awesome word, this character into her own show, it was following those threads.

Craig: It was already like raring to get out and do it.

Jac: Also, in film school, the like want versus need, I always had a hard time with that. But Agatha, it’s like so clear. She wants power, she needs community. End of story. That’s really what led to the thrust of the show or the kickoff, is like the most hated witch has to form a coven. You have the longest runway.

Craig: Great. Love that. Love that. All right. Interesting.

John: I think it’s time for your game, Craig. Talk us through what we want to do here.

Craig: Oh boy, here we go. Okay.

John: First off, we need to bring up two very special guests.

Craig: Yes, we got to get some guests going.

John: Holidays are a time for family. Let’s bring back some Scriptnotes family here. Two former producers of the Script Notes podcast, Megan McDonnell and Megana Rao. Can you guys come up?

Craig: Megan and Megana.

[applause]

Craig: Megana, is it true that you just flew back from India literally just to be in this game?

Megana Rao: I was in India.

Craig: Did you literally just got on a plane to be here.

Megana: Yes.

Craig: Thank you.

Megana: Yes.

Craig: For my game?

Megana: Yes.

Craig: Clearly not the case.

Megana: I am hours off of a plane. I also want to put that out there.

Craig: Excellent.

John: Absolutely. All right. Do you guys enjoy– These are Christmas songs we’re doing?

Craig: Yes.

John: Do you guys enjoy Christmas songs?

Craig: Oh, apparently not.

John: Megan MacDonnell, did you grow up with Christmas songs?

Megan MacDonnell: I love a Christmas song.

Jac: Megan MacDonnell is Christmas.

Craig: She’s Christmas.

Jac: Let’s be clear.

Craig: She’s Christmas.

Megana: Do we get to be on the same team?

John: You’re all on one team?

Craig: You can be on the team too.

John: All right.

Craig: Here, let’s switch seats.

Megana: Okay. Fantastic.

Craig: As you guys know, every now and again, John and I like to do a three-page challenge. Today, we’re going to be doing a little Christmas song game. Of course, because we’re writers, I like to concentrate on lyrics. We’re going to be doing a Christmas song three word challenge. Here’s how it goes. I have picked the strangest three words I could find in a Christmas song. They’re in a row, they’re not random. For instance if they were Deck the Halls, it might be “boughs of holly,” and then you go, oh it’s Deck the Halls. That’s it.

I’m just going to give you three words, you have to tell me the Christmas song. If you know it out there, don’t shout it out, just raise you hand.

Megana: Do we shout it out, or we have–?

Craig: You can confer, you can shout. You guys can shout. You guys can do anything you want. You can shout. You can confer. Let’s start with this one: Every mother’s child. Here we go.

Megan: Every mother’s child. Oh, that’s wrong.

John: Every mother’s child.

Craig: This is awesome.

John: Every mother’s child.

Craig: Does anyone out there know?

Megan: I’ll be home for Christmas? No that’s–

Craig: No.

Megan: No, I’m not saying. That wasn’t an official guess. That wasn’t an official guess.

Craig: Oh.

Megan: What about–

John: Every mother’s child.

Craig: Someone’s ready to go in the front row it looks like.

Megana: Silent Night? Sorry, that was my answer.

Craig: No, this show is only like– It’s not five days long.

Megan: So we’re not qualified.

Jac: I can almost hear it.

Audience: The Christmas Song?

Craig: Yes. The Christmas song, Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire. Every mother’s child is going to spy to see if reindeer really know how to fly.

John: All right.

Megana: Oh, wow.

Craig: All right. See. It’s hard.

John: It’s hard.

Megan: Stop with this game.

Craig: Ready? How about this one, you ding-dongs. I love this one, because this one really speaks to me. How you’ll hate.

John: How you’ll hate.

Craig: How you’ll hate.

Jac: Can we do Christmas movies?

Craig: No.

Jac: I don’t know, Wheelhouse.

Craig: I love saying no like Hannibal Lecter. No.

Megan: How you’ll hate to come in from the snow or something like that?

Craig: Yes, you’re very close. How you’ll hate going out in the storm–

John: Baby it’s cold outside.

Craig: Well, that’s part– No, it’s not. It’s, but if you really hold me tight, all the way home, you’ll be warm.

Audience: Let it Snow.

Craig: Yes. Are you from Australia? Oh, great. I thought I heard let it snorr.

John: Let is snow, all right.

Craig: It is. It was let it snow.

A platinum mine.

Megan: Santa Baby?

Craig: Yes. Santa Baby.

John: That’s a dime.

Craig: Yes.

Megana: You’re so good at this.

Megan: No I’m not, that’s my first win.

Craig: Okay, we’re cooking now. All right, this one is weird. I don’t know why this is in a Christmas song at all. This one speaks to you Jaq: Scary ghost stories.

Megan: [humming] Long ago.

John: Scary ghost stories.

Megana: Is that it?

Megan: Tales of the glories of Christmas. What is the song?

Craig: Yes. [humming]

John: It’s not my favorite things, it’s–

Craig: [humming]

Megan: It’s the most wonderful time–

Craig: Yes, it’s the most wonderful time of the year.

John: It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

Craig: This turned into name that tune, but with so many notes.

The kids bunch.

John: The kids bunch?

Craig: The kids bunch.

John: The kids bunch uo, I assume. Is it a verb?

Megana: The kids would like to bunch up.

John: The kids bunch.

Craig: I like the analysis. Anyone?

Audience: Silver Bells.

Craig: Yes, it’s Silver bells.

Megan: Nice.

Craig: See the kids bunch. This is Santa’s big scene. I told the three words. This one you’ll get: The tree tops glisten.

John: [humming]

Craig: Oh, my God.

Megana: When the tree tops glisten.

Craig: You just said she was the– Yes.

John: Tree tops glisten.

Craig: Keep going. And children listen. To hear sleigh bells in the snow.

John: I’m dreaming of a White Christmas.

Craig: Yes, you are. White Christmas.

Jac: Apparently this is not how my brain works.

Craig: If you don’t get this one, I’m going to lose my mind.

Megana: Me neither.

Craig: Do you recall?

John: Frosty the snowman.

Jac: Rudolph the red nosed reindeer. I got it. I got one.

Craig: Yes. All right: Some pumpkin pie. It’s hard.

Megana: You got it. You got it.

Megan: I’m this close. It’s close. Nope.

Craig: Nope.

Megan: Is it rocking around…?

Craig: Yes it is. Rocking around the Christmas tree.

John: All right.

Craig: All right. Two more: You didn’t hear.

Jac: I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.

Craig: Oh, God. We’re going to turn to the audience?

Megan: What’s the lyric?

Craig: You didn’t hear.

John: You didn’t hear.

Craig: I case you didn’t hear.

Megan: Oh, by golly [crosstalk]

Craig: Yes, of a Holly Jolly Christmas.

Jac: These are all the same song. Right?

Craig: They are not. Last one. Then I’m going to ask a trivia question that connects them all. I know: a circus clown.

Megan: Yes, then we’ll pretend that he’s Parson Brown, it’s Frosted Snowman.

Craig: No. No. No.

Megan: Yes it is.

Craig: No, it’s not Parson brown…

Megan: We’ll pretend that he’s a circus clown.

Craig: Yes.

Megan: It’s not called Frosty the Snowman?

Craig: We’ll have lots of fun with Mister Snowman. Until the other kids come and knock him down. Does that sound like Frosty the Snowman to you? No.

John: Winter Wonderland.

Craig: Yes, you’re walking in a Winter Wonderland.

Megan: Wow, you’re so right. It wasn’t Snowman. Snowman is the clown.

Megana: So certain.

Megan: I was so certain.

Craig: No. All of these are linked by one commonality that isn’t that they’re about Christmas. I’m going to read the names again, see if you can tell. If you know in the audience raise your hand. You’re ready? Maybe they already know. The Christmas song, Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire. Let It Snow, Santa Baby, It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, Silver Bells, White Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, Holly Jolly Christmas, Walking in a Winter Wonderland.

John: They were all written for movies.

Craig: No.

John: All right.

Craig: That was a great guess. I’ll give you a hint. The answer begins with they were all written.

John: Same composer.

Craig: No.

Megana: Same year.

Craig: No. We have a guess.

Audience: They were all written by Jews.

Craig: Yes.

[applause]

They were all written by Jews. You’re welcome. Great job. Great job.

John: Well done.

Craig: Front row crushing it out here.

Jac: I feel like you deserve a prize.

Craig: Thanks for playing.

Megana: Because that was really good. You guys did great.

John: We did, yes.

Megan: Yes, yes.

John: Phenomenal.

Craig: You did great.

Megana: All contributed equally.

Craig: Yes.

John: Megana, Megan, Jac. Thank you so much.

Craig: Thank you, guys. Thank you.

[applause]

I love how scared you were. They were all written by Jews. Because if you’re wrong, that’s, what?

John: What?

Craig: Jeez.

John: Oh, my God.

Craig: What the fuck, man. Who are we letting in?

John: I will say as a non-Jewish person, saying the word Jew just by itself is always still a little terrifying to me.

Craig: I’ll give you a pass.

John: All right. Let’s move on with our show. Our next guests have been working together as writers, directors, and actors for almost a decade, making dozens of shorts, web series, three feature films for YouTube. Now they are in one of my favorite shows of the whole year, English Teacher. Please welcome its creator, Brian Jordan Alvarez, and its co-writer and co-star, Stephanie Koenig.

[music]

Stephanie: Thanks for bringing the chairs and couches from my living room.

Brian: Thanks for bringing the chairs and couches in general. We didn’t want to have to bring these ourselves.

John: We try to keep our guests comfortable if possible. Could you hear backstage? Could you identify any of the lyrics in that song?

Stephanie: Yes.

Craig: All right.

Stephanie: What song? Wait, no. The Christmas songs?

Craig: The Christmas songs. Did you do it?

Brian: She was guessing them backstage. Yes.

Stephanie: I understand a couple.

John: You should have said you got them all. Yes. You had an opportunity.

Stephanie: No, I think I really only got one.

Craig: Oh.

Stephanie: I was singing it, and then I had to sing the whole thing to get to the refrain.

Craig: It’s hard because every Christmas song does have three weird fucking words in there, all just for no reason. Yes, and I went right for them.

Brian: Wait, what was the common thread between all of them?

Craig: They were all written by Jews.

Stephanie: Wow.

Craig: No, you didn’t believe me.

Brian: I don’t know whether– I don’t know how to react to this.

John: See, I didn’t either Brian.

Craig: Are you angry?

Brian: No, I just don’t want to have the– I don’t know if you’re kidding.

Craig: I’m not kidding.

Brian: Okay, you’re not kidding. Great.

Craig: I swear to God, I’m not kidding.

Brian: That’s very amazing.

Craig: They were all written by Jews.

Stephanie: Wow, that’s great.

Craig: Apparently John gets nervous when I say Jew.

John: No. When you say Jew, it’s great.

Craig: Oh.

John: It’s when I say it that I feel so bad.

Craig: Well, because you yell it.

[laughter]

Craig: Let’s talk about English Teacher for a moment.

John: Brian and Stephanie, so in this award season, we’re seeing a lot of co-stars who will come on and do interviews for things. They’re just the best of friends when they’re on camera and the cameras are rolling, and you’re always like, do they actually like each other whatsoever? Now, the two of you are genuinely friends in real life. Is that true? You guys have known each other for a minute.

Brian: A long time. 11 years going on 12, I think.

Stephanie: It’s 11 years now. That’s crazy. We hang out all the time.

Brian: We hang out all the time.

Craig: That’s not convincing. We hang out all the time. We’re best friends.

John: Because we hang out some, too-

Craig: We do.

John: -but we also work together, then we have to do stuff together. How do you guys manage a relationship of being friends, but also co-workers who are doing stuff together? Are there tensions? What are things you guys have learned over the years making so many things together about keeping your friendship, but also a professional relationship?

Brian: I don’t think it’s been very hard. We focus on, making sure the friendship is primary. I think that’s the only– If ever we need a reminder, it’s just like, well, the friendship is more important.

Stephanie: Correct.

Brian: The work is– It’s like a privilege.

Stephanie: It’s all the same. It feels all the same.

Brian: It’s all the same thing, yes.

Stephanie: Because when we first met, we met at a student short film.

Brian: Student film.

Stephanie: Student film, we were like the adults in a UC Santa Barbara.

Brian: Yes, we were like the sort of lame hired actors in a student film.

Stephanie: Yes, we really had not much happening.

Brian: We didn’t have anything going on.

Craig: It sounds great.

Brian: Her commercial agent was in the process of dropping her.

Stephanie: Just dropped me, yes.

Craig: Oh, God.

Stephanie: I think she had just sent the email out.

Brian: I don’t think I had representation at all.

Stephanie: I remember the first day on set, we were making jokes about getting dropped. What was the joke? It was something like–

Brian: You were doing the–

Stephanie: Listen, we think you’re great. If at any point you get funnier or you know, if you’re getting prettier, reach back out.

Brian: You were pretending that you were your agent talking to you and I was being you. You were saying, “We’re dropping you because we just have so many people who are better and better looking.”

Stephanie: Yes. You had said the only way we’re going to actually– Because you meet friends when you’re an adult. It’s like you have to really try.

Brian: You have to find an excuse to keep getting together.

Stephanie: Yes, exactly. He was like, we should make something to keep hanging out.

Brian: Then we worked on a short that then we didn’t end up finishing.

Stephanie: Never went anywhere. We didn’t make–

Brian: Then we started making sketches. The first night I met her, I was like, so this is the funniest person in the known universe.

Stephanie: That’s what I thought about you.

Brian: Thank you.

John: Aaaw.

Brian: We’ve gotten less funny over time and we’re still supporting each other as–

Craig: On the slow–

Stephanie: I’m now the funniest person in Sherman Oaks.

Craig: Still, that’s legit.

Stephanie: It’s big. It’s big.

John: A thing we talk about on the podcast a lot is, we’ll have listeners write in saying, oh, what should I do? I need to break in. We tell people, make stuff. You guys just made stuff. You’ve made so many things.

Brian: I know.

John: If you look through, your YouTube, you guys have been working–

Craig: You made a song about sitting.

Brian: I know. I did. I’m doing it right now. Crushing it.

Stephanie: Oh, my God.

Craig: Crushing it.

Brian: This thing of telling people, just go out and make your own thing. I keep wondering if there’s ever going to be some new answer to how to break– Because that’s been the real answer for the last 15 years. I think we got lucky because– Maybe we weren’t even at the very beginning of this, but there was a time when you had to spend $100,000 to get a movie made yourself in 1990 or whatever. Then there was the time when you were like, people have these cameras that they thought were good digital cameras. I think they were Panasonics, because it’s big. They’d be like, oh, yes, we’re shooting an indie on this thing. I’d be like, that looks like shit. It looked like a handy cam, I was like, that’s not– I don’t know.

We ended up coming to, into being able to make stuff at a time when– Even very specifically camera-wise, we were shooting our sketches on the Blackmagic Pocket that had a really cinematic look. I had an eye for this stuff, but, the tech was just– It was also when YouTube was just a few years old. You could post something that really looked a bit like a movie on your YouTube channel and then that’s global for anybody who wants to watch it. I guess whenever you come up, you’re finding how to make it work. We would have done that in any era, I think. I think we were lucky in some ways.

Stephanie: What was great was your YouTube channel was sort of like a network of your stuff. I would put– Because I didn’t have a–

Brian: Yes, later when it started gaining steam.

Stephanie: Yes, later. It was just nice to go, okay, well, I’m going to make something for us and put it on your channel, and I know that there’s going to be an audience there.

Brian: Because you made this amazing movie, Spy Movie, that was us as spies, and it was a full feature and then we put it on the YouTube channel and people loved it.

John: That’s great. Talk to us about, the transition between you’re making stuff for yourself versus making stuff for other people, because you both as actors, went off and did other things. You managed to steal so many scenes on Will & Grace in ways that were just absolutely criminal.

Brian: I still have them in my house.

John: Yes, that’s great, you took the scenes with you.

Brian: I’m very grateful to Max Mutchnick and [crosstalk]

John: Stephanie, you were doing other stuff too, but was it hard to think about, okay, we also need to do some stuff together. How do you? As you’re going off and doing your own things and having your own successes, you still want to do stuff together. Is that hard to find those balance?

Brian: It’s so organic.

Stephanie: Yes. It’s just coming out of, how much fun it is to make stuff. Spy Movie was just like, oh, wouldn’t that be so funny if we were two dumb spies? Dumb.

Craig: In terms of that sense of this feels natural, I’m curious, when it comes to your show, were you guys just feeling like, hey, we’re adults now, and who are these children, and what are they about? Because what I find so fascinating about the show is that normally high school shows are about the kids, and this one is not. This is fascinating to me.

Brian: Right. We needed to be the leads. We needed the lead roles, yes.

Craig: That’s actually a great fucking answer. Ask a fancy question, you’re like, idiot, we need to be leads.

Brian: No, this show, maybe it’s more organic. I unfortunately don’t put a ton of analytical thought into most of the things I’m making before I make them. Then as they grow, they end up becoming smarter and deeper, maybe. Really, I was like, this felt like an environment that would make sense. It was also just, Paul Sims, who’s a genius and is TV royalty and has made so many amazing things. He essentially cold called me through my agent because he had seen my stuff online. He was like, “We need to make a TV show together. I did Atlanta with Donald Glover. I’m doing What We Do in the Shadows.” He’s done a million things, he’s amazing.

It was also a little bit fortunately in a moment, or I don’t know if it was fortunate, but it was in a moment when I had given up on making things in the system. I was really focused on acting. I was saying, look, I just came off Will & Grace. I’m doing this movie, Megan, coming up. At that time I had booked the role of Megan, then they changed the part to– I’m just kidding.

Megan, you guys know Megan?

Craig: That would have been better.

Brian: Paul was like, “We need to make a show.” I was like, “Oh, I don’t think I can. I’ve tried before. I don’t know how to get through that TV system.” He was like, “I’m going to show you. You’re coming out of retirement. We’re making a television show.” It was like this moment when someone comes down from heaven and is like, I believe in you. Then it’s literally like, oh my God, I got to go write something. Then I just was like, I don’t know, I’m like a teacher at a high school, and Stephanie’s there and we’re at lunch– Really, it was like that.

Craig: What did he show you in terms of– Well, okay, so you had some experiences as a writer, you mean, trying to work the system.

Brian: We’d had a few developments deals.

Stephanie: Yes, exactly. It was like a lot of shows that we were both in. We were like trying to make a show specifically where we were always including each other.

Brian: Yes, able to do our thing.

Craig: Yes, you were getting frustrated as you went through.

Brian: I mean, they just didn’t end up getting made. It wasn’t any more frustrating than anything.

John: Talk to us about it. What did Paul Sims bring into the process that was new to you, that was different to you, that got it passing?

Brian: Every part of it was completely foreign to me. I was just like used to doing everything by myself and just with my friends. Any time there was any somebody being like, we think you should do this instead. I was like, this feels insane. Then like, Paul’s like, it’s okay, you’re going to survive, basically. It’s like, why don’t you just try doing it and maybe it’ll work. Then I would be like, all right. Then the show gets better. Then eventually you’re like, this show is way better than anything I could have made by myself. What the hell happened here?

I got lucky because it’s like, it’s not just anybody who’s giving you, it’s like Paul Sims, it’s like really intelligent people.

Stephanie: Jonathan Krisel.

Brian: Krisel, John Landgraf. These are the best of the best. They’re changing your show very gently. They’re still preserving the whole DNA, golden fiber at the center of your show. This is what people say to me when they see it now, having known my work for years, they go, “Oh my God, your voice survived. Your voice actually got on TV.” That is to their credit, because they know how to make it better and better, but to not break that spirit at the center of it. What I’m saying is like, some places would have made my show worse, but this show I look at it and I go, this is infinitely better than what I started with. It’s John Landgraf, Kate Lambert, Jonathan Frank, Paul Sims, Jonathan Krisel, even our line producer, Kate Dean, Dave King. There’s just high level help of people that have made 20 shows and they just know what’s good.

Especially Paul, I was with him the other day. I was just realizing, I was like, this guy can see story. I once heard of a DP who could just see light in a different way. He can just see what light is doing and Paul can just see story through everything.

Stephanie: Yes. This is like a separate thing, but to see Brian, because I had, worked with him so much on our little sets where we’re putting iPhones in our bras and strapping these bandages around our belly to record sound.

Brian: Yes, for lavalier mics, we would use iPhones with these bandages.

Stephanie: To save on not hiring any sound guy because we didn’t have any money.

Brian: Save the money we didn’t have.

Stephanie: Just like rigging the lights and bringing all the gear and setting up the camera, all that stuff. It was so cool to watch a hundred people do all of that especially on the stuff that Brian was directing, because he’s also showrunning as well. It wasn’t weird. It wasn’t like a different– It felt exactly the same, but he wasn’t having to carry anything.

Brian: Right. That was the thing about making stuff ourselves for so long. It’s hauling the equipment gear.

Craig: It’s the worst thing, and the food is a little better.

Stephanie: The food is great, yes. You don’t have to remember what and be like, I got to go feed them. I got to go feed everybody.

John: We talked about your voice surviving through the process. One of the things about the Evan character, which is so wonderful, is that we see him taking a stand and then realizing that his stand is sort of indefensible or he doesn’t actually– He wants to be the person who fully believes what he’s doing.

Brian: Are you just talking about a specific episode or in general?

John: The gun episode is one of the examples. Also, when a kid comes in and says– Comes out to you, it’s like, what should I do? It’s like, fuck you, yes, talk to someone your age, this is not my experience.

Craig: Go be gay out there. Everybody else is gay. Yes, it’s pretty awesome.

Brian: Thanks. I love that scene.

John: Talk to us about like, those moments and figuring them out on the page, figuring them out on the pitch to the page to how they go through, because it’s your voice. You have to say like, well, no, this will work in my voice. Talk to us about that.

Brian: We have a great writer’s room. It’s a really specific group, and it came together very slowly. I even remember saying to Paul, there are these two guys that write on Shadows and I keep seeing their tweets and it’s Zach Dunn and Jake Bender. Paul was like, “Oh, that’s funny. They were asking about if they would maybe be able to come write on English Teacher with you.” It just came together really organically over time. Essentially we have a great writer’s room and we build these stories that I love and that have this real funny bone. Then beyond that, with the execution, and this comes to Krisel, Jonathan Kreisel too, the execution is where it gets all that flavor, but it’s in the writing too.

I talk a lot about texture, what’s special, one thing that we’re good at is this texture of the show, the way people talk over each other and the way people are reacting to each other. I just think it’s all of that. It’s like we’re writing the best stories we can, but then when we’re on set, we’re trying to figure out right then how to make it funnier. We do it a lot of different ways. We trust our editors, Antonia de Barros and Mike Giambra. They love us sending as many options as we can.

So I’ll do a take where I’m going huge and I’ll do a take where I barely move my face and I’ll do a take that’s like somewhere in the middle. Then we’ll do a take that’s almost– I’ll tell them, okay, now say anything you want, do one that’s like– Doesn’t have to be all improv, but just anything you want to say, like we’ve got the camera on you, so just go for it. Then some that are perfectly descript.

Stephanie: To talk about that scene where the kid is asking for his advice on being gay and he thinks he wants to come out and stuff. I think he’s really good at this, which I’ve noticed in like our sketches.

Brian: Spelling everything correctly.

Stephanie: He knows how to use the apostrophes. There’s a lot of apostrophes in that monologue.

Brian: Unnecessary.

Stephanie: No, it’s like the surprising turns, the left turns that he takes really well in comedies and what makes us laugh so hard.

Brian: Yes, because that’s what we were doing in our sketches too, was sort of being like, you expect this joke and then boom, it does this other thing.

Stephanie: Yes, so I think that’s what the show does so well, is you’re like, you’re getting led into something and then it like takes a left turn.

Craig: I think to do that as well as you guys do, you do need to be in touch with the world around you in a very real way, because that can go on, right? The same concept could be incredibly not funny and sort of upsetting, and then in that case–

Brian: You know what I think the secret sauce is to that? To this exact thing you’re talking about?

Craig: Yes.

Brian: I think it’s the acting.

Craig: Oh.

John: Oh, yes.

Brian: Maybe I shouldn’t say that.

Craig: But you’re saying you’re a good actor.

Brian: Me and everybody else on the show. No, I mean, playing things hyper real.

Craig: Grounded.

Brian: It’s amazing writing, and then you have to have really good, not just good acting, like Oscar winning acting, just acting that knows how to make that joke ripe. I say this because I’m not talking about my own performance. I’m saying like, we really care about the acting on our show.

Craig: It’s serious business.

Brian: We talk about it and we direct it and we need the performances to be a certain way to sell that joke. That moment specifically, when the kid says, “I’m gay,” and then the camera spins around, “I’m like, what? Just go talk to somebody in the hall about this. I can’t help you with this.” Yes, it’s an acting thing and the kid performing it really real. There’s this character in this field trip episode, Sharon, like we call her like stone-faced mom, right?

John: Yes, incredible.

Stephanie: Yes, she was stone faced mom.

Brian: She’s obsessed with these games that these kids are playing. Her acting is so brilliant. We saw all these different tapes for it and everybody was being funny and playing the joke. Then we got her tape and she was playing it like it was like an Oscar movie. We’re like, this was the most serious thing that’s ever happened. She’s like, have you heard about these games that these kids are playing?

Stephanie: We were all like obsessed, obsessively watching the tape.

Brian: it’s only the final piece on an amazing joke, but it’s another critical piece and I think it’s something. Jonathan Krisel also really cares about acting. If you watch Baskets, the acting in that is just hyper natural.

John: Very much so.

Brian: What’s the name of the person who played the mom in the–

Craig: Oh, Louie Anderson.

Brian: Yes. It’s so natural and that’s what we’re going for. Even telling the editors–

Stephanie: It’s the editing, yes.

Brian: -leave the little things where people say things wrong-

Stephanie: The mistakes, yes.

Brian: -or stumble on their words and make people talk over each other.

Stephanie: Like in reality, yes.

Craig: Yes. It’s a testament to you guys how technically good you are. I know that you’re saying you sort of almost stumbled into this situation and somebody plucks you out from the things you do. You have to be very, very smart to come– It needs the smartest people. The attention to detail and how serious you have to be about being funny, it’s incredible and it really shows.

Stephanie: It is also just in the writer’s room. We are like dying laughing.

Brian: Dying laughing, yes.

Stephanie: It’s probably most writer’s rooms for comedies, it’s like the joke that keeps making us laugh will stick in the episode. We’re like, “God, that still makes us laugh so hard.”

John: Talk us through the process of getting a half-hour script out of this. In that writer’s room, you’re coming up with the outline, you’re coming up with the beat, so this is what’s basically going to happen, these are the scenes. One person goes off and writes and brings back a script and then you’re workshopping it or what happens?

Brian: Oh, we’re in the nitty-gritty.

John: Oh, yeah, this is the podcast where we talk about the nitty-gritty.

Stephanie: Scriptnotes.

Brian: Okay. Yes, do we tell you? Do we tell you our process? We’re beating out the story as a group and then generally we’re sending somebody off to outline, and the outline is an outline, but it’s relatively detailed and then somebody goes off to script.

John: Is the outline funny or is the outline just-?

Stephanie: Yes.

Brian: Ideally, yes. Like Stephanie’s outline was fucking funny. [crosstalk]

Stephanie: I thought my outline was so funny.

Brian: Yes. I would say the outline is not as funny as the final script.

John: I would hope. Yes.

Brian: The outline’s not full of dialogue and the dialogue is a large part of also what’s funny, so.

Stephanie: Very true.

Brian: Yes, each part being as funny as possible is certainly ideal.

Stephanie: What I loved so much was it felt so– I felt going off and writing Powderpuff, I was like so taken care of by the story because we had really broken it. We do that with each episode. We would like really all together like break the funniest thing in the scene.

Brian: Yes, I often think going off to script is one of the least labor intensive parts because the outline is so– then you’re just dancing on the outline, but yeah.

Stephanie: It’s like it feels all easy. Isn’t that?

John: Making a TV show is easy is what I’m taking from this. Yes, so easy. Everyone can do it. Why aren’t we all doing it?

Brian: Why aren’t you guys doing it?

John: [crosstalk] We? Come on.

Brian: We have all the best writers.

Stephanie: Actually, only easy because it’s like the funniest people in there.

Brian: Yes. Dave King, Zach Dunn, Jake Bender, Emmy Blotnick. Shanna. You guys know Jeremy and Rajat?

Audience Member: Yes.

Stephanie: So funny.

John: Some people do.

Brian: You got [unintelligible 00:52:50] heading the house.

Craig: These guys know literally everything, by the way.

John: They do. They answer the questions.

Craig: These guys know everything about everything. Geniuses.

John: They should be hosting a podcast.

Brian: Geniuses.

John: Congratulations on your show.

Brian: Thank you.

John: We cannot wait to see what you guys do next.

Brian: Awesome. Thank you so much.

Stephanie: Thank you for having us.

Craig: My pleasure. Thank you.

John: All right. This is the time of the podcast where we do one cool things. Things we want to recommend to our listeners at home, to our audience here tonight. Jac, start us off because you warned that you might have two one cool things.

Jac: Oh, I’ve been sweating this for the 24 hours that I knew we had to do this. I already feel like I’m failing. The thing I am recommending to everybody is the English Teacher. In lieu of that, because everybody here’s a fan, I really loved My Old Ass. I don’t know if anyone has seen that. I think that movie is spectacular. I think it’s a Thanksgiving movie. I think it’s about gratitude. I saw it over Thanksgiving. I did a lot of crying. Aubrey is fantastic in it. Then just to be weird, I’m also going to do a song that is an obsession of mine from Billy Joel’s lesser worshipped era, Downeaster ‘Alexa’. Does anybody know that song?

Craig: Of course. Of course.

Jac: It is a song that really inspires me to write because I feel it’s very atmospheric and it’s very rousing and it conjures a place and a person and it’s very salty. Yes, it’s an inspiring piece of pop music.

Craig: It is Billy Joel’s finest nautical theme song.

Jac: That is correct.

Craig: No question. No question.

Jac: A little weird fact for y’all.

Craig: Excellent. Fantastic.

John: Hey, Brian, do you have one cool thing to share with us?

Brian: I started watching the Netflix reality show about people over 50 dating each other called Later Daters.

John: That’s a very good title.

Brian: It was excellent. I recommend it. There’s one woman in it who’s a total star.

John: Excellent. Nice.

Stephanie: You love reality TV so much.

Craig: I don’t like that we’re in a category that’s called later.

[laughter]

Craig: That’s fucked up.

John: We’re married. We’re good.

Craig: I might be over 55– We’re married, but if we did date, it would be like we should make a reality show out of you.
[laughter]

Brian: That’s freaky.

John: Stephanie, what do you have to recommend?

Stephanie: Wait, can I do two too?

John: Of course, you can do two.

Stephanie: Okay. One’s a quick one. It’s like get yourself a sun lamp. It’s one of those lamps that kind of that same warm lighting that was glazed over you guys.

Brian: You mean like a full spectrum?

Stephanie: It’s a yellow– that. You can have that in your room. At night, you’re like, “Oh God.” It just takes you to a good place. Then real quick, I would say I suggest escape rooms for dating.

Brian: Yes.

John: Sure.

Stephanie: Just a couple– Take one other person that you’re dating to an escape room.

Brian: Especially if you’re over 50.

[laughter]

Craig: We got to book. Hell yes.

John: Stephanie, that is such a good idea. Tell us more because it feels like it reveals something about a person that we’d like–

Craig: Because we love escape rooms.

Stephanie: Do you?

John: We love it. We do escape rooms all the time.

Craig: Obsessed.

John: We’re going some escape rooms things after this.

Stephanie: Okay. Really?

John: Oh, yes. [crosstalk]

Stephanie: The reason I got the idea is because me and my husband will do that. It’s like, “Do you want to go out to dinner?” “No. We’re going to go to an escape room.”

Craig: How many have you guys done, you think?

Brian: 25?

Craig: Oh my God. 25?

Stephanie: 60.

Craig: 60?

John: I’m sure.

Craig: I don’t even think they have that many.

Brian: We’re in triple digits for sure.

Jac: Do you do it with strangers? That sounds weird.

Stephanie: No.

Craig: In the early days, you did.

Stephanie: If they’re open.

Craig: That was like an issue. In the early days, they were like, “We’ve got shove 12 people in.” No one does that anymore.
Stephanie: No.

Jac: You can do it just you and a date?

Stephanie: Yes. With a friend or someone you love or somebody you might love. It does tell a lot about a person.

Craig: Are they dumb, for instance?

Stephanie: That. That. If you’re a really competitive person, it’s like you may want another competitive person who’s like, “This is serious. I don’t want any hints,” and that’ll be for you. You could really suss somebody out if they’re really upset about you not getting something right. If there was a fight in the escape room, it’s like you’re done.

Craig: Wouldn’t the worst person be somebody that is just like, “Why does this even matter?”

Stephanie: Yes.

[laughter]

Craig: Date over. Over.

Stephanie: Yes. I’d be like, “Get out. Let me finish it.”

Craig: Yes. Exactly. Go home. I need to escape.

Stephanie: I need to do Welcome To Jumanji alone.

John: That’s a good one.

Stephanie: That’s one of them.

Craig: That’s a good one. Amazing.

John: Craig, what you got?

Craig: My one cool thing, Thin Mint Bites. Have you had these?

John: No. Tell us.

Craig: Oh my God. Thin Mints.

John: Yes, it’s delicious.

Craig: Girl Scouts in combination with Satan. I always thought that the thing about Thin Mints that are so good is the crunchy bit, but there’s just not enough crunchy bit. Then these bastards came up with a way to turn it into this little tiny ball. It’s all crunch with just a little bit of the chocolate on the outside. You feel like, “Oh, I’m just eating one little bit.” Then it’s like bla, bla, bla. They’ve perfected something that I thought was perfect. Christmas time, guys. Thin Mint Bites.

John: Treat yourself.

Craig: Thin Mint Bites. Fantastic.

John: Excellent. My recommendation, one cool thing that’s also very good for Christmas time, it is a show, it’s like number two on Netflix. I’m not the first person to discover the show. It is A Man on the Inside. It is a show by Mike Schur, who’s been on the podcast. He did Parks and Rec, he did The Good Place. You’ll see our own Megan Amram on the show, in a small part.

The star is Ted Danson. He is a retired professor who’s being sent undercover into a retirement home. It is really light and it’s just delightful. Then because it’s so light, it’s like a sitcom, it’s able to hit some surprisingly serious themes of mortality and just losing your sense of autonomy. Really well done. I say Christmas time because it’s actually a show you can put on with your extended family who don’t like each other and you can all watch the same thing and no one will object to it. It’s nice to have TV that is just a common experience for everyone. A Man on the Inside on Netflix.

Craig: Amazing.

Stephanie: Great rec.

John: All right. It is time for our thank yous. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt. Drew Marquardt, thank you so much.

Craig: Thank you, Drew.

John: It is edited by Matthew Chilelli, who also wrote our music tonight. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at JohnAugust.com. That’s also where you find all the transcripts going back 12 years. We’ll have lots of links to things that we talked about tonight, including your shorts and all the other stuff that you guys have done. We have T-shirts and hoodies. They make great Christmas presents. You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments. Thank you to all our premium members. Do we have any premium members in the house tonight?

Craig: Oh, amazing.

John: Oh, my God. Look at that, so good.

Craig: Thank you, guys.

John: Premium members also get first notice about live events like we’re doing tonight. Thank you to Brian Jordan Alvarez, to Stephanie Koenig, to Jac Schaeffer.

Craig: Thank you, guys.

John: Do you want to do stuff?

Craig: Sure. Thank you to Kasey Anderson and everyone at Hollywood HEART. Remember, you can learn more about their programs at HollywoodHEART.org. Also thank you to Dax Jordan and everyone in the booth. Thank you to Missy Steele, Mary Sadler, and everyone at Dynasty Typewriter. Thank you to all of you. It is so much fun to get to do this live. Thank you guys for showing up and making us feel welcome.

John: Thank you so much.

Craig: Appreciate it.

John: Have a great night.

Craig: Have a great night.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right, it is time for our audience questions. If we can bring up the house lights a little bit, and if we can bring our producer, Drew Marquardt here.

Craig: Yay, Drew.

John: Sometimes, Craig, in the past, you’ve run into situations where people seem confused about the idea of a question, and you try to give them instructions, and yet still it doesn’t quite work.

Craig: It’s amazing. Every time there’s one.

John: I thought this time we might do some modeling of behavior. Drew, this is an actual question that came in to ask at JohnAugust.com, a legit question, but maybe you could be an audience member asking a question.

Drew Marquardt: Hi, guys. Big fan.

Craig: Get to the question.

Drew: A writer friend of mine recently asked me what I’ll be getting my reps for Christmas, and my answer was I didn’t know that was a thing. Is that a thing? If so, what should I get them?

Craig: That was in the form of a question. It was concise. Loved it.

John: Loved it. Let’s talk about getting your reps, your managers, your publicists, the folks who work for you on your behalf, getting them holiday presents. What do we think? Suggestions?

Craig: Their publicists are here, so they got to lie about that.

John: All right. Let’s think about other folks.

Craig: Like the agents.

John: The agents. Agents or agents assistants.

Craig: Agents assistants, yes.

John: All right. Talk to us about this, because back in the day, I used to know my agents assistants because I would talk to them on the phone all the time, and we don’t talk on the phone that much. I’m just emailing people now.

Craig: Right. Also, back in the day, we were probably sort of their age and we were all sweating it out. Now, it is a nice thing if you can remember and so just make the list of– and it’s a good old fashioned Amazon gift card or an Apple gift card or something like that, so that you don’t have to like use brain power and, “Oh, I wonder what John would like,” whatever. It’s a nice thing to do. The agents deserve nothing. Nothing. They get 10%. That’s enough. It’s enough.

John: Craig’s gift to a manager is not firing them.

Craig: What manager?

John: What manager? Jac, do you have any guidance? What do you think about gifts for your reps?

Jac: This is tricky. It’s making me real nervous. What I do think, like for up and coming writers, I would say you do not need to get anything of monetary value for your representation. I think that holiday gifting in the industry is something that happens when you cross that invisible line into some form of success. I started noticing I was getting gifts from people I wouldn’t have expected to get gifts from after WandaVision.

I am sort of just getting my gifting together because I feel like a puppy that’s learning from like the bigger dogs. I would say, early in your career, absolutely not. Later, you’re sort of indicated. I think the types of gifts that the people who are making money in the industry, it’s like I do think always, always acknowledging a person is the thing. Calling someone by name, wishing them well, sending them an email, giving some lip service to what they have done for you is you can never go wrong with that.

Craig: Great answer.

Brian: I keep it simple. I get each member of my team a brand new car.

John: Okay. Good. Do you let them pick the color?

Brian: No, I pick the color.

John: Drew, thank you for that question. That was a great question.

Craig: Thank you, Drew.

[applause]

John: All right. Now, if you are an audience member who would like to ask a question of us, of our panel up here, this is the time you can line up. Now, John, remember you can ask the first question if you choose to ask the question, but there’s no pressure.

Audience Member: All right. Just for the younger, like the up and coming, just breaking in and are about to spend 8 to 10 years grinding and probably overthinking as you are, like you’re in it though, but you’re at the very beginning. What is the advice? The one thing that sort of, and it’s usually I feel like something simple you would tell yourself.
Craig: What is the advice that we would give our younger selves?

John: Yes.

Brian: Do less, more often.

Craig: Oh. I like that.

Brian: I got that from somebody else, but I’ve been doing that my whole life. Do less, more often.

Stephanie: Like a brick a day is going to build a house?

Brian: Yes. You can build a house by putting one brick down a day.

Stephanie: I would add to that and say, whatever energy you’re putting into something, like energy in will match out. It might not be what you’re expecting, but it always– it’s like if you’re putting it in every day, something will happen.

Brian: Right. There’s no wasted energy. You could spend four years working on a project that doesn’t work out, but that energy will be the thing that made your next project work.

Craig: I like that. What about you? Do you have anything?

Jac: I would say the feeling that you get when you’re like at a bar telling a friend a story and you’re loving telling them the story and they’re loving hearing it and they’re hanging on your every word, channel that into your work.

Craig: Yes. Nice. Ooh.

Brian: Nobody’s ever hung on my every word.

Craig: Lots of snapping. Love that. John, you got any?

John: I do. I will say that too often you’re looking for who is the person who is a few steps ahead of me who could help me out. That’s the mistake. Look for people who are at your level who are trying to do the things you’re trying to do. Make friends with them. Help on their short films. They’ll help on your short films. Rise together with a group.

Jac: So good.

Craig: I love that. I’ll leave you with this very simple one. Do the work. Work. So much calculating, so much guessing, so much thinking, planning, wondering, blah-blah-blah. Do the work. Just do the work. That’ll get you there.

John: John, thank you for your question.

Audience: Good copy.

[applause]

John: Nicely done. Hello. What is your name and what is your question?

Brandt: Hello, my name is Brandt. My question is mainly for Craig, so ‘70s and ‘80s, Airplane, Naked Gun, huge movies, spoof movies. Then ‘90s, early 2000s, Scary Movie and Austin Powers. Today, from 2010s to today, there’s really no spoof movies around. I’m just questioning why you think that is.

Craig: An opportunity first to say rest in peace to Jim Abrahams, who is one of the three members of Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker, and a wonderful man. I think the reason is actually a lot to do with what you were talking about earlier with the way timing and technology works. Back then, a movie would come out and people would talk about it amongst themselves. No one would be talking to each other across the country or the world. Then somebody would say, “Here’s a funny version of that.”

Everything is parodied instantly and publicly, second by second. A parody or spoof is ancient by the time next week rolls around. There’s just no way. When Jerry and Jim and David made Airplane, they were spoofing a movie called Zero Hour that no one had seen from the 1950s. No one lets you do that anymore. No one’s interested in that. It turned into this weird pop culture machine. They are remaking Naked Gun and Seth MacFarlane making it with Liam Neeson, which that’s fucking exciting.

Brandt: Definitely.

Craig: I don’t know if you’ve seen his thing on Ricky Gervais’ Show where he’s, “Let’s do some improvisational comedy.” It’s fucking incredible.

Jac: Even as the Lego cop. He’s so funny.

Craig: Yes, that Lego cop. He’s just like that when he was like the deadpan– that’s my hope, but it’s unfortunately technology.

John: Stephanie, you were about to say something?

Stephanie: I made a spoof and you should watch it if you’re craving.

Craig: Oh, okay.

John: What’s the spoof?

Stephanie: It’s called A Spy Movie. You can watch it on YouTube.

Brandt: Yes. I definitely will.

Craig: How about that?

Stephanie: It works.

Brian: It works. It’s amazing.

Stephanie: It’s because it’s not specifically-

Brian: It’s not topical.

Stephanie: Yes. It’s not parodying– like it’s not doing the exact copy of the scene and remaking it. It’s actually just going–

Brian: The genre?

Stephanie: Yes. Yes, so you have to be less specific about it.

Craig: I think that’s exactly right.

John: Great. Brant, thank you so much.

Brandt: Awesome. Thank you.

Craig: Thank you.

Stephanie: I’m like shameless plug.

John: Hello. What is your name? What is your question?

Ken: Hi. My name is Ken. It’s for everyone on the panel. When you have a story idea, whether it’s for like an original feature or an episode of something or even just a scene, when you have that first spark, what do you immediately do to get that sort of seed to sprout to become something other than a passing notion? Then, by the same token, when you get further on in that idea and you hit what Aline Brosh McKenna calls the Rocky Shoals and you slow down. What do you do to remember what really sparked you about it in the first place?

John: For me, my first instinct is I do just write it down just so I don’t completely lose it, so I have like a stack of next cards and just like write down the idea so I don’t lose it. There’s something that resonates with me that’ll keep me thinking back about it. If it’s an idea that I do forget about next week, it was never that good of an idea. It’s the ones that keep demanding brain time like, “Oh, that’s a really good idea. I have to remember what that is.” I see some nodding.

Jac: Yes, I agree with that. For me, this is very specific to me, so this isn’t necessarily advice. I find that if I have something I’m excited about, if I tell someone about it, the magic goes away. The longer I keep something secret, the more I nurture it because I am thirsting for the day that I share it. The more sacred– and I can tell when something is very sacred because I have the discipline not to be like, “I had this really cool idea,” Even to my husband, like I just protect it, protect it, protect it.

For me, that works. That’s sort of like hoarding, “It’s my secret treasure,” spurs me on. Then later, when it gets bad, there are people in my life who they’re light helps me. Megan McDonald is one of them, like truly. There are personalities that if I talk to them about the thing, they have a natural energy that reminds me what I love and I can continue.

Stephanie: I follow that. The magic, it going away, is so huge.

Jac: Leaves the building, it’s so sad.

Stephanie: My husband gets so mad at me when I tell somebody an idea that I’ve had. He’s like, “It’s gone, girl. It’s gone.” It’s like 80% of the time I’m like, “Yes, I don’t like that idea anymore.”

John: Great. Thank you very much for your question.

Craig: Thank you.

Christy: Hi, I’m Christy and I’m an actor who’s dabbling in screenwriting. I was wondering if you had any specific, especially because we have some actresses who are like obviously doing more than dabbling.

Brian: What is that can in your hand?

Christy: Oh, it’s wine.

Brian: Oh, nice. You were kind of holding it out.

Jac: I thought you were filming us or something.

Craig: I thought it was a phone.

Christy: It was like a cheers, like top of the morning.

Craig: Okay, cheers. Yes.

Brian: Yes. I’ve been drinking. Yes. I love it. Do you remember your question?

Craig: You’re saying you’re an actor and–?

Brian: Some advice on being an actor and then transitioning to writing.

Stephanie: Yes. Okay. I strongly suggest it’s similar to what John was saying is like finding people that are in a similar position as you that make you laugh or you trust their creativity and you make stuff with them. I don’t know. I just think it’s easier with community as an actor when you’re specifically writing something for you to be into. You usually want to make it. You want to show that it’s just– and it was so helpful to– I swear to God, I would not be up here if I wasn’t also writing stuff for myself. The auditions, the endless auditions that people are like, “Next, next, next. They are not interested,” which is insane.

Brian: Because she’s so fucking good.

Stephanie: It’s just crazy to me. Yes, there’s been so many rejections. Actually, it was so nice. It was so nice. I remember like being like I would come home after like an audition or like a casting director being like– Oh, whatever. I’m not going to say anything. The rejection actually like fueled the writing. It was like you can do something, you can actively do something about it when you are inspired to write.

Brian: I support this. My only question is do you want to make things? Are you more like, “I should do that because people say I’ve got to break in that way.” I don’t know that I have an answer either way. I do think there’s a lot of pressure when you are an actor to figure out how to make something. I was always making things and so were you. We were making movies as kids, like on our handy cam. It’s also like an old muscle.

I don’t know. I would say you can you can also just be an actor and stay on the grind and you will get a part that will get you another part that will get you another. I many times was pursuing that trajectory and had some success that way, and also had more success also making things, so I don’t know. Do you have a natural instinct to write something and film something, or it’s more you’re doing it because people are telling you that that’s the only way to break in?

Christy: I have made things. I feel the same as you where it’s like I did it, it was so hard and I got it made and it got some recognition and people said it was good. Then it’s like, “I guess I’ll make another one.”

Craig: Welcome to writing. Yes, it never ends. “I guess I got to go make another one.” Here we go. That’s what it is. That’s the gig. It never ends. That’s how you know you’re a writer. When you go look– When you hit the end, you’re so proud of yourself for whatever. Give yourself a week… Fade in. Here we go again.

Christy: God damn it.

Craig: I know. I know.

John: Thanks so much.

Brian: Good question.

John: Hello. Can you tell us your name?

Katie: Hi, I’m Katie. In a previous episode, you guys mentioned that it can be helpful to let your representatives pigeonhole you in a genre as a writer so that they know where to put you. You guys have a myriad of different genres that you’ve written for. I’m curious how you navigate transitioning out of that once you have solidified your foundation.

John: Great. That’s a great question. I think what we said on the podcast before is like sometimes it’s useful for people to know what box to put you in just so they have some sense of how to send you out into the world. Yet it can be really frustrating. For a while before Go, I was only getting sent family movies. Things about gnomes, elves, dwarves, and Christmas. With Go, I was able to say like, “No, I can really write a lot of other things.” Jac, I’m curious for you, as a feature writer, were you pigeonholed originally? Was there a thing that like, “Oh, we’d think about Jac for this, but not for other things.”?

Jac: Yes. I made a feature called Timer. Referring to the previous question.

Brian: I made a one called Oppenheimer so, people watched that too.

Jac: I wrote because I wanted to be a director. I’m not a good actor, so that really resonated with me, the like do you have the creator piece? Because I think that’s really what it is. I made it, this feature called Timer that’s about a device that counts down to the moment that you meet your soulmate. I was going for like an eternal sunshine, kind of a vibe. When people looked at it, all they saw was the rom-com. For a long time, I was the rom-com girl.

John: You’re also a woman. Could that be a part of it?

Jac: Yes.

John: Maybe.

Jac: It was a little bit of a part of it. It was really frustrating. Then I wrote– I was very angry. That’s another thing you said that I feel like when you write out of frustration, it can be really fantastic, like when you’re sick of something. I wrote the spec out of frustration and it was to sort of break out of the box. It got on the Black List. It’s called The Shower. It’s about a baby shower that gets interrupted by an apocalyptic alien invasion.

I was like I can do action. I had no idea how to do action, but I was like– so I sort of burst out of the box with a spec script. In fact, my agents didn’t get it. My manager, bless her, was like, “It’s time for you to leave,” so I left with like no career and a spec script that nobody got that was totally just all about vagina panic. It was me being like every horror movie is just a big, scary vagina and I need to address that in the script.

The script, then it got on the Black List, then I got representation. For my journey, I had to be like I’m going to write the thing. I didn’t feel like it was helpful at all to be in the rom-com box. I do think it is about what a kind of a creator you want to be. Do you want to be a writer for hire who can do any genre, any thing, like whatever? Then you need material that demonstrates that. If you want to have a singular voice, you got to write that singular voice. I think the real answer is what do you envision for yourself and write that.

John: We can stop there. That’s great.

Craig: Terrific.

John: Thank you so much.

Craig: Thank you.

John: All right. Our last two questions of the night.

Thomas: Hi, I’m Thomas. This one’s aimed at Brian and Stephanie, but open to whoever.

Craig: I’ll take this.

Thomas: When you’re making your own stuff and you’re excited about it, how do you strike that balance of wanting to show your friends and your contacts and stuff, but also not wanting to seem annoying or needy?

Brian: Wanting to show your friends and your–?

Thomas: When you make something and you’re really excited about it and you want to send it to everyone, but you don’t want to annoy them.

Brian: Oh. That’s a great question.

Craig: Early on when you’re like, “Look, I made another short,” and everyone’s like, “We really don’t care.”

Brian: I have a gift where I’m not afraid to be annoying. My mom, when I was like five, she was like, “When you go to school, don’t care what people think of you.” Obviously, I care what people think of me. It’s also not just that I’m not afraid to be annoying. It’s that just being annoying– I had an older sister, so I just am kind of annoying. Then that’s like– it’s just not all the time, but it’s just a part of my personality where I’m like, even, I don’t know, it’s like part of something I’m comfortable within my relationships. I’m like, “Oh, I’m being a little annoying right now.” I can’t believe I’m saying this publicly. This is crazy.

Stephanie: It’s very endearing.

Craig: You brought your publicist. We will strike it from the record. “I’m annoying.”

Brian: Anyway, hopefully it’s endearing or something.

Stephanie: You’re saying don’t worry about it.

Brian: I’m just saying, yes, I would make something that I thought was funny. I would post it on YouTube, but I would also like send it around to people and be like, whatever. J. Crew is spamming me every day. I can spam my friends.

Craig: He’s got a point there.

Brian: You’re a business. You got to get your stuff out there. What I do say a bit more earnestly is, at first, if the stuff you’re making is good, which I’m sure it is. At first, maybe you’re sort of spamming people or you’re being annoying about sharing it. Eventually, people are sort of thanking you. “Oh my God. I love your stuff.” It’s almost like the same people that were ignoring it at first are like just complimenting it later. I don’t know. It’s like the– and the world will thank you for being willing to give it something that’s cool, that it didn’t have before. Then eventually you won’t be annoyingly spamming people on Facebook. You’ll be here talking about your TV show. That’s cool.

Craig: Yes. If it’s good, it’s not annoying.

Brian: Yes. Yes.

Stephanie: That’s great. That’s amazing.

Brian: It’s okay to be annoying, basically. I think.

Stephanie: Yes. What’s the point? You might–

Brian: Any business is annoying. It’s trying to–

Stephanie: Yes. No, but there’s also just no loss in spamming people your stuff that you made, and you made it. It’s like, “Watch it, damn it.”

Brian: Yes. Exactly.

Stephanie: Send it away.

Craig: I like this.

John: I will tell you that I feel your insecurity there because I’ll post one thing. I posted the one thing that’s all [unintelligible 01:20:16] and then I do it, but then I have friends who are 15 stories in a row for the next two weeks that are proposing another thing. It’s like, “I clicked through and it’s fine.” I’m not angry with them. I would say err on the side of showing too much because you don’t know who’s going to see it, and then when they’re going to see it. People are not going to get annoyed by you. They’re not going to unfollow you, it’s fine.

Craig: I wish that all our emails had the thing that the texts have that says, “Reply ‘stop’ to end,” so that I could respond to a friend with just the word stop.

Brian: But if you think about it, what you are trying to do is make something that the whole world sees. It’s like why would you be afraid of trying to get a bunch of people to see your thing. Isn’t that why you made it? Maybe it’s not why you made it, maybe it’s also you make it because it comes of you and is art and needs to exist, but it’s both, you want people to see it. Don’t be afraid of showing it to people.

Thomas: Thank you so much.

Brian: Thank you.

Craig: Thank you.

John: Our final question, and I don’t want to jinx you, but these have been the best questions we’ve had on a live show.

Craig: Oh, that is such a jinx. Oh my God. I would be drenched in sweat if I were you right now.

[laughter]

John: Let’s see if you can hold up to the standard here.

Ben: Oh, no.

John: Oh no. First off, what’s your name?

Ben: Hello, my name is Ben.

John: Hi, Ben.

Ben: I have a question about how writers’ rooms are scheduled and structured. I’m wondering-

Jac: I love this topic, so I’m already in on this question.

Ben: -Is it like a 9:00 to 5:00, a 10:00 to 6:00? Is it every Saturday and Sunday? I just have this irrational fear that if I get staffed, I’ll never see my wife again. I’m just curious how that works.

John: What a good question. Well done, Ben.

Jac: Such a good question. Such a good question.

Ben: Thank you.

John: What an audience. What an incredible audience.

[cheers]

Craig: I think we made it. I think we made it. This is a great audience.

John: Maybe the best audience we’ve ever had.

Craig: I think it might be.

John: It is a Christmas miracle. Jac Schaeffer, we’ve talked about writers rooms a lot.

Jac: We have. I love this question. I stumbled into TV with WandaVision because I was writing features at Marvel. When I got the job, I won the job, they were like, “How do you want to do this?” I was like, “How do I want to do this?” I asked all the smart people I knew who had TV experience and Micah Fitzerman-Blue said to me, “It is possible to have a civilized writers room that is 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and that you get your work done. You have to be focused. You give them 15 minutes to shoot the shit in the morning. You are clear about what time your lunches are.” He broke it out for me.

My children were two and four. I was like, “This is going to blow up everything.” Also, I was doing TM at the time. I was like, “When does the TM happen?” Transcendental meditation, it’s 20 minutes, twice a day. I don’t do it anymore, which is maybe why WandaVision is probably the best thing I’ll ever make, because I was tapped into something. I’m a kind person and I’m a warm maternal person.

So I was warm, but I was real clear. I was like, “Go to the bathroom when you need to go to the bathroom.” Another thing I was told is let everyone know what the expectations are, and how they can reach you, when they can reach you, when you’re on the clock, when you’re not. I was told to give homework because I was like, “I don’t want to sit here,” like, “We’re not going to stare at each other until it gets funny or cool.” We end, everybody leaves.

I also had an hour-long commute. I was on the West side. We were at Marvel. It was, like, I’m still married and good job me. It’s because of what I did in this room. That’s not every showrunner, that’s not every show, but there are rooms out there that function in a way that support a life outside of the room and also support your creative mind outside the room.

Not everybody is fast in the room. Some of the greatest ideas on both my shows were born of homework, were born of people reflecting. Sometimes they would do it in pairs. They were allowed to stay as long as they wanted to stay. The childless people were there all the time. I promised them we wouldn’t have any overnight work sessions. We ended up doing that on WandaVision, and everyone loved it because it felt like we were kids in a candy store. This is the longest answer forever.

Brian: This is so good. Amazing. I’m learning.

Jac: I believe that we are currently in a moment where people can advocate for their personal lives and for their mental health, and I hope that we stay there. I think it’s about people in charge modelling that, and I think everyone has a right to that. You just have to do your job well. That’s the end of it.

Ben: That’s a big relief, thank you.

[applause]

Stephanie: Are there writers rooms Saturday, Sunday that you guys– Other than Saturday Night Live? That’s not even Saturday.

Jac: No.

Stephanie: I think Saturday and Sunday, you got-

Brian: I think the other thing is they vary wildly.

Jac: Production is totally different.

John: Production’s crazy.

Craig: You need to get a job on one of her shows. [crosstalk]

John: I was going to say.

Craig: You’ve got to get a job first.

Brian: We all want to work for Jac.

Craig: Step one, get a job.

Ben: It’s funny, you mentioned mental health. My wife is a therapist, which is why I’m asking this question for my own mental health. Thank you.

Craig: That’s great.

John: Great question.

Jac: Bless her.

Ben: Thank you.

Links:

• Hollywood HEART
• Jac Schaeffer
• Brian Jordan Alvarez and Stephanie Koenig
• Agatha All Along
• Fleetwood Mac – Silver Springs (Live)
• English Teacher
• A Spy Movie on YouTube
• Sitting
• My Old Ass
• The Downeaster “Alexa”
• The Later Daters on Netflix
• Sun lamps
• Thin Mint bites
• A Man on the Inside on Netflix
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
• John August on BlueSky, Threads, Instagram, and Mastodon
• Outro by Matthew Chilelli (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to episode 666 of Scriptnotes a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to Satan.

Craig: We will eat your soul.

John: Probably not, but today on the show it is a deep dive into the unholy trinity of films that established the genre of movies about Satanism. We are going to discuss how we got here how these films work and the future of the devil on screen.

Craig: The future of Satan. It’s like the worst deadline article ever.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: Like Satan ankles hell.

John: Totally. 100%. Our bonus segment, we’re premium members. We will pontificate on our best candidates for the Antichrist.

Craig: Oh.

John: Yes. Who would it be? Who should it be?

Craig: Think of a couple of people.

John: I can think of a few. Let’s start off by talking about Satan. We don’t talk about Satan very much, Craig, at all. I don’t think we ever even discuss him.

Craig: Weirdly, it doesn’t come up.

John: It doesn’t come up that much.

Craig: I know that some people in certain parts of our country probably presume that here in Hollywood, we talk about Satan all the time. While we’re drinking the blood of children or whatever it is that they think we do, when in fact, mostly what we do are things like, figure out why there are all these fingerprints on the refrigerator door and take the dog out for a walk. So it doesn’t come up.

John: Quotidian life just doesn’t involve nearly as much Satan as one would guess.

Craig: Also, Satan’s not real.

John: That is true. Let’s talk about Satan, at least the modern conception of Satan. Because when we talk about Satan as an idea, I think we have an image in our head for who Satan is. Satan, in modern conception, is an individual who was thrown out of heaven-

Craig: Fallen angel.

John: -fallen angel, yes. Very, very powerful.

Craig: Yes.

John: The nemesis of God.

Craig: Right, so Satan occupies a very difficult narrative space because he is the antagonist in the Bible, or if you– the Old Testament doesn’t really talk much about Satan, but–

John: Also, we’ll get into that, the New Testament doesn’t really talk about it.

Craig: The church love to talk about Satan. They set up Satan as this rival. Then when you get into Revelations, and then here’s the narrative problem for Satan: Currently, the theory is he’s down there in hell, ruling over a lake of fire, where people burn for eternity but he’s going to come back through his form as the Antichrist or I guess that’s his avatar.

John: Yes, that’s one of the ways he could do it. He could be the equivalent of Jesus where he’s like is incarnate through the Antichrist.

Craig: Yes, he creates his Satan incarnate and son of Satan, whatever you want to call it. And that brings him back to earth where he gets into a huge battle with God and Jesus and all of God’s forces and it’s an actual battle that takes place in a place called Armageddon, I believe, or it’s Megiddo and it becomes Armageddon something, and Satan loses.

Now the narrative part here, that’s rough for Satan, said apparently he knows he loses. It’s already like. What’s he getting ready for? That big fight that he’s going to lose one day?

John: I would say often in our cinematic stories we have heroes who know they’re going to lose and yet they carry on the valiant fight anyway.

Craig: The heroes do.

John: The villains–

Craig: The villains never do.

John: Well, you know what? We’ve just had Wicked. We’ve just reformed the Wicked Witch of the West.

Craig: Yes, but that’s not–

John: That’s not what we’re talking about here.

Craig: No. This devil, this Satan doesn’t seem to be– he’s like he missed those pages. I assume everybody else has read it and then no one wants to tell him. It’s a preordained loss. That’s Satan for you.

John: We also have like the South Park incarnation of Satan, which is basically packaging up all these things and then making him a sad, lonely figure.

Craig: Also a musical theater figure, which is like the best.

John: Absolutely the best.

Craig: Yes, he just wants love.

John: Importantly, we should say that our modern conception of Satanism, and really Satan, is that there are cults who are there who are trying to bring about the end times, hell on earth. He has his minions on earth, which is, without that, there’s really no story to tell.

Craig: Satan is constantly using us to try and get his way and there are the versions where we never actually meet Satan. There are versions where we do, so for instance in Constantine, we meet Lucifer and he’s quite annoyed actually that his son is trying to get back because his son is going to take over his throne or something. Then there are versions where Satan is walking around among us and just by lying and manipulating gets us to just be evil and that would be The Devil’s Advocate where, “I’m a fan of man.” God is an absentee landlord. That is a great line.

John: It’s a great line.

Craig: Yes, it’s a great line.

John: Let’s go back into the roots of Satan and Satanism. This idea of an existential cosmic evil makes sense. It’s always sort of been there and so there’s always been some embodiment, some agent behind misfortune, it’s useful to believe that. It’s useful to believe that there’s some force that created the universe, some fatherly figure or motherly figure who is shepherding us all, but also that there’s a villain out there who is responsible for all the bad things that happen to us. You see that across all ancient mythologies.

Craig: Absolutely. Nyx was the Greek goddess of shadow, I believe, and she gave birth to a bunch of children, discord, war, disease, famine, all the baddies.

John: Then we have Hades who rules over the underworld, so the idea of like ruling over the land of the dead, you sort of combine and conflate these things.

Craig: Hades is a little bit more management than the traditional Judeo-Christian sower of evil. In American tradition, because we go all the way back to our Puritans who came over and Puritans, a lot of people think the Puritans left England because the English wouldn’t let them be freely religious. The problem was that Puritans were too religious. The discrimination was, “You guys are way too religious.” They were like, “Well, we want to be as insanely religious as we want.”

John: As hardcore as we want.

Craig: As hardcore as we want. “We’re going to go.” They really, really had a thing about Satan. They were very much convinced that he walks around. Today we indeed have churches who refer to Satan all the time.

John: Go back to the ancient roots of things too. You have, other religions like Zoroastrianism, had the sense of there’s an evil, there’s a balancing force of evil that’s out there. The idea of a duality between the good and the bad makes sense. You can understand why it’s naturally there. When you have a monotheistic religion like our Abrahamic traditions, it’s understandable that they would feel like, okay, well, what’s the counterbalancing force there?

Craig: Especially if you start to organize yourself, then you need something to scare people with. Jesus was like, “Here’s all this wonderful positive stuff. It’s really difficult to do. You have to be poor, you have to put everybody else first, you have to allow them to hit you and not hit back.” And everybody that came after him was like, “Great. Also, you have to give the church your money and you have to follow our rules or you will be sent to hell. If we don’t like you and you’re saying things we don’t enjoy, like for instance, the earth revolves around the sun, for instance-

John: Yes, heresy.

Craig: -clearly, Satan is working through you.” That’s a nice way to dehumanize somebody and burn them alive.

John: Yes, it’s good. Now, before we get to Christianity, we of course have Judaism, and we have the Old Testament, and we have all the other things that didn’t make it into the official Old Testament. Going back to your Bar Mitzvah days.

Craig: My Hebrew school days.

John: Your Hebrew school days. There’s not a lot of Satan there. There’s the idea of a Satan, which is any sort of adversary, it’s like an obstacle there, and they would use Satan as a verb, like to oppose. It’s not the same thing.

Craig: It was not a thing. I remember asking my rabbi about it because we grew up, everybody watches cartoons, you see the red devil with the pitchfork. Why a pitchfork? I don’t know.

John: Actually pulled from Poseidon is what they’re thinking.

Craig: Maybe. I don’t know why.

John: Maybe the trident of Poseidon.

Craig: Barbed tail, not sure why. I remember him saying, “We don’t even really have a hell.” There’s like a theory of a place you go if you’re really really bad, where it’s just like cold and empty and it’s a wasteland and you’re lonely. We didn’t have that personified guy, the guy who sits there and laughs as you burn and burn and burn, it was just more like, you’re going to be disconnected from other people and you’ll be miserable. Which is enough for me.

John: Yes, we had bad people and bad forces in the Old Testament. The snake in the Garden of Eden is often matched up to Satan, but there’s no direct connection there.

Craig: No, that was– he was not. Yes, it was just more temptation.

John: Temptation. Throughout the Middle Ages, you don’t see a lot of the devil, you don’t see a lot of Satan. If you see him it’s as a comic character, like a pathetic character, and just the same way we have a devil versus the Devil, it’s sort of a blurry line between the two of them. Book of Revelations, you mentioned before, is where we first start to really get into this notion of this capital S Satan of Armageddon. He’s this big third-act villain. It’s important to sort of put the Book of Revelations in context because I think the movies we’re going to be talking about will reference it.

Craig: All the time. It’s the worst book.

John: It is referring to specifically the Roman Empire, which it was written in. Even 666 is actually probably referenced to Nero rather than to any other sort of thing.

Craig: Likely was written by somebody who was mentally ill. It has all the hallmarks of somebody who experiences schizophrenic breaks, is hallucinatory, or I don’t know, it was John of something who was writing Revelations. Maybe that he was just snacking on shrooms because it sure feels shroomy to me. It feels altered. The imagery does correspond a lot to the way people experience hallucinatory images when they take drugs. It’s an incredibly unreliable book, even more so than all the other ones that are also ridiculous in their own way.

John: One of the things that’s different is though, like the rest of the Bible is a history and this is a prognostication of things to come.

Craig: It’s not gospel. A bunch of people kept telling the same story about what happened with Jesus and disagreed slightly from time to time.

John: Sure. That’s why you have four copies.

Craig: Then this guy was like, “Yes, yes, great.”

John: Let’s say what’s going to come.

Craig: I’ve seen, yes, I see the whore of Babylon.

John: He’s mapping out the future seasons.

Craig: Then she’s riding with a host of lions screaming and I’m like, “Get off the drugs, buddy.”

John: Early modern church starts to personify in the season. It’s increasingly powerful. It’s really with John Calvin, Martin Luther. It’s less of a metaphor of like, of temptation or wickedness, but actually an individual. Then of course we have John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which is sort of mapping that out. It’s important to understand Paradise Lost is literature. It’s not actually canonical Bible anything.

Craig: No. It’s a story. Calvin was definitely– Look, here in the United States, we’re all still living in the shadow of John Calvin and his crazy ideas.

John: Yes. 2013, a YouGov poll found that 57% of Americans believe in the literal devil compared to 18% of British people, which is just such a shocking difference.

Craig: The answer is again, Britain said, “Go away.”

John: That’s true.

Craig: “Leave. Please leave. Stop saying things like babies are evil because they were simply predetermined to be predestined to be evil. Stop it. Just go. Go away.” I’m not surprised. I’m fascinated by the 18% of British people who are like, “Yeah, I do believe the devil is real.” It seems like such an unpopular thing to talk about in the UK.

John: Also, the British people are also living in popular culture. They’re living in a global popular culture that’s often dominated by American stuff. They’re seeing the three movies we’re going to be talking about.

Craig: True.

John: It’s possible that that’s the influence.

Craig: They’re movies.

John: They are movies.

Craig: They’re movies.

John: Milton’s Paradise Lost is a book.

Craig: I know. I know. Ghostbusters also is a movie. Do you think more Americans believe in– It seems like more Americans probably believe in angels than in Satan.

John: Probably so. I want the polls. I want the polls. People love angels.

Craig: People love angels.

John: They love angels. They love ghosts.

Craig: They do.

John: They do.

Craig: It’s like the idea of children flitting around on wings, just saving them from stuff or I don’t know, making sure Starbucks opens up on time, whatever people pray for.

John: It’s a lot. I think we also, as we get into this, there’s a weird connection to the Catholic church and the Catholic church, not that the modern Catholic church has done a lot of talking about Satan or Satanism, but I think there’s some sense in like the Catholic church being organized and like that it’s a secret conspiracy that they’re hiding from you. The movies we’re going to be talking about often have Catholic priests who are, “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but–“

Craig: Yes. What we find when we’re telling this story is that the Catholic church is incredibly useful if you’re a screenwriter because A, it is powerful and it is wealthy. Also, it’s the oldest of the traditions, particularly in the United States. It feels like it goes back to the beginning. The Holy Roman Empire essentially was Catholic. That was what it was. They speak Latin. It has this ancient vibe. It’s almost like they’re as old as the devil himself. Therefore, we need to go into these old scrolls and talk about these things that only the Catholic priests would have access to.

John: I wonder if there’s also an aspect of racism there because you look at the Protestant foundations of the United States and the Puritans and all this stuff, and you had this influx of immigrants who were largely bringing in Catholic traditions, which were also Christian, but not the same kind of Christian. It’s a way of differentiating. We obviously have anti-Catholic leagues. We have this sense of anti-Catholicism. I wonder if some of that gets folded into why we’re thinking about them as being involved with all this.

Craig: Yes. There could be some catholiphobia going on there. I’m not sure it’s racism, per se, because in the United States, there was tremendous fear of white Catholics. John Kennedy, the big thing about him was like, no one’s going to vote for a Catholic. As if that were a thing, it used to be.

What’s interesting is that in our country, we’re predominantly not a Catholic country. Satan is talked about constantly in our Protestant churches, in our Southern Baptist churches. Satan is a massive thing. It’s sort of their big selling point, and yet it feels like a different Satan than the Catholic Satan, which is like older, creepier, more in the shadows. The Protestant Satan comes up to you and offers you a weed.

John: Yes, absolutely. Before we get into our actual movies, let’s talk about the Antichrist because that’s a thing that’s sort of come up in, I think, all three of these, which is the Antichrist is mentioned four times in the New Testament as sort of a false prophet to take the role of Jesus. Again, it’s sort of like a lowercase antichrist, it’s not sort of an individual, it’s like sort of anybody who’s standing in the way of the prophecy of Jesus. According to my Wikipedia research, the first big reference to all this is 400 CE, which is Martin of Tours saying, “There is no doubt that the Antichrist, has already been born, firmly established already in his early years. He will, after reaching maturity, achieve supreme power.”

Craig: I think it was a running theme. Every generation is like, “This is it.”

John: This is it. It’s always the end times.

Craig: There has to be a term for generational narcissism. Maybe that is the term.

John: Sure.

Craig: We always think that we’re the ones living at the end of the world or in end times because we’re the special ones. No, we’re not. Ever.

John: Ever. And yet, even as we’re saying this, it does feel like it.

Craig: Yes, like probably it is happening.

John: All right. Before we get into our movies, because we’re going to focus on three movies and obviously they’re not the first movies or only movies to talk about Satan or Satanism, we should talk first about Faust, because right from the start of cinema, there were a bunch of movies about Faust. Let’s talk about the Faust story, which is really the devil’s bargain. It’s the idea of a pact with the devil.

Craig: Selling your soul becomes this big thing. The soul itself, the concept of the soul is a very murky one that, at least in Christianity, it’s murky until it becomes part of this bargain story where it’s now this thing you can give away. Again, it’s one of those stories where everyone knows the ending and yet somehow people keep falling for it over and over and over.

This goes to even in the American Black tradition, blues. it was always, thought like this blues man sells his soul to the devil and so that he could play this well. I’m like, but you know how that’s going to end and then lo and behold, you get movies like Angel Heart where it’s how it ends. Every time.

John: Every time.

Craig: Every single time. No matter what. I can’t understand why anyone makes that deal.

John: No.

Craig: Bad deal.

John: Bad deal. Bad deal.

Craig: Totally.

John: We can understand where that story comes from because if you look back at like Rumpelstiltskin or sort of the classic fable myth kind of things, there’s that sense of like, we’re going to make a deal and that person is going to come collect on that deal. Always there.

Craig: Well, what’s interesting is like the Rumpelstiltskin story is a good devil’s bargain story, except in the end he loses. That story is sort of like, this guy took advantage of this poor woman who wanted a child and made the deal and she spun the straw into gold and — oh, that was it, because she just wanted to stay alive.

John: How dare she.

Craig: Right? He lets her turn straw into gold, but his price is, “I’m going to take your baby,” which is crazy. Also, what are you going to do with it? Then she figures out a way to beat him. The whole point of the devil’s story is you lose, every time.

John: That is a whole different class of devil stories. For this episode, I really want to talk about the Satan that is Satanism and how that all fits together.

Craig: I need a chorus going while we talk. [hums] There’s always a chorus. [hums]

John: Latin, you couldn’t understand, but it’s just creepy because it’s there.

Craig: Exactly.

John: The three movies I want to talk about are Rosemary’s Baby from 1968.

Craig: So good.

John: The Exorcist from 1973.

Craig: My favorite.

John: And The Omen from 1976.

Craig: Also a movie.

John: Also a movie. The commonalities, I should say, we’re going to put links to the scripts we found for these three things. You can take a look through those. One thing I’m struck by is they’re all about the horror of parenthood. It’s interesting that our window into these stories of Satanism and satanic cults is about parenthood, which is specific. I guess there’s an aspect of like Antichrist being born. Parents are just a natural thing. If you were to even take out the Satanism of it all, they’re all unified about stories of how scary it is to be a parent.

Craig: Even though they shift gears and sort of concentrate on the father in The Omen, they are all about the conception and then how to deal with the fact that this symbol of innocence, a child, is in fact evil. That contrast is horrifying to us. Even though in Rosemary’s Baby, there is no child until the very, very end and you never get to see him. But, “he has his father’s eyes.”

John: He does.

Craig: It is the year one.

John: We’re starting in 1968, which I’m going to count as the ‘70s because it’s really more– By that point, we’re in the ‘70s.

Craig: It’s ‘70s vibe.

John: Let’s talk about the ‘70s vibe because looking at these movies, they do feel like they’re responding to a thing that’s happening in American culture. We’re starting to realize like, oh, the year 2000 is not that far off. That feels like a marker. That millennial change feels like, oh, 2000 years ago, we had Christ being born, and so there’s that aspect. We have Ouija boards. We have that sense of like, there’s a spiritual outside world there that feels different. We have changing social structures. We have the women’s liberation movement. It’s a different time, so it’s not surprising that we feel like there’s some end-of-times angst going in here. What else about the ‘70s strikes you?

Craig: Well, that was pretty much America’s low point. The late ‘60s, early ‘70s, our cities were suffused by riots, racism. Even though the Civil Rights Act had been passed, the echo of what occurred after that was violent and long and led to multiple assassinations. Presidents were being assassinated. Civil rights leaders were being assassinated. Candidates for president were being assassinated. Cities were on fire. Crime was very high, and there was a sense that America had fallen into, you remember when we were kids in the ‘70s, pollution.

There were ads that were just basically begging people to stop throwing garbage out of their car window as they drove. There were also ads that said, “It’s 10:00 PM, do you know where your children are?” What the hell was going on where parents had to be reminded by television? Maybe it was five o’clock. I can’t remember what the time was. Like, “Hey, by the way, remember? You also have kids. Find them.” Everything was falling apart, and the notion that there was some explanation to this, that there was evil in the air made sense.

You had the Night Stalker, and you had Son of Sam, and serial killers-

John: I agree, yes.

Craig: -they were always there, but I think in the ‘60s and ‘70s, we suddenly became very aware of them.

John: I think we were also aware of conspiracies and things happening behind the scenes, and we had investigative journalism that was uncovering things. The idea that there is a group of people, a cabal, who has secret plans feels like a very natural fit for the time.

Craig: Nixon.

John: Nixon, yes.

Craig: It was happening. So it feels like a smart thing to do. America was still quite religious, and also, you were starting to see shifts in the politics of motherhood. The birth control pill was available. The idea of being a mother was now difficult. People were looking–

John: The idea of choosing when to become a mother.

Craig: That’s right. Single parenthood was now– single parenthood prior to the ‘60s and ‘70s was– and you and I both remember how, even in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, Murphy Brown, the sitcom–

John: A woman who chose to have a baby by herself.

Craig: She was yelled at by a vice presidential candidate.

John: Yeah, she was the Antichrist, though. All right, let’s talk about Rosemary’s Baby. Written and directed by Roman Polanski, based on Ira Levin’s novel. I’ve not read the novel. Apparently, it’s a very faithful adaptation.

Craig: It’s a really good book.

John: Development-wise, we know that Polanski wrote a 272-page screenplay for the film in approximately three weeks. I guess it got cut down.

Craig: I’m going to go with cocaine on that one.

John: I think it’s a safe bet that some cocaine was involved. It apparently was very faithful, and it lifted dialogue and stuff directly out of the source material. In our story, we’re following Rosemary Woodhouse, who’s played by Mia Farrow, and her husband, Guy, played by John Cassavetes moving into a new apartment in New York City, they meet their neighbors, Ruth Gordon among them-

Craig: The best.

John: -iconically. It doesn’t start out being about a woman wanting to have a baby.

Craig: No.

John: Talk to us about your experience of Rosemary’s Baby.

Craig: It feels at first like a story about a little bit of a fish out of water, because Rosemary, as Mia Farrow plays her, she almost has that mid-Atlantic accent. She’s very refined, and she’s very delicate. Her husband feels urbane. She is not so much, and she’s trying to figure out how to be a good wife, and she’s trying to figure out how to fit into this world which is–

John: A young wife.

Craig: A young wife, which is very metropolitan, and there are the weirdos down the hall. It’s a pretty good start. We would never be able to get away with it now. The length of time you have to just feel the discomfort of feeling out of place. It also allows the film to zero in on her perspective. Much of the movie, you’re with her, feeling how she feels. Then some things start to go wrong.

John: Notably so, husband is an actor, so he goes off, he’s cast, and things are sort of percolating for him. She’s being left alone more, and the neighbors are starting to intercede. I didn’t go back to him when we watched this, but at what point does she have the chocolate mousse that sends her into slumber?

Craig: The mouse.

John: The mouse.

Craig: The mouse.

John: That sends her into slumber.

Craig: I think it’s middle-ish because there’s someone who dies. I can’t remember. There’s like an early death in the movie that’s very suspicious. It does strike me, we talked about agency recently, and so much of this movie is about somebody trying to find their agency, and everybody keeps taking it away. Ruth Gordon is concerned that she’s not– “Oh, you’re not feeling well, you’re not eating enough, I made this special mouse for you,” which is a mousse. Everybody then begins the gaslighting process. That is followed by one of the most terrifying sex scenes I’ve ever put on.

John: Yeah, it’s a rape.

Craig: Oh, definitely a rape. Also a monster rape. We should probably talk about Roman Polanski for a second because Roman Polanski raped a girl. He raped a child and fled the country, and has never returned. Is he still alive?

John: He’s still alive.

Craig: He’s still alive. And this town only seemed to acknowledge that recently, but even, it was like maybe 10 years ago or so, he got like an honorary Oscar or something, and everybody stood up and applauded, and you’re like, ”The hell is going on here?” Roman Polanski definitely falls into the, okay, person who did very bad things, person who made very good movies.

And that scene in particular is disturbing because it’s oddly restrained. There’s not nudity. There’s just this sudden flash of this thing. Then there’s a delirium that follows and paranoia.

John: Yes. The Satanism of the movie comes from this sense that this pregnancy that comes out of this rape, that there’s something wrong about it, that she’s not being told everything.

Again, we’re locked into a very limited POV, which is really helpful for our storytelling here. It sort of leads to the paranoia here. And yet the edges of the conspiracy are nebulous, which is actually a case with all these things. You never quite know, how big is this? Who’s behind this? Whose plan really was this? How far back did it go? I think that’s one of the hallmarks of these movies is that by being vague, they’re sort of more sinister.

Craig: Sure. The less the more scared you are. There is this entire genre of, I’ll just shorthand call lifetime movies, where a wife or a girlfriend is being gaslit by her husband. Other people join in but she’s like, “No, I know it’s–“ and then there are movies like, was it Flightplan? Is that the one where Jodie Foster is in a plane with her daughter and then her daughter disappears and they’re like, “You never had a daughter on the plane. What are you talking about?”

That’s this thing that echoes how people treat women in society. We now create this wonderful allegory and then you discover how mundane it all is. It’s the mundanity of Rosemary’s Baby that’s so brilliant. When she finally comes to understand what’s happened, everybody’s weirdly relaxed. They’re also so normal. You not only have Ruth Gordon playing the lovely old lady who lives down the hall, but you have just like, there’s this guy from Asia who’s taking photographs and he’s just like a tourist almost. You have Ruth Gordon’s husband, who’s just an old goof. Then there’s like women that look like from the steno pool. The evil, it says, is everywhere you look.

John: Let’s move on to The Exorcist. The Exorcist is 1973 and by that expression, you love The Exorcist. My recollection of The Exorcist is having watched it in like little small segments when it was broadcast on TV because I was too scared and my parents would be out of town. The Exorcist again is a story of the terror of parenthood and the terror of this child being possessed, literally possessed by the devil. What are the responsibilities of a parent?

Craig: Even worse, she’s possessed by a demon.

John: I’m sorry.

Craig: So it’s worse because the devil–

John: Yes, sure.

Craig: One of the things that they did that was so smart, it comes from the book, William Peter Blatty.

John: Yeah, so Blatty wrote the novel and the screenplay.

Craig: Right, brilliant. William Friedkin, of course, directing it. The entity that has occupied her is very powerful and not even close to being the devil, which makes it sort of worse. What you immediately note in the small amount of time between Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, the gulf between how vulgar and how shocking things are in The Exorcist. Mia Farrow’s got this like, “What is happening? I don’t believe you. What?”

John: Meanwhile, Reagan is vomiting.

Craig: And masturbating with a crucifix, and using the most foul language possible, and just doing these things. She’s a child. The thought that we could, some of the scenes in The Exorcist now, you simply would not– you wouldn’t even be able to get past the script. People would be like, “We’re going to– No.” Are you going to have your intimacy coordinator come in and talk about how this is going to work? But it also was graphic, deeply graphic in ways that Rosemary’s Baby wouldn’t have even thought of.

John: Because I remember even long before I’d actually seen any clips of The Exorcist, I was aware of the tropes. I was aware of the spinning heads and the vomits and the crawling on the ceilings, because it was just part of popular culture. It was a meme before we had a word for memes.

Craig: I watched The Exorcist in the most ill-advised fashion. I was 9 or 10, which is the perfect age to be deeply traumatized by The Exorcist. I was staying at my friend Eric Freeman’s house, and he had a basement. This was 1980. There was a service in– that’s right, 1980, there was a service in New York called WHT. New York infamously did not have cable for a long time, because of like–

John: It was hard to plug wires and stuff in.

Craig: It was laws. It was just laws and the mob or something, I don’t know, for some ridiculous reason. Then there was a service, WHT, that you would pay for, and it would basically send an over-the-air, scrambled signal, and then you had a little de-scrambler. They would run movies. They would also run some soft-core porn after hours that’s when I also saw porn for the first time. Eric Freeman’s basement was like– it was the hottest club in town.

I knew nothing about what I was in for, and it was so impactful upon me. To this day, it still scares me. I know it shouldn’t, but just seeing her face sometimes scares me.

John: Let’s jump ahead, then, to The Omen. We’ll talk about this for all three of them, and sort of their financial success, and why that’s cemented their place here. Let’s talk about The Omen, because I’d never seen The Omen, so I watched it last night. Written by David Seltzer, directed by Richard Donner. This is where we get the popular culture or knowledge of 666 because they’ve mentioned it a lot in the course of the movie because it wasn’t known at that point. People didn’t know Book of Revelations 666, so they had to explain it a lot in the movie.

Story follows Gregory Peck, who is an ambassador, first we see him in Rome, then he’s coming into London. He and his wife have a young child. Only he knows that it’s actually adopted, because their child died when it was born. This is Damien, which is such a great name. It became iconic in terms of the demon child.

Craig: Basically, we were like, let’s take the word demon, and change it to Damien.

John: Perfect.

Craig: Yes, that sort of goes to why, to me, The Omen feels like somebody said, “Get me Rosemary’s Baby, get me The Exorcist, blend them, and let’s see what comes out the tube.”

John: I’ll try to find a link to it, but I was looking through one article, blog post that was arguing that the movie was deeply impacted by one episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, which actually, an episode that had many of the same beats in terms of like politician raising the child, who is the Antichrist. This child, Damien, sinister things happen around them, a nanny hangs herself in a really graphic fashion.

Craig: That’s the best scene.

John: It’s the best scene.

Craig: “It’s all for you.”

John: It’s all for you. There’s a photographer who is tracking the family, who keeps noticing, funny that all these images are showing up in photos they’re taking of you.

Craig: Then he dies.

John: Then he dies. My frustration in watching it is that I really enjoyed how it started, I loved the filmmaking, and that ‘70s feel, it’s like this handheld–

Craig: Real grimy.

John: Yes, it was great to see, and then the movie gets dumber as it goes along.

Craig: Unfortunately, it does, because there’s nowhere for it to go. In the end, Rosemary’s Baby is about Rosemary. It’s not about the baby. The ending of Rosemary’s Baby is so horrifying, because all it is a mother who can’t help but be in love with her child, even though her child is the Antichrist. Because it is about motherhood, and it is about lack of agency.

Rosemary’s Baby is almost like, love is so powerful here that it doesn’t matter what happens, you’re going to love your child. The Exorcist is about saving a child. It’s about a priest who’s started to lose faith, and who feels like he hasn’t been able to help anyone, including his own mother, finally being able to do what Jesus did, give his life to save an innocent. The Omen is just sort of, just the kid is the problem.

John: The kid is the problem, and Gregory Peck ultimately doesn’t have to wrestle that much with it. He’s like, “Oh, I can’t kill my son,” but he can take those daggers. He’s ready to do it.

Craig: Yes, that’s the problem is, you’re just waiting, and then it’s just sort of the same thing of, okay, I can’t do it, I can’t kill him, and so then you end up, everybody dies, and Damien’s the devil who runs everything. That’s the thing. I just think it’s so much more remarkable that the ending of a movie like that, be the parent chooses to pick the child up and love it.

John: Yes.

Craig: That movie just got a little goofy.

John: Yes.

Craig: I don’t like saying bad things.

John: No, not a bit. We should stress that all three of these movies were giant hits.

Craig: Huge.

John: Phenomenons, and they were lines around the block, which is the reason why they’re so anchored into place in popular culture in terms of establishing what we mean by Satanism. I would posit that we would not have our understanding of Satan and Satanism without these movies, in the same way, we didn’t used to be so afraid of going into the water until Jaws. It created a thing that is actually not really a thing. The moral panic over Dungeons and Dragons and heavy metal music and all that stuff wouldn’t have happened without these three movies.

Craig: It would not. Just as our understanding of who Santa Claus is because Coca-Cola drew a picture of a guy, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was a song written by an advertising firm for a department store in Chicago, I believe. We think these things have been there forever. They have not. We think that there’s been this concept, and it hasn’t. It came out of those movies. It came out of that time.

Then you’re absolutely right. What happened almost immediately, in terms of speed of a nation moving, was something called the Satanic Panic. These movies presented a situation where there was, not in the case of The Exorcist, but in the other two, a kind of conspiracy of people to bring about Satan in our world, who would then do bad things.

Very shortly thereafter, people started to say, I think that there’s a conspiracy to bring Satan out in our world. Just as they did with Galileo and everybody else, it became a great way to take people that no one liked and accuse them. It was Salem Witch Trials writ large. America got so stupid. We think of America now as stupid. No, no, we have been stupider than we are now.

John: Let’s jump forward to where we’re at now and the sequels to these movies. There were other movies that were in their same place. We saw Satanism in our television shows to some degree. Our serial killers that we would put in our stories, might sometimes be satanic. Right now, we’re not actually doing a lot with Satan or Satanism in our movies. Longlegs, head nods in that direction. We have a movie like Hereditary, isn’t Satanism, but it’s adjacent to it.

Craig: It’s adjacent but that feels more like possessory. Again, The Exorcist was about a possession, and the whole concept of exorcism, which is a very Latin word, is connected deeply to the Catholic Church, and it’s the idea that you can be possessed by something. There have been so many possession movies, all of which, ultimately for me, I just wonder, I wouldn’t know, it just feels so weird. It’s like making a movie about two young people falling in love on an enormous boat that’s going to hit an iceberg and sink. Now, do something original, and you’re like, I can’t. It’s done, as good as it can be done.

You’re right, Satan has gotten goofier now because we sort of, again, like The Devil’s Advocate, it’s broad, and it’s very winky, and sort of like, “Satan,” come on. When you see Peter Stormare’s depiction of Satan in Constantine, it’s almost like they said, “All right, you saw how big Pacino got, go bigger.” So Satan becomes broad because he presumes we’ve all heard of it, we all know it, and then it’s almost like he’s rolling his eyes about 666. It’s old-fashioned, it’s hokey.

John: It’s hokey, and I also wonder whether we’re reaching for other forms of cosmic horror. It’s not like we’re making Cthulhu movies all the time, but there’s other senses of just existential dread out there that don’t have to be so tied into one specific mythology there. Maybe we should be reaching for other ways of acknowledging the horror of the unknowable darkness.

Craig: Yes, and it may be that because we’re American, our tradition is so steeped in Satanism, going back to Salem and all the rest. It’s hard for us to feel the same things that we would feel about, say, Cthulhu, even though, of course, also a creation of an American.

John: Yes, 100%. I think we should also maybe wrap this up by saying, of course, this is all based on our very sort of Western views of what Satan is just because it comes out of that tradition. I’d love to hear what the Asian equivalent of this is. I guess we have The Ring.

Craig: Oh, yes.

John: Yes, some of those movies. Again, so we’re talking about this otherworldly horror that is unknowable and unstoppable.

Craig: Which, again, draws a lot of it, it seems to me, from The Exorcist. We are all people. We are all scared of the dark. It doesn’t matter where we grow up. We’re scared of the dark, we’re scared of the unknown, and we’re scared of ghosts. Japanese horror does a particularly good job of figuring out how to make ghosts really scary as well. Korean cinema does a beautiful job with this as well. Every culture has its nightmare creatures.

John: Absolutely, a way of showing those primal fears in a cinematic form.

Craig: Lord of the Rings. Sauron. That’s Sauron, Satan, nightmare. That’s on–

John: Absolutely. I say it as opposed to like a Voldemort who is a character who has a full, rich backstory and does it like, even though there’s a cabal trying to bring him back to life, there’s a little of that, but it’s not the same thing.

Craig: No, because Voldemort has not always been. The idea is that Satan was here before man. Before God made man, and Satan makes a bet with God about Job, and there’s all this stuff where it’s quite clear he’s floating above all of us or underneath all of us, I suppose.

John: All right, we have a couple of listener questions that are on topic.

Craig: Great.

John: Eric writes, “As you said, in a good screenplay, the protagonist goes from ignorance of the theme to embodiment of the theme through action. It seems to me that in most movies, that involves a process of gradually embracing a positive truth that the protagonist needs to live a better life. What about movies with tragic endings, in particular horror films, where the protagonists end up dead, or at least much worse off than how they started the movie? Are they also still gradually learning to accept and embody a theme? It just happens to be a theme that destroys them instead of making them better. How does the journey from anti-theme to theme play out in The Exorcist for the protagonist, Father Damien, as he approaches his tragic ending?”

Craig: That one’s pretty easy. It is just a straight-up guy who’s questioning his faith. He has doubts. He is not sure how he is supposed to be an effective priest to anyone. He’s certainly not the person that the Catholic Church is thrilled about to go help this girl. They send– the exorcist is somebody else. It’s not him, it’s Max von Sydow. He’s the exorcist, but he dies. It’s really there so that Father Karras, at some point, can decide, “I’m going to commit myself to saving somebody at any cost, even if it’s my own life.”

And so in his final words, he says, “Take me, take me, take me.” It happens. Then he throws himself out the window and goes down those amazing stairs. That is about as clear of a going from anti-theme because in the beginning, he’s like, “I’m not very good at being a priest.”

John: I think other sort of horror films. the first Alien is a horror film. Ripley’s journey is great, to get singled out and actually rise to the occasion in ways that embody a lot of the themes we’re supposed to be doing here. In a lot of other horror films, especially slasher films, you can say that, yes, it’s actually tougher to chart the journey of that character. They’re surviving, but are they growing and changing in a way that is meaningful? Sometimes, yes, but a lot of very successful movies in that genre, you’re not seeing those same dynamics.

Craig: No. Myself, I’m not a big student of those films. Sometimes, when you look at how people describe the mechanics of screenwriting, you should also ask, what kind of movies do they make? I talked about the mechanics of screenwriting all the time, but there are kinds of movies that I’m not that into. I’m not that into– I was never a big fan of the Halloween films or the Friday the 13th films, because it didn’t really do anything for me, mostly for this reason. Didn’t seem like there was much there other than, “I’m not going to let you kill me.”

John: Absolutely, the final girl, “I will survive.”

Craig: The final girl.

John: I’ll see essays that really talk about the dynamics of that, and it’s great. I’m so glad you’re finding meaning in that. It just doesn’t resonate with me.

Craig: Right, and so what I would say to Eric is, you might not see this applying to some of these movies, and that’s okay because that is not really a skeleton key for everything. I think I pretty clearly said this is for mainstream storytelling of a certain sort.

John: I can imagine a better version of The Omen that has a lot more of that character arching, too. It’s not like the father’s desperate for a child and then to have to decide to kill the child.

Craig: It could be better.

John: It could be better.

Craig: It could be better.

John: Emily asks, “What’s the difference really between thriller and horror?”

Craig: Well, it’s whatever we want to say it is. Ultimately, it’s terminology.

John: There’s overlap between the two, but there’s a lot of thrillers that are horrifying, and there’s horror things that actually aren’t thrillers in the sense there’s not suspense. They’re just dark.

Craig: Thrillers, in my mind, are designed to quicken your pulse and get you chewing on your fingernails because you’re nervous. Horror movies are supposed to make you look away because you’re scared. Those are the two–

John: Sure.

Craig: Those are supposed to scare.

John: Absolutely, because there are political thrillers. I guess you could imagine a political horror movie, but it’s like it’s not the, it’d be very different. Michael, our final question. “I wanted to get your opinion on horror films never doing well during awards season. It seems like regardless of the quality of horror films or the performances in them, there’s never any Oscar buzz around them. Does Hollywood hate horror?”

Craig: Does Hollywood hate horror? Hollywood loves horror.

John: Loves horror.

Craig: That’s why they keep making horror films. What you’re asking is-

John: It’s so much money. It’s so cheap.

Craig: -do Oscar voters hate horror? I don’t know if they hate it. They just don’t seem to be that into it, but again–

John: If you look at the films that have incredible quality, they still do get singled out. The Silence of the Lambs, horror film. Well, horror film, thriller, both.

Craig: Thriller. It’s a thriller-

John: It’s scary.

Craig: -with scary moments. Look, the genre films, yes, of course, like comedies, they are generally overlooked in favor of the Oscars to some extent become about these smaller movies a lot. They’ve expanded it to make it a little bit better. Repeatedly, we end up in a situation where, yes, big movies that are very scary and have really lasting, deep impact on culture aren’t even considered.

John: No.

Craig: Because they’re genre and the Oscars are snobby.

John: Also, let’s be realistic that the makers of those horror films aren’t trying to win those Oscars and they’re not doing the work that it would take to win those Oscars.

Craig: Because they know it won’t work.

John: Yes, absolutely. It’s a trick of the day problem, yes.

Craig: I think it would be fair to say like, “Look, you make a big comedy and everybody laughs and they have a good time. You also know, we’re not going to spend money on an Oscar campaign, it’s just not happening.” The Oscars are for dramas and they’re for a certain drama that appeals to a certain age of people.

John: It’s time for our one cool things. My one cool thing, I’m reaching back, I’ve probably, this has been my one cool thing, maybe three times, but it’s so topical that I need to do it, which is the short story Gifted by Simon Rich, which is about these parents who discover their child– the child is born with horns. It is the Antichrist. They are so obsessed with getting it into Dalton to get it into a really good private school and to make sure their son’s life is as awesome as it can be. It is just hilarious. It’s just a great reminder of, for all the tropes you set up in a genre, the antitropes can be just hilarious.

Craig: So funny. My one cool thing this week is a television series. You know me, I don’t watch a lot of things. I’m two-thirds of the way through, it’s called Say Nothing or in the parlance of the show, Say Nothin’. It is a series about a woman named Dolours Price, who was a member of the IRA and most infamously perpetrated car bombings in London and was imprisoned and went on a hunger strike and was force-fed and tortured and then sent back.

It’s also about Gerry Adams, who, and this is fascinating. I’ve never seen this before. At the end, so Gerry Adams, this show is based on a book, and Gerry Adams runs the IRA, he’s going through all this stuff, and at the end of every episode, it comes up and it says, “To this day, Gerry Adams denies ever being a member of the IRA or participating in any violent activities.” That disclaimer, I’m sure Gerry Adams’ lawyers thought would be real good for him. It is the most damning disclaimer I’ve– and the fact that they repeat it at the end of every episode is so brutal. I think it’s just beautifully done.

John: Great.

Craig: It’s gorgeously performed and filmed, and the writing is excellent. Josh Zetumer is the showrunner here. Just beautiful work. My kind of show. Congratulations to everybody that clearly worked so hard on Say Nothing. Oh, and also now, because I’ve been watching it, I think I can do this, and if you’re from Northern Ireland, please go ahead and write in and tell me I blew it. This is the phrase I’ve been working on, is do it now. Okay, ready? “Do it nye.” How is it?

John: Nice.

Craig: Well, it may not be nice. We’re going to hear from some folks from Belfast. I want to hear how bad I did, or how good.

John: How good, How good. Where do we see that show?

Craig: That’s on Hulu.

John: Hulu.

Craig: On Hulu.

John: Hulu.

Craig: Hulu.

John: Hulu. That is our show for this week. Scripnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, and edited by Matthew Chilelli, who did our very special outro this week. Matthew, thank you for this.

[music]

John: If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnaugust.com. It’s also the place where you can send questions, like the ones we answered today. You’ll find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts and sign up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts and hoodies and drinkware. You’ll find them all at Cotton Bureau. You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net. We get all those back episodes and bonus segments, like the one we’re about to record on The Antichrist.

Craig: Oh, there’s more Antichrist?

John: Yes.

Craig: Good.

John: Good.

Craig: Excellent.

John: Craig, thank you.

Craig: Thank you.

[Bonus Segment]

John: Craig, the Antichrist today. Let’s figure out who we should– Who’s a good candidate for the Antichrist? Because, and we should also specify, which aspect, is it just supposed to be the son of Satan, or is it supposed to be the false prophet who leads us away from the true teachings of Jesus Christ? Do we need the person who seems evil, or the person who seems really good? There’s lots of ways we can go here, so what are some of your instincts?

Craig: Well, the way that people tend to treat this is somebody shows up who is really slick and appealing.

John: Up-facing the crowd, yes.

Craig: Everybody wants to vote for this person, this person seems great, but then casually starts to convert us all to a one-world government, which is the worst possible thing.

John: Yes, of course.

Craig: Like a one-town government or a one-state government. Why would everybody just– what? Okay, so one-world government’s the worst possible thing, and then they start doing horrible things, and of course, it’s over. The person who would be the most hysterical Antichrist to me would be Kirk Cameron.

John: Oh yes, that’d be great.

Craig: Kirk Cameron was a child actor on sitcoms in the ‘80s.

John: Growing Pains.

Craig: Became very, very religious, and then has dedicated his time since to a lot of evangelical Christianity, but also making these movies about the Antichrist. In those movies, he’s the hero who’s trying to stop everybody from believing in the Antichrist. That is what the Antichrist– that is the movie the Antichrist would be making to get the lens off of him.

John: Oh yeah.

Craig: It’s very clever, see? That said, Elon Musk is a pretty decent candidate.

John: Mr. Beast. Name is right there.

Craig: Wow.

John: Mr. Beast, he’s doing all this good in the world.

Craig: What a put.

John: He’s helping blind people see. He’s giving away all this money.

Craig: Mr. Beast.

John: He’s obviously the most generous person on Earth.

Craig: You’re right. It’s sort of like in Angel Heart, Robert De Niro plays the devil, and he introduces himself as Louis Cypher.

John: Yes, can’t figure that out.

Craig: Lucifer.

John: Wow. Mind is blown.

Craig: Jeez Louise, come on devil, do better.

John: All right, so if we’re starting with somebody who’s already powerful, then Elon Musk or some other billionaire feels like a good choice. Taylor Swift in terms of her influence, in terms of her ability to get the young people motivated to do terrible things like vote.

Craig: This is why I think people get real keyed up about the UN. If you know anything about the United Nations, you know that the one thing you never have to worry about is the United Nations doing anything-

John: Oh, 100%.

Craig: -in a particularly effective, quick–

John: People want to think of the UN as like a government. Does it govern anything? No.

Craig: It’s the biggest Zoom meeting where nothing happens ever. Yet, because it smells of one world government, yes, the person, whoever’s running the UN, the Secretary General of the UN is always looked at as a possibility.

Then I think you’re right, in the modern times what’s happened is kids through rap culture and through hip hop culture have swung over to this idea of the Illuminati. They’re super into the Illuminati, when in fact, I don’t think there is– there seems to be some really screwed up parties going on.

John: I think we should talk about it because I didn’t know that was happening.

Craig: You and I, I think, we are on the outs, man. We have never been invited to anything like that, nor did we– We’re actually quite sweet in that, I’m sure you were like–

John: I’ve been invited to board game nights.

Craig: What? Yes, when you read that, you were like, “What? Really?” Yes, we play D&D and I do my puzzles. It turns out that some bad things are happening. That said, they aren’t satanic. That’s the whole point, they’re just people being jerks, and a jerk is a very mild term for the things that they were doing. They were being criminals and violent criminals. That’s always been a thing. Maybe people would think like Sean Combs, but he’s in prison now.

John: Sort of by definition, you want the Antichrist to have a lot of sway and power in popular culture and he at the moment does not.

Craig: Who are we all cheering for?

John: Obviously a president feels like a good candidate for an Antichrist because they have so much power. They can literally do a lot of things. They can start wars.

Craig: Donald Trump, it’s too obvious. He’s too clumsy, he’s like Mr. Magoo.

John: Yes, so like Hillary Clinton would be a better choice.

Craig: Well, Bill Clinton, really. The thing is–

John: Oh, he’s charming, yes.

Craig: That’s the thing. The devil is charming. When these charming– Justin Trudeau, there’s so much weird pretty privilege that turns into-

John: Oh, sure.

Craig: -pretty paranoia where we are terrified of these good-looking men, more so than women, it seems. Good-looking men who get a lot of power, you’re like, “Wait a second.”

John: Ryan Reynolds.

Craig: Ryan Reynolds. By the way, Ryan, the thing is, if we are going to have Satan, and it is Ryan Reynolds–

John: Satan or Antichrist, it could be a manifestation. It could be the son of the devil.

Craig: If it were, you want them to be Canadian and you want a nice– A nice Canadian Antichrist is going to be like, okay, it is one world and so we are going to– there are going to be more traffic lights and things. I’ve lived in Canada for a while now. We’re all going to drive the speed limit. We’re all going to drive like we have nowhere to go. This is my impression of a Vancouver driver. Just driving like I don’t need to get somewhere. That would be the worst of it. I think Ryan actually would be okay if he was in charge of the one world government. He does a really good job at the gin.

John: I think part of the challenge with the term Antichrist is that we think of it as being just like a polar opposite of Jesus Christ. Therefore it would have to be like, not humble, but like boasty and caring for only the rich and all this stuff. We can envision that, but it doesn’t actually– it’s unattractive. It doesn’t lead to power in any good way.

Craig: No. No. I wonder if Ryan’s going to hear this and just go, “What? I was just on the show.”

John: “I was just on the show.”

Craig: “I don’t need this. No.” Ryan Reynolds is not the Antichrist.

John: He’s not the Antichrist.

Craig: No, he’s not the Antichrist.

John: It would be, if you were the devil–

Craig: You would want to look like Ryan Reynolds.

John: Most men wouldn’t be upset with you.

Craig: I also want to look like Ryan. I don’t want to be the Antichrist. I just want to be able to do sit-ups.

John: Thanks, Craig.

Craig: Thank you, John.

Links:

• Rosemary’s Baby – Screenplay
• The Exorcist – Screenplay
• The Omen – Screenplay
• Gifted by Simon Rich
• Say Nothing
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
• John August on Threads, Instagram, Twitter and Mastodon
• Outro by Matthew Chilelli (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: Well. My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to episode 665 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, we often talk about characters needing agency, but what does that look like on the page? We’ll explore agency on the scene level and in the script overall. Then it’s listener questions on sign language, screenwriting while blind, and credits when something is written for television, but then goes theatrical.

In our bonus segment for premium members, Disneyland. Craig, I just went to Disneyland for the first time in many, many years. I want to talk about Disneyland and our experience of theme parks as folks who create entertainment for those giant corporations.

Craig: My wife loves Disneyland.

John: But I’m guessing you don’t so much.

Craig: I’m not against it.

John: I’m not against it either.

Craig: I like Disney World, but it’s so far away and I’m never going to Florida again. So I guess I should probably get back into Disneyland.

John: Mike and I are not Disney adults, but we went as adults on election day to avoid all the anxiety of election time.

Craig: How’d that work out?

John: It was actually a very good distraction for the period of time that we were at Disneyland. Then we just did not open up any social media on the phone. Then we got home and eventually we had to break the seal and the bottom fell out of the world.

Maybe we’ll start with that. Remember back in 2016, we actually did a bonus episode of Scriptnotes the day after the election saying the title was Everything Will Be Okay but I was genuinely freaked out then. I was also really upset this time, but not as astonished, I guess.

Craig: First, let’s try and find some vague silver lining here even though a lot of people have very good reason to be concerned. This was eight years ago and we said everything will be okay. Everything’s not okay but the world didn’t end.

John: Did not end.

Craig: So that’s something. That’s a data point. Things definitely didn’t go great. This time it doesn’t feel good again. We’re going to have to see what happens. The only weird psychological difference for me this time was A, I already knew what it was like to feel this. It wasn’t a new feeling.

And B, and this might feel counterintuitive, the first time it seemed like everybody just made a really crazy mistake. People were just goofing around and mistakenly elected a guy. This time, no, they fully chose. They fully chose. This is the country we live in. This is the choice they made, and now we live with it. It’s not going to be great, and who knows?

John: The who knows is a big factor here because it’s as we talked about on our last episode, the uncertainty and the anxiety that comes with uncertainty is big. In that episode, we were talking about waiting on a decision for a thing and the situation of knowing that we have x number of years ahead of us of this stuff and that it’s going to be remembering how exhausting 2016 through 2020 was and just getting through that. Yet we know we got through it.

We also know that people throughout history have gotten through things. A thing that I’ve talked about on the show before is that the Great Big Book of Horrible Things, which is this book I read every couple of years which recounts the hundred greatest losses of life over the course of human history. It sounds so depressing, but what you learn about when you look at those terrible events in history is yes, but we still got here. For all the suffering that happened in the moment, humanity did pull through.

Craig: I think it’s unlikely that we will vaporize. The other, I wouldn’t call this hope or silver lining as much as notably pragmatic, is that now everyone is prepared. We take care of the people that we love. We look out for people that aren’t living in States where the laws are good, and we take action to help the people we need to help as best we can. And we do whatever we can. Acknowledging that there are limitations to what we can do until such time as this democracy chooses otherwise. That’s the best we can do. Yes, 2016 to 2020 was exhausting. There was also this insane pandemic. He didn’t cause that pandemic as far as we know.

John: Here’s the thing is that there’s going to be a bunch of unexpected surprises logged our way. You want to have people in those positions who can best deal with those things. I don’t feel like we’re going to have a highly staffed, competent government to do those things and that is a concern for me. For example, I’m concerned about the safety of the AI systems that are being developed. I don’t feel like this is a group of decision-makers who are particularly well-suited for the task.

Craig: They don’t seem particularly well suited for any task. I don’t know how that will end up, but I’m very focused on a couple of realities. The most important of which is, I must be aware of the things that are within my control. I know I can vote, I know I can donate money, I know I can talk to people, but I also know that there are some things I cannot influence whatsoever. I am not able to influence legislation about AI. No.

John: I’m not able to influence this man’s relationship with Putin, which I think is incredibly alarming, but not. We talked last week about the circle of concern and circle of control, and that they don’t overlap very much. Yet what I have found very helpful in these days after this election result was to make a list of the things I’m actually worried about. Actually, just chart them, because sometimes it’s just as a amorphous blob but when you actually list them down, you’re like, “This is a long list, but I can see them.”

For each one of them, is there anything I can control or effect about this? In most cases, a lot of cases, no, but in some cases yes. For example, I’m really alarmed about the damage that can be done to our US healthcare system under this person. But the actual steps I’m going to take is I can make sure I got my flu shot, I got my COVID booster, make sure I’m up to date on other vaccinations. I can get extra copies of the prescription medicines that I actually need. I can have those. My daughter can get plan B which lasts for four years. There are some things like that you can do.

I’m really concerned about the economy just blowing up. An individual can save money, they can also just think about, “What are the plans you could take if things got bad. What are the roommate situations? What are the moving home situations? What are the things you could do?” Because at least that’s something you can think about that’s under your control versus these uncontrollable issues.

Craig: If you extend that too far, you end up a prepper. You have to find the balance, which is difficult but trying to reengage the neocortex and kick the lizard brain back a little bit is valuable. It does help put things in context and it does give you at least a sense that you’re not just running around in circles screaming. That’s pretty much about the best you can do.

John: The other thing you can remind yourself is that it’s okay to feel grief and upset and outrage, but it’s also okay to feel joy and happy. You don’t have to live inside a horror movie.

Craig: It’s actually critical. I was talking about this with my older kid, how living a joyous life is the best revenge. We will have to do things to try and make sure that we can live a joyous life, including choosing where we live. If it seems to me over the course of time, if I look around and I’m like, “Oh dear, this is sliding towards something horrible, even here in California,” I’ll leave. I will. I’ve always felt like you got to keep one eye on reality.

Now, generally, I’ve never actually thought about that as an American, really. I’ve never thought, “Oh, would I ever have to leave?” I don’t believe I would ever have to leave here because I don’t really think that there is an America. I think there are two Americas. I think there are in a cold civil wars, how I would call it. It’s not a shooting war, but it’s a cold civil war. There’s a really good article in Wired. I guess I’ll make it one of my cool things about California and how California, despite everyone else’s screaming and gnashing of teeth, is just dragging everybody toward the future.

It’s what we do but the other thing that isn’t within my control and that I’ve absolutely exercised is even though I had a very diminished footprint on social media, I’ve turned it off entirely. Because I think at this point, it is fair to say nobody knows what the hell they’re talking about. Everybody is under the delusion that they can influence other people. They can’t. They are simply talking to each other and reverberating. I am totally with you, John, that the most important thing is that we don’t let any person steal our joy. Even in the midst of other people’s suffering, we do what we can to help them.

John: You and I are in the business of hopefully making joy or hopefully we’re making entertainment. It feels so trivial to be doing that in time when things could be– Things aren’t awful right now. But they could get awful. How are you going to continue to work? I do remember in 2016, I was writing the second of the Arlo Finch books, which is the best of the Arlo Finch books. It actually was a terrific privilege to just be able to disappear into that work at that time. So I would say, yes, all of the stress outside stressors can be a negative impact on your work, but they can also invite you into your work to focus on those and create meaning in them.

Craig: We’re in post-production. I gathered everyone together and I don’t presume what people’s politics are. I don’t talk to them in any way about, oh, everyone here hates what happened. I don’t presume that but what I did say was I imagine that there are quite a few feelings right now. We talked through what options were for people. Then I just reminded them that making shows like the one we make, it’s one of the last things that Americans seem to enjoy doing together, are watching sporting events, watching certain television shows, going to certain movies. Everybody’s happy to just do that together. There’s not much left. We don’t watch the same news, we don’t live in the same states, we don’t believe the same things, we don’t listen to the same music.

It’s all over the place. Then there are these moments where we’re all like the way it used to be, where everybody just does things together and we’re something that people can do together. It matters. It actually matters. We’re not making vaccines, we know that. We’re not curing cancer. But it’s actually significant.

John: It feels like a natural segue into our main topic today, which is on agency. Back in episode 627, Aline was here and she and I were talking about this term agentic, which is related to main character energy. People describing themselves as wanted to be agentic.

Craig: I hate that word so much.

John: You were gone for that episode. Here’s what I do respect about it. It’s about taking the reins of your destiny to do things the way you want to do them. It’s being the protagonist in your story. It can relate to that grind in hustle culture, but also about taking risks socially and professionally and not being afraid to take space and demand attention, which are generally noble goals. Sometimes we have this instinct to hide back in the corner when we shouldn’t do that.

It’s about taking that step outside of yourself and saying, “What should this person who is me do in this situation to achieve those goals?” Let’s now turn this back to the actual work that we do, which is our characters and our stories. How do we think about agency and what does agency really mean for them? Craig, what’s your definition of agency? What does agency mean for a character and a story?

Craig: I always think of it as giving a character qualities that allows them to change the plot. Basically they can make choices that change the plot.

John: Absolutely. They have autonomy. They have the ability to make choices themselves. They’re self-driven rather than be directed by others. They’re not on rails that they really have to do a thing.

Craig: And there are choices to make.

John: There are choices to make. Absolutely, and that they’re making those choices with intentionality. There’s a reason why they’re making this choice versus that choice. Sometimes they can make the wrong choices, but they still had the ability to make that choice. I think that last point is so crucial that there’s the possibility of effectiveness. It’s plausible that the choices could have an impact on their situation and in a meta-level, change the story.

Craig: Sometimes when people write stories, they’ll have a character make a choice because they, the writer, need them to make that choice to make stuff work. We can feel it every time. That’s where you’ll start to hear, “We’re not sure this character has agency because they just made a choice for no reason. It’s not particularly consistent with what we know about them or how they’ve lived before. They’re just doing it and it worked out well for your plot.” That’s not ideal. Then we don’t really feel the illusion of a real person there, because, of course, it is all an illusion.

John: Absolutely. I think the Inside Out movies do a great job with a sense of characters who are making choices that are having a direct impact on the story overall. In both movies, Joy has a goal. In trying to achieve her goal, she’s creating the plot of the story and her misguided assumptions are changing what’s happening there. You see that reflected in the real world too, in terms of the real-world character who’s trying to do things that we can understand why she’s trying to do them, even though they’re the wrong choices she’s making.

Craig: We, as we write, have to basically be all of the emotions of our character. We are joy and we’re anger and we’re sadness and anxiety. We’re all those things. We just have to figure out in these moments which one of those things is going to be driving the character.

There are some characters that play as purely logical, very rational. They are almost never the hero because we are not interested in investing our emotions in somebody who is not driven by their emotions.

Spock is a great side character. In the team that’s breaking into, the Russian intelligence building, there’s always one character who has no emotions and is just incredibly dry and matter-of-fact, but that’s never your hero. Your hero has to get angry, your hero has to be scared, your hero has to have worries, and your hero has to love something.

John: Those emotions that we need to be able to see. We need to find ways to externalize these internal stakes so we can actually see what they’re doing. We need to believe that they are informing the choices that they make, that they’re actually contributing to, that the actions that we’re seeing them take, that next line of dialog comes out of what is underneath the surface there that we believe exists.

Craig: Choices are difficult. If it’s an easy choice, it’s not a choice.

John: You brought up the idea of like, we mostly hear about agency when we get the note. It feels like the character lacks agency. Let’s translate that. What is an executive really saying when they’re giving you that note?

Craig: Usually that everybody else in the story is laying out for that character what needs to be done and that character picks one of the options that they’ve laid out, or the character is stuck. Someone says, “We’ve got to go rescue this person. They’re here. We’ve got to do this and this.” You’re like, “Okay. I’m going.” Then really what you’re left with as a character is, “How well do I aim a gun?” That’s not agency. That’s just skill, which is cheap. You start to feel like there isn’t a person there who is in charge of their life. They’re just an NPC.

John: I can envision two different scenarios where you might hear the agency note. They’re different situations. There’s the, it feels like this person is giving these choices and they’re just doing this thing, but they’re on autopilot, and it’s almost like they’ve been assigned a mission. Like, you’re going to do these things in this order, and this is how you’re going to do it. That feels like a lack of agency. That feels like a lack of choice.

You also see characters who, because of the situation you’ve put them in, like it’s a depressed young mother in a small town who can’t get out of her thing. It’s like, she feels like she doesn’t have agency. I’ve not created a situation where that person can actually make a choice that can influence their life. Those are different things and require very different solutions.

Craig: We used to hear passive. That was really what we, then somebody came up with agency and our business loves a buzzword.

John: At the end of the day, our business loves a buzzword.

Craig: The business of it all loves a buzzword or buzzphrase. Agency took over from passive but it’s similar. It is similar. There’s nothing wrong to be clear with a character who you define as somebody who is trapped because they have no agency. And then they are forced by your plot hand to start to make difficult choices, which forces them to experience what it means to have agency. 40-year-old Virgin, there’s no agency there. He’s just going through life on autopilot and then he is forced to try and do stuff.

John: I think what’s comparing that like, here’s the mission you’ve been assigned versus kicking you out of your comfort zone. The work the writer needs to do is so very different. The passive character lacks agency because they have no choice put before them. Fundamentally your story is different. You need to find a reason why you’re telling this one-time story of this character who’s changed and has to undertake this quest to do a thing versus the “you’ve been assigned this mission.”

That’s the carpentry job that you and I are sometimes hired to do is like, “How do I get these beats to happen in a way where our character is actually making the choices to do these things?” That’s why Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible, he gets the self-destructing message, but then he’s making his– charting his own course.

Craig: This is our version of magicians forcing cards. They give you the impression that you have agency, that you get to pick a card, any card. That is what we’re doing too. You do not get to pick any card. This character actually doesn’t have agency. They don’t exist. But our job is to make it seem like they do.

John: A thing I’ve said often talking about character wants and motivations is the hero’s allowed to drive wherever they want to drive. We’re building the roads. Yes, you can drive anywhere you want. These are the roads you got. We are laying out the roads and it feels natural because there have to be roads, and so we built the roads for them.

Craig: It’s a weird job that we do.

John: It’s a very weird job.

Craig: It’s very strange.

John: Talking about the note about character slack agency, I think sometimes it’s a mismatch of character and story. You’ve created a character who doesn’t have the tools or expertise for this really interesting plot. You may have just picked the wrong hero for this plot or the wrong plot for this hero. And the gears don’t match, and so therefore the engine doesn’t work right.

Craig: None of my skills, abilities, desires, none of them have anything to do with the story that’s happening. The plot that we choose is designed specifically to test a certain human being who has certain limitations, needs, wants, or undiscovered strengths. If we don’t pick that plot for them, then it really doesn’t matter if we give them a choice because the choices don’t matter and it doesn’t feel like it’s purposeful.

John: The other problem I see sometimes is you have characters who feel like they are rats in a maze. It happens a lot in horror movies where they are just responding to the stimulus that’s being put there. Some of the very best horror movies, Alien is a great example of a scary movie that where the characters do have agency and are making choices and there are conflicts between characters because of the choices that they’re making. That is when it feels great. But when it’s just we have to get away from this madman and I can go through this door or through that door, that doesn’t really feel like agency.

Craig: No. That’s running. Now, usually, there is a character early on in horror films that has no agency on purpose who just gets chewed up. Poor woman swimming when the shark gets her. She has no agency. Usually, the first person that Jason or Freddy gets has no agency. That’s what NPCs are for, to demonstrate the formidable nature of the villain. Then our hero, they’re the ones who are like, and in horror movies, this does happen where you’re like, “Clearly plot armor has come into play.”

Plot armor exists specifically to protect characters who have agency. The reason we call plot armor is it’s not working well enough because the choices that they’re making in theory aren’t good enough to keep them alive based on the rules of what we know. You got to watch out for that one or else you just stop worrying about your characters.

John: Indeed. Let’s talk about what agency looks like on the page. In the course of a scene, how do you think about agency within a scene? You talked about it from your protagonist or from other characters in the scene. What does agency look like in a scene for you?

Craig: I always start with, what is the point of this scene? The point–

John: Your point as-

Craig: My point as the writer.

John: -as the writer.

Craig: The point is surely to change this character in some way, to express a need or want, or to fail. All of those things require the person to make choices. If they just walk outside and get walloped, it’s not interesting. They make a choice in every scene. No matter what, they must choose something. If they just walk outside and it’s like, “We’ve got to figure out how to get from here to here,” and there’s no choice, even if the choice is, “There’s only one way to get there, but it’s incredibly dangerous. Should we do it or not? We should do it.” I need to understand that choice and I need to know what the ramifications are of it.

John: They’re making a choice. They’re deciding to make a choice. They’re not being forced to make a choice. They’re deciding to make a choice. It’s plausible that the choice that they’re making is effective. You can believe that they think that that choice is effective.

Craig: That the choice is effective. It is also important to make sure that the choice is not irrevocable because if it is, then it doesn’t matter what they think. They can’t choose their way out of it. So running away is a great choice to always keep for your characters in whatever form running away would take, so that you know that you can back out of it. You don’t have to go through with it. Therefore when you do, it is either because of courage or folly. It’s a smart idea or it’s a bad idea, but the choice remains all the way.

John: Absolutely. If you’re designing your character as well, each different character would make us a different choice in that moment. Both in what they’re going to say and what they’re going to do, the choice that they’re making should reveal more about that character and more about why they are such a unique person in this situation but it has to be specific to who they are and what they’re doing.

Craig: You brought up the idea of arguing. Debating the choice is important. It underscores where each person is coming from. Arguing is a great instrument that we have, like sleigh of hand for magicians to create the illusion of agency because people are arguing for their points of view, which means they have a perspective that is individual and individuated from each other, which is also important. If everybody agrees, and everybody is like, it can either be A or B, and everybody votes B, we got a problem with the story.

John: I will agree. An argument or disagreement should reveal the differences, it should reveal power imbalances, it should reveal hidden things that are not being spoken about. If characters are disagreeing, it should be more than about A or B, it should really be about some other situation that’s behind the scenes.

Let’s talk about agency within a sequence. By this, I mean a collection of scenes that are driving towards one specific point. To me, even if you’re given a task, a mission of what to do, you want characters to have autonomy on how they do it. If we know that we need to blow up that bridge, great. If that’s the goal, fantastic, but let’s see our characters making the decisions about how to do that and then we as storytellers frustrate those decisions and force them to rethink their plans along the way.

Craig: Yes. There are also sequences that are defined by characters revealing, and this is a double negative, revealing that they really don’t have agency. Characters that are obsessive, that are losing the plot, so to speak, who convinced you they were being rational and then you realize they’re not. That’s a very uncomfortable feeling.

I love Star Trek: First Contact. That movie is great. A lot of it is basically lifted from Moby-Dick. Captain Ahab pretends he has agency. He makes you believe he has agency and then he exhibits this quality that we recognize in people, which is, okay now it’s a notable lack of agency. It’s not mistaken. It’s notable. They’re trying to hide it. That’s also fine. A lot of humans move through life without any real ability to shift the levers. They just keep doing what they do.

John: They keep pulling the slot machine and expecting the reward. Finally, let’s zoom all the way back out to a movie, an episode of that, a series, or the whole series in terms of what agency looks like in the course of those. Sometimes I’ve seen problems where it’s like, “You’ve made the wrong choices because you focused on characters who didn’t have agency or you had to make smart choices about who you were focusing on because of lack of agency. I was thinking about the movie Thirteen Lives, which focuses on the tie soccer team that’s trapped in the caves, the flooded caves. It’s important to see their perspective. Yet those characters, once they’re trapped, they have very little agency.

Craig: Correct. They’re trapped.

John: Exactly. Once we’re there and we have the means to get them out, then seeing that their decision making process about how they’re going to do it makes a lot of sense. They’re basically like Baby Jessica did down the well. It’s a story about them, but they’re not actually the central characters.

Craig: There are situations where we have an expectation that there won’t be agency. Let’s say for instance, you live in the Soviet Union and someone calls you and says, “We need you to do what the government is telling you to do.” You’re like, “Guess I’m filing that report.” Then the character’s expression of agency is underlined as some startling act that then has to be encouraged somehow, or else you, again take it away.

Or you have a story where you imply to somebody that they have agency and then you behave in a way that undermines them completely because only you deserved agency, not them. That’s also fun. Those arcs go across all the episodes or the whole movie, and you will find at the end of things, seasons or movies that you find out who really gets to choose and who doesn’t.

John: Looking at TV series, Lost is like– Let me talk about what you’re looking for overall. The audience has characters and wants to see those heroes accomplish a thing. You really can’t talk about agency without some goal or larger purpose. In Lost, it’s that you want those characters to get off the island. Severance of series you and I both like is a lot about agency and its characters deliberately severing their agency.

Craig: Then trying to get it back.

John: Exactly. We want them as an audience to be able to get that back and figure out just how to reconnect it. In Big Fish, we want to see the father and the son reconcile. They both have quite a lot of agency in trying to do that. But the mismatch of how they’re going about trying to do it is the frustration and ultimately hopefully the success of their story.

Craig: Every romance involves people who have a choice and we just keep waiting for them to make the choice and want them to make. If they just made it, there wouldn’t be a good story.

Then the question is, why aren’t you making the choice we want you to make? You got to give them a really good reason to not make the choice that you want them to make. It has to be compelling. Otherwise, you end up with a situation where you think you’ve given these characters agency and people who read your script will say it just seemed like they were not getting together for no good reason other than you needing to keep them apart until page 98. Now you’ve put your finger on a problem, you need to give them a reason.

John: Yes. Its tough. Let’s wrap up this agency conversation with, I’m trying to think if there’s any good general takeaways. Agency is one of those telescoping things. You see it on the very small scale. You see it on the very large scale. It’s not just for our heroes. We’ve mostly been talking about our protagonist.

Craig: Oh yes. The villains must have it.

John: Villains must have it. Yes, if you do a freeze frame and you’re looking at that third guard over there–

Craig: NPC.

John: NPC, we won’t care. Supporting characters too, we need to believe that they’re there for reasons beyond just the plot and to help out the protagonist.

Craig: Anybody that you want to foreground, needs to feel like they are not dancing on your string. If we can see the strings, it’s over.

John: I think you particularly notice that if a character who has been supporting character is allowed to drive scenes by themselves, if they actually can be a POV character on things, that it doesn’t feel like they have any agency. It doesn’t feel like they can make independent decisions. Oh shit, something’s wrong there.

Craig: You don’t want to follow what should be a day player. You have a scene between your hero and your villain are facing off at a diner. You don’t want to spend time with the waiter in the kitchen for any reason because they don’t have agency. They will be making no choices that impact the plot whatsoever.

John: I will never write this movie, so I’m fine to talk about it on the air. I’ve always wanted to do a romcom that was set inside the movie world of The Spy Who Loved Me. What I love about The Spy Who Loved Me is they’re inside this giant tanker ship, and we see all these other henchmen who are working for —

Craig: So many henchmen.

John: So many henchmen and I just want those henchmen to fall in love. I want to see their story, and I want basically a Rosencrantz and Guild’s turn in there. That’s a question of agency. They have no agency when it comes to doing their bosses deeds, or they have a lot of agency in terms of falling in love.

Craig: Mike Myers did this joke in Austin Powers where a henchman is killed, and then you just leave to go to his family, and they get the phone call to figure out what to do with that dad. It’s great and it’s funny because the notion that that person’s a real human being is hysterical to us because we just know they’re not. They’re just people dying in the background so that our heroes and villains can finally get to each other. It is amazing how we compartmentalize these things. We watch human beings literally murdered and we don’t feel their humanity whatsoever. None.

John: But if our guy get’s like, a cut on the arm, “Oh, no. Indiana Jones, you’re hurt.”

Craig: What will happen? This is important. Meanwhile, there’s guys in the background just dying. That’s Kevin Smith’s thing in Clerks, that Luke Skywalker is a war criminal because all the people on the Death Star were just doing their jobs.

John: Absolutely. They’re maintenance.

Craig: Literally. They don’t even know what the Death Star does. They certainly don’t know that it’s called the Death Star. Who would take that gig?

John: Let’s answer some listener questions. We’ll start with Seb in London.

Drew: Seb writes, I’m writing a pilot script where one of my characters is deaf and communicates through BSL. There are times when one other character in a group communicates with them through BSL, similarly to Sam and Henry in The Last of Us. How do I convey this when writing the script? Is it as simple as one line of action in the very first scene to give the reader the information, or do I have to preface every line of dialogue that’s signed?

Craig: Do not preface every line of dialogue.

John: No, that will be exhausting.

Craig: You can do a little indication early. I think, I’m pretty sure for that script, I just put that stuff in italics.

John: I have it in one of my scripts for a main character who’s deaf. The first time where it’s introduced, Garrett, who’s deaf, signs to Leyhill, parenthesis, we will always subtitle this so you know that it’s there. I boldface those lines just because it was a little easier to spot because there’s other languages that were sometimes in italics. To me, it’s important that I always show what that character is signing, even if other characters are translating the scene because there can be a difference in discrepancy there. I don’t just have the character who’s talking and doing the interpreting. I want to make sure that it’s actually clear that this person specifically had lines.

Craig: Sam would have dialogue.

John: Sam has dialogue in there.

Craig: It’s just in italics. We would understand he would be signing. By the way, that is how Keyvan understood what to perform. It was a little easier, I think, for us because so many of those scenes were really just between two brothers. It was quite clear how that conversation would go. But I think for the purposes of a page, even if you have 12 characters, 3 are deaf and 9 are not, just indicate how you’re doing it. Stick to some consistent method, whether it’s bolding or italicizing.

My personal opinion is don’t put too much garnish on the dialogue because you start to almost put something between you and that character. You don’t want to feel any difference there. Then step back and let the script be the script.

John: At a certain point, I remember I was listening to a podcast when they were talking about CODAs or how they did all the sign language in CODA. There’s a stage called glossing. Glossing, it’s specifically how are you going to sign that line because it’s not a one-to-one transition at all. That’s like when we had Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo talking about the Japanese in Shogun. You want the people who can really figure out exactly the best way for that character to express that.

Craig: That’s exactly how we did it. It’s not enough even to have a translator because as Justin and Rachel said, translators just translate, then you need somebody to understand the craft. So we had somebody whose job is to really understand from a literary point of view what was the context of this line, what’s the intention, what does it mean? Now let me figure out how that should be signed in a way that matches the intent here. Then the translator is really there just to facilitate communication between the filmmakers and the actors.

John: Absolutely. This thing that Seb is writing, if this gets produced, you would be working with the director, the actors, and some other person in there to help make sure that what is being signed accurately reflects what the intention is there. Let’s move on to Oren’s question.

Drew: Oren writes, my name is Oren, and I’m a blind scriptwriter living in Ireland. As a new writer who requires a screen reader to navigate programs on my computer, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to find a script-writing program or application that is accessible with industry-standard screen readers.

In case you don’t know, a screen reader is a text-to-voice software application used by blind or vision-impaired people, which will read aloud any information, including text, button controls, menu ribbons, form controls, edit boxes, et cetera.

I’ve tested most script writing software, including Fade In, Arc Studio, Celtx, and Final Draft. Ironically, I would say Final Draft is the most accessible so far, and by accessible, I mean about 2% of the application is usable for the screen reader.

Craig: That is definitely stretching the meaning of the word accessible.

Drew: I understand that you created your own screenwriting software called Highlands, John. However, as I work on Windows and your product seems to be only available for Mac, I can’t try it out. I would even consider purchasing a cheap Mac just to run your software if I knew it was accessible with Mac’s built in software VoiceOver.

Would you consider talking briefly about this accessibility issue on your podcast as it might help kick start a conversation with developers and persuade them to look more seriously at this problem? A lot of these screenwriting software applications claim to be the industry standard, but I fail to see how they can claim that right if they’re not making products that are inclusive for all.

John: Ryan Knighton has been on the show a couple times. He’s a blind screenwriter and a friend of mine. He had been using Final Draft on this Toshiba laptop for many, many years, and then it stopped working with Final Draft. He was in a panic situation so he came to us. Highland fortunately works really well for him. He first tried it on his iPhone to make sure the voice over worked. He had to learn how voice over worked with it. He now does it on his Mac. He wrote us this really lovely message about he’s spent his first year on a room writing entirely in Highland. One of the nice things about Highland is because it’s only an Apple ecosystem, it just actually works with all the Apple stuff, and so it can actually tie into all the stuff.

Craig: Because Apple’s already got a framework for how to be accessible for people who are blind.

John: It’s not like we created a special version for blind writers. We just did it properly and have proper labels on all the controls so he can hear what’s there. He will text me occasionally saying, “How do I do this one thing? How do I see what page number this is on?” It’s like, “We’ll fix that.”

Craig: We’ll figure that out. I think, Ken Testman, who makes Fade In listens to the show. I’m pretty sure that the way he wrote it is native for Mac.

John: It’s not.

Craig: Oh, it’s not.

John: That’s how he gets it to put on the PC too, because it’s it goes through Adobe Air. That’s the challenge. The web-based ones, in theory, should be relatively accessible because there are–

Craig: They’re agnostic?

John: It’s agnostic. What’s challenged is inside the browser window that these things are working. It’s like, can the reader actually figure out everything that’s inside there? But there is accessibility stuff for the web that should work. It’s a question of could Arc Studio or the other ones or Celtx, could they do better? Probably they should.

Craig: Let’s put this out there in the world and see if it’s something that these folks can do. He’s absolutely right. He could get, I guess, a “cheap” Mac.

John: Get a cheap Mac or iPad now because we work on that.

Craig: That’s the other thing. There may be something that is cost effective. It is a bummer to have to buy an entire computer just because the one piece of software that takes advantage of this stuff only works on that platform.

John: My guess is that Warren probably is using an iPhone because from every blind person I’ve spoken with they tend to go towards the Apple ecosystem when they can.

Craig: Because it works.

John: It works for them.

Craig: Then he could theoretically be working on iOS in Highland. That’s a possibility.

John: We’ll send him a code to the beta and see if it helps him out.

Craig: Sweet.

John: Cool. Last question here is from Dan.

Drew: I’ve been fascinated by Disney’s decision to turn the Moana TV series into a feature length movie. Do you know how writing credits would get determined in this situation? Assuming there was some writer’s room for the TV series, how do they decide who gets the screenplay writing credit, and how does this impact royalties?

John: Oh, boy.

Craig: What a spaghetti pile of trouble.

John: Let’s talk about this from a couple different levels. Writing credit is one thing. Let’s just talk about why you make the decision to originally do it as a series and make us a movie. I think it’s because this started in the pandemic, and they’re, like, “Oh, we need to make series for Disney Plus. We’ll do Moana.” Then it probably turned out– It was going to be really good and really expensive. They were, “We can make so much more money theatrically.”

Craig: If we make fewer episodes, like one big episode, and put it in theaters, it’ll– Because the animation’s expensive.

John: So in terms of credit, I will tell you that there’s other stuff behind the scenes, which is, you’re going to start seeing some teleplay body credits on theatrical movies, and it will drive me crazy. Craig is already shaking his head.

Craig: Jesus.

John: It’s because these things were contracted under TV contracts.

Craig: This is where I feel for our credits department because they are tasked with codifying a system that is routinely rocked by the insane things that happen in the industry. The employers have no concern whatsoever about it. Their whole thing is, “We hired you under a WGA deal. That was our responsibility. You guys handle credits. See ya. Just let us know what to put on the screen.” Then it’s up to the WGA to hash through this.

That is a very, very difficult question. If you have, let’s say, eight episodes and then you turn to another writer and you’re like, “Take all eight episodes. We’re hiring you to make a movie out of these. Pull stuff from all of them or none of them, whatever. Make a movie.” They’re all participating writers but they weren’t under the feature thing. How do you consider the contributions? It’s a mess and my heart goes out to the arbiters and the pre-arbiters who will have to deal with this. But that is what we do at the Writer’s Guild. We handle our own credits. It’s the best of the worst systems possible.

John: 100%. The answer is a lot of internal discussion and figuring out what is the best way to apply the rules as written to situations that are new.

Craig: I’ll say, I would rather that, I would rather deal with this rat’s nest than be like, say, another union in our town that’s just one person pick a name, that’s who did it. No, it isn’t. That’s not right, but that’s how they do it. Hint. It’s not SAG.

John: No.

Craig: It’s not IA.

John: Those IA credits is like “Cool. Which gaffer gets credit for this?”

Craig: Many gaffers.

John: Many gaffers.

Craig: Multiple gaffers.

John: All right, it’s time for one cool things. I have two, one cool things I want. First is a Netflix documentary by RJ Cutler on Martha Stewart called Martha. Some backstory here. Back when Dana Fox was my assistant, she and I would watch the original Martha Stewart show, the one-hour highly produced version almost every day. It was so good and so specifically Martha’s taste. You could tell she loved doing it and that she had absolute control over every little thing. Well, she went to prison for lying to the feds.

Craig: What a world we live in.

John: Then did a season of The Apprentice, and then did this talk show aversion, which you could tell she hated. I spoke to people who were guests on her show and she hated doing it. She really hated it.

Craig: Really?

John: Yes. In the documentary, she’s also clear she hates it. Anyway, this documentary is really delightful if you enjoy Martha Stewart. If you don’t like Martha Stewart, you might still find it fascinating.

Craig: You might still actually like it.

John: Because she is such a fascinating character because she’s very blunt and she has self-awareness, but not necessarily insight. You see-

Craig: It’s so weird.

John: – that she’s talking about these things like, well, you don’t understand that that’s not how any other person would respond to this situation.

Craig: Right. Well, she’s special.

John: She is special.

Craig: She’s special.

John: She had a very distant father who loved her very much, but loved her on very certain conditions. That tracks.

Craig: Definitely tracks.

John: I really recommend seeing this if, at all, interested in Martha Stewart on what she’s done. My other, it’s a good thing, it’s a one cool thing, is the replacement ear pads we got for our headphones. We use the very classic headphones that everybody uses, which is the Sony MDR-7506s, which are these great headphones. The covers are this pleather thing that just flakes away and it just leaves detritus everywhere.

Craig: It feels like the kind of thing where later, when we’re dead, they’ll pull us out of the ground to measure how much of the pleather was absorbed into our bones. Like, “Why did they both die on the same day under circumstances that are not really–“

John: Pleather.

Craig: It was the pleather. It’s just inhaling pleather flakes. What will we do when the podcast population is decimated by pleather flakes? We will all be happy.

John: Our new replacement pads for these headphones, but the headphones, they’re going to last forever, but the new pads have a mesh coating, which is not going to–

Craig: They’re very lovely.

John: We have two other small, tiny one cool things, which are two new babies born into the John August ecosystem. Stuart Friedel, our former Scriptnotes producer, welcomed his second child. Very excited for new baby on that front.

Craig: Weirdly, his second child was born and then it said, “Two weeks earlier.”

John: The Stuart special right there.

Craig: His child was born at two weeks of age, bizarrely.

John: That’s crazy.

Craig: Incredible.

John: Chad Creasey, who is also one of my former assistants who have been on the show also welcomed new baby. I love babies.

Craig: I do too and their world will be good and they will never know some things.

John: 100%.

Craig: They just won’t know.

John: They won’t know.

Craig: They won’t know. Lucky.

Well, I mentioned earlier an article in WIRED about California and setting the pace and we’ll dig that link up. There’s another WIRED article that I’m obsessed with right now. The title of it is the kind of title that generally I’m like, “Hungh.” The Quantum Geometry That Exists Outside of Space and Time. Now, usually, I go, “Ehh” because I’m like, “Either this is going to be some oversimplification bad science article like most of them are, or this will be impenetrable.”

There’s very little middle ground. This article actually appeared in Quantum Magazine and it has been, I guess, repurposed for WIRED and it’s outstanding. It does a great job of explaining what a big deal it is for how the mathematicians and physicists who think about the underpinnings of reality have started to reimagine it. It turns out that what was going on was we were stuck in a model. The model was all about what happens when collisions occur. The only way to figure it out was just to grind out like, “Here’s–“ oh my God, I think it was Feynman came up with the method, but it was the best we had.

Then through this combination of scientists, they’ve figured out like, “Oh no, no, this is a vastly simpler way to start to model how this works.” They reference it. They’re like, “It’s literally you could teach it to a fifth grader.” Which kind of makes sense. That when you really get down to it, what’s underneath, reality tends to weirdly be simple, like how weird is it that energy is mass times the speed of light squared? There’s three letters in that equation. What we keep finding when you really dig, dig, dig, dig, dig is it’s actually simple which is, of course, because we’re in a simulation, obviously.

Drew: No.

Craig: Of course, we are. We’re figuring it out right now. There’s no problem. It’s fine. Don’t let that upset you. Of course, it’s a simulation, but we’re figuring out how it works and we’re getting better at it, which I think is amazing.

John: It reminds me of you’ll see these formulas for weird things that don’t seem like they have anything to do with normal geometry and Pi is in there or E is in there.

Craig: Pi is a perfect example. Why does that keep showing up? Why would that be how circles work? Then when you look at it, you’re like, “Well, this totally makes sense.” They find that they can layer paths on polyhedrons in very simple ways to explain so much of what’s going on.

Now, I’m simplifying this because we don’t have the time for me to read this whole thing, but I would say if you are even a B-plus science student, and if you’re a B and lower, I’ll probably skip this one, but if you’re a B-plus science student–

Drew: You keep pointing at me when you say B or lower.

Craig: I don’t know how you were in school with this. I don’t know. See, I nailed it. B or lower.

John: He went to drama school.

Craig: Aww. Well, this isn’t for you. You take physics for poets.

John: Maybe have your wife explain it to you.

Craig: Yes. Have your wife explain this to you. Even if you have moderate scientific interest and capacity, this article really is mind-blowing and a great little, almost, like many science stories are, an exciting hunt with an awesome conclusion.

John: Oh, I love that. Very nice. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, edited by Matthew Chilelli. Outro this week is by Nick Moore. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That is also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find the transcripts and sign up for a weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts and hoodies. They’re all great. You’ll find them at Cotton Bureau.

You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments. A reminder that we have a live show on December 6th. I thought we were sold out, but apparently, we still have some VIP tickets left. If you don’t have, come to that.

Craig: VIP tickets?

John: VIP tickets.

Craig: What do they get?

John: You get cool first-row things. What else?

Drew: You get a drink ticket, so free drink and you get to stick around for an after party where you get to meet John and Craig and me, and maybe some other guests.

Craig: I like that you slipped in you.

Drew: I’m important.

Craig: You’re like, “This is what’s going to move those VIP tickets, folks.” I agree with you. I think a lot of these people have already seen us. Megana is basically a celebrity.

John: If Megana is back, we’ll bring her too.

Craig: Ooh. Yes. Let’s bring Megana. Everybody. People love– When you graduate to Megana status, you too will be–

John: It’ll be a different, yes.

Craig: It’ll be a thing.

John: We had some great cast we got lined up.

Craig: Yes. We always do. Who will we be benefiting this time for this show?

John: This is Hollywood HEART. Hollywood HEART is a fantastic charity that helps kids who otherwise couldn’t go to summer camp, go to a special summer camp.

Craig: We’re doing what we can do to spread some joy and make things better.

John: That’s all we can do.

Craig: That’s all we can do. Craig, thank you so much.

John: Thank you, John.

[Bonus Segment]

John: So Craig, as I mentioned on the pre-show or the early part of the show, whatever you want to call the intro, we went to Disneyland, which I had not been to for five or six years. Since pre-pandemic. It was good. It was a good distraction for this and it was already on our– I’ve talked about like Mike and I have this list of 24 for 24. We made a list of 24 things we wanted to do in 2024.

Craig: God, you guys are organized.

John: Going to Disneyland was one of them.

Craig: It was one of them.

John: Scratched that off the list.

Craig: Take that right off. My wife is a big fan of Disneyland. We have an old college friend of ours named Andrew. He’s a Disney adult. I wouldn’t say that Melissa’s a Disney adult, but she’s a Disney aficionado and she and Andrew will go, oh, probably three times a year. She goes quite a lot and she loves it. I haven’t been in quite some time.

John: Have you been there without kids?

Craig: I don’t know if I– maybe. Yes. One time. I do remember this very specifically. There was one time Melissa and I went with a couple of friends of ours, another husband and wife. It was four of us. We went to Disneyland, we did adult Disneyland. We made a reservation to eat dinner at the Blue Bayou. Melissa got food poisoning. We had to leave early. I will tell you this about my wife. She can hold on to not throwing up longer than anyone in the world who needs to throw up. That ride is not short. It’s like an hour. We drove, she just sat there clenching her jaw and trying to not throw up for an hour. Succeeded. Stepped out of the car and barfed.

John: Oh God.

Craig: It was like she was just waiting the whole time. Me, I’m like, “Pull over right now.” That, I think, may have been the last time.

John: Not a good memory there.

Craig: No.

John: No.

Craig: No, but a fun one because it’s funny now. I’m telling you, it’s an amazing thing to see somebody sit there for an hour. The second they open the car, they’re like, “Oh, good. Finally.” Blah. I’m like, “How did she do that?”

John: Incredible.

Craig: Oh my God. The willpower on this woman.

John: Part of the reason we wanted to go is we’d not been there since the whole Star Wars land opened up. Man, they did a great job with the Star Wars land.

Craig: See, I haven’t been there.

John: That Imagineering is fantastic. Rise to the Resistance is a great well-constructed narrative story in there, which is fantastic.

Craig: The showcase ride is on the Millennium Falcon or something?

John: There is a Millennium Falcon ride as well, which I didn’t think was quite as good. The full Millennium Falcon there is incredibly impressive. I took some photo there, which you should. There’s a ride that goes there, which I didn’t think was actually as good. It’s a little bit motion simulator kind of, I don’t really care.

Craig: Sure. We’ve done that before.

John: There’s some really good surprises in Rise to the Resistance, you get the Storm Troopers, you get like surly like Imperial Guard or First Order. Disney people being mean to you is just like a such a nice-

Craig: That’s hot.

John: -change.

Craig: That’s pretty hot.

John: Absolutely. I know you always like the empire and sort of the–

Craig: That’s my love language is park employees abusing me. I love that.

John: Really enjoyed that. It’s also just nice to see the attention to detail where we got our Bontu garden wraps, our veggie wraps at the little shop there. I was tapping to pay, but they even changed the font on the little card reader was like the Star Wars font.

Craig: Oh, the Star Wars font.

John: It was all tracked.

Craig: Well, they’ve always been great with the attention to detail-thing. That’s their bread and butter. I should go. I haven’t seen Star Wars land. Also Disneyland’s little shop borne in spots, but there are some things that are nice to see just for old-time’s sake.

John: Yes, 100%. You go through Frontierland, it’s like, “I don’t really care,” but I’ll get– Sure.

Craig: Sure. Every time Melissa goes, she and Andrew will do the Haunted Mansion I think every time. You could recite the Haunted Mansion at this point.

John: I was sad that Small World, which is my sort of Haunted Mansion. I just loved Small World for sure no good reason. It was not open the day that we went there.

Craig: Oh darn.

John: Oh darn.

Craig: Worst ride in the park.

John: Then over in California Adventure, which they’ve also done a good job sort of, it wasn’t terrific when they opened it up and they’ve done a good job recognizing their mistakes and fixing them. I loved Tower of Terror and I was actually attached to do a Tower of Terror movie at Disney, which didn’t end up happening. I have deep affection for it, but I would say the risk they did for Guardians of the Galaxy, again, the Imagineers did go through and really found clever small things. Like if you’re standing in line and reading little signs like on that sink, it’s like spinal fluid must be washed off. They’re finding all this stuff. They really do find all this stuff.

Craig: I would never ever go on Tower of Terror because I do not like the feeling of falling at all. I hate it. I just don’t understand it. I don’t understand how you find joy. I’m glad you did.

John: Yes. I did like it. There were some frustrations and so there’s no comment form I can fill out. So I’m going to put this on the podcast.

Craig: Disney will be alerted.

John: Disney will be alerted. We were in the line for the Guardians ride and they only had one of the elevators open. We basically got stuck in a place where we hadn’t moved for 20 minutes and we’re like, “No, no, no. We need to leave.” It’s actually really hard to get out of a line at Disney, especially in this one. We try to walk our way back and they’re like, “Oh, no, no. You have to walk all the way to the front and then they can let you out.”

Craig: You have to constantly say, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m not cutting the line. I’m not cutting. I’m just trying to leave”?

John: Yes.

Craig: That’s terrible.

John: That’s not good design.

Craig: No, that’s not great.

John: Because people do need to leave people.

Craig: Sometimes they need to throw up.

John: Yes, exactly. If Melissa were there, she’d have to wait until-

Craig: She’s capable of it. She can do these things.

John: The other thing I would say is that there were situations where maybe they were training people or something, but we were waiting in line for five minutes to get a soda and they were like seven people at the counter–

Craig: That’s training.

John: That’s training. I felt like if I were the Disney executive, like Disney Park executive there, I would’ve had some strong words where whoever was letting guests wait around for five minutes.

Craig: Well, you went there on a Tuesday in the middle of the day.

John: That’s true.

Craig: That seems like that’s when they’re like, “Uuh.” They’re not training anyone on a Saturday.

John: The last thing I’ll say is, I fell down a little bit of a rabbit hole with– at California Adventure we went to where the Starbucks is and it’s this cafe thing. I could see there was branded stuff around it. Like, “What is this for?” It’s for the Silver Lake Sisters. It’s just like this weird imaginary story of this trio of sisters who were big singers in Los Angeles in the ‘20s who were inspired by Disney’s version of the Three Little Pigs. It was like this whole ouroboros like, and it was a fun, just brand essential because like no one would ever know or care. It felt like the way–

Craig: What a weird misfire. [chuckles]

John: Not actually misfire. I get it.

Craig: Really? It worked?

John: It kind of worked for me because I actually– I googled the fair like, “What is the deal with the Silver Lake Sisters? Were they a real thing?”

Craig: It would work if you’re a guy in your 50s doing adult Disney and like–

John: Who was supposed to write the Tower of Terror movie which they were actually– they tied into the Tower of Terror politics.

Craig: The Silver Lake Sisters.

John: Yes. They performed at the Hollywood Tower Hotel.

Craig: Got it. Inspired by Disney’s Three Little Pigs.

John: Inspired by Chateau Vermont.

Craig: It’s a big mess there.

John: It’s a big mess, but anyway, it made me think about sort of the stuff that we do in terms of storytelling. It’s about finding the story that will carry you through for two hours. The storytelling that Imagineers need to do is like, how do we make the experience of this place that you’re in rewarding for the time you’re there but feel like it actually has a bigger footprint than that? I think that’s a cool job.

Craig: Yes. It is a cool job. I never forgot when I was taking my kids to Disneyland or Disney World, because I took them there too. I never forgot how I felt when I went to Disney World as a kid, which was awe. I felt awe. I also remember how big it was because I was small. I think they do a really good job of that. There are things that I notice as an adult that I certainly didn’t notice as a kid. I didn’t notice the air vents in the ceiling of It’s a Small World.

John: Yes. Now you can’t help but see it. It’s just a black drop ceiling vents.

Craig: The first time I went on Pirates of the Caribbean, I honestly believed I was outside at night in the world. Now I’m like, that ceiling is not that far up. It really isn’t. Nice job painting it. You see everything because you’re grown and the scales have been lifted from your eyes. But the Imagineers do get how to create this for children. They know their audience. That’s why I actually love the whole adult Disneyland thing because it’s like we just love it now. We forgive it. It’s air vents.

John: I would say the Marvel Avengers area, it’s fine. The Cars Land, which I don’t like cars at all as a concept.

Craig: I’ve done the Cars Land, I believe.

John: Incredibly well-designed.

Craig: Yes, really well-designed. Because they know that’s where the kids are going. The experience of seeing the animated car people is really weird. It’s like the whole car thing is actually– I have so many questions. Do they have sex? Do they like–

John: Why does Mater have teeth?

Craig: Why does he have teeth? Why do cars race like cars even though they’re people and there are cars in the stands? I guess it’s like people watching people race, which we do, but with crashing. I have so many issues.

John: Drew, you were saying at lunch that the Marvel and Star Wars things were about the lifestyle of keeping people in the Disney ecosystem.

Drew: I heard that Disney basically has– They had for a long time too, a system that was like cradle-to-grave for women of like this is how you interact with the Disney ecosystem. When you’re a baby, it’s Mickey diapers through every phase of a woman’s life.

John: The Tinkerbell, the princesses.

Drew: You have your princess phase, you have all that stuff, through becoming a mother, and then, theoretically, the phase resets.

Craig: Resets.

Drew: That’s how you keep people in a loop. One of the reasons they bought Marvel and Star Wars was because they didn’t have that loop for boys.

Craig: Oh, that’s interesting.

John: Because it does make sense, then dads want to take their kids to see– to the Star Wars and all.

Craig: I get it. They’re like, we’ve mentally dominated half of the population. How do we mentally dominate the rest of them?

John: I did see a couple of folks who were clearly had been just married at Disney, but I also saw– one of my favorite things I saw was this group of 16 cousins. I know they’re all cousins because it was Cousins Trip 2024. On their back, they said, were they the Lopez or the Alvarado or Cousins by Choice? It was all checkmarked on the back of their shirt. I loved it.

Craig: The organization there is, coming from a family that was super isolated because everybody was in a feud with everybody, I’m always fascinated by the families with their matching shirts.

John: It was one or two women in the cousins who organized that whole thing. Of course.

Craig: Of course. Melissa’s family is pretty big. Melissa’s mother was the all-time organizer. She woke up in the morning and was like, “What can I be in charge of and how can I organize stuff?” Now that she’s gone and it’s sort of like– it was almost like everybody just went, “We’re not doing this anymore, right?” Yes. Because there were… There were so many events and they were fun and they were great and it’s actually sad, you need that bossy pants. You need bossy pants. You need bossy pants. To make you go have fun. You will have fun. But then you do.

John: Yes, absolutely. You need somebody to sort of take away some of your agency and you’re just making things. It’s like, no, this is what we’re going to do now. Full circle, folks. Craig, thank you for a fun episode.

Craig: Thank you, John. Thank you.

Links:

• Scriptnotes LIVE! December 6th at Dynasty Typewriter
• Even Under Trump, California (Yes, That Hellscape) Will Keep Moving the World Forward by James Fallows for WIRED
• The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History’s 100 Worst Atrocities by Matthew White
• And Yet It Moves by Ken White
• Martha on Netflix
• Replacement ear pads for Sony MDR-7506 headphones
• The Quantum Geometry That Exists Outside of Space and Time by Charlie Wood for WIRED
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
• John August on Threads, Instagram, Twitter and Mastodon
• Outro by Nick Moore (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, and is edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hello and welcome, my name is John August.

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to episode 660 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Now one thing I love about our podcast is that we actively solicit suggestions on topics from our listeners. Today’s episode exists entirely because of one email we got. Craig, would you mind reading this email?

Craig: I would not. It says:

“Could you do an entire episode on why Moneyball works? A strange disease I have is watching the same movie over and over again when it affects me, and lately, it’s Moneyball. My older son has been doing this too lately, which I’m either proud of or worried about, and he was the one who landed on Moneyball, a movie I don’t even think I saw in theaters. I would very much welcome an expert understanding of why that movie, which contains so few of the traditional elements of a movie, a B-plot love story, for example, is so effective.” Side note, I challenge the premise.

John, I think we should do this.

John: I think we should. I think this is a great suggestion from any listener, but when it comes from an accomplished journalist, a best-selling novelist, she wrote Fleishman is in Trouble. She also wrote the acclaimed adaptation, the limited series adaptations of Fleishman is in Trouble, who we had her on the show to talk about that, and this summer’s new bestseller, Long Island Compromise. We had to get her on the show. Welcome back to the program, Taffy Brodesser-Akner.

Taffy Brodesser-Akner: It’s so great to be here. Thank you for having me again.

Craig: I love this. We have a genius on. This is great. I get to argue with her about Moneyball, which is one of my favorite movies of all time, and–

Taffy: Is it?

Craig: Extra thank you, Taffy, because we get to talk about baseball on a podcast where 50% of the people on this podcast don’t talk– They don’t even discriminate between various blank balls, basketball, football, baseball, it’s just sports ball to John, and I’m a baseball fanatic. I love Moneyball. I, too, have watched it over and over and over. I think it’s brilliant for so many reasons, and I do think it has all of the traditional elements of a movie, so, huh.

John: Wow.

Taffy: On the surface, the traditional–

Craig: We’ll get into it.

Taffy: Let’s go for it, let’s go for it.

Craig: We’ll discuss.

John: I agree with both of you. I think we’ll try to find the happy middle, the dialectic between these two polar opposites here. This joins your tradition of deep dives. We’ve done it on movies before, so we’ve talked about The Little Mermaid, we’ve talked about Frozen, we’ve talked about Die Hard.

Taffy: Clueless was one of my favorite deep dives.

John: Oh my God, Clueless, incredible. We’re going to do this. Also in our bonus segment for premium members, I would like to talk about money, because, Taffy, your book, Long Island Compromise, is about the intersection of trauma and money. Moneyball is literally about calculating how much a person is worth, so I thought we would dig into our feelings about money and value and how we value ourselves as writers. Money for our bonus segment, premium members.

Taffy: So good.

Craig: Amazing.

John: All right, Craig, you and I have a little bit of housekeeping to do before we can get on with Taffy here.

Craig: All right.

John: About two weeks from now, we are going to be in Austin for the Austin Film Festival. You and I are doing a live Scriptnotes show. I’m doing a 25th-anniversary screening of Go.

Craig: Oh, nice.

John: Yeah. I see that you are on at least one or two other panels. You’re doing the– I can’t believe they drafted you into doing the Pitch Finale. I don’t know how they–

Craig: You know what, I’m there. What else? It’s either I’m drinking while judging the Pitch Finale party, or I’m drinking and not judging the Pitch Finale party. I will say the thing about the– listen, I don’t care about pitches. I don’t think they make any sense. This is like, I don’t know why they keep picking me. They all know this. But it is fun because it’s in a bar, it’s packed, it’s kind of exciting. I feel like Simon Cowell, obviously that’s my part. I play Simon Cowell on the show, and we get to make somebody very, very happy, but the crowd is like really into it. That part I think is fun.

John: That part is fun. Drew will be there. Megana will be there. Craig, I don’t think that Megana’s going to come as well.

Craig: I am now levitating.

John: Chris who does our Inneresting Newsletter will be there as well. They’re there to help support Scriptnotes, but also because we’re launching the new version of Highland and so we’re going to throw a party for that. If you’re in Austin and whether you have your badge or don’t have your badge and you’d like to join us for this launch party for Highland, that’ll be on Thursday afternoon at some point. You need to click the link on the show notes and tell us that you want to come and then we’ll send you the details about that.

It should be a good fun time to see the new version of Highland that everybody else will be using. Let us get to the marquee topic here, Moneyball. We will talk about the development and probably at the end of this because there’s actually a really interesting development history that we can talk through. Let’s talk about the movie that we’re watching on the screen. It’s based on a book by Michael Lewis, screenplay by Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin.

Craig: Who?

John: Two hacks, they’ve never done anything else.

Craig: Can you imagine? That’s already screenwriting Voltron. That’s incredible.

Taffy: Right.

John: It is incredible. Story credit by Stan Chervin. Drew has found this undated 166-page draft. It has omitteds in it that makes it feel like it’s a production draft, but it’s not actually a very close representation of what we see on screen right now. Drew at some point made a hop in to tell us like, “This is a thing that was different in this draft as written versus the movie that we see.” Really for our purposes, we’re going to talk about the movie that we experienced.

If you were to download it as we’ve recently watched it, this is the movie we’re seeing. This is why it works on screen the way it works. Let’s get to the premise here because Taffy, you said that this quote contains so few of the traditional elements of the movie, like a B-plot love story, yet it’s so effective. What has been your experience and exposure to Moneyball and what prompted you to actually ask this question?

Taffy: Like I said in my email, my son has started watching Moneyball over and over. My son recites full scenes from Moneyball.

Craig: Yeah, he does.

Taffy: There are a couple of words that you could say that will trigger an entire scene. He is excellent at it. I’m not allowed to disseminate video of it, but I have video of it. In case you see me, I will show it to you.

Craig: Amazing.

John: I think you sent me a clip. We’re not going to post it–

Taffy: Did I?

John: Yes, I think you did.

Taffy: We started watching it a lot together. I have been a sports reporter, but before you get excited, Craig, I do not understand baseball on a level that I have had to, in ESPN Magazine stories, write, “please insert sports stuff here,” which is how it works sometimes if you’re bad. I think of baseball as the language Mandarin. You could learn it, but if you didn’t learn it before you were 11, you will never be fluent at it.

Craig: You might be onto something there because I certainly did learn it before I was 11.

Taffy: See. And by the way, I therefore think that there is something very, very– like I watch Moneyball over and over. I can now recite it. I still don’t know how baseball work. I think one of the successful things about it is that unlike the movie, also about a thing I don’t understand, Rounders? I don’t understand. When I watch Rounders, I don’t understand what I’m supposed to think based on the hand of cards that’s presented to me. I don’t feel that I am missing anything.

I feel like maybe these luminaries who wrote it may be learned about baseball, but understood more from my point of view than theirs, that you don’t need to know anything about baseball.

Craig: I agree with you. I’m running through my mental inventory of Moneyball and it teaches you the things you need to know along the way. You get a basic sense, okay, Billy Beane is the GM. That means he’s deciding who to trade, who to engage, but he doesn’t own the team. Then you have a bunch of scouts whose job, everybody played baseball and they’re old guys and they’re supposed to find you new talent. Then there’s this kid who’s helping him figure out with statistics, how do we solve this problem we have, which is that our team sucks.

One of my favorite quotes of any movie is Billy Beane, as played by Brad Pitt, defines the problem the Oakland A’s are having. You don’t need to know anything about baseball to understand this. “The problem we’re trying to solve is that there are rich teams and there are poor teams. Then there’s 50 feet of crap and then there’s us. It’s an unfair game. If you try to think like the Yankees in here, you will lose to the Yankees out there.” Anyone can understand that. We are dealing with an underdog.

John: Let’s talk about digging into more of Taffy’s question. There are things that she is expecting to see in a movie like this that do not appear. Part of it, I think it’s also because the presentation of the movie is not what we might expect. It is shot almost like a documentary. It feels like a documentary at times. The camera’s very loose. There’s a lot of archival footage put in there. You feel like you’re watching things happen in front of the lens, but it’s not as presentational as we might expect from other movies.

Taffy: Can I just say also on that documentary note, we looked up all of the actors in this movie. Some of them are scouts and some of them are professional actors. The professional actors are not acting like professional actors.

Craig: They’re not.

Taffy: They’re acting like people who are in a documentary.

Craig: I’m so glad you said that.

Taffy: It’s amazing.

Craig: Because the person that I’m obsessed with the most, just on a tone point of view, is this actor named Ken Medlock who plays Grady. Grady is kind of the villain scout. He’s the guy who doesn’t want to hear about the idea– the basic premise of Moneyball is baseball’s been around for 100 years. It is imbued with tradition and old ways of thinking, the Oakland A’s are a poor team and they’re losing. This kid comes along from Yale and says, “There’s a better way of thinking about how to evaluate players.”

Grady represents the old guard who’s like, “You and Google boy– as he calls them– aren’t going to change baseball.” This guy, Ken Medlock, I was convinced was an actual baseball scout. He had baseball body, gym teacher face, and just the fluidity and realism of the way he portrayed that character. People don’t talk about a great character actor enough. Ken Medlock, you’re my one cool thing this week. I don’t care. Ken Medlock. So good.

Taffy: Is his name John Henry at the end who plays the owner of the Red Sox?

John: Arliss Howard plays him. Yes.

Taffy: Sorry, Arliss Howard plays John Henry.

Craig: The owner of the Boston Red Sox.

Taffy: The owner of the Boston Red Sox. He’s an actor, but he is acting like somebody I would have interviewed and is trying to figure out how to speak to somebody for the first time in front of a– it’s amazing.

Craig: It really is amazing.

Taffy: It’s like a third kind of movie, a thing that’s conveying itself as the thing we’re used to in a documentary from all these ESPN, 30 for 30 things, right?

Craig: Yes, this stiffness to it.

Taffy: So interesting.

Craig: Bennett Miller, who directed the film, also, a ton of credit there for just both the visual style and also keeping everything so wonderfully grittily grounded. You’re right, like an ESPN 30 for 30.

John: Well, let’s also talk about things you might expect to see in this movie. Let’s imagine that Michael Lewis’s book lands on your desk and like, okay, well, how do we adapt this book? How do we adapt this story? The very basics of the story is Billy Beane is the general manager of the Oakland A’s, has this team that is not winning, does not have the money to do what he needs to do. Ends up recruiting somebody on to help him figure out how to assemble a team in a much less expensive way that is the antithesis of how you’re supposed to be doing baseball.

We get this Michael Lewis book. The things we expect to see in a movie, like Taffy points out, is like, well, where is the B-story love interest? Where is the Brad Pitt love interest? You have Brad Pitt and he doesn’t kiss anybody in the whole movie. Now, Drew, the script that you gave us, there is a love interest in there. Talk to us about what’s different if we wanted to look at this script.

Drew: Yes, from the get-go, he has a girlfriend character who he’s bouncing things off of. A lot of those scenes get repurposed and given to Jonah Hill in the final thing. Yes, throughout, she pops up, they’ll have dinner and just little moments where he gets to talk to her and use her as a sounding board.

John: The movie is almost completely focused on his quest to make this team work under this new principle. Yet there are moments where we are able to hop off of this main ride and see some things who are not directly baseball. We have his daughter. We have Robin Wright who is his ex-wife. We had one scene with Robin Wright and Spike Jonze, who plays her husband, which is great fun.

Craig: Awesome.

John: They’re useful, but they’re not crucial. I think they’re just there to– well, let’s talk about why they’re there. Because almost this entire conversation is going to be about the main arc quest about this. Let’s talk about the little side quests we do with the daughter, with the ex-wife. Why they’re there and what function do they serve in this movie? Because you could have cut them out but they still feel crucial. Craig, I see you squinting like you couldn’t have cut them out.

Craig: I don’t think you should. There’s the right amount of them. To me, the story it’s a classic redemption tale. This character, Billy Beane, is a real person, obviously, was a first-round draft pick coming out of high school, I think, and was projected by scouts to be a star. And he was a complete flop. Ah-ha, scouts, flop, failure, and now he rolls himself into this front office gig, which is generally seen to be a bit like, “Well, you crapped out, so now this is what you can do instead.” His success and that’s what we’re invested in like, can he come back? Can he achieve?

Because in his mind, he’s a loser. His whole thing is, “I am a jinx and a loser. What I’m doing here, on the one hand, theoretically will work and it’s bold. On the other hand, simply because it’s me, it probably won’t work because I am a loser.” We need some stakes beyond whether or not the Oakland A’s succeed. We need to know that there are people at home that he is trying to also prove himself to, that he feels like a loser in context with. The most important one is his daughter.

It’s not like his daughter and his ex-wife are like, “If the Oakland A’s don’t win, then like we said, you’re a loser.” They do believe in him. That’s why it hurts more. He needs to show them, though. He needs to. Or else he goes home with his tail between his legs, again, a failure in the eyes of the people he wishes he could impress. The only people I think he’s trying to impress in this movie are his– really, the only person is his daughter, actually.

Taffy: I also think his daughter is there for a much more practical reason, which is that she is there to talk about his anxiety about being fired. Also, I want to say, I don’t know if this is even an okay thing to say. In a couple of those scenes, Brad Pitt is a different size and wearing a wig. It makes me wonder if he is returned–

John: These small things I never notice.

Taffy: -because there aren’t enough. I notice wigs all the time-

Craig: Oh, goodness.

Taffy: -but Brad Pitt, I was like, “What are those veins in his neck?” He’s bulking up for Troy 2 or whatever. He’s brought back in, and also, she’s a girl at a funny age where she could look like a child or a grown-up within a second.

I guess I think that a lot of this movie revolves around the idea that if you look at the movie in a certain way, Billy Beane is a villain who is just– he throws things. He is cruel to people underneath him. He’s a little bit abusive. He is doing something that actually puts a lot of people’s livelihoods in danger, but she is there to ask him, “Are you going to be fired?”

We have to see with him that the stakes are so, so high. He has another scene with Jonah Hill, with Peter Brand, where he says to Peter Brand, almost apropos of nothing like, “You went to Yale, this is your second job, you’re going to be fine. If I fail at this, I fail forever.” It’s like him against the world, but what is he doing? What about this world? I think the whole thing lands, and he’s saved by the one essential question of the movie, which is, what is the best way to love baseball? Is it to honor its traditions, or is it to innovate so that it becomes what it could be?

Craig: I love having this conversation. I’m fascinated, Taffy, by your view that there’s a slightly villainous aspect to him because I have a very different relationship with this character. My relationship with this character is– one of the reasons I love baseball is that it’s fairly scientific. I remember as a kid reading– I talked about it here on the show before, a book called the Microbe Hunters. There’s this old book written in the 1920s, but it basically catalogs seven or eight great scientists in history who tracked down the cause of disease and figured out a way to solve it.

Louis Pasteur, for instance. One of the things that keeps coming up over and over in these things is how much resistance each one of these people faced by the church, by commonly accepted… And the tension that I felt reading this was, there’s like this innate anger in watching somebody who is scientifically correct having to force their way past ignorance, doubt, fear, and superstition to prevail at great risk to themselves.

Watching this movie, that’s what I connect to. It’s like watching a story about Galileo or Copernicus trying to argue that, “No, the sun doesn’t revolve around the earth. The earth revolves around the sun, and I’m going to risk my life and limb to prove it because it’s correct.” I love that. I do. I love him for it, and I forgive him all of his tantrums and his stuff.

Taffy: I think that you’re right, and I think that that’s why it’s a great movie. I think his villainy is just viewed from all of these different parts. I do think he’s doing the work of innovators, and he’s very afraid. Also, there’s no winning for him. Even at the end when he wins, he didn’t win the last game of the season, so he gets to hate himself all over again. I think this is what I meant exactly when I said this doesn’t come along with the traditional, not just a love story. But with a certain kind of sympathy and a certain kind of like a dog, all of the things that you would have if we were showing you were such a great innovator but a really difficult personality.

It’s almost like it’s one of the freest movies I’ve ever seen because it just allows him to be in this story about this thing he was trying to do without– when I was learning how to write screenplays, I was told that if you have this difficult character, you should give him like a disability. The professor, I remember, always said, “Clubfoot.” I don’t know. That’s what he always said.

Craig: Worked for Shakespeare, I guess.

Taffy: Right. I felt like this was free from the constraints of that. That’s more what I mean when I say the protections around a traditional story are that he’s just allowed to do this. He’s allowed to fire people and send them home. He is allowed to have the hate of the people. Also Brad Pitt’s performance in this, his contempt for the people he’s talking to.

Craig: It’s so good.

Taffy: It’s so good.

Craig: “What is the problem? Enh. What is the problem? How can you solve it if you don’t know what it is?”

You’re absolutely right about everything you say. The counter really is just that there are elements that if– and I don’t know what the ordering was. I don’t know if Zaillian sat down and then Sorkin showed up, or Sorkin sat down and Zaillian showed up. It doesn’t matter if you have both those guys. The things that pop out when you look at the book and the story are, A, this guy was first-round draft pick and failed. That’s good character setup.

B, the Oakland A’s suffer this incredible challenge because they lose their star player. In general, they’re poor, and so the owners can never afford to keep the good players. They always leave for free agency. Then by applying this method, which no one believed in, the Oakland A’s go on to tie the record for most consecutive wins in a season by a team, and that is capped off by this insane game where they were up by an enormous amount.

It was in the bag, and then they almost blew it, and then the guy who wins it for them is the very guy that Billy Beane went out and pulled off the scrap heap even though he had unrepairable nerve damage and can’t throw, as Grady says. All of that stuff gives you really basic things. The only thing that would be missing there and then along it comes is what is the central relationship. Where is the love story?

The love story, to me, I would argue, is between Billy Beane and Peter Brand, that it’s Brad Pitt and it’s Jonah Hill. Because obviously it’s a buddy-buddy love story, but it is two guys who decide they’re going to go all in with each other and trust each other. The look when they pull off that trade for Rincón and Jonah Hill, the passion of it. You see these guys are in love with each other. They’re falling in love, and the whole thing will be on their shoulders.

To me, there are those romantic, basic storylines, and of course, the beautiful moment of Billy Beane to say, “Okay, we’re winning. I’ll show up at the 20th game. Oh God, I showed up and we immediately started to lose.” That’s the final climactic test of a character, all that stuff. I agree with you. There is all this beautiful freedom, and then you have all these great traditional elements that I think, had they not been there, this would have been a hard movie to write.

Taffy: Can I just say one more thing?

John: Please.

Taffy: I’m sorry. I agree with all that. The traditional stuff I was talking about was more like someone having sex with Brad Pitt.

Craig: Oh. Yeah, that’s pretty traditional.

Taffy: It makes me always think, by the way, which is why I love sports movies, that I really do believe you just have a freedom in these kinds of movies. I also want to say that I think that the love story– I love their relationship, but I think the love story is between Billy Beane and baseball. It is like-

Craig: Fair way to look at it.

Taffy: -it’s the only relationship that changes. He and Peter Brand are sort of like Butch and Sundance for the long haul. Billy goes from, is the best way to love baseball, to look at its statistics, or is it to just love it? He comes around to the best way I can love baseball is by trying to get to win this game. Anyway, you go on, sorry.

Craig: No, I think that’s a fair point. Look, what’s the line that people quote the most? “How can you not be romantic about baseball?” Baseball, which is, if you don’t love it the way I do, is one of the more boring sports to watch on television. Baseball, without question, empirically, factually, is the best sport to turn into a movie. There are so many great movies that have baseball at their center, and so few that have football or basketball. There are some, but you don’t have a field of dreams. You can just go down the list of incredible baseball movies and how much fun they are, all the way down to Bad News Bears. There’s no–

Taffy: What is it about baseball that does that?

Craig: Well, great question. Only a theory. Baseball is one of the few games where everything stops to let one person face off against one person, even though there’s a whole team. Baseball is the only sport that doesn’t have a clock. There’s no like– baseball is full of these traditions. It is pastoral. The fields are all different. There’s this sense that it was cobbled together out of America. I think most importantly, it’s the fact that there’s no clock.

The ability to stop and pause and feel anxiety is enormous. And only baseball has a home run. Everything else, a touchdown is how you score. You score touchdowns or you kick a field goal. In basketball, football in hoop. Hockey, puck in net. Soccer, put ball in goal. Baseball, you can run around the bases. You can steal home. Then there’s the home run, which is just everything stops. Everyone has a party. It’s just dramatic. Slow, but it’s wonderful. I love it.

Taffy: It also has a moment as opposed to moves. It has a moment.

Craig: Has a moment. When we get to the moment in this film where Scott Hatteberg gets to the plate and has a chance to win this game for them, it’s the same moment that you’ve seen in The Natural with Robert Redford. You see this over and over. Everything slows down. Time slows down. Bull Durham–

Taffy: Parenthood.

Craig: Every movie with baseball, there is a moment where everything gets slow and quiet. It’s just me and the hands squeezing on the bat. Everyone almost shoots it the same way and it works every frickin’ time. Because, you put it perfectly, baseball has space for moments and other sports don’t.

John: Yes, if you try to watch a football game or soccer game–

Craig: Match.

John: -you’re trying to follow the ball. You’re trying to follow, where’s the ball? Because that’s where the action is. Versus baseball, you’re looking at the people and what the people are doing. You can follow the action much more clearly and so can the camera, so can the audience, which is fantastic.

Let’s follow the ball in this story and take a look at how it unfolds on screen. We’re going to start with, the movie opens with Billy being listening to– not really listening to this disastrous game.

He’s frustrated. This is where we wonder if he’s a villain because he smashes the radio. He’s really upset. Then, seven minutes in, we get him explaining what the problem is and what he needs. This is a scene where he’s going to talk to the owner of the team. Let’s take a listen to this clip from seven minutes into Moneyball.

Billy: We’re not going to do better next year.

Steve: Why not?

Billy: Well, you know we’re being gutted. We’re losing Giambi, Damon, Isringhausen. Done deal. We’re in trouble.

Steve: You’ll find new guys. You found Jason, you found Damon.

Billy: I need more money, Steve.

Steve: Billy.

Billy: I need more money.

Steve: We don’t have any more money, Billy.

Billy: I can’t compete against $120 million with $38 million.

Steve: We’re not going to compete with these teams that have big budgets. We’re going to work within the constraints we have, and you’re going to get out and do the best job that you can recruiting new players. We’re not going to pay $17 million to players.

Billy: I’m not asking you for 10 or 20, 30 million dollars. I’m just asking for a bit of help. Just get me a little closer and I will get you that championship team. I mean, this is why I’m here. This is why you hired me. I got to ask you, what are we doing here-

Steve: Billy, I–

Billy: -if it’s not to win a championship?

Steve: I want to win just as much–

Billy: That’s my bar. My bar is here. My bar is to take this team to the championship.

Steve: Billy, we’re a small-market team, and you’re a small-market GM. I’m asking you to be okay not spending money that I don’t have. I’m asking you to take a deep breath, shake off the loss, get back in a room with your guys, and figure out how to find replacements for the guys we lost with the money that we do have.

Billy: I’m not leaving here. I can’t leave here with that.

Steve: What else can I help you with?

John: All right, such a great scene. You guys are talking about your experience with baseball and so you were making fun of me for sports ball and not knowing anything. Here’s what I will say. I had not seen this movie in the theaters, I don’t think. Until Taffy wrote in with the email, I was like, have I seen Moneyball? I watched Moneyball and it’s of course fantastic. What I found useful is I could see the analogies to the studio system that we’re used to working in this movie.

Billy Beane is the producer. He’s not the director. He’s not the coach. He’s not the one who’s directing all the action on the field. He’s the producer putting the whole thing together, but he’s not the studio head. Right now he’s talking to the studio boss saying like, “I need more money.” They’re like, “There’s no more money. You got to figure out with what you have.” He has to figure out like, “Okay, well, I don’t know how to do this. I’m explaining very clearly what I need, and I’m not getting what I need. What am I supposed to do?”

The scene we just played is essentially I want song. If this was Moana, this is How Far I’ll Go. This is I have this thing I need to do, and I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to need to find a way to win because I want this team to be a competitor at the highest level. I want to win.

Craig: You nailed it there, and I love your analogy of, because it’s dead right, this guy that he’s talking to is the studio chairman. He’s the producer. The director is the manager, and the actors are the players. He is saying, “You guys want me to, and I want to win.” He’s not even saying, “If I need more money to be able to do the job, you’re asking me to do so I can keep my job.” He’s saying, “I need more money so I can win.”

“I want to win,” and what this guy is telling him is,” I don’t have more money. You’re not getting more money.” I love just how stolid he is, “And hey, I’d love to win too, but also, it’s not actually that big of a–“ really, as long as our tickets sells and I profit, he’s not in it for the same reason Billy Beane is. That’s very, very clear. What a wonderful way of establishing where Billy is in the pecking order, what he wants, and what the problem is.

John: Yes, I agree with you, establishing what is the problem so that the hero can go about trying to solve the problem. So Billy Beane goes back to his scouts because he needs to find a replacement for the players that he’s lost. The scene in the movie is terrific with all these– a mix, I think, of real scouts and some actors in there playing scouts, and as we talked about, the documentary feel of this is fantastic.

Now, the script that Drew found actually has a scene that’s different that’s really, really good, and so I thought we might do a little play acting here, and let’s read through the scene that’s actually in the script for this thing. Craig, will you play Billy Beane?

Craig: Sure.

John: Taffy, can I have you play Grady? I’ll do Poat. I don’t know whoever Poat is. This, we are in the conference room with a team talking about how to put this together, and Billy Beane has lost his patience with his scouts.

Billy: What if we’ve been wrong this whole time about what ingredients manufacture a win? What if this whole time we thought it was the chicken that made the chicken soup taste good when really it was the onions that made the chicken soup taste good? Onions are a lot cheaper than chicken. You see what I’m saying?

Poat: I don’t have the first idea of what you’re saying.

Billy: We got to go start over. We got to go rethink this thing. We got to go look where others aren’t looking.

Grady: With all due respect, we’ve been doing this for a long time.

Billy: It doesn’t mean you’re doing it right. You watch nature docs? You know what happens to the runt of the litter? He dies. I’m open to any solution, as long as it’s not what the other guys are doing. Now, I’m going to Cleveland to poach an outfielder named Brandon Garcia.

John: All right, so this is a scene that’s not in the movie. At the end of this whole segment, we’re going to talk about sort of the development process of this, because this is a really weird situation. What I like about this is like, this is the feeling of the scene, but it’s not the actual words that are in the scene. You can see the scene like, oh, I get the shape of this. I get like what it is that he’s trying to do, but these words are not what we’re actually seeing on screen.

Craig: I think runt of the litter made it in, as I recall.

John: Yes.

Taffy: Runt of the litter did make it in, but it also feels like you’re doing a baseball movie and you’re writing it and you don’t know how much the person reading it knows about any of this. You just over-explain so that everyone’s on the same page and then you could take it out.

Craig: That’s a really good point. One of the things that they threaded beautifully on the page and then on the subsequent film is, they make sure that the way Billy is explaining things to these guys, and specifically the what is the problem scene, why I love that scene so much is, he’s explaining it to them, but not in a way that you would have to if you were with baseball people. He’s explaining a baseball thing to baseball people, but he explains it in a way where you go, ah, they haven’t considered doing it like this before and very specifically, he talks about how important it is to get on base.

What he says is, “I don’t care how people get on base,” because these guys do. All he care is how he gets on base. This is who we have to replace, Jason Giambi. This was his on-base percentage. We have to get three people who in the aggregate recreate Jason Giambi. That is a way of explaining things to baseball people where I go, oh, yes, whereas the chicken soup thing here feels a little bit like, oh, none of us know baseball, so let’s use a cooking analogy.

John: Yes. All right, so we zoom ahead and so he’s going to talk with the Cleveland Indians about doing a trade there. It’s in that room that he sees Jonah Hill’s character. He’s playing Peter Brand, who’s just a guy off in the background who would be a day player, except that Brad Pitt notices him and is like, “There’s something, people are listening to this kid for whatever reason.”

He goes and finds this kid in the bullpen and talks to him. There’s a scene which is like a first kind of an aggressive meet cute between them there. Then the real meat of the scene happens in a parking garage below. He’s just like, “Follow me down to the parking garage.” Let’s take a listen to that parking garage in which Peter Brand explains his theory of the case.

Peter: There is an epidemic failure within the game to understand what is really happening. This leads people who run major league baseball teams to misjudge their players and mismanage their teams. I apologize.

Billy: Go on.

Peter: Okay. People who run ball clubs, they think in terms of buying players. Your goal shouldn’t be to buy players. Your goal should be to buy wins. In order to buy wins, you need to buy runs. You’re trying to replace Johnny Damon. The Boston Red Sox see Johnny Damon and they see a star who’s worth $7.5 million a year. When I see Johnny Damon, what I see is an imperfect understanding of where runs come from. The guy’s got a great glove. He’s a decent leadoff hitter. He can steal bases, but is he worth the $7.5 million a year that the Boston Red Sox are paying him? No.

No. Baseball thinking is medieval. They are asking all the wrong questions. If I say it to anybody, I’m ostracized. I’m a leper. That’s why I’m cagey about this with you. That’s why I respect you, Mr. Beane. If you want full disclosure, I think it’s a good thing that you got Damon off of your payroll. I think it opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities.

John: Wow. I pulled that clip this morning and so I was watching it as I was playing. Now that I just listened to the audio, you realize that music cue comes in at just that moment and says like, aha, this is where we’re getting a resonance between what he wants and what I want, that the light bulb is starting to glow there.

Craig: We also start to shift to footage of Johnny Damon and what he does. Johnny Damon, it always hurts me in my heart a little bit because the Yankees eventually make the same mistake the Red Sox do with Johnny Damon, no offense to Johnny Damon, but everything that this character is saying here is correct. The most important part of this is baseball thinking is medieval. It’s hard for us now, if you are a baseball fan, to process how medieval it was all just this short time ago.

Spoiler alert, not only do the Oakland A’s and Billy Beane adopt this way of thinking, everyone does, and not just a little, an enormous amount. It hits its crescendo with a guy named Theo Epstein who becomes a very young Billy Beane-ish general manager of the Boston Red Sox. Boston Red Sox don’t, they’re not able to get Billy Beane. They end up with Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein applies all these principles and breaks the curse. The Boston Red Sox finally win the World Series after a gazillion years.

Then what does Theo Epstein do? He leaves Boston Red Sox and goes to the Chicago Cubs, the only team with a longer curse, and they win the World Series using all of this. The problem baseball deals with now is that maybe they’ve gone a little too far with this. They have a billion statistics now. It has become insane. Just a short time ago, what they had was a bunch of scouts going, “He’s got a good baseball body. He’s got good hands.”

John: Yes, it was like phrenology. Yes, it felt medieval. Now, I’m not pushing back, but I’d say like, growing up, I always heard about baseball stat. People were always obsessed with stats.

Taffy: That’s what I was going to say, that you could look in The New York Times and–

Craig: Sure, there’s a box score.

Taffy: Yes, and see what happened at every point in the game. I also just want to say, my birthday is on October 26th. I can’t tell you how many game three, four, five, like surprise dinners I’ve had with boyfriends that forced me to watch one of these games. It feels like it’s all statistics and that’s what every– people make snow angels in statistics. It’s hard for me to understand why this was such a big deal.

Craig: Here’s what statistics used to be. I, of course, collected baseball cards like every little boy baseball fan. On the back of the cards, there were statistics. A hitter has a batting average. That’s how frequently they get a hit. They have home runs, hits, stolen bases, runs batted in. Those are your five statistics.

Here are what you have now just for hitting: You have batting average on balls in play. You have isolated power, late-inning pressure situation, on-base plus slugging. You have slugging percentage, which wasn’t a thing back then at all. Pitches per plate appearance, runs created, weighted runs above average. The most important one, wins above replacement. They figured out how many wins you create above the league average of who you are at your position. There are weighted runs created plus. There are maybe, and pitching– don’t get me started, there are about 40 statistics that they have now, including things I literally don’t know what they mean, like skill, interactive, earned run average. The spreadsheets that are happening right now with these players is insane. It’s insane.

John: Now Craig, what I would say though, is the success of this movie is that we don’t need to know about any of those statistics, because the only thing that Jonah Hill is introducing is that we need to actually figure out how much they are worth. Because we, as people, understand money. It’s like we don’t have the money to do this thing, so how much money is this person worth? I think one of the things when we’ll get into the bonus segment too, but like the movie talks a little bit about assigning a value to a person and reducing them down to just their statistics and not think about them as human beings.

Craig: As people.

John: Yes.

Craig: I will say like the one thing that they did brilliantly here was, and this was an early day’s thing for this sort of stuff, sabermetrics is ultimately what it was called, is on-base percentage. Like I said, it used to be, how many hits do you get? How many walks do you get? How many home runs do you hit? How many hits do you hit? What he’s saying here, what Peter Brand says in that speech we just heard is, I see an imperfect understanding of where runs come. Your goal should be to buy wins, and in order to buy wins, you need to buy runs. What he boils it down to is, to get runs, you need people on base.

They have to reach base. The imperfect understanding of baseball was walks. It’s mind-blowing to think that this was revolutionary, but the big revolution at the time was saying, a guy who reaches first base by hitting singles, and a guy who reaches first base by walking a lot, are the same guy. We’re paying the singles hitter an enormous amount more. They boiled it down to just that one concept. So why do you want Jason’s little brother, Jeremy Giambi, because he gets on base? Why do you want David Justice, an old guy whose best days are behind him, gets on base? Scott Hatteberg, gets on base.

Taffy: Am I correct to think though, in baseball, that it’s more interesting to watch someone run to the base than to walk to the base?

Craig: Of course.

Taffy: Is that what it is? It’s that like betting changed this? It’s that it didn’t matter anymore if it was entertaining, it mattered what you were betting on?

Craig: The ultimate entertainment, I think, is winning. What fans want is winning.

Taffy: I feel that way.

Craig: You, as a Yankee fan, if a pitcher wants to fall apart and walk eight guys in a row, which means a bunch of guys are going to score just by being walked in, awesome. Getting on base is not as exciting as getting a hit, no question. Winning is the most exciting thing. That’s what sells out a stadium and sells out your season tickets for the next season.

John: And in baseball and other sports, if there’s a thing that is happening that is not entertaining, they will change the rules to make the more entertaining thing happen. That’s happened in baseball in the last few years, right, Craig? Where they’ve changed some of the things to speed up the play and just make-

Craig: They have.

John: -it a more interesting game.

Craig: By the way, after a century of refusing to. I just want to say, baseball has been the most rules-change-resistant sport there is. Over the last 10 years, I think they have made a few, not dramatic, but a few good rules changes. For so long, they refused to change anything. Whereas basketball is like, you know what, they love the three-point line. They love it in colleges, screw it. Let’s do it. Let’s put it in.

John: Brilliant. All right, so let’s get back to the actual movie that we’re watching on screen.

Taffy: Especially since it’s so sad that I’m not going to remember anything you said, but I understood it in the moment. So sad.

John: Getting back to the movie that we’re watching on screen. Billy Beane is implementing these changes over the resistance of his scouts. He’s making trades and changes to the lineup that his head coach hates, that everyone says is not going to work. I think according to movie logic, it doesn’t work. Luckily, the true story is that it does not work at the start. They’re not winning games. Everyone is coming down on him like this is a stupid idea and he’s doomed for failure until it starts to work.

Taffy: And they have this moment where the two of them have to really recommit to each other. Billy and Peter have to decide like, “Do we really believe in this?” That’s a very touching moment to me. I think that so many of the things we’re talking about are aided by music and showing something on the screen that is illustrating the thing that they’re saying. In that moment where they recommit to each other about it is the moment that I understand really what I’m watching.

Craig: We have to personify the resistance. The resistance was personified by this scout Grady. Grady gets himself fired by putting his hand on Billy. His very baseball-y kind of thing. Then we have a new villain. The new villain is Art Howe, the manager. Played brilliantly as always by the late greats Philip Seymour Hoffman. The problem now is, okay, I’m the producer of the movie. I’ve come up with a plan that might make this movie good with the tiny amount of money we have. The director isn’t going along with the plan. And I can’t set the lineup directly.

What I can do as a general manager though is start to trade guys that I don’t want playing to make the manager have to play the people I do want playing. This is the great tension and in the best part of it all is that in the end, you see Art Howe– by the way, this isn’t really how it worked in real life. They did not fight like this. Art Howe makes the fateful, wonderful decision when everything is on the line. They’re trying to make baseball history to send Scott Hatteberg to the plate, which is his commitment to being honorable and pursuing of truth rather than baseball medieval thinking.

John: Now, so one of the things that the story does do, they establish that Billy Beane does not watch the games. He does not want to listen to the games. He doesn’t want to have any direct interaction with the players. He doesn’t travel with them. There are moments along the way that he is actually becoming more involved in the day-to-day. He’s in the locker room more and talking with them. A scene I think really embodies this is his conversation with David Justice, who they’ve now recruited on-

Craig: So good.

John: -to play for them. This is a senior player, and they’re having tension. This is all happening at a batting practice. Let’s take a listen to this scene.

Billy: Had a few thoughts.

David: Yeah?

Billy: Yeah.

David: Can you teach me some things?

Billy: Excuse me?

David: I’ve never seen a GM talk to players like that, man.

Billy: You’ve never seen a GM who was a player.

David: Huh.

Billy: We got a problem, David?

David: Nah, It’s okay. I know your routine. It’s patter, it’s for effect, but it’s for them. All right? This shit ain’t for me.

Billy: Oh, you’re special?

David: You’re paying me seven million bucks a year, man, so, yes, maybe I am a little bit.

Billy: No, man, I ain’t paying you seven. Yankees are paying half your salary. That’s what the New York Yankees think of you. They’re paying you $3.5 million to play against them.

David: Where are you going with this, Billy?

Billy: David, you’re 37. How about you and I be honest about what each of us want out of this? I want to milk the last ounce of baseball you got in you. And you want to stay in the show. Let’s do that. Now, I’m not paying you for the player you used to be. I’m paying you for the player you are right now. You’re smart. You get what we’re trying to do here. Make an example for the younger guys. Be a leader. Can you do that?

David: All right, I got you.

Billy: We’re cool?

David: We’re cool.

Taffy: Villainy. This is such a mean scene. This is so mean.

Craig: It’s so wonderful you think that.

Taffy: I feel like his arc is like, yes, he keeps a distance from his players. There’s this point where he’s trying to give them a pep talk and it’s like an eight-word disaster. “You don’t look like a winning team, but you are one, so play like one,” is what he says. In things like that, I feel like we are being set up storytelling-wise. By the way, patter is such a showbiz word. I do not believe at all-

John: Don’t believe it.

Taffy: -anyone here [unintelligible 00:50:00] yes. I think we’re being set up for a guy who is trying his hardest to keep his distance and can’t do it without getting a little bit messy. That’s what the three-part runner about cutting players is, when he’s trying to show art and he keeps cutting players.

Again, on my 30 millionth viewing, I started to think, that’s actually pretty terrible. You are firing people and ruining their lives because you’re having an argument with this guy. It’s the same thing as a guy who throws his chair across the room. It’s like a display of something that hasn’t aged very well.

Craig: I shockingly have an entirely opposite point of view about this.

Taffy: Good good good.

Craig: One of the things about sports, and when you listen to fans discussing sports, they’re brutal. The fans are the meanest ever. A little bit like the way the audience out there on Twitter is the meanest about, we never talk about each other’s shows or movies the way people online just go, garbage, blah. People are brutal. There are entire, still functioning, listen to AM radio stations that are nothing but call-in shows for 30 to 50-year-old, 60-year-old men to yell about players sucking. There is a brutal reality to sports, which is winning is winning. Every athlete gets into it to win. It is a binary function. There’s winning and losing.

Billy’s job is to make them win. He’s not cutting those players to win an argument. He’s cutting those players because that’s their best chance to win, and there’s somebody in the way of their best chance to win. That’s the thing about sports where it gets super focused. This scene, to me, is not villainy. This is actually kindness, because when you start to lose it as a man, where you’re like I had this physical capacity as a man, and there’s a reason the scene is set where it is. It’s in the stadium, in the back area of the stadium inside, and David Justice, who was an amazing player, is in the batting cage crushing these pitches coming out of the pitching, the little machine, right?

He’s putting on this display of masculine power, and Billy is like, you need to graduate because you’re 37. If you’re hanging on to what that was, it’s leaving you. I’m telling you have to redefine the value of your masculinity, and your masculinity’s value is no longer physical prowess, it’s wisdom.

Taffy: It’s we’re all told that we can’t always play the children’s show, right? Is that what it is, the children’s game? That’s what it’s called?

Craig: Yes.

Taffy: I feel that the movie agrees with me that it’s villainy, which is why he gets the soda in the end. I think that you’re right. I also think that when he restores the soda after David Justice is like, why am I paying for my own soda? It is an admission of villainy.

Craig: I don’t know if it’s an admission of maybe imperfection, but I want to point out how fantastic the beginning of this scene is. This is where there’s this formalized romantic way of portraying men talking to each other, and Mamet is the king of it, right? Sorkin and Zalian both excellent at it. The beginning of this: I got a few thoughts. Yeah? Yeah. Teach me some things? Excuse me? Never seen a GM talk to players like that, man. You never seen a GM who was a player. We got a problem, David? Now, there’s so much being said there in this blah way. You got a few thoughts? Get out of here. Yes. You have no validity with me. Teach me some things.

He’s just going basically, dude, you suck. You’re not a player. Then Mr. Sensitive/Villain goes, yes, I was. David Justice goes, not like me. Not even close. What are you doing down here, man? Then this thing about the money. I’m sorry, he’s right. The Yankees were paying $3.5 million dollars for David Justice to play against them. It’s hard truth and that’s why at the end, I think David Justice says we’re cool because he knows it’s true.

Taffy: Right, he can’t win.

John: My previous analogy, like this is actually a story about show business. You can map everything into the equivalent show business thing. I think about Amy Pascal running Sony Pictures while this is happening and she was the owner of everything and she had to make this decision. The three of us have all been the person in charge on set or we’ve had to make tough calls. I remember going to the first AD saying like, “I never want to see that extra again.” Just like, “Make them disappear.” That’s villainy but it’s also like this is standing in the way of what I need to do my job.

This conversation is really, it’s having the conversation with your lead actor, the top of the ticket. I need you to be a leader here. We had Ryan Reynolds on the show. We were talking about that, about when you’re number one on the call sheet, I need you to do a certain thing. Act like the number one on the ticket and be the example here. Having that honest conversation is just so crucial. I can’t imagine the back half of this movie working without this scene.

Taffy: I agree. I will say that the second AD having the conversation with the background person is the villainy. You were incredibly passive in that as you were supposed to be, right? You were supposed to not, you’re not supposed to fire them yourself. That’s the thing is that all the more so, this is him doing it in a way that we understand, but is brutal.

Craig: Yeah, and effective.

Taffy: Very effective. It pokes at every masculine little point. He just punctures everything.

Craig: But then builds them back. Yes, that’s the thing. I think the reason it works is he’s not saying you shouldn’t play or you should quit. What he’s saying is the implication of the movie was David Justice shows up and he’s just like, this team sucks. I’m just going to take my money, go out there, dog it, not try that hard, whatever. If the stuff works great, if it doesn’t, I don’t care, right?

Then he’s coming and saying, no, no. Actually, you do have a role here that could matter. It won’t be by occasionally hitting a home run. It’s going to be by teaching, mentoring, and leading by example. That’s your new value. You can feel in the scene– who’s the actor that played? He did such a good job.

Taffy: He did such a good job.

Craig: Playing David Justice. You can see him actually like, yes, actually, there is a competitive spirit in me that resented the fact that I have to give up and not care. Billy’s given him a reason to play.

Taffy: It’s so interesting because maybe the whole runner about cutting people is about how the most direct conversation is actually the kindest. That you don’t sit there and you don’t sit– maybe the movie is trying to explain that to you, this scene.

John: Yes. Brad Pitt’s character explains to Jonah Hill, this is how you cut a person. We actually see Jonah Hill having to do it and how to have the grown-up conversation about how to be the second AD who’s telling the extra that I don’t ever want to see on set that goodbye, you’re being paid for the day and see ya without a reason, why you were so annoying in that shot.

Craig: Or over apologizing or dragging it out or making it, there is– and Billy Bean’s character is brutally direct. You can also see from that very beginning scene that you cited, John, the problem that he has is also brutal. There’s no way to win if you pussyfoot around it. You have to just go straight at it. When you see the, my favorite scenes in the movie are the two scenes where he’s with the scouts because he’s so brutally direct. It’s wonderful. Watching again, that greatest character actor.

Taffy: My son Ezra is available to act that out for you right now.

Craig: Ezra may just do it all day long. One day I’ll be Billy, he’ll be Grady, then he’ll be– and then we can do the Fabio.

Taffy: Oh, he’ll do both sides.

John: Who’s Fabio?

Craig: He’s a shortstop.

Taffy: Who’s Fabio? I think he’s a shortstop.

Craig: He’s a shortstop. Yes, no, you got to go carry the one. There’s so many great little moments in there that are incredible. He walks a lot. Do I care if it’s a hit or a walk? Then he points, you do not. Do you want me to talk when I point at you, yes.

Taffy: When you point at him.

Craig: So many great things in those scenes.

Taffy: Yes, oh my God.

Craig: Anyway, this movie, and can we just talk for a second about the beautiful thing at the end? This is why I love baseball. They have this incredible moment where it does all work. Billy seemingly is able to overcome the curse of him even being near the team and they win and they win because of Scott Hatterberg and a home run. It’s tremendous, but they don’t win. They don’t, ultimately they don’t win the World Series. There’s this lovely, it’s a metaphor, Stone Hill over in the Plains-

Taffy: I know what it is.

Craig: -of this guy in their farm system who hits a ball and because he’s a big guy and he’s slow, he thinks it could be a double. He rounds first, gets scared that he’s going to get thrown out, tries to get back to first, falls. Then it turns out he hit a home run.

This is true. The Billy Bean didn’t think he did it and he did. He changed baseball permanently. By the way, the Oakland A’s winning 20 games in a row that season, that is insane. That is bigger than winning the World Series. It’s so special. The tragedy, of course, is that the Oakland A’s are no longer in existence as of right now.

Taffy: Last week.

Craig: That’s correct. The Oakland A’s played their last games as the Oakland A’s. The entire franchise is leaving Oakland and is being reconstituted as the Las Vegas Aces. This is not the first time this has happened in baseball. This has happened a lot in baseball and in all sports. There’s a reason that the basketball team in Utah is called the Utah Jazz. It’s because they used to be in New Orleans.

John: Because jazz is what I associate with Utah, yes.

Craig: Of course, the Los Angeles Lakers, because of all the lakes in Los Angeles.

Taffy: Oh, I didn’t know that.

Craig: Yes. These teams come from elsewhere and keep the names sometimes. In this case, they do not. The A’s became the Aces. It’s clever but it’s sad. The Oakland couldn’t survive. They just couldn’t survive. One of the reasons, ironically, they couldn’t survive is because everybody else picked up on it. The big market teams that do have a better fan base and do sell more tickets and can spend more money, they all follow the Billy Bean model. All of them.

John: Let’s now close up this discussion and talk about Brad Pitt’s character. Billy Bean and the decision he has to make at the end. The end of the movie finds him going to Boston. He’s talking with John Henry, the owner of the Boston Red Sox. It’s a really interesting scene. It’s raining. There are umbrellas. They’re in this semi-outdoor space. We’re going to hear some rain in the background here. This is that discussion and ultimately a job offer for Billy Bean.

John Henry: Steve told me he’s offering you a new contract.

Billy: Yes.

John Henry: Why did you return my call?

Billy: Because it’s the Red Sox. Because I believe science might offer an answer to the curse of the Bambino because I hear you hired Bill James.

John Henry: Yes. Why someone took so long to hire that guy is beyond me.

Billy: Baseball hates him.

John Henry: Baseball can hate him, you know. One of the great things about money is that it buys a lot of things. One of which is the luxury to disregard what baseball likes, doesn’t like, what baseball thinks, doesn’t think.

Billy: Sounds nice. Well. I was grateful for the call.

John Henry: You were grateful?

Billy: Yes.

John Henry: For 41 million, you built a playoff team. You lost Damon, Giambi, Isringhausen, Pena, and you won more games without them than you did with them. You won the exact same number of games that the Yankees won, but the Yankees spent 1.4 million per win, and you paid 260,000. I know you’re taking it in the teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall, he always gets bloody. Always.

This is threatening, not just a way of doing business, but in their minds it’s threatening the game. Really what it’s threatening is their livelihood. It’s threatening their jobs. It’s threatening the way that they do things. Every time that happens, whether it’s a government or a way of doing business or whatever it is, the people who are holding the reins, they have their hands on the switch, they go bat shit crazy. Anybody who’s not tearing their team down right now and rebuilding it using your model, they’re dinosaurs. They’ll be sitting on their ass on the sofa in October watching the Boston Red Sox win the World Series.

John: There he slides a piece of paper across the table.
[movie scene playing]

Billy: What’s this?

John Henry: I want you to be my general manager. That’s my offer.

John: All right. What’s crucial to me about this scene is that he’s done it. He went out with this goal and someone is finally saying, yes, Copernicus, you were right. The solar system is the way that you described it, not the way that everyone always described it. It’s so nice to have an outside person come in and say, you did this.

It’s important for us to have the people who we’ve established in the movie, who he loves, who love him, provide that support, but to have an outside person that he’s always been pushing against come say, no, kid, you were right, is crucial.

Craig: Absolutely. Even more so, give our hero, I still think he’s a hero, give our hero a chance to do one last heroic thing which is to stay loyal to the sloppy mess that he helped improve. It’s like listen, I inherited a broken down trailer home and I worked really hard to make it look like a mansion. And I’m going to stay with it. And Even though I know I’m going to be losing to you probably, because now you now, Bill James was the guy that invented sabermetrics, which leads into the whole thing that Peter Brown was talking about. Now you got Bill James, now everything I know, I’m going to lose.

I’m going to lose over and over and over because now I’m not, because the trick is out, but I’m not leaving because I’m loyal. Literally, that’s exactly what happened. He stayed with the A’s and the Boston Red Sox won the World Series.

Taffy: I also think all sports movies have a stoic guy. In a romantic comedy, the equivalent would be a “you complete me” or a big sweeping kiss. In a sports movie, it’s the stoic guy cracking a smile. It’s Kurt Russell in the tunnel in Miracle. I think in this movie, I know, I know. You’re like, everything in your body just needs them to be happy for a minute.

Craig: For one moment.

Taffy: I think when he turns to Peter Brandt and says, “You’re a good egg.” That is our sweeping kiss. That is everything I need, which sets me up for that car scene that murders me dead every single time. I just need three notes from that song and I’ll need a minute. It’s really beautiful.

Craig: Yes. In the end, you have to boil all the sports away and get down to who am I as a person? What is my value? Have I performed up to the level of expectation that my loved ones should have of me? It doesn’t matter if their love was unconditional. It wasn’t to me. I needed to fulfill conditions for their love. Did I? The answer is yes, I did.

That’s why everyone who sees a movie like this can connect to it. Everyone. It doesn’t matter. This is where I do think this is different than Mamet when you talk about movies about men being all men-ish.

Mamet movies are brutal and Mamet stories are brutal and they’re wonderful and I love them. Glengarry Glen Ross I’ve gone all day about it. The sentiment of Sorkin and Zaillian, and they are sentimental to me, is why I love these movies. Love them. I get transported by them. They’re just wonderful.

Taffy: You didn’t have to learn about sports. I leave with as much knowledge as I came in with and it’s fine.

Craig: True. That’s absolutely true.

John: I want to go back to something you said quite early on about shame. We were talking about, and I think Craig, you also mentioned that Billy Beane is a character who was recruited and was going to be a superstar and was not. He feels shame. He feels this thing that was supposed to happen didn’t happen. It was his fault and he just did not live up to promised potential. The journey of the story is like how do you get past that shame? How do you get past the fact that you were seen as an underachiever, that you didn’t do this thing?

He’s actually able to finally do it. Having this outside force and everybody else say, yes, you did it. You changed baseball. You are worthy in baseball. For a movie that is so much about what is a person worth? What is a person in baseball worth? He’s proven his worth. That’s ultimately what he seems to be going for here. Like most movie protagonists, he couldn’t explain at the start of the movie what he actually needs inside. We as an audience see at the end like, oh, he got that missing piece that he was so hungry for the whole time through.

Taffy: That’s so interesting because the thing I always think with this is one of the plots is changing baseball, but it’s actually about a man processing his failures. If you look at the structure of it, it’s exactly at a third that you see the first flashback. The question is like, how long are you allowed to play? We’re all told we have to leave the children’s game and we don’t know when it is. The question that looms throughout this, is this when I’m leaving? Even as the GM, I’m playing the children’s game. Is this when I’m leaving? Is this when I’m leaving?

Craig: Wrapping this up, we talked a bit about how the screenplay that we have that we can look at is not a very good reflection of the actual movie that’s in front of us. Some of that is, I think, related to the development of the movie. Here’s what we know. This writer Stan Chervin pitches and sells the idea to Sony in 2004.

We’re going to talk about Amy Pascal. Amy Pascal was running Sony Pictures at that time. Brad Pitt was attached to a draft by Steve Zaillian in 2008. Chervin apparently wrote something, but Steve Zaillian came in and wrote a draft, and that is the draft that got Brad Pitt attached.

Steven Soderbergh attached himself to the project in February 2009. There’s a quote we have from him saying, “I think we have a way in making it visual and making it funny. I want it to be really funny and entertaining, and I want you to not realize how much information is being thrown at you because you’re having fun. We found a couple of ideas how to bust the form a bit in order for all that information to reach you in a way that’s a little oblique.” Former athletics players and manager Art Howe were set to play themselves. Dimitri Martin was cast as Paul DePodesta, who was the actual real person in real life who became later the Jonah Hill character.

The Jonah Hill character is not the person in the book. It’s a composite of other things and stuff put together. DePodesta ultimately asked, “Can you change the name of my character?” Because, it’s not me. The movie was given a green light with a $58 million budget.

Then five days before it was supposed to shoot in July 8th, 2009, Sony canceled it. They stopped production on it, and Soderbergh left. Bennett Miller was brought in December 2009, and Amy Pascal brought in Sorkin for a rewrite. We don’t know where stuff was at quite with this, and so we don’t know, I’ve never seen the Zaillian draft. I don’t know what stuff is what. I think we always can reach for and feel what feels like a Sorkin-y bit, but I’m not sure we really know.

My speculation is that there’s a draft, but the way scenes were actually shot, it feels like in going for that documentary feel, they probably did it a bunch, and they weren’t as text-obsessed as you would expect in a Sorkin movie.

Taffy: The thing I heard was that maybe the previous version was more literal documentary, real players, people looking at the camera and interspersed. I don’t know, I don’t know if that’s true, I don’t know that apocryphal, I just–

Craig: I think that’s what Soderbergh was going for, from what I understand.

Taffy: Yes, which is its own great way to go.

Craig: Could have been great, that’s the thing.

Taffy: You never know.

Craig: You could have three different versions of this movie that are all great. I am just thrilled that we got what we did get, which was very romantic, sentimental.

Taffy: It’s a very sentimental movie.

Craig: It’s very sentimental, it’s very dramatic at times. It clearly is, like the score is borrowing from those, the score for The Natural, like one of the great movie scores of all time. Ba-bam, ba-bam bum bum. It has that when Hattenberg hits the home run, that, whoa, that dramatic swell. I love the tone.

John: The movie was given a July 2010 start date, so about a year after it had been stopped, it got started again. Brad Pitt’s still attached, budget reduced to $47 million, and they went ahead. Amy Pascal coming in there and saying, “We got to go change some stuff, and you don’t have as much money,” feels very much like the owner of the ASA, no, this is how much money you have to do it, and figure out a way to do that.

Craig: What else can I help you with?

John: On the first Charlie’s Angels, I remember a meeting on a Friday afternoon going in, and Amy Pascal’s going through the script, and she’s like, and she just ripped out five pages and she’s like, “These are gone, figure it out. Basically, got to go save some money,” and that’s how we did it.

Craig: Figure it out is one of the great lines. Robert Weiss, who I worked with, he’s a producer, go all the way back to Kentucky Fried Movie and Naked Gun. He produced one of the great bad movies of all time called Nothing but Trouble, starring Chevy Chase.

Taffy: I love Nothing but Trouble.

Craig: Yes, it’s insane. It’s terrible, but it’s also so crazy that it’s worth watching. In the development of it Chevy Chase, the characters start in Manhattan and then they drive into Pennsylvania, and Chevy Chase, Bob Weiss was like, “We’ll do the New York stuff in Toronto. We can’t afford to shoot in New York.” Chevy Chase is like, “No way, no. If it’s New York, we’re shooting in New York. In fact, I’m going to call–“ the head of the studio was Mark Canton. “I’m calling Mark Canton right now.”

He picks up the phone, “Mark, Chevy Chase, I’m hearing that we can’t shoot this in New York. I demand we shoot in New York.” “Thanks.” Click. “We’re shooting in New York” and then he walks out, and then Bob Weiss picks up the phone and calls Mark Canton and goes, “Did you just tell Chevy Chase we’re shooting this in New York?” “Yes.” “Are we?” “No. Figure it out.” I always love figure it out is like-

Taffy: I love it.

Craig: -that’s amazing. Yes, no.

Taffy: Oh my gosh.

John: All right, that wraps up Moneyball.

Taffy: Thank you.

John: Quickly, let’s go through some one cool things. Taffy, do you have one cool thing you want to share with the audience?

Taffy: I do. I went to a Yeshiva high school, so I always feel that I am behind in my education.

Craig: My dad would teach, he worked at Grady High School in Brighton Beach, and then after that day was over, he would go to Mirror Yeshiva.

Taffy: That’s serious stuff. To teach what?

Craig: To teach the Yeshiva book, his history-

Taffy: How to read.

Craig: -because they had to pass the Regents exam.

Taffy: I know, it’s because of the Regents exam.

Craig: The Regents exam.

Taffy: Everything we know is because of the Regents exam.

Craig: The Regents exam. Everything is secular that you know.

Taffy: Right. I did not read great books but I read the Scarlet Letter four times.

Craig: Because you had to.

Taffy: That’s like cheating on your husband. Also because it was kosher. It punishes women for infidelity. It’s good, it’s good.

Craig: It’s good.

Taffy: I always feel that I am behind in my education, and I found this app recently called Imprint, and it is teaching me philosophy. It’s teaching me step-by-step. Also, I feel that I have several undiagnosed learning disabilities. It is teaching me exactly how I would like to be taught, short sentences and cartoons. I think that is my-

Craig: Imprint.

Taffy: It’s called Imprint. I think it’s like $25. It’s so good, and I am learning all about Stoicism. Right now learning about Stoicism. We’re moving on to Kant.

Craig: Oh, Immanuel Kant. Boy, you’re about to get into synthetic apriority and posteriority.

Taffy: Someone didn’t go to yeshiva.

Craig: Correct. Also, Kant, as it turns out was wrong. If you can avoid reading his massive super boring book, then you’re–

Taffy: I’m just going to see a cartoon about it. I think I win this.

Craig: The best way to learn Kant. The best way.

Taffy: All right.

Craig: Amazing.

John: I have two uncool things that are very closely related. These last two weeks I was traveling. I was first in London, then in Paris. I was in London in large part, to see ABBA Voyage, which is the ABBA show outside of London. It is incredible.

This is a sanctioned ABBA thing that uses, I thought it was holograms, but it turns out it’s not holograms. It is just done with really good visual effects and ILM and a real band that’s playing and just a purpose-built space. It was really incredible. The illusion that, I am somehow back in 1970 and I’m watching ABBA do these songs was great.

Really, I just thought ABBA Voyage was fantastic. If you like ABBA, even to some medium degree and you’re in London, see it, because I thought it was really good. Relatedly, weirdly, the apartment we were staying in, we got there and it had one of those narrow, stripped fireplaces that was lit when we went in. I’m like, this is really wasteful. Let me figure out how to turn this off. Then I realized, as I got very closer it’s like, oh, this is actually not a fire at all. This is some sort of virtual screen thing that’s incredibly compelling and looks like a fire.

It turns out it was actually the same basic technology as what I was seeing in ABBA Voyage in that there are foreground elements which are actually up above in the enclosure and there’s a split glass thing like how we do teleprompters that is making it look like it’s at the base and then there’s a video screen that’s really compelling. We ended up leaving it on the whole time, and I genuinely miss that fireplace in the apartment.

I was just astonished that both in the ABBA Voyage show and in this fireplace, synthetic things that felt so real and compelling are possible in 2024 through recording this. I applaud the technology behind them and encourage people to check out both of these things. I’ll put a link in the show notes to this Opti-V fireplace, which is the European version, but there’s many other ones out there.

Craig: The Dimplex Opti-V Duet. Well as promised, my one cool thing has to be Ken Medlock. I was looking Ken Medlock up as we were talking here because if you look at his resume, it’s classic character actor resume. He’s happily still alive. He’s 74 years old, but he hasn’t done much in movies since Moneyball. Really, it seems like he might be like possibly semi-retired because he really hasn’t done much since those years. Here’s something not surprising at all to find out. He played baseball. He played in minor leagues. He was a pitcher for the Decatur Commodores in the 1970s.

That’s a team that I don’t believe exists anymore. Then later worked as a coach for the St. Paul Saints. He was like most people that have ever had any experience in professional baseball, he never made it to the major leagues but he’s a player. You could just tell. That’s the thing. I’m so not surprised. I would have been so much more surprised if he had not played baseball just because he has that thing. He’s got baseball face, baseball voice, baseball– it’s hard to describe. Anyway, brilliant, absolutely brilliant job. I’m obsessed.

I think he’s only in three scenes. He’s in the two scenes with the scouts and then he’s in one scene where he confronts Brad Pitt. By the way, you’re going toe-to-toe with Brad Pitt and he just ate him up. He ate him up. Yes.

John: I want to congratulate Ken Medlock, Bennett Miller for directing him so well, but also let’s shout out the casting director who found him and found that this is the person who can do this role. Whenever we see those moments where that one actor was in one scene and killed it, that’s some great casting directing there probably.

Craig: Let’s find out who the casting director was, shall we? Casting director. Casting by Francine Maisler, who’s-

John: Oh, Francine Maisler–

Craig: -just a legend.

John: Indeed.

Craig: Legend.

Taffy: I’m sad that we didn’t get to talk about Brad Pitt’s stress eating in the movie.

John: Oh my God. The greatest.

Taffy: The Twinkie.

John: Constantly eating.

Taffy: Yes, the Twinkie that he jams angrily into his mouth. It’s not in the script.

Craig: It’s so great. I think it was a thing, he was like, I want my character to always be eating.

Taffy: Same.

Craig: It’s a real challenge when you’re directing because of continuity. It’s just the sandwich is too big, too small. You have to have a bucket. You have to spit the thing out or otherwise you’re going to be barfing after take seven. They committed and just pulled it off. It’s great stuff.

Taffy: Because he shoves everything in his mouth. There’s no continuity problem. You just need 30 Twinkies.

Craig: That’s true. That is also such a guy thing. Like oh, screw you food. I win.

Taffy: We do that. Just so you know we do that too.

Craig: We do it in front of everyone and you guys are like, there’s no one watching.

John: That is our discussion on Moneyball. Scriptedness is produced by Drew Marquardt. Drew, thanks for all your research and help here. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Spencer Lackey. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnaugust.com. That’s also a place where you can send questions. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com.

That’s also where you find transcripts and sign up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have t-shirts and hoodies. They’re great. You’ll find them at Cotton Bureau. You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net. We get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on money. Taffy Brodesser-Akner, thank you so much for joining us.

Taffy: Thank you for having me. I just want to say thank you to my assistant Chris Logan, who is wearing a Mets jersey right now and is so excited about this. Don’t spit on him right now. He’s having the best day of his life.

Craig: It’s going to be over real soon. If they make it to the Yankees, if you’re so lucky to make it to the Yankees, we will destroy you.

Taffy: I still don’t know what that means, but thanks, everyone.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right. We are here for the bonus segment. We’re going to talk about money. Listener note here: Craig had to disappear at a certain point. If he vanishes for a bit in this conversation, it’s because he had to give up the room that he was recording in. Taffy and I are going to be talking a little bit in the middle part without Craig there, but you’ll hear him at the end because of editing magic.

All right. Taffy Brodesser-Akner, I just finished reading your book, Long Island Compromise, last night. I was reading it on the flight on the way back, and then I stayed up and read the final chapters. Such an accomplishment. So well done.

Taffy: Thank you.

John: I want you to go out and read it. Taffy, your book is about the intersection of trauma and money. Do you feel any resonance between the things we were talking about in that and Moneyball?

Taffy: Yes. If we’re talking about worth, and thank you so much for saying such nice things about my book, which is about how money makes you crazy. I want to say that people ask me very often, what was making a television show like? I answer with actually what is a good answer to your question, which is this:

I work at the New York Times. I work at the New York Times Magazine. I’ve worked there for many years. Before that, I was a freelancer. I know how much you get paid and I know how hard things are. I think very often about this story I wrote about sexual harassment at Kay Jewelers. Remember every kiss begins with Kay?

Craig: Yeah, mall jewelers.

Taffy: Oh my God, terrible stuff. Two and a half years it took to write that story. Maybe 14 cities, thousands and thousands of New York Times dollars. It was dangerous. There were threats. There was crying. There was protection ordered for people. It was hard. It was scary. And it came out and the money I got paid for it was the same amount of money that I got paid per scale to write a six-page outline for an episode of a television show based on a novel I’d already written.

Craig: Voila.

Taffy: I couldn’t get over it. I would say, I’m writing paragraphs that are true, that are out there in the world and people took a risk in talking to me. I couldn’t get over it. I still can’t get over it because I think what does this mean?

Also, maybe we know what it means because we see how news is being treated. We see how entertainment is treated, although it’s starting to happen in entertainment too, this lessening. But it made me understand that it’s just crazy what we value in this system. To assign money as an assignation of what is valued, that way lies madness.

John: Yes. I’m thinking about the times often on this podcast, we talk about why are screenwriters paid the way that we’re paid, which is arguably too much. It’s interesting we’re talking about Moneyball because there are fewer professional screenwriters than there are professional baseball players. It is, in the end, a unique skill, a thing that we’re able to do and that gets us paid the way that we’re paid. And that I’ve also been in the same situation you’re fine. It’s like, I feel like I’ve been paid too much for the amount of work that I’m doing here or that I’ve had to play tricks on myself saying like, I just do not want to write this. If I actually break down the amount I’m being paid per page, I’m of course I’m going to write this. It’s crazy.

Taffy: Right.

Craig: What we get paid doesn’t necessarily make sense from day to day. The same talent that we have earns us X. Then two years later, for some reason, it earns us twice X. Then for two years later, it’s half X. There’s no real rhyme or reason when you focus on it. Overall, one of the things I’ve come to understand is, and it’s hard to process, no one would ever suggest that what we do is as valuable as, say, somebody that’s working on a vaccine.

John: Right.

Craig: Those people get paid less, probably, than the people working at the New York Times Magazine. Then there are people who get paid even less than that, who are doing other things that are just beautiful work. Then there are people who don’t get paid at all, the unpaid labor of the world, particularly among women. Then the question is, how do I morally reconcile all this? Kant will have some stuff to say about this as you go through your course. One of the things that I’ve come to just understand is that entertainment which we think of as frivolous, while it certainly doesn’t save anyone’s life, seems to be one of the reasons people like to live.

It’s one of the things we’re here for at all. If we took it all away, including watching sports or playing video games or movies or television or reading great fiction, then at that point, people may not care as much about having their lives saved. Because what’s the point? People’s value of entertainment is so profound — way more than I value it, by the way. I love the creation aspect of it but sometimes I do I can feel guilty about these things. The bottom line is, the demand for what we do, particularly if it works for people, is so high that this is how the market functions.

Taffy: Right. I don’t think I feel bad about it because now I’m both people. I’m making that for an outline. It’s just astounding to me. It makes sense to me that athletes and actors get paid an inordinate amount. They have at least the perception of an expiration date of their prime, whereas you and I can imagine that the older and older and older we get, eventually we’ll keep. You’re right. I don’t know. We may be dwindling already. I don’t know.

John: We also have an opportunity cost. Part of why I’m getting paid this thing is so that I’m not doing something else.

Taffy: I think these are all these questions about how we value a person. I think the answer is, I was always this person and then I got an amazing agent who suddenly had access to things like this. But I was always like this. If you go back to when I was being ridiculed at my first job at Soap Opera Weekly, I was writing the same things that I am now highly valued at the New York Times for writing. It makes no sense. What are we supposed to do with that?

Craig: Let’s go back to your book here. One of the characters in Long Island Compromise, Beamer, is a screenwriter. He’s a screenwriter who’s written with a writing partner. It’s really clear that Beamer’s not the talent there. Beamer has some soft skills but he’s not the writing superstar here.

Now that the partnership is broken up, he is questioning his own worth because he was getting paid good money to do this as a writing team. It’s a real question, can he do it himself? Is he worth anything by himself? He comes from a family where he didn’t necessarily need to make money. This was all a game for him to start with.

Taffy: Right. He, by the way, when you’re as wealthy as Beamer Fletcher is, the money isn’t meaningful. The question is when we meet him is my value dwindling? My agent hasn’t called me back in two days. That is what he knows. That is what I live in fear of, is I haven’t heard from you. Oh, it’s been Sunday, okay. You still love me, my agent? Thank you.

John: Our sense of self-worth is like a price tag on it. There’s the number of likes we get on a post. There’s the number of people who show up to a book signing. There’s all these little ways in which we determine our value based on outside forces coming in to tell us things. None of that actually reflects our own internal sense of valuation.

I think you’re going to be looking at in your Imprint app probably, is really where is the sense of self, the degree to which our self-perception is internally generated versus externally put upon us. That balance is tough. The dollar figure people are paying you is one of the ways in which you calculate your own self-worth.

Taffy: It’s one of the ways they calculate my self-worth. Can I ask you, what do you think? What do you think about all this? Your quote, it goes up and it goes up. Do you feel better about yourself? Or is there a point at which you’re like, I’ve made it. Is it success or is it money or is it money defined as success?

John: There was a point early in my career, like project after project, my quote was going up. I remember at one point, my agent, my lawyer, were pushing really hard on the studio to pay me more than this, or basically better, or John won’t do it. I was upset with them because I felt like they were pushing too hard. Basically, ah, I’m not worth that much, you’re asking for too much.

Then we moved into a period which was supposed to be technically post-quote, where they’re not supposed to be asking for quotes, but people still supply them. You’ll wait to get an offer. Then they’ll say like, “Oh, no, let me send you these last few things so you can say this is how much he’s actually worth.”

You can also as a writer, get to a place where your quote is so high they won’t even consider you for certain projects. That’s a situation that people will run into, where it’s like, I was at a lunch with a producer and she was talking about this project that they were looking to do. She said, “Oh, no, we’re looking for a younger writer for that.” I heard younger writers, like babies really, she meant a less expensive writer. I was 30 at that point. I was like, “How much younger do you want?” But they meant less expensive. There are certain things which you’re just not on the list for because they just know you’re too expensive.

Taffy: Which is where money backfires, because the more they’re spending also in this business, the closer they’re watching and the more their ability to make a decision is jostled by the immense amount of money. There’s a sweet spot, it seems, where you stay under the radar of anybody being up at night worried about the money that’s being spent.

John: Yeah, it’s crazy. Then I would say like over the course of my career, a lot of the places where you really feel your value because it’s just so direct is when you get paid on a weekly to come in and do on a project, it’s like my weekly quote got really high. It’s like, that was exciting, but also I felt like you’re on a tightrope. It’s like, Jesus, am I really worth this amount of money for this one week’s work? You quickly realize, yes, they want your writing, but they mostly need you to be able to survive in a room with some of these people because these are sometimes monstrous, sometimes just really talented, but also very demanding people.

And there’s very few people that, there’s a scarcity problem. There’s very few people they can put into that room who can survive in there and then also still deliver the project that comes out of there. That was really what I was going to be paid for was not necessarily the words I was writing, but the words I was able to say in those rooms.

Taffy: That’s so interesting. Also, that is the true opportunity cost because every time you’re doing one of those weeklies, you’re not doing something that is the product of your brain, the product of your creativity. It is maybe the least gratifying thing. What if the way you can define your self-worth in this business monetarily is the amount of money someone like John August is paid to fix your terrible screenplay? I would like to think that they don’t pay more than $150,000 a week to fix my crap. If they do, I quit because I should be doing something else.

John: I’ve actually heard that rationalization not applied to me directly, but someone saying, no, yes, they’re replacing you. They’re bringing on this big writer, but it means they really love the project because look how much they’re paying that person. Which is absurd, but also true because it means if they’re willing to spend six figures on something or seven figures on something, they really are planning to make it. So it’s good news that you’re being replaced by this big giant, expensive writer because it means they really want to make it a thing. It’s crazy.

Taffy: You go home that night and you share the same blanket that David Justice had to say, well, Billy Bean thinks I’m a good leader. That’s all you have to keep you warm that night. I guess I’ll be a good leader.

John: You’ll be a good leader. You are a fantastic guest on the program. Thank you again, Taffy for doing this.

Taffy: You guys are the best. I had such a good time.

Craig: Bye, guys. Thank you.

John: Bye. Thanks, Craig.

Links:

• Moneyball on IMDb
• Moneyball screenplay
• Taffy Brodesser-Akner
• Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
• Scriptnotes LIVE! at the Austin Film Festival
• Highland Pro Austin launch party – sign up here!
• ABBA Voyage
• Opti-V fireplace
• Ken Medlock
• Imprint App
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
• John August on Threads, Instagram, Twitter and Mastodon
• Outro by Spencer Lackey (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.