The original post for this episode can be found here.
John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August.
Craig Mazin: Bloop, bloop. My name is Craig Mazin.
John: And this is Episode 654 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Now, often on this podcast, we talk about what we can learn from great movies. On several occasions, we even do deep dives on specific films to look at what makes them tick. Craig, you and I are trying to schedule one of those right now, in fact.
Craig: Very excited to make that happen. It’s been a long time since we’ve done a deep dive. And I love doing those.
John: We have a special guest who proposed one, and we’re so excited to do it. We’re gonna try to find a time for that.
Craig: It’s gonna be great.
John: It’ll be good. But today on the show, let’s take a look at what we can learn from watching bad movies. Here, we’ll say that I’m talking about selectively bad, like movies that just don’t work for you. Because my thesis is that we can draw a lot of useful lessons from the films you don’t enjoy, that you happen to watch for whatever reason.
We’ll also answer some listener questions. In our Bonus Segment for Premium members, since we’re talking about sticking it out through movies we don’t enjoy, let’s think about when else is it okay to bail on something. Specifically, when can you bail on a book, a play, a friendship, a relationship, a marriage.
Craig: What’s going on here, John? Is this where you explain to me why I’m not on the podcast anymore?
John: Only the folks in the Bonus Segment will know.
Craig: I like that you just couched it inside of a Bonus Segment. It’s a very you thing to do.
John: Absolutely. As the check is coming at the end of the meal, I was like, “Oh, also, I think this is our last meal together.”
Craig: Oh my god.
John: I had friends – well, a friend – I didn’t know the other guy – who went to Paris, and one professed his love to the other one, and it’s like, “Oh, I don’t feel that way at all.” They were gonna be in Paris for like another seven days or something.
Craig: That’s where you just go and do solo tourism. Were they sharing a room?
John: Yes.
Craig: Oh, no. Get a different room. Get a different room. That’s rough.
John: Let’s do some follow-up here. We had several people who wrote in with feedback about something we talked about in Episode 651. We were talking about this writer who had done a Lifetime movie and was wondering what should he be doing next, how to use this as a springboard for next steps. A couple people wrote in with their reactions to our advice.
Drew Marquardt: Tim writes, “There was an assumption that these films are covered by the WGA. That is not the reality for a lot of these cable network movie-of-the-weeks. A majority of these films are made by non-signatory companies and are acquired by Lifetime or Hallmark or what have you after production, with the writer most likely a non-union writer. A lot of these movies are also produced in Canada, by Canadian companies, so again, WGA rules may not apply.
“As for Daniel gaining momentum, I have written four movies for Lifetime, Hallmark, and similar channels, with one of my movies declared one of the 25 Best Hallmark Christmas Movies of All Time by Variety, and yet still I have trouble getting traction, even with the executives or network production companies I wrote the movies for.
“Regarding representation, I have also tried to get an agent manager, but the feedback I’ve received is that they are either not taking on new clients or they don’t really work with movie-of-the-week writers. So while I appreciate your advice for Daniel, it’s not really reflective of the reality of the movie-of-the-week world right now.”
Craig: I am thrilled that Tim wrote in with all this, because this is good education for us. It is a good reminder that these companies can buy things. We imagine typically, oh, it’s a Lifetime movie, Lifetime hires you to write a movie. But other production entities that are non-union – and certainly in Canada that makes it a lot easier or it’s WGC – make these things, and then Lifetime or Hallmark buys them and puts them on the air. That’s a great point, Daniel.
John: Yeah. To the point of like, it’s not just that these are non-signatory companies and that our assumptions about who makes these is wrong, but the idea that, oh, you should have reps and a manager, an agent who’s doing all this stuff for you, I guess that’s, again, our bias towards the kind of industry that we work in, versus the way that these movies are made. We had other people write in saying, “Yeah, I’ve done these movies too, and I’m still having a hard time getting a rep to represent me.” Again, this is a good education for us.
Craig: It is. I said, “Good point, Daniel,” when I meant, “Good point, Tim.” Sorry. Sorry, Tim. I have thanked him now, and I have also apologized to Tim. This is going great for me with Tim.
What I am also sort of delighted by is that Daniel has written four movies for those types of channels, and one of them was declared one of the 25 Best Hallmark Christmas of All Time. What’s awesome about that is that implies that there are a lot more than 25 Hallmark Christmas movies.
John: Oh, there are.
Craig: If it’s one of the 25 best-
John: There’s like 25 per season. There are so many of these.
Craig: How many do we think there have been?
John: Oh my god.
Craig: Is that something Googleable? Is it 100?
John: I think Stephen Follows, who’s the data expert, could probably generate a big database of how many there have been. It’s a huge, huge number.
Craig: Because I’m just thinking about the writing challenge of coming in to do something… Granted they want a certain kind of formula, of course. They’re not gonna want you to be wildly original, but still, you have to do something different. If there’s 100 of them, it’s like the “Simpsons did it” problem. What other angle can you do?
I have a friend who writes Hallmark Christmas movies. It is fascinating having a conversation with him about how he tries really hard, actually, to put a little spin on the ball here or there. Not easy to do. They have definitely gotten better about LGBTQ representation. It used to be, “No.” Then I think he worked them up to, “There are two guys that live next door, but no one talks about what the story is.” Then eventually, yes, now they are featuring people that aren’t in very Hallmarky heterosexual relationships. But it must be very challenging to come up with either new things or things that they allow that are new.
John: For sure. Again, an area we don’t know very much about. We’re sorry that we speculated wildly and used our biases towards the Hollywood stuff that we’re used to in answering the original question from Tim. I’m realizing we keep going back between Tim and Daniel. We’ve merged them into one super entity of person who writes these movies.
Craig: Taniel.
John: Taniel. Taniel, thank you so much for all your feedback, and everyone else who wrote in about this one.
We’ve talked before about colored pages and whether colored revisions are a thing that are still worth keeping. HL wrote in with a thought.
Drew: “Regarding the colored pages in screenplays, can they be used for WGA arbitration, given each writer had their own color?”
Craig: No.
John: Not really. I think it’s a misperception about how arbitrations work. In an arbitrations situation, the different writers will say, “Oh, this is the script that I wrote. This script best reflects the work that I did on the project.” But if they were on the project for two months and did seven different sets of colored revisions, you’re not gonna ask the arbitration panel to read each of the seven sets of revisions, probably. Instead, you’re gonna say this is the sum total of what was in these seven sets of revisions, or this is the state of the script after all these sets of revisions. Colored revisions themselves are not particularly meaningful in terms of which writer did which thing.
Craig: They’re not. The idea being, HL, that if you’ve done five revisions, the point of the fifth revision is that that’s the last one you hand in. That’s the one that’s relevant. We don’t ask arbiters to read prior revisions of stuff that got deleted and not filmed, because credit is for the film as it appears on screen or on your television screen. So that’s not relevant.
The only time that the credits department will say, “Hey, look, here’s this person’s final script they did, but here’s also one prior one,” would be if that writer – let’s call them Writer B – said, “Hey, my last script was on this date, but Writer C came along, went back to one of my earlier drafts and took some stuff and put it into their draft.” At which point it is relevant for the arbiters to see that, because basically, chronology determines primacy for authorship. That’s really the only circumstance.
I did, by the way, have a further discussion about this topic with my script supervisor, about the locked pages thing. Apparently, there’s something called Scriptation. Do you use Scriptation? I don’t use Scriptation.
John: I don’t.
Craig: But apparently, everyone around me is using it. I guess there is a way to use Scriptation to basically – if the pages do get unlocked, it does it for you and moves your notes around and stuff. I don’t understand it. But in any case, he was like, “Honestly, I could deal with the issues of it.” It’s fine. I would just basically have my own locked script that I would just be living with, because I have to generate a Final Draft file for him anyway, because that’s what he imports into his thing. I’d make one locked thing and one unlocked for everybody else. It’s fine.
John: Last little bit on colored revisions here. The only time in arbitration I can think of where I have seen one set of revisions come into the mix was when there were two writers who were working simultaneously on a project. Writer B did this thing, and Writer C did this thing. But Writer B was still employed and did something after that.
Sometimes, as an arbiter, I’ve seen little bits of pages rather than a full draft coming through. That happens too. But that’s more the exception than the rule. Whether it be a colored page or not a colored page, it doesn’t really matter, because every set of revisions has a date on it, and really the date is what matters.
Craig: Correct. A reasonable question, HL, but the answer is, not really, no.
John: Not really. This next one is about AI and screenwriting. This comes from Eileen. There’s screenshots here, so we’ll read what’s actually in the screenshots here if we can, Drew.
Drew: Sure. Should I do my LinkedIn voice?
John: Please. We got an official LinkedIn voice.
Craig: I didn’t even know LinkedIn had a LinkedIn voice.
Drew: “Pareto.AI is a human data collection platform connecting reading AI researchers with trusted industry experts to collaborate on AI alignment, safety, and training projects. By working together, we can better align AI models with human values and develop more helpful, honest, and harmless AI models. We have a globally distributed network of master annotators, evaluators, and prompt engineers, with a proven track record of successfully completing over 3 million tasks.
“We are currently seeking TV movie screenwriters in the Writers Guild of America or equivalent to assist with developing complex prompts to AI models based on difficult questions and tasks encountered in your respective field of expertise. Experience required: TV movie screenwriting with membership in the Writers Guild of America or an equivalent organization, strong background in creating and developing complex narratives and characters, and experience in crafting dialogue and storylines for TV or movie.
“Compensation is 100 US dollars per approved hour of work. Should your application be successful, the next step includes a one-hour paid trial to be completed within two days. What’s approved will progress to a two-hour paid trial. Those who pass both trial phases will join our project team. Work hours are flexible with an expected commitment of 10 hours per week for 4 weeks. If all goes well, the project may be extended. Please note prior AI training experience is not required, as hands-on mentorship from our expert team will be provided. This project is starting ASAP. For immediate consideration, please apply.”
John: A job listing on LinkedIn for folks to help train this AI model for script evaluation, screenwriting. It’s not quite clear what the model’s being used for. Craig, what’s your first instinct here?
Craig: To vomit.
John: Yeah.
Craig: This is a pretty classic, “Hey, come and teach your replacement so that we can replace you. We have this new robot that can spotweld. It’s just not good at spotwelding. We pay you a lot to spotweld, but jobs have been a little dicey, and the economy, blah, blah, blah. Come in, and we’ll give you $2,000 to train this robot, so that you, human spotwelder, will never be able to spotweld again.”
In addition, Pareto.AI is training their AI with writers who apparently need to make $100 an hour training AI. I gotta be honest with you. I’m not sure that’s gonna get you, for instance, the kind of writing that is done by people that don’t need to be paid $100 an hour to train AI for a couple of weeks or a month. I think this is all bad. I understand people need money. There are other ways to make money. I think this is gross and sort of demeaning. I don’t like it at all.
John: I looked through Pareto is actually doing. It looks like they are a subcontractor, basically. Someone has a model, and they go to Pareto to say, “Hey, we need you to recruit people to actually do the reinforcement learning from human feedback,” which is the way you train a model to get better, basically. The model spits something out, and the human needs to say, “No, you did bad here, but this was actually pretty good.” That’s human reinforcement, the human feedback that reinforces the model there.
Listen. These things are going to happen. They’re gonna train these things regardless. I can’t fault a writer who needs the money. There are certainly a lot of writers right now who need the money, for getting 100 bucks an hour to do this thing, as opposed to driving for Uber or working at a coffee shop. One of my first jobs was as a reader at Tristar. It wasn’t data labeling in the same way, but it was kind of the same gig, where I was doing work for people so they wouldn’t actually have to read these scripts. That’s a function that I can understand.
What makes you uncomfortable, I think makes me uncomfortable too, is that you are training your replacement. You’re training a system that is there to replace your whole industry. A thing you set out your life to do is this thing. That is a real, tangible frustration. And yet it’s going to happen inevitably, so getting paid some money in that process, I can understand.
Craig: We all have choices to make. $100 an hour is pretty decent, but it is not a shocking amount of money. More importantly, this is a four-week gig. “If all goes well, the project may be extended.” This isn’t a year of your life. You’re gonna make some sort of short-term cash for these people.
I’m just looking at their deal. It was founded by Phoebe Yao, Thiel Fellow. That’s Peter Thiel’s. I’m out. I see Peter Thiel, I’m running the other direction. Peter Thiel, the guy who said that we don’t need democracy anymore I think was his latest.
John: That’s a good one.
Craig: Way to go, Peter. No. No. I hate this. This one’s easy to me. Sure, it may be inevitable. It may be that they’ll find people. But I guess my biggest pitch to people considering this is, I’m not saying you’re a bad writer. What I’m saying is, if you are contemplating this, you are an underemployed writer. You may be somebody that is specifically going to benefit from getting in a room, being properly trained by humans who are very good writers with a lot of experience, who aren’t at this level, who don’t need $100 an hour for four weeks. Those people will make you better writers. This isn’t gonna make you a better writer.
This is just gonna make an AI make it much, much harder for new writers to break in, because when new writers enter, they probably are functioning around the level of the AI that they just trained. It’s just making it harder for all of us. It’s going to ultimately deplenish the farm system of writers that rise up from the bottom, up through the ranks, as they learn and gain experience. I just hate it. I hate it.
John: Yeah. I agree with most of your points. The start of what you said is that writers who would go for this thing are probably not at the level where they need to be as writers. I would just say that I know so many folks who are actually genuinely terrific writers and fantastic and have done great things and can do great things, who at this moment are not employed. That’s always gonna be these people, but it feels especially now those people are struggling. I can understand why this is attractive for them, and it feels time better spent than doing other non-industry kinds of jobs. But your point about this is training your replacement and the ick of that is real. It’s tangible.
Craig: This isn’t gonna get you health benefits. This isn’t going to fill your year, or even more than a month. I would sooner, personally, apply for a Good and Welfare loan from the Writers Guild, which are available to members, because they’re saying, “We want Writers Guild members.” If you’re a Writers Guild member, you can apply for a loan. The Guild has an enormous amount of financial resource for that.
John: Last week, we talked about that. We had Betsy Thomas on talking through that.
Craig: There you go. To me, that is vastly more honorable than this. This is one of those things where, with empathy, I can still say there are certain jobs… Look. If you’re struggling to find work in your chosen field, and someone says, “Hey, I’ll give you $1,000 to murder to somebody,” the answer, of course, is no. Now, somewhere on there, once we decide, okay, there are certain value judgments that will overrule these things, then the question is where does this exist on that continuum.
I find this to be toxic to the soil that grows us all. I just would urge people to not do it. It doesn’t threaten me. It’s threatening the new people. It’s threatening younger writers, newer writers. It’s just Silicon Valley being shitty again.
I hate the language that they’re using. These weasel words are horrifying to me. “By working together, we can better align AI models with human values.” Whose human values? Which values? “And develop more helpful, honest, and harmless… ” More harmless? Harmless is binary. What does that mean? What they’re really saying is develop less harmful. They’re giving it away. Heed the words. Do not do this.
John: Let’s move on to our marquee topic here. I want to talk about bad movies. What prompted this was, twice in this past month, I found myself in a movie theater watching a movie I did not enjoy.
The first case, it was not a movie that I intentionally set out to see. I went to the theater to see one movie, and they’d cancelled that screening, because they gave the screen to Deadpool and Wolverine. Good job, Deadpool and Wolverine, but I really wanted to see this one movie. I couldn’t see the movie I intended to see, so instead, I saw this other movie that was out in theaters. In the second case, I went with friends to see a movie that is doing great at the box office. Happy for its success. I just did not like it. I just did not care for it at all.
In both cases, I guess I could’ve walked out. When I went to the movie by myself, of course I could’ve left. When I went to the movie with friends, there’s a social pressure to stay. But I wanted to reflect on what I actually learned from watching a bad movie, because it’s two hours of your time that you could be doing other things. But I actually found those two hours useful, because in a weird way, I stopped watching the movie for the story. Because the movie wasn’t working for me, I could actually just notice all the other things that I was seeing on screen and the points that weren’t working. I actually could take some mental notes about like, “Yeah, that never works,” or, “Let me make sure I never do these things.” I want to talk about some bad movies for a bit.
Craig: You said something interesting there, which is, it’s a movie that’s doing well at the box office, that other people like. The question is, as you said – maybe I would rephrase it. Rather than, okay, what do I get out of watching this bad movie that’s bad for me, and rather, why isn’t this working for me? Because what it helps define is your own taste, which sometimes is just as valuable as saying, “Okay, I didn’t like that. I don’t like that. I think that was fake. That doesn’t make sense. Where’s the logic in that?” But really, sometimes you can just say, “What’s different about me from the people that like this?” That helps you write towards something, which is super helpful.
John: It’s a chance to ask the question, why isn’t this working for me? As you hear laughter from people around you, people who are genuinely enjoying the movie, it’s like, okay, what are they seeing that I’m not seeing? What is it about my taste or my reaction to this movie that is just different from everyone else around me? What can I learn from that? What are the specific things? That moment which everyone thought was hilarious, I rolled my eyes at. Is it just the nature of the joke? Is it how the setup is working? Did I just fall off the train of the movie and just start despising everything I saw because something broke for me?
We often talk on the show about how when you first sit down to watch a movie, those first 5, 10 minutes, generally just go with it. Whatever you’re showing me, I take it at face value. I’ve signed a little social contract. I’m gonna give you all of my attention, as long as you don’t waste my attention. I’m here for the ride. Then some movies, you fall off that. You feel like they’ve broken that trust between you, and it’s very hard to get back into the movie. You’re able to watch the movie for like, oh, these things. I’m able to suddenly see cuts. I’m just noticing the filmmaking and not really paying attention to the story at a certain point.
Craig: That right there is a really interesting indicator of taste, because I’ve noticed for myself, as I direct more and as I work with lots of different directors on my show, that one of the things that is true about my taste – doesn’t mean it’s right or wrong, it’s just individual me – is that I tend to not appreciate when I can feel directing happening. Unless it’s the beginning or end of an episode, or the beginning or end of a movie – where you don’t mind a soaring camera or a sneaky move – flashy things or things where it’s evident that a shot is happening, they tend to bother me, because my taste is to want to be completely immersed in the people. One of the things I know about me is that when I watch movies, I am all in on people and relationships.
The first time I saw Goodfellas, for instance, I was just in love. And I still am to this day. I don’t care how many times I see it. But I didn’t even notice that there was this long tracking shot where Ray Liotta is going through the nightclub with Lorraine Bracco, because all I cared about was what he was saying. The voiceover there was so fascinating and so indicative of why he chose the life he chose, that I didn’t even notice the fact that there was this incredibly difficult-to-pull-off tracking shot, especially in the ’90s, back then. It’s a little easier now. So that’s me. That’s an interesting taste thing I’ve noticed about myself.
As I approach writing, I often ask myself, hey, am I writing in some cool shot here to be cool, or is it purposeful? Is there a reason? That’s something that things that I don’t like have taught me. Obviously, I love Goodfellas, but there are times where cameras go whipping around. I’m like, “Oh my goodness, where is this camera? Who is this camera? What’s happening here?”
John: I would say my early reaction to Wes Anderson films, I liked Bottle Rocket, but I didn’t like many of the films after that point, because I feel like every moment was like, “Look at me direct.” It was just so presentational at all times. At a certain point, a little switch clicked, and it was like, oh, I get what he’s doing. I like what he’s doing. I’ve come to accept it.
Some of that is the way we approach genres and filmmakers. We come in with a certain set of expectations. As long as those expectations are met and we know what we’re gonna get, we’re okay.
I think about this with – I was hearing this podcast was talking through Deadpool and Wolverine. One of their viewers said, “This is all prefaced on the fact that I can’t stand Ryan Reynolds.” I think it’s good you said that, but also, it’s really hard to sit down in a movie theater and watch this movie if you don’t like Ryan Reynolds and what he does, because the movie is all Ryan Reynolds.
Craig: That’s so weird. Let me just preface this review of this hamburger shop by saying I hate hamburgers. I don’t care then what you think. The only thing to say after, “Let me preface this by saying I don’t like Ryan Reynolds,” is, “Therefore I didn’t go,” or, “I went, but I’m not gonna write a review. Who cares what I think? I’m not useful to you.” If you don’t like Ryan Reynolds, you weren’t going; and if you do, you probably were.
John: You also hear people like, “I hate horror movies.” When people talk about a genre, I think it’s always worth digging a little bit deeper, because what is it about horror movies that you don’t like? What do you actually define as a horror movie? Does it include any thriller? Is it anything with suspense? Is it gore? What are the specific things you don’t like?
My husband, Mike, he’s very specific. He doesn’t like scary movies that take place in realistic situations. He’s fine watching Aliens, because Aliens is never gonna happen to him, but he doesn’t want to see anything that’s like a home invasion thriller. That’s not a thing he’s gonna watch.
Craig: Because he doesn’t like the feeling of being scared. I don’t like the feeling of falling, so I don’t like roller coasters. I am not a good person to review a roller coaster.
You also said something really smart. So much of this has to do with our either expectations or what I would call familiarity. Wes Anderson is very specific. The way he makes movies is unique to him. Nobody else makes Wes Anderson films, as far as I can tell.
John: I’ll also add, if someone did use some of those same techniques, it’s like, “That’s a Wes Anderson thing.” Anyone who tries to ape his style, we recognize the symmetry, the thing he’s doing. He’s doing a Wes Anderson thing.
Craig: It’s really specific to him. Bottle Rocket was his first film, I believe, and so he’s just beginning to become Wes Anderson. But when he gets into full Wes Anderson mode, finally, the first time you get there, you’re not familiar with it. And I think it’s perfectly appropriate to go, “What the hell is this?” But once you become familiar with it, then it’s just different. Our minds are anchored in a completely different place. We are now receptive, because we know. We’re not walking in going, “What the hell is this?” We’re walking in going, “This is going to be like this. Now, what’s going to happen in it?” I think that’s important.
I remember the first time I saw Fight Club, I struggled with it. The second time I saw Fight Club, I fell in love with it, because I knew what was going on. It was weird. It was almost like the problem with that movie was the twist came too late for me, because everything before it, I was going, “Why? Why?” I spent so much time going, “Huh? Why?” Then the second time I saw it, I could settle in and be like, “I love this.” It was a question of familiarity.
John: Yeah. Let’s say you’re sitting down at a movie and you’re not enjoying it and you’re staring at the screen. Some questions I think that are worth asking, because if you’re not enjoying the movie, you can ask yourself these questions. What is it about the story that’s not clicking for you? Are you clear who the hero is and what they want? We talk about hero motivation so much, but if you don’t know what they’re actually going for, why they’re doing the things they’re doing, you’re gonna fall off the ride.
Do you believe in the setup? Do you believe the world? Do you believe the rules? Do you believe the supporting characters around that hero? Do you buy this as a story concept, as a group of people who are here together in this specific cinematic universe? So often on the podcast, we’ve talked about mystery versus confusion. Are you confused in a bad way? Are you confused in a way that does not spark your curiosity but just becomes annoying?
Do you want to know more about the backstory? Do you want to know more about motivations? Do you care what happens next? If you don’t answer those questions yes, then something didn’t click for you there. It’s worth asking what more could’ve happened that might’ve gotten you on that ride or gotten you to stay on that ride.
Craig: This is why I wish more film and television critics would just disclose their tase. When you go to read their review, there’s just a little profile that says, “Here are the things that I love, and here are the things that are not that important to me.” Some people are logic Nazis. Some people only care about the relationships and the human beings and the truth of the drama. Some people love spectacle. Some people love being cinematically challenged, like Wes Anderson might do to you. Some people love being confused, and some people loathe it. Disclose all of that, because the truth is…
The point of this show, what we do here, is to help people become the best writer they can be. There’s no such thing as be good writer. That’s not a thing. You be the best writer you can be. One of the ways is to find the movies you love, figure out why you love them, and write towards those. But when you do see things you don’t like, figure out why, then stop beating up the movie, and start thinking about how that educates you about your own priorities and taste. And then lean into that.
There are so many people that like slasher films, for instance. They don’t just like them. They love them. They’re passionate about it. There are magazines dedicated to it. The great Fangoria. Movies that involve lots of blood and gore and slicing and crying and sadism and ripping of flesh. I don’t. I don’t.
John: I don’t either. But I would say that’s the same thing as a Wes Anderson. It does not work for me. I don’t have the exposure, the history to it, so I can’t appreciate a good one versus a bad one.
Craig: Right. It’s like drugs. There are some drugs that… You’re not a big drug guy. But if I laid out all of the kinds of drugs there are and we went through a John August month of just each day we hit you with a drug, I guarantee you – everything from alcohol to nicotine to LSD to fentanyl, literally everything – there are gonna be at least one or two drugs that you go, “Oh, I sure did like that.” And there are gonna be a whole bunch of them you’re like, “Nope, don’t want that again.”
John: Never again.
Craig: The “never again” drugs are some people’s lifelong addictions. And the drugs you love and you be like, “Oh, I gotta stay away from that,” are things other people detest. The concept of criticism, I think, would be helped tremendously if critics disclosed the things they just hated and loved before they ever showed up. That would be helpful. If they really do hate what is at the heart of something, maybe don’t write the review of it.
John: I think so. You’re sitting in the theater, and you’ve given up on the film. You’ve given up on trying to like this movie. Some suggestions for what to do next. Be thinking about how much of what is not working could be pinned on the script, in terms of the story. Obviously, you don’t have the script in front of you. But does it feel like these are fundamental story issues that are in the way? Is it the filmmaking? Is it the choices the director’s making? Is it a choice of how the music is working, how the shots are put together? Is it the casting? Is it just the wrong person in that role? Those are all fair questions to ask and investigate along the way.
But while you’re doing that, I would also say keep an eye out for things that actually do work, because even in these two movies I watched, there were things I actually genuinely liked about them, things like the score or the setting.
I recently went back and rewatched Grumpy Old Men, which I didn’t love on the rewatch, but one of the things I really appreciated is it was snowy and it was real snow. It was real snow in a way that I’ve not seen in movies in 30 years. I really felt just dirty, actual snow, which I liked a lot. It felt cold, which was great. I remember watching the Amityville Horror remake. I did not like the movie very much, but I really thought Ryan Reynolds was great in it. That’s why I cast him in my movie.
There can be really good things in movies that don’t otherwise work. That is something to always keep in mind as you’re watching a film that is not clicking for you.
Craig: Yeah, without question. That is helpful. I’ve always made a point of saying hey, let’s just talk about the things you love. On this show and nowhere else online will I ever say I don’t like this or I don’t like that. I just don’t do it, A, because I’m part of a siblinghood of writers who hopefully help each other rather than tear each other down, but also because I’ve always felt intrinsically that talking about the things you love helps make you better.
But I agree with you that there is value here, at least, in figuring out why you didn’t like something. Rather than working it out as, “Hey, everyone, stop liking the thing I don’t like,” which is the worst and stupid and ignorant of the human condition, just allow that you… Look. I don’t like mayonnaise. I hate mayonnaise.
John: Yeah, you really do. This is the true fact.
Craig: There’s a world of cuisine built around mayonnaise. It makes me crazy. But what I don’t do is sit there at a restaurant and say, “No mayo, please. Also, can you just stop making things with mayo, because mayo is bad.” That would be stupid.
John: Yeah. You don’t let people lecture you, say, “No, Craig, if you actually tried mayo, if you tried aioli, you would love it.”
Craig: They do say that.
John: You’ve never had good mayo. That’s the whole reason.
Craig: I’ve heard that too. My favorite is aioli. I’m like, what? If you throw garlic in mayonnaise, it’s not mayonnaise anymore? Beat it.
John: It does actually apply to genres. People say, “Oh, no, you really need to watch this thing and then you’ll love the genre.” It’s like, probably not. Yes, there’s a 1 percent chance that’s gonna tip me over and I will suddenly love that whole way of making movies, but probably not. There’s many other movies and many other foods to enjoy.
Craig: Speaking of foods, Dan Weiss, of Game of Thrones fame, was having a conversation with me. We were talking about sushi. I love sushi. There are a couple things that I don’t love. I’m not a big salmon roe guy. I love masago, the little tiny roe, but I don’t love salmon.
John: I don’t like big roe, no salmon. I think it’s because going fishing, we would use salmon roe for fishing.
Craig: It’s a bit chummy then. I said I had tried uni once, sea urchin, and really, really just struggled to even get it down. Dan said, “Okay.” He did the thing. He goes, “The uni is binary. It’s either gonna be horrible and you’ll want to throw up, or if you have it someplace great, it’s transcendent.” He said, “If you’re at a great restaurant, just give it a try again.” I was at a great restaurant, and I tried it again, and it was horrible. I just don’t like it. But he got me. He got me with the whole, “Oh, if you try a good… ” I texted him, I think right then and there, and said, “You lied. You lied to me.”
John: He lied. He lied. Let’s see if we can answer some listener questions here.
Craig: I bet we can.
John: We’ll start with Stefan in Prague.
Drew: “How do you thread the needle when writing weirdos or characters that feel really off without making them feel artificial? What, if anything, changes when the character is the protagonist or a side character or the antagonist?”
John: I think a question I would start with is, is the character weird in the context of the film, in the context of the story? Would other people around that character say, oh, that’s a weirdo, or is just the world weird and it’s a character who makes sense within this weird world? Those are two different situations. It’s how the people around them are reacting that will cause us to have empathy, sympathy, relatability with that character, based on how everyone else is treating them.
Craig: Yeah. Stefan, the other advice I would give you is to go far more specific. Weirdo or off is such a broad concept. We use it all the time, but we’re not necessarily accountable to an audience when we’re describing somebody. But very typically, if you’re saying to somebody, “Oh my gosh. I went on a date, and I was with this guy. He was so weird,” the very next question the person you’re talking to will ask is, “How?”
John: What did they do specifically? Yes.
Craig: Yes. In what ways were they weird? Did they have verbal tics? Did they move physically stiffly? Did they not have the ability to make reasonable segues in conversation? Were they obsessive about one sort of thing? What was weird about them? Did they not blink? There are so many ways that we can feel offput by somebody.
It’s worth doing your research here and thinking, okay, when I think about weird or off, who am I actually thinking about in my head? Or am I thinking about a couple of different people? What about them? Go really specific. Do some research. Are you talking about neurodiversity? Are you talking about somebody with anger issues? What are you going for? Get really, really deep under the hood. The more you get under the hood, the more interesting and specific it will be, and certainly, the more realistic it will seem.
John: Absolutely. You think about the Pee-wee Herman character or Napoleon Dynamite, they are weirdos, and yet they’re specific to their world. They are the heroes, the centers of the story, because everything’s constructed to let them be the centers of the story. Think of all the characters in Wes Anderson movies. We were talking about Wes Anderson. Most of those are weirdos, and it works within the context of that movie. Again, it’s all about how these characters fit within the world that you created.
Craig: Exactly.
John: Next question comes from a Concerned Dad.
Drew: Concerned Dad writes, “My son is looking to hire a ghostwriter for an idea he has for a full-length movie screenplay. Neither my son nor I have experience in this. He has done some research and found this person, who has a website which he has shared with us. This person is listed on IMDb. He has sent a contract to my son. The price is $7,500 over 4 installments, each with a deliverable for a 100-page script. He also asks for 2 percent if the script is optioned or sold to a third party, as well as a co-writer credit, and that the client owns the rights and copyrights to the script. Do you have any thoughts or advice I could pass on to my son?”
John: I believe the person writing in with this letter, but I also kind of don’t believe it, because I’ve never actually heard of this existing in the real world, where someone commissions a screenplay for $7,500 where their name is taken off it. This is wild and crazy and does not make sense at all. Wait six months, Concerned Dad. You can just hire the Pareto.AI people to generate the screenplay for you and probably be cheaper than this.
This is weird and wrong and bad. There are no movies that are made that are done this way, where a ghostwriter wrote the screenplay and a different person has their name on it. Having an idea for a movie is not a thing. I think that’s part of what we’ve talked about on this podcast for 12 years. None of this feels right. You should not be sending money to these people.
Craig: Yeah. First of all, I just think as a writer, the idea of hiring a ghostwriter, it’s against my values, because writing is about authorship. It’s the purpose of it. I’m looking at the website that Concerned Dad has indicated for this ghostwriter. I don’t like it. I think it’s full of a lot of unverifiable boasting. Furthermore, if somebody is gonna write you an entire screenplay for-
John: $7,500.
Craig: Over four installments. $7,500 for a screenplay. Just to be clear, WGA scale minimum for an original screenplay, I think, is $100,000. You’re gonna get what you pay for. You’re gonna get something that I assume somebody just barfs out, for the cost of $7,500. He’s asking for a co-writer credit. That doesn’t even make sense, because this isn’t a WGA thing. Eventually, it just ends up as source material, and somebody else is gonna get writing credit at the WGA.
I don’t know what to say except this would be a huge waste of money, and you’re not doing your son any favors. If my kid came to me and said, “I have an idea for a movie. I’m looking to hire somebody to do it for me,” I would say, “We need to talk about values.”
John: I think the other thing you could say to your son is, “Congratulations, you’re a producer.” You’re a producer with an idea for a movie. You’re gonna go out and hire a writer. That is an actual, valid thing. Producers have ideas. They read a bunch of scripts. They hire a writer. They pay that writer to write a script for them. That is a thing that happens. But this ghostwriter thing is not a real thing.
Craig: No. “Congratulations, you want to be a producer.” How about go do the work that is required to function in this business. There are 14 billion people who want to be in Hollywood. Your son isn’t any different, except that he thinks that if he pays $7,500, he has this genius way of short-circuiting the whole thing. He does not. It will be bad. It will not work. Never in the history of Hollywood has some ghostwritten script for $7,500 ended up on screen and made somebody’s career. Even if it did, what would anyone need your son for? To hire the publicly advertising ghostwriter again? It just doesn’t make sense. So, no. No. No.
John: No.
Craig: No.
John: That’s Craig’s answer to a lot of the questions today.
Craig: Yes. But Concerned Dad, I will say, as a fellow dad, that concern, the reason you labeled yourself concerned, it means, A, you love your kid, which I love, and B, you have an instinct that should be heeded.
John: For sure.
Craig: Good on you, actually.
John: It is time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing this week is the Pageant of the Masters. Craig, what do you know of the Pageant of the Masters?
Craig: Nothing.
John: Nothing. You watched Arrested Development, I’m sure. This was actually a joke on Arrested Development, where the family, the Bluths, were participating in what they called the Living Classics, which is where they would stage these great works of visual art, and they’d have to dress up like the people and recreate the frames of these master artworks. It’s a real thing.
The Pageant of the Masters happens in Laguna Beach once a year, for six weeks or so. For my birthday, we went down to Laguna Beach and we saw it. And it was actually kind of great. I was expecting it to be cheesy. There was some element of cheese to it, but it was also incredibly impressive.
You’re in the audience. It’s this outdoor amphitheater. There’s narration, which is actually really well written and really well delivered. There’s a full orchestra. But the curtains open, and it is a work of art, a painting. You’re looking at it like, “Oh, wait, those are some real people in there.” There are people who are dressed up in the costumes, with their faces painted to look like the brushstrokes of the people in there. You really have to look carefully to figure out, oh, that actually is a person in there and not something else.
You’re admiring it for, at most, a minute. The curtains close, and then very quickly, the curtains reopen again and it’s a completely different staged artwork. It’s not until maybe five or six of these reveals in does it actually show you – they don’t close the curtain. They actually show what happens behind the scenes.
Anybody who’s interested in stagecraft will be just blown away by how precise everything is. The picture frame has to change. There’s a quick change of the person who was wearing this one thing. Clothes get ripped off and they’re in a different thing. New sets are brought in behind them. It’s all just on rails to get it to happen so quickly. It was incredibly impressive.
The theme this year was the art of fashion, so they went back to Ancient Egypt but up to Alexander McQueen and the work of Edith Head, who developed Hitchcock’s movies. It was just really, really well done. If you happen to be on Laguna Beach and get a chance to see Pageant of the Masters this year or next year, I’d recommend it, because it was actually a much cooler thing than I was expecting.
Craig: That sounds actually pretty awesome. I’m looking at the list of the paintings. I would love to see The Last Supper with people.
John: The Last Supper was the final work of art in this year’s performance.
Craig: That’s what I’m seeing. As opposed to what people thought was The Last Supper in the opening ceremony for the Olympics, when it was not.
John: It was not. In the show notes, I’ll put a link to this Wall Street Journal video that shows how they do some of the work. This is some young children painted up like this work of art. The people you’re seeing on stage are volunteers. Good lord, that’s such a time commitment to do it. But I was really impressed by the professionalism of everything around it was off the charts.
Craig: That’s amazing. Well done, Pageant of the Masters.
John: Craig, do you have a One Cool Thing for us?
Craig: I do. I’m very, very late with this. I apologize to Dan Erickson, the creator, and to Ben Stiller and Aoife McArdle, the two primary directors of this show, or the only two directors of the show, but I finally watched Severance.
John: Holy cow, I loved it. Did you love it?
Craig: Loved it. I mean loved it. I finished it and I texted my agent and I said, “Who represents Dan Erickson? I need his contact. I just need to email him and just tell him how good this was for me, how much I loved it.” It’s one of my favorite things to do is just email someone and go, “I watched your thing. I loved it. Here’s why.”
It was so brilliantly done. The thing I loved about Severance is, the sci-fi high concept of it, which they exposited beautifully, could have led to 400,000 bad shows and maybe 1 good one. They did the good one. What I loved about it is that it ultimately prompted questions that were relevant to me, to all of us, not just about work and life and late-stage capitalism, all the easy stuff, but literally about who we are, what defines us. How important are our memories? How important is experience? If I split, is it still me? What is me? What responsibility do I have toward me? Who would I be if all the circumstances around me changed irrevocably and the other ones were wiped away from my memory? All of that stuff was so brilliantly done. The tone was so cool. I love the look of it.
John: Now, growing up in New Jersey, were you familiar with Holmdel, the exterior there for the big office building? Because that’s where my dad used to work.
Craig: Indeed, I was familiar with Holmdel and the exterior. It was an old AT&T building, I think, right?
John: That’s right. Bell Labs.
Craig: Bell Labs. Lovely brutalist kind of thing sitting there. The casting was brilliant. I loved how spare everything was. When you look, there’s almost nothing in there. I assume that that’s probably a lot of input from Ben Stiller, since he was directing the first few episodes and kind of sets the look, I imagine, along with Dan Erickson, to be so sparse.
I loved how they had a job that made no sense, but they told you it made no sense and explained why the characters were okay with it making no sense and promising that perhaps maybe it does make sense. The confusion versus mystery meter was perfectly pitched.
The most important thing, the thing that made my heart sing, was that in a world where television shows are constantly using the bait of mystery that they cannot actually pay off, this show paid it all off. When I say paid it off, I don’t mean they figured out a way for it to make sense later. It was clear that they knew from the start, everything they wanted to do, who everyone was, why everything was happening, and how it should come out. It was just masterfully done.
I don’t know how many people watch Severance, because it’s on Apple TV, and it’s not like there are ratings or anything, but I would encourage anyone who has not put in the time to put in the time. By the way, it’s not one of those things where it’s like, “You just gotta watch the first five episodes and then it gets good.” It’s good literally in the first second. It’s great.
John: It’s one of the shows you can definitely say watch the first episode. If you don’t like the first episode, you’re not gonna like the series. Then move on. That’s great. Some things will not be for everybody. But definitely, it’s the show it is from the very start, which I love about it.
You and I actually had the same experience, because I watched it while I had COVID, when I was stuck in Boston. You watched it more recently on COVID. We both had COVID brain as we were watching it. I don’t think that’s a prerequisite for loving it, but definitely, it was the same special time.
Craig: It focuses you. It focuses you, and it helps pass the time while you’re sitting there blowing your nose. I would just say again that everything is so beautifully thought through. The level of intelligence that went into the creation of the show, and the seamless direction, also, between Ben Stiller and Aoife McArdle. For me, at least, there was no seams. It was all beautifully done.
Congrats to Dan Erickson. Congrats to any of the writers on the show. I’m looking now to see who else was writing on it. Just so gorgeously done. There was Anna Ouyang Mench and Mohamad El Masri and Wei-Ning Yu and Chris Black and Andrew Colville and Kari Drake and Helen Leigh and Amanda Overton and Erin Wagoner. Congrats to everybody there. Oh, and Samuel Donovan also directed two episodes. Congrats to the crew that put it together. You could just tell it was put together with love. Huge tip of the hat also to Adam Scott, Zach Cherry, Britt Lower, and of course, the great John Turturro, not to mention Christopher Walken, all of whom sort of led things, and then Patricia Arquette, who just was so-
John: Great.
Craig: And Tramell Tillman. Oh my god, was he good.
John: Oh, yeah, he’s a star-maker.
Craig: Honestly, just top to bottom, wow. What else can I say? Couldn’t have loved it more.
John: That’s great. That is our show for this week.
Craig: Yay.
John: Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt.
Craig: What.
John: Edited by Matthew Chilelli.
Craig: Woo.
John: Our outro this week is by Pascui Rivas, and lord, it’s such a good outro. Man, you guys have just been topping yourselves. Thank you to everyone who sends through these outros. If you have one, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. Y
ou will find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts and sign up for our weekly newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts and hoodies and drinkware now and hats. They’re all great. You’ll find those 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, like the one we’re about to record on when it’s okay to bail on a thing, which is not an excuse to get rid of Craig, I promise. Craig, thanks for being here. Good to have you back.
Craig: Good to be back.
[Bonus Segment]
John: In the main show, we talked about you’re sitting in a movie theater, and you actually have the choice, you could leave the movie theater. Rarely will I do it, but sometimes I’ve done it. But I want to talk about when you can bail on a book or a play, a friendship, a relationship, a marriage.
Let’s start with books. Craig, if you start reading a book, how much of a book do you feel like you need to read before it’s just not for you and you’re setting it down and never picking it up again?
Craig: It’s gotten shorter over time. I think it wasn’t that I was more patient. I just simply had broader taste. It was just more accepting. I have become less accepting. I feel like if I’m gonna read something, I want it to be great. For me, it’s not really a question of pages. It’s just like once I get to a spot where I go, “This is just not enjoyable. I’m not looking forward to turning the page,” it’s over.
John: Yeah. There’s no sense of having to honor that commitment and finish a thing. I’m better about setting down books. Honestly, Mike and I – Mike more so than I am – we’re both a little bit stubborn about continuing to watch a show that we’ve stopped enjoying. Something that we really enjoy the first season, the second season, if we’re in the third season, we’ll probably stick with it, even if we’re not loving it. Some of it’s inertia. Some of it’s hoping it’ll get back to its good form. But we’ve definitely stuck it out through bad final seasons of shows. Craig, do you stick with a show if it’s not working in later seasons?
Craig: No. No, I don’t. Maybe because I make a television show and I’ve made movies, there’s something about movies and television shows where I just… At least with a movie, it’s like, meh. Look. Unless we’re talking about some three-and-a-half-hour behemoth, it’s gonna be a couple hours of my life. It’ll end. I’ve walked out of two movies in my life, because it just feels like, meh, distress tolerance. You’ll make it through. But television shows, now I have to actively go and keep watching.
I won’t say what the series was, but it was a very supergenre, very popcorny, fun television show that I watched the first two seasons of, and then the third season came around and I was like, “I’m done.”
John: We’ve been talking about works of art, but let’s talk about in the real world and relationships. Friendships that you’ve decided to bail on. I can think of a couple. There’s natural stages of your life where you have friends who are specific to that stage of life, and as you move past that stage of life, you have to decide, are they gonna come with me, or are they gonna stay back there? There are friends from high school who I wish them well, but they’re not my friends now; friends from college, the same way.
But there’s also some people who I’ve just had to make deliberate choices, like, “You know what? I think I’m not gonna continue this friendship.” I always feel weird about it. Also, it feels like, do I acknowledge to that person that I’m not continuing the friendship, or do I just let it fade away and let things go longer between the texts?
Craig: As we get older, it seems less and less reasonable to force yourself to spend time with people you don’t enjoy or people who actively are upsetting you, because you’re running out of life. When you’re in your 20s, it’s like, whatever, who cares? We’re entering the “ain’t nobody got time for that” phase of our lives.
I’ve never really said, “Dear so-and-so, it’s over.” You just put a little less effort in. Look. The truth is, I’m not so proud as to imagine the people on the other end are like, “He seems like he’s putting less effort in.” I think they have plenty of other people that they’re… If it’s not working for me, it’s probably not working that much for them either.
But mostly, the friends I have that I really care about, I care about. I’m more of a focus on the people I really like person, as opposed to a, “I go and move with lots of different people every weekend. I go here and there with this group and this group and this group.” I don’t have that kind of social battery anyway.
I don’t really recall having to actually push the eject button specifically on a person. But I would say certainly if you’re not enjoying someone’s company, just remove yourself.
John: It is interesting. There was a person who was a friend for a good number of years and things fell off. Moving to France was actually a pretty clear demarcation of who’d I get back in touch with after I moved back from France and who I did not. But when I saw this person got married this last week – there was a Facebook post that Mike shared, like, “They got married.” I was like, “Oh, wow. That’s so weird.” I was trying to fill in all the details from what must’ve happened between the last time I saw them and now.
It was just a reminder that time marches on for everybody. Just because someone’s not in your sight right now, they’re still off living their own lives. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that I missed.
Craig: Thank God for that. I’m one of those people that, if somebody asked me, “Would you prefer that people be thinking about you or not thinking about you?” I am 100 percent in the I would prefer they are not thinking about me category. Go think about other stuff, and I’ll see you when I see you.
John: It’s a strange thing. There are friends who I think about, and it never really occurs to me they must be thinking about me too. I don’t know. I’m sure they are.
Craig: It’s possible. I like to live in a fantasy that – like babies don’t have object permanence – when I’m with somebody, we’re being friends, and then when we go away, they’re not really there.
John: I would also say with friendship, having regular times when you’re going to meet is so crucial for this. I definitely have friends, who are longtime friends, who I haven’t seen them for a year, you could pick right back up and everything’s fine. But also, the fact that I see you guys every week for D&D, the fact that we’re on a Zoom for this, those regularly scheduled things are important. It reminds me of why bowling leagues and church and other things like that are so crucial for maintaining and strengthening friendships.
Craig: Yeah, especially for men. They’ve done all these studies. As men grow older, they just stop having friends. They just end up being friends with their spouse, and that’s it.
John: A lot of work for them.
Craig: Then their work, quote unquote, friends. But they don’t have their own friends. I saw this happen with my dad. They begin to get isolated and detached from the world around them and stubborn and cranky. Because I don’t go to church, and because, generally speaking, I hate anything organized with people – any time I’m part of anything that even vaguely resembles a mob, I start to get very sweaty. But the fact that we do have this ongoing D&D game, and that I have a couple other groups that I play D&D with here and there, is like that’s my church. That’s where all these friends come from.
Then on top of that, honestly, because of a bunch of online things that have since withered away in importance, I know a lot of writers that do what we do, and I have a lot of friends that do what we do. We meet up and we hang out and we have a drink. We go out to dinner. We know each other’s spouses and things. Those things are wonderful. I’m just very grateful. My wife has 4 million friends.
John: I’ll see them over at your house, and I’m like, “Oh, yeah, another Melissa friend.”
Craig: It’s insane. But I have, I don’t know, like 20. I have a decent amount of friends, and I love seeing them. I’m just very grateful that even though I go and I disappear for a year to go do something, a bunch of them are also disappearing for a year to go do something. We’re all in that world. When we’re back together, we’re back together, and it feels great.
John: Craig, it’s always great to be back together with you.
Craig: Aw. Segue man.
John: Thanks for another fun show.
Craig: Thank you.
Links:
- WGAW Good and Welfare Emergency Assistance Loans
- AI Screenwriter job posting
- Pageant of the Masters
- Pageant of the Masters Brings Art to Life from the Wall Street Journal on YouTube
- Arrested Development – The Living Classics
- Severance on Apple TV+
- 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 Pascui Rivas (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.