The original post for this episode can be found here.
John August: Hey, this is John. Heads up that today’s episode has just a little bit of swearing in it.
Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and you’re listening to Episode 648 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.
Today on the show, how do you say goodbye? We’ll take a look at farewell scenes to explore what makes them work. We’ll also answer listener questions about managers, fairies, and moving to Los Angeles. To help us do all of this, let’s welcome back our OG guest host, Aline Brosh McKenna. Aline, welcome back.
Aline Brosh McKenna: I’m actually Craig Mazin.
John: You are Craig Mazin. Craig always affects different voices, and he’s been working-
Aline: Je suis Craig Mazin.
John: I really respect his dedication to the craft. He really finds what it is, that unique kind of thing. As busy as he’s been doing The Last of Us, he still found time to. Craig, thank you again for all of the hard work you’ve done.
Aline: He’s doing a great impression of Aline. I’m doing a really good impression of Aline.
John: We’ve lost the thread here. Aline, it’s so nice to see you.
Aline: Thank you. Thank you for being so gracious about me being late. Anyone who knows me know I am scrupulously on time. And I was on time for the time I thought I was, which was 11:00. But for 10:30, when it actually was, not on time.
John: Not on time. Aline, I haven’t seen you for a bit. Tell me in just a general sense – you don’t have to name projects, but what are you working on? What’s under your fingers right now?
Aline: I have two thrusts to my day. There’s the things that I personally am writing, and then I have a company called Lean Machine, which is run by the wonderful-
John: Can I stop you for a sec?
Aline: Yeah.
John: I just recognized that Lean is actually related to Aline.
Aline: It is.
John: I’ve known you 10 years. I just now got this.
Aline: It’s because when I met my husband – people really love to call me AY-leen, and my husband said, “You should tell people it’s Aline Mean Fighting Machine.” When I started my company, I had to choose between Lean Machine and Fighting Machine.
John: No Fighting Machine.
Aline: I chose Lean, because we’re on time and under budget. I have a company that I run with this woman named Heather Morris, who’s wonderful, fantastic, used to work for Mindy Kaling. We have about 15 to 20 projects. About maybe 30 percent of them are things I’m writing in TV and film, and then the rest we work with other writers. That has been just a pure delight.
I’m not shocking anyone when I tell you it’s a tough time in the business right now. And so what I’ve really focused on is trying to be the producer that I would have wanted to have, which is someone you can really call for story input, because sometimes you work with producers and they are really helpful for story, and sometimes you work with producers and you call them when you have a story problem and you’re like, “Never mind.” It’s like when you ask your parents for advice about your friends, and then they start and you’re like, “Never mind.”
We provide a lot of story support. We help break stories. We make decks for writers. We proofread their scripts. We get sandwiches from Sycamore Kitchen. We try and get things in as good situation for the writers, so that they’re very proud and excited about what they do. I was telling you we started this company in 2019, which was just really great time to start.
John: A great time, because the business was expanding, so there were many more opportunities. However, you could not have known all the roadblocks ahead.
Aline: We did run into a buzzsaw. In fact, Heather started February of 2020, and we moved her right into her office, and then she wasn’t there for months. But I’ve really enjoyed working with writers. There is something fun about breaking a story with a writer and then seeing what they come back with. We work with wonderful people. That’s been really fun.
In this time, still creating things in collaboration with people, which is my favorite thing, I still get to do that. Then I split time between TV and movies. Right now, I’m working on a rewrite, and then I have another movie that we’re making a deal for. Then we have a project that has popped out of a place that it used to be, and we’re trying to find a home for that.
One of the interesting things is, in addition to the market being very soft, I don’t know if you found this, but the making-a-deal process has become glacial beyond my understanding. We have a running joke, because it’ll be like, “Oh, the BA guy is water skiing. Oh, the BA guy sprained his Achilles.”
John: BA being business affairs.
Aline: Yeah.
John: A thing that’s important to understand is, when they say, “Oh, congratulations. We’re gonna have a deal. We’re gonna hire you to do this thing,” that is the start of a process. When you and I started in this business, it could take not usually days; it was weeks to get that deal settled. Your agents and your lawyers and everyone would go back and forth, but you’d come up with a deal, and then you’d start writing. Over the course of the last decade, but really I think in a crisis point since the pandemic, to make a deal has taken forever. There’s times where you’re waiting 11 months to actually make your deal and start writing. Just crazy.
Aline: The movie stuff that I’m doing has been okay, has moved apace really, because if you’re working on something that they have in their mind as like, “Oh, we need this,” or, “We’re making this.” But TV is the thing that used to be, we would be saying, “Oh, TV’s so great, because they need things every season.”
John: There’s a season. There’s a schedule.
Aline: But there’s no seasons anymore. One of the things we’re taking out soon, we’re adding a producer, and we had this writer, and I think that deal took 10 months to make or something like that. And then some of these deals were interrupted by the strike. So we would’ve started it, then there was the six months of the strike, then you come back and you’re still making the deal.
Those poor BA people opened a door and a bunch of snow fell on them, because all these deals that had not gotten done before the strike, they’re doing those. So there’s just been, especially in TV, where you often have numerous components… Sometimes when I come onto a movie, it’s just me; it’s not my company. But things where you have multiple companies coming together with the writers, with maybe a rights deal, a book deal, it’s so funny, because as you said, all this enthusiasm, we’re making this thing, and then 10 months later you’re like, “Oh, right, yeah, no. Yes, this guy.”
John: I’m in that same situation right now. There’s two feature projects, both of which I would love to do. I’m halfway allowing myself to commit to them, like, “Oh, these are things I’m going to write.” But I’m also recognizing it could take so long to make the deals, I’ll probably be writing something else before I’m writing those projects.
I just came off five weeks on a project, which was really interesting for me, because you and I have done weekly work on features, where we come in and we’re working on a thing that is in trouble. It’s about to go into production, it’s in production, or maybe it’s in post and they’re gonna do rewrites. I had this situation for a series that had already been shot and was going to go back and do rewrites.
It was very challenging, interesting work, because I had to write new material that could fit between things that were already established and were gonna stay in the series. But then I had to keep in mind that, “Oh, this new scene also has to pay off in Episode 2, 3, 4, and 5.” Then there were things that could change and couldn’t change. It was really difficult. Drew had to go through all this with me, because there were times where I had to ask. I’m like, “Wait, what happens in Episode 4?” because I want to make sure I’m not duplicating this thing or making the thing that happens in Episode 4 impossible.
Aline: That’s kind of cool. We like to do our puzzles. That’s a puzzle.
John: It was a jigsaw puzzle, the kind of thing that Craig would hate.
Aline: That’s correct.
John: But Craig’s not here to complain about it.
Aline: That’s correct.
John: We’ll talk about these things, but also, in our Bonus Segment for Premium Members, I thought we might talk about journaling. I don’t know if you journal at all. It’s a thing I keep trying to do. I never actually do.
Aline: Great.
John: But should we be keeping track of what we’re doing all day?
Aline: Oh, can’t wait to talk about that.
John: We’ll talk about that. In the news, Inside Out 2 opened huge. It opened in $155 million in the U.S. and Canada, $295 million worldwide, a huge, giant opening hit for the summer. I’m so happy for everybody at Pixar and the people who made it.
Aline: God, I’m rooting for anything that works. Rooting, rooting. Just need those things to work and for people to be excited.
John: Yeah, so it was great to see that. I was honestly surprised. I didn’t know that the world had a huge, pent-up demand for Inside Out. I liked the first movie. It wasn’t like, oh, that’s a surefire sequel. I was surprised.
Aline: I think that that has built up an increased following on Disney Plus, where kids have really dug into some of the older animated titles. I know Moana and-
John: Encanto.
Aline: Encanto. Those have I think become huge juggernauts on Disney Plus. I think that that’s Inside Out. If you’ve been watching it at home, it’s exciting to take your… It’s an all-audience… I think because that movie’s a little more sophisticated, in that it has these more, almost Charlie Kaufman-y themes to it. It’s like a Charlie Kaufman movie for kids. I think adults enjoy unpacking the math of that.
John: It wasn’t the only good news about the box office. Bad Boys 4 opened up really well, and opened up better than I think people expected as well. A $56 million opening weekend, made $214 cumulative as we’re recording this. That’s great for them. Good job, Sony.
Also, Sony and George Gallo settled their suit. Apparently, there was an ongoing lawsuit for many, many years. The original movie was based on a George Gallo short story, and it was a question of, do they have to pay him for that short story for the other things. Apparently, they finally settled that lawsuit that had been going on for years and years and years.
Aline: Do you know how that was settled?
John: Of course no one ever talks about what the actual settlement details were. But both sides are apparently happy that the thing is resolved. It’s really about derivative works, because obviously they buy the short story to make the first movie, and then it’s a question of are all other movies based on that short story or not.
Aline: Got it.
John: Sony’s also busy; they’re buying Alamo Drafthouse. I don’t know if you saw this.
Aline: I did see that.
John: Do you like the Alamo Drafthouse? Have you been down there?
Aline: I love it. I love it. Now, how branded is it gonna be? I saw a movie at The Egyptian, which is owned by Netflix.
John: It’s Netflix’s Egyptian, right?
Aline: Yes. It’s beautiful. I don’t know what it looked like before, but it’s sparkling new. Concessions are good. It’s a really nice place to see a movie. I just wonder, are we gonna be looking at Charlie’s Angels everywhere? How branded do you think it’ll be?
John: I doubt it’ll be very branded, but we’ll see what happens. For international listeners who aren’t familiar with the chain, Alamo Drafthouse came out of Alamo, Texas and was known for having a real love of movies and retrospectives of films, older things in addition to new releases. They also had food that came to your seat, which was delicious. Just a really good movie-going experience. We have one in Downtown Los Angeles. For me and Aline, it’s a bit of a hassle to get to, but it’s worth it when you want to see a movie down there. I’m hoping that the chain stays the same and they keep that same vibe.
But it’s important to bring up the fact that it feels like this was a thing that wasn’t supposed to be allowed to happen, because we don’t think about movie studios being able to own theaters, because of the consent decrees. We’ve talked about this on the show before, but back in 1948, the government said that you could not be both a movie studio and also own the theaters, because that was a vertical integration. That was bad. I’ll put a link in the show notes. Apparently, that only applied to Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox, and MGM. It didn’t apply to Columbia, because Columbia didn’t own movie theaters at the time. And so even if that had not been overturned relatively recently, nothing was stopping Sony from owning a theater.
Aline: Listen. I wish someone would buy the ArcLight. I miss the ArcLight every day. I know they’re gonna reopen the Cinerama Dome, but the actual ArcLight, that’s where my kids grew up going to the movies. It was the greatest. I wish someone would buy that and bring that back.
John: I feel like eventually ArcLight Complex will reopen. It’s been so tough to see it happening. What I’ve heard is that the ongoing issue is that ArcLight Theaters owed money to the studios and basically had to figure out some sort of settlement for unpaid film rental, and that may be what’s actually keeping them from being back in business. I hope it gets resolved. It was such a great place to see movies.
Aline: The best.
John: The best. More follow-up. Drew, talk to us about 3 wing 4. I did not understand this.
Drew Marquardt: In our last Three Page Challenge, there was a script called The Long Haul, where two of the characters were talking about 3 wing 4. You and Craig and me had no idea what that meant. Several listeners wrote in that this comes from the Enneagrams.
Aline: Oh, I’ve done this. I’ve done this.
Drew: Which is a personality profiling system kind of like Myers-Briggs.
John: Great. 3 wing 4 refers to what your personality type would be. In Myers-Briggs, I was an ENTJ or whatever that was.
Aline: So am I.
John: Not surprising that we’re successfully driven screenwriters and have the same kind of things. We’ll put a link in the show notes to what these descriptions are.
Aline: I did this, but I can’t remember what it was. There was a thing where this was going around. Someone sent this to me. Whatever I got, the person who sent it to me was like, “Oh yeah, you’re such a that.” But I don’t know. How useful do you think this is?
John: I don’t know if it’s especially useful for an individual or for a character. I guess there’s two threads I want to talk about. The fact that Craig and I didn’t understand what this was would mean that a lot of people are gonna have no idea what the hell you’re talking about on page 2 of a screenplay. So that’s an issue there.
I always look at these kind of things like astrology. It’s just like, okay, everyone says that this is what your energy is. It’s like, okay, fine, great, if it helps you as a writer make choices for the character that underline that. But I worry that it could be a shorthand for not actually doing the work on the page to create that character who has these characteristics.
Aline: I know this is not a thing that will endear me to folks, but I have an easier time believing in these things than astrology. I’m puzzled. Maybe I am under-informed. But there’s so much chance that goes into when you’re born, like when the doctor can get there or when you push or how you’re pushing or who’s there or whether your mom got there yet.
John: Yeah, or did they fill out the right thing on the form? Turns out you were actually born the next day. They just wrote the wrong thing down on this.
Aline: It’s really, really popular among younger people, especially women. And so often people want to talk to me about it. I usually say, “This won’t be a fun conversation for you, because I will not be yes anding you. I will be wondering why.”
John: I think I’m in your camp here, because it feels like things like Myers-Briggs or what this Enneagram is, which I don’t really know very well, it’s based on, okay, looking at the choices that you make in your life, what are characteristics that group together like that. That kind of tracks for me. But where you were born, when you were born, where the stars were, how Mercury was doing that day doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Aline: I think it goes to, you know in scripts, the idea of the chosen one, the Harry Potter? It’s most religious things. It’s like, oh, no, this guy matters more than all the other people. I think there’s a fantasy in your specialness that even the stars would pull you in certain directions.
Listen. I get it, because as I was saying to someone the other day, it doesn’t sound cute, but we are meat that will be dirt. Of course we will look for greater meaning. I get that. It’s just the exact moment of when you were born, as someone who gave birth twice, just don’t know what that would correlate to, because there is actually a bit of… You could nudge it if you wanted to.
John: My daughter, we had to induce. When she was born was kind of a choice that a group of people made.
Let’s talk about these kinds of scenes. This is a feature we do on Scriptnotes every once in a great while. The first time we did this segment, it was about your first day on the job, and we referenced Devil Wears Prada. We’ve also talked about breakups. Today I want to talk about farewells, which is that moment in a movie where two characters are saying goodbye presumably for the last time.
We’ll talk through some examples of these scenes in movies, but also, what are the characteristics of a farewell scene. This could be the end of a romance. It could be that one character is dying. And so Big Fish, of course, obviously has a farewell scene. We have the deathbed scene and the funeral there too. Or it could be some other situation that is pulling these two characters apart. Maybe buddies who’ve come to – they were rivals at the start, they became friends, and now they’re having to say farewell, and we see the journey there.
But I want to talk through the aspects of farewell scenes, how they work, why they work, and what things writers should be looking for if they’re crafting a farewell scene. Can you think of farewell scenes that you’ve written?
Aline: The one that I’ve spoken about the most probably is the end of Prada where they see each other on the street and Miranda does a little tip of the hat to Andy. I think you can interpret that in a number of ways. Is that a salute? Is that a farewell? She has a little bit of a lingering smile when she gets into the limo. And then Meryl says, “Go.” I say Meryl, because in the way it was scripted, actually, in the screen description, it said, “She looks at the driver. Go.” It was in the scene description, and they had actually shot it, were packing up, and Meryl wanted to go back and say, “Go,” to the driver. It snaps you back into her actual MO.
It’s funny, because I think about this also with respect to romantic comedies that end with people kissing, and that has a finality. But you need to make either your coming togethers or your coming aparts feel final, because you don’t want to feel like they said goodbye forever at the end of Casablanca and then they ran into each other at a bar two days later. The same thing with rom-coms. If it’s like, end of Pretty Woman, he rescued her, she rescued him right back, you don’t want to feel like, cut to four days later where it’s like, “This is insane. You leave your pants on the floor. What is this?” How do you make any ending feel like it stuck?
John: That’s why I think because movies are one-time journeys for characters, we mostly think about farewells in the course of movies. Of course, some series, especially with ongoing regular characters, they will say farewell to a character, and that can be incredibly meaningful at that same time.
But let’s think through the aspects of a farewell. Generally, the characters in that scene acknowledge that this is the end. They may not go into the scene knowing that it’s the end, but at some point in the course of the scene, they realize this is the end. The location they’re at generally is relevant to the scene. Either it’s a special place for them or creates a situation in which they have to say goodbye. Ideally, it needs to rhyme with an earlier moment in the story.
Aline: That’s a great point. That’s a great tip for writers. It should not be a random place. It should be something that goes, “Ah. The irony.”
John: It could be the location rhymes or we’re back in a place we were before, the dialogue is rhyming back to an earlier thing that was said before. Something about this moment needs to feel like it echoes a thing that happened before.
Looking through these examples, we’re gonna see that there’s a bunch of nonverbal story points. There’s a lot of silences in these. That’s honestly the characteristics of these. And it’s why sometimes we’re not gonna be playing the audio for this, because it’s a lot of people not talking.
Aline: I hope you’re gonna put these up on the website, because this is fantastic. Drew, did you make this? This is fantastic. This is really good.
I did send you that funny – there’s a funny piece about the end of Big and how many problems it brings up, where it’s like, are there missing posters for him as an adult? Are there missing posters for the boy? I had read that in the original end of Big, that he goes back to class and there’s a girl named Susan in his class and they wink, like, this is gonna be Elizabeth Perkins. But they dropped that, and so they’re never gonna see each other again. I had been trying to think of comedies, and that’s one. E.T. is probably one of the…
As we had discussed, I think Past Lives is – people were hysterically sobbing at that moment of, they’d been separated for so long, and this is another separation, and possibly permanent.
John: I think what’s important – and Past Lives is a good example of this – is that you’re closing hopefully two characters’ arcs. And so it’s not just your protagonist that you’re seeing through this, and this is the end of their journey. Hopefully, the other character, it’s the end of their journey too, at least in terms of what we’ve seen them go through. Past Lives is a great example of that.
If there’s a choice to be made, hopefully your characters are making the choice. Sometimes the situation may just require them to separate. But I think the farewells that land best, one of the characters is making a choice for this to be the end, and that feels great.
Aline: Can I ask you a question?
John: Please.
Aline: How do you feel about this Bill Murray whisper at the end of Lost in Translation? Is that tantalizing to you, or is that frustrating for you?
John: For me, it’s a little bit frustrating. And also, as I went back to look at the kiss, my recollection of the real movie is that it was a friendship and it was a relationship, but it wasn’t a romance at all. And then he kisses her on the lips, and I’m like, “Wait, he did?” That sounds weird. It felt like it was more of a-
Aline: Of a cheek moment.
John: Yeah, a cheek moment rather than an on-the-lips moment. I was like, “Oh.” I didn’t like the moment when I just watched the clip out of context.
Aline: Lip kissing is out. I used to have a couple friends who were lip kissers, which was always like when you saw them coming towards you and time slows down, because my lip kissing policy would be spouse or gave birth to. That’s about it, pretty much. Those people are coming at you and you’re like, slow motion turn the face. But I think it’s post COVID.
John: To me, lip kissing is a romantic gesture.
Aline: Can you imagine if I lip kissed John on the way out of here?
Drew: I don’t-
Aline: Drew would be so uncomfortable. Or if I lip kissed Drew on the way out of here. It would be so weird.
John: We’d all be so uncomfortable.
Aline: So weird. The French…
John: Yeah, but it’s the cheeks.
Aline: The cheek. The cheek. It felt like this wanted to be a two-cheeker, but we don’t do that in America. But I agree with you. I have a memory of this being a cheek kiss, and it’s not.
John: It’s not.
Aline: You’re saying it’s a full lip kissing. Interesting.
John: Full lip kiss. We can look at the video.
Aline: But what do you feel about not knowing what he said?
John: I’m a little bit frustrated, but I’m also kind of okay with it. How do you feel about it?
Aline: I think it suits this movie, which has a thread of enigma running towards it, and I think suits Sofia Coppola’s vibes, so I think that sense of intrigue and that sense that people are layered and mysterious. I think it works for this. If this was in a really super mainstream Hollywood movie, you’d be irritated.
John: We as an audience need to see that growth or change has happened. A farewell will not be meaningful to us unless we’ve seen the characters are in a different place now than they were at the start of the story, and not just because of circumstances, but because of things they chose to do.
Also, as an audience, we need to see what the characters believe, even if they’re not saying it out loud or speaking it, because oftentimes in these things, one character’s being stoic and holding back. There’s reasons why they’re not fully expressing themselves. But we as an audience have to have insight into what they’re actually really feeling inside there.
Aline: Something I think about a lot is that, because if you have a quieter moment movie, you can have a quieter ending. Past Lives is a very quiet movie with a beautifully quiet ending. E.T., interestingly, which is one of my favorite movies that I’ve seen a lot, for a sci-fi movie, the level of relief on that is pretty low. The enemy is Keys. It never really gets that heightened. I know that if you made that movie now, there would be an interstellar shootout, there would be so much action packed into that end.
I think about that a lot, because anything that we’re working on that has a genre element, it just feels like it needs to get into a third act where there’s giant caterpillars invading from space, that need to be shot. I do feel like that movie now, you’d get a lot of notes about making it huge.
I would put this up there with Casablanca for me, in terms of merely really meaningful goodbye. And I think it’s because the ’70s aesthetic was still at play there, where you could have these quieter movies then. I really mourn that, because now it feels like that’s reserved for the smaller movies. And the bigger movies, if you’re not exhausted, on the ground, with a pounding headache by the end of a sci-fi movie, they’ve not done their job.
John: Let’s take a listen to Casablanca. Of course, we’ve avoided Casablanca throughout almost the entire podcast, just because it’s so cliché. But of course, as farewell scenes go, this is the one that people think about. So let’s take a listen here.
[Casablanca clip]
Rick Blaine: If you don’t mind, you fill in the names. That’ll make it even more official.
Captain Louis Renault: You think of everything, don’t you?
Rick: And the names are Mr. and Mrs. Victor Laszlo.
Ilsa Lund: But why my name, Richard?
Rick: Because you’re getting on that place.
Ilsa: I don’t understand. What about you?
Rick: I’m staying here with him until the plane gets safely away.
Ilsa: No, Richard, no. What has happened to you? Last night we said-
Rick: Last night we said a great many things. You said I was to do the thinking for both of us. Well, I’ve done a lot of it since then and it all adds up to one thing. You’re getting on that plane with Victor where you belong.
Ilsa: But Richard, no, I-
Rick: You’ve got to listen to me. Do you have any idea what you’d like to look forward to if you stayed here? Nine chances out of 10 we’d both wind up in a concentration camp. Isn’t that true, Louis?
Louis: I’m afraid Major Strasser would insist.
Ilsa: You’re saying this only to make me go.
Rick: I’m saying it because it’s true. Inside of us we both know you belong with Victor. You’re part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.
Ilsa: But what about us?
Rick: We’ll always have Paris. We didn’t have, we’d lost it, until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night.
Ilsa: When I said I would never leave you.
Rick: And you never will. But I’ve got a job to do too. Where I’m going, you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do you can’t be any part of. Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble. But it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that. Now, now. Here’s looking at you, kid.
[End of clip]
John: This is a situation where one character knows this is gonna be a farewell leading into it, and she doesn’t know this, and she’s processing this in real time.
Aline: I don’t love the use of the word “kid.” I’m not loving that. That’s giving infantilization to me. I’m just wondering if you could just say a normal goodbye without… I’m not calling you “daddy,” so I’d appreciate not being called a kid. That would be a slightly different ending.
John: Yeah, it would be.
Aline: But I think this idea that’s embedded into this goodbye is this idea that they’re sacrificing for the greater good of the world. Does that still resonate? Do you feel like if you made a movie where it’s like, I need to go do this more public servicey – not public service, but global redemption thing that they have to go do. They’re dedicating themself. Their problems, their love is less than what the world requires of them. Maybe a climate change movie?
John: Or perhaps a movie about a robot apocalypse. Let’s take a listen to Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
Aline: Just his best transitions.
John: Right now, they’re at the forge, and they’ve just thrown the chips into…
[Terminator 2: Judgment Day clip]
Sarah Connor: It’s over.
The Terminator: No. There is one more chip.
John August: He points to his forehead.
The Terminator: And it must be destroyed also. Here. I cannot self-terminate. You must lower me into the steel.
John Connor: No. No.
The Terminator: I’m sorry, John.
John Connor: No!
The Terminator: I’m sorry.
John Connor: No, it’ll be okay! Stay with us! It’ll be okay!
The Terminator: I have to go away.
John Connor: No, don’t do it, please! Don’t go!
The Terminator: I must go away, John.
John Connor: No! No, wait, wait! You don’t have to do this.
The Terminator: Sorry.
John Connor: No, don’t do it! Don’t go!
The Terminator: It has to end here.
John Connor: I order you not to go. I order you not to go! I order you not to go!
The Terminator: I know now why you cry, but it’s something I can never do.
[End of clip]
John: So again here, we have a character who knows that this is going to be a farewell and the other character does not know it and is resisting that moment at the same time, and it’s for the greater good. This is self-sacrifice for the greater good.
Aline: One thing I will say is that where movies really let me down is – not to bring this way, way down, but dying in movies is really glossed over, even in movies about illness. Everybody looks real pretty. They’re beautifully arranged in a bed, and they go cough, cough, and then they look to the side and close their eyes. I had not had a lot of experience with that. My dad passed away two years ago, and the process of that was kind of shocking to me.
I know that love is not what’s in movies, so I don’t know why… And birth is not what’s in movies. People in births are always screaming, and screaming at the husband. I know that those things are not… But we do a very bad job with what it actually looks to leave this world in movies. Maybe it’s too nitty gritty. Maybe all those things are too nitty gritty. Maybe movies don’t need to show people peeing or people performing basic body processes. But maybe these are stand-ins for that. There’s a goodbye we all know is happening, is going to happen, and that these are wonderful, satisfying goodbyes that you can cry at. None of these are death, right? No, Philadelphia is.
John: Philadelphia, I want to focus on a moment that’s not the actual death. It’s not the moment on screen where he dies, but it’s the farewell moment. Initially, it’s Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington talking, and then he’s saying goodbye to other people. But if you listen, he’s never actually saying goodbye. Everyone’s basically saying, “I’ll come back tomorrow. I’ll see you soon.” Let’s take a listen to Philadelphia here.
[Philadelphia clip]
Joe Miller: How you doing?
John August: He’s taking off the oxygen mask so he can speak.
Andrew Beckett: What do you call a thousand lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean?
Joe: I don’t know.
Andrew: A good start. Excellent work, Counselor. I thank you.
Joe: It was great working with you, Counselor.
John: Here, Denzel Washington is putting the oxygen mask back on Tom Hanks’s face, because he was having a hard time doing it himself. It’s a moment of tenderness that we’re seeing.
Joe: Well, I’d better go.
Andrew: Yeah, sure thing.
Joe: I’ll see you later?
Andrew: Thanks for stopping by.
Joe: I’ll see you again. Well, I’ll keep it on ice for you.
[End of clip]
John: He just brought a bottle of champagne to celebrate the winning of the case. He’s putting it there and he’s saying goodbye to the rest of the family. Over the course of the rest of this, we’re gonna see the rest of the family members say goodbye. Some of them happen more emotional; some of them don’t. Of course the conscious is they’re saying goodbye for the night, but it’s clear to an audience that this is the last goodbye. Really well done. Not surprisingly, really well done.
It’s a great example of how it’s the subtext that is carrying the scene. They’re not actually saying the things they’re supposed to say, but the writer, Ron Nyswaner, has created a space to let the actors play those things in eyes that they’re not actually saying.
Aline: Beautiful.
John: That’s a final goodbye. But I really want to play this clip from Weekend. Have you seen Weekend, Andrew Haigh’s film?
Aline: It’s the top of the list of things I should see.
John: It’s really terrific.
Aline: I know.
John: I pulled this because I just did the Sundance Labs, where we were talking with filmmakers about the next things they’re gonna shoot, and the theme for the clips we were supposed to bring in was finales or conclusions. What I loved about this moment at the end of Weekend is…
So the premise is it’s these two guys who hook up on a Friday night, not really knowing each other, and they spend the weekend together. But one of them is going off to America, and so they know there’s no future for this. The one guy, he’s at a kid’s birthday party for a friend. The guy’s like, “If you like this guy, why don’t you just into the train station and stop him?” He’s like, “Oh, no, that’s too movie of a thing to do.” I just love that these two characters realize that they’re in a movie kind of moment. Let’s take a listen to a scene from Weekend.
[Weekend clip]
Russell: Looks like it, eh?
Glen: So is this our Notting Hill moment?
Russell: You know, I’ve never seen it, ever.
Glen: Neither have I, but I imagine there’s a declaration of love and everybody applauds.
Russell: Yeah. Do you reckon that’s what would happen with us?
Glen: Might do. Could give it a go. They’d either clap or throw us under a train.
John August: What happens in this next little sequence is there’s a train going by, and so like Lost in Translation, we’re not able to quite understand what they’re saying. But clearly, one character is telling something more meaningful, and then we catch in at the end sort of what that conversation was.
Automated Voice: 24-hour CCTV recording is in operation at this station.
Russell: I want you to not know I’m not here to stop you from going.
Glen: Please be quiet. Shut up! No, no, no.
Russell: I just want to… I just want to… I just want you to know that…
Glen: Oh, fuck. You’re a bastard for coming down here. Fuck me. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.
Russell: You’ll be great. You’ll have the most amazing time.
Glen: Fuck’s sake. Fuck.
[End of clip]
John: Like Past Lives, there’s a lot of sounds, there’s a lot of things left open, which makes the moment feel very real and very extended. The kind of thing you couldn’t probably do earlier on in the story, but because you’re invested in these characters, you’re willing to watch them struggle to figure out what the next thing is to say.
What I also liked about it is that these characters are recognizing this is a movie kind of thing to do, to race to the train station to stop him before he goes. But once they get there, like, am I actually stopping you? They don’t quite know themselves what the real goal is. They’re just recognizing that this is probably the last moment that they’re gonna have together.
Aline: Has anyone ever done, in a rom-com, a run to the airport where you can’t park, you can’t get through TSA? Actually trying to stop someone at the gate now… That’s ’70s only. Post 9/11, actually trying to say goodbye to someone at a gate is science fiction. You can’t do it.
John: I think probably two examples of it. First, in 30 Rock, there’s a moment where Liz is trying to get to Jason Sudeikis’s character before he moves off to Cleveland. She tries to do the whole thing. She has her special sandwich. They give her a sandwich to get through the TSA. But I also feel like David Wain’s movie They Came Together, with Paul Rudd and…
Aline: Amy Poehler.
John: Amy Poehler. I feel like that must’ve happened in that, because it’s playing all of those rom-com cliches. We’ll put a link in the show notes to a lot of these other clips.
Aline: This is beautiful. This is a great resource. This podcast is free.
John: Free.
Aline: You don’t have to fast forward through ads. This is great stuff right here. This is great. This is the kind of thing, if I was a baby writer, I would be so grateful for, just to focus yourself in on. As you’ve often said, pick the thing that has the best ending. Write something where you know the ending. If something occurs to you for a final scene, that’ll guide you through the whole writing of your movie. It’s really great to study these things. I think this is a wonderful resource.
John: Big Fish would not exist if it weren’t for that last scene. You’re leading up to that. I always describe Big Fish as it’s a long joke that ends in tears rather than a punchline. And it’s getting to that place. The other ones we’re gonna include on the show notes here. The end of The Wizard of Oz, of course she has to say goodbye to all of her friends, that she’s leaving. E.T., of course, saying goodbye to E.T. Toy Story 3, which is a sort of special case. Oh, god, Michael Arndt.
Aline: It’s a killer.
John: Killing us here.
Aline: Yeah, killer.
John: It’s Andy giving up his toys and sending them off to the girl who’s gonna take care of them. Dead Poets Society. All such great choices. Farewell scenes.
Aline: Well done.
John: Well done. Let’s continue with momentum and talk about some listener questions. We’ve got a manager question here from Annie.
Drew: Annie writes, “My manager and I recently broke up. We weren’t a good fit for one another, but he also wanted 10 percent of my day job salary, a gig unrelated to what they were representing me for. However, a script I wrote was doing well on the blacklist, and a studio reached out to my manager during the fallout. But my manager won’t give me the studio’s contact info. It’s been a month. So should I assume my project’s dead? I looked on IMDb Pro for an assistant or someone to reach out to at the company, but I was unsuccessful. If the studio really wanted the script, they would find me, I guess. I’m pretty sad about it, and I’m not sure how to find new management. Thanks.”
Aline: That’s not nice.
John: That’s horrible. That’s horrible on every level.
Aline: That’s really not nice.
John: First off, that manager should not be trying to take 10 percent of your day job salary. That is crazy. I’ve not heard of this.
Aline: Craig would be turning this desk over.
John: Absolutely. Craig has destroyed so much furniture on this podcast. It’s really tough.
Aline: This is shitty.
John: This is. Let’s talk about what happens next. First off, on your script, you have contact information on that. Hopefully, they’re not stripping that contact information off the title page, so they can get a hold of you directly. You, Annie, need to have some public presence out there in the world, Twitter, Instagram, some other place where people can find you, because they will be able to find you if that comes up. Put up a website, Annie, whatever your last name is, screenwriter. Make sure you have a way that people can find you. Obviously, if you’re a WGA member, you’re in the WGA directory, and so people can always look you up there.
Aline: If they were desperate, if they really wanted it. And it may have been an idle inquiry. But this actually just sounds like someone being sadistic and just trying to punish you.
John: Annie, when you say it’s doing well on the blacklist, I assume it’s the blacklist-
Aline: Ratings.
John: The ratings site and not the-
Aline: List.
John: Not the actual list, the end of the year stuff-
Aline: That sounds like it to me too.
John: … because that’s a thing when people would’ve tracked you down more specifically. Pick yourself up. Dust yourself off. As you’re looking for new managers, new reps, try not to be too burned by this experience. Remember that you’re always advocating for yourself first, and keep doing the next thing. It’s good that you had a script that people liked. It’s proof that you can write a thing that people will like. You need to keep writing those things. I’m sorry. All I can do is commiserate with you here.
Aline: Same, same.
John: Question from TJ here.
Drew: TJ writes, “Like many feature writers, I cheered the huge and very real win of guaranteed second steps in the new MBA, but I’m wondering what, if any, recourse we have if a second step remains unstepped. Chalk it up to strike disruption or executive turnover, but I have two feature projects at major studios, with multiple contractually guaranteed rewrite and polished steps, that have been sitting on ice for over a year. I’ve been doing this long enough to understand the writing is likely on the wall for these projects – or not. Who knows? And that’s fine. I’m an expert at moving on. But negotiating guaranteed money and turning in a draft, only to get ghosted on further steps, feels extra mega shitty, especially while trying to string together qualifying years for health coverage. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.”
John: I’ve had this happen too. Let’s remember what a guaranteed second step is. It’s that if you’re hired to write a feature project, you are hired for the initial draft, and if you’re under a certain cap, they have to also guarantee you a second step, a chance to do that rewrite on that project. This is good. This is a big win. Sometimes what happens is you’ve turned in a first draft and there’s a guaranteed reading period, and after that point they should be coming up to you for the rewrite. Sometimes this stretches out for a very long time, because things are just not-
Aline: But they’re supposed to pay you at the end of that reading period.
John: They are supposed to pay you at the end of the reading period. It’s your reps who are there to remind them, “You need to pay them.”
Aline: I’ve done that, for sure.
John: I’ve done that too, fairly recently.
Aline: Some people don’t know that they have a limited amount of time to get back to you and that they have to get back to you.
John: Someone made this deal. If it wasn’t your agent or manager, there was probably a lawyer involved. It’s time to call them and say, “Hey, we need to nudge this.” What can happen sometimes is there’s a little bit of a negotiation, like, “We don’t really don’t want to do this some more. Can we figure a thing out here?” You might be able to settle for less than that if they really don’t have you doing that next thing. There may be a way out of here. But you should be getting paid and-
Aline: On a schedule.
John: On a schedule. TJ, your concern about getting paid money so that your health insurance and everything else continues is correct. And so get that money coming in.
Aline: God, two of the most depressing things when you’re a young writer is trying to get paid, especially when it’s not a ton of money to other people but it is very meaningful for you, and then the other thing is – have you ever been on a money where they don’t want to give you your per diem? Then you’re calling your agent about something so minor. I have friends who were just telling me that this happened to them. It’s literally the most embarrassing, because you’re just trying to get money for a sandwich. There’s this embedded idea that you get paid enough, you should be fine. But if you’ve relocated, then you want that.
John: Totally.
Aline: But there’s nothing in it for your reps really. Early on in my career, I remember having to do that, and it was just so embarrassing, which is like, “No, I really would like money for that latte, so if you don’t mind.” Then the people they’re calling, they’re production people, not the creatives, creative executives. I don’t know. Anything where you have to ask for money, it’s such a bad day. It’s just such a bad feeling.
John: I recently re-watched Tropic Thunder, which largely holds up. Some stuff didn’t hold up so especially well. But one of the ongoing jokes in it is that in the actor’s contract he’s supposed to have a TiVo, and his TiVo didn’t show up. And so he’s like, “Where’s my TiVo?” The agent, Matthew McConaughey, is always trying to track down this guy’s TiVo. It’s silly. My daughter ended up not wanting to watch it, so I wanted to ask her, what is a TiVo. Does she even know? There’s a sense of-
Aline: That’s how my son taught himself to read was to use the TiVo, because he would run down in the morning to turn on the TV and figure out where Sesame Street was. That’s how he taught himself to read and work the TiVo at like four.
John: Of course.
Aline: It’s just funny, the tiny humiliations that we sustain as a writer, that are like, you’re just asking for the basic thing that you’re guaranteed, and then everybody acts like you’re a weenie for asking. It’s one of those things that can really grind you down.
John: This is a bit in the weeds here, but on this project I mentioned that was a five-week rewrite, it came at a time in which I did not have an agent or a manager, because I switched representation. It was just negotiated with my lawyer, who did a fantastic job. But also, it meant we actually had to bill for stuff ourselves. We invoiced for ourselves. It was weird dealing with it.
When you and I are starting a project, it goes from some special magic development account, and it’s this thing. But when you’re actually on a thing that’s running, it’s being paid out of the actual payroll for the actual production. I was talking to the accountant for this thing. It was clear that I’m filling out these forms that, as a writer, I should not be filling out this form. It was weird.
Aline: Wild.
John: Ultimately, the checks still cashed. Money is fungible. But it was weird to be paid out of just different pot of money.
Aline: Please, sir. Please, sir. Please, sir, may I have my paycheck. I’m sorry, TJ. You just have to find the right person to ask. But they do owe you something. Guaranteed means guaranteed.
John: Early on in my career, I did a project for Fox 2000. I did my draft and my set, and I had no more guaranteed steps. But my agent got a call saying, “Oh yeah, we decided to let the option on this book lapse, and so we’re closing out the books on this project. And there’s one polish step on his deal that we’re not gonna use, and so we’re just gonna settle that out and pay it.” I’m like, “But why are you doing that?” They wrote me this check.
Aline: Nice. Take that out. Take that out. Take that out. That never happened.
John: The statute of limitations on that has passed a long time ago.
Aline: That’s right. That’s long ago been spent on some fabulous vacations we’re gonna hear about.
John: We have a question from John about NDAs.
Drew: “I’m new and started shopping my first script around that I’ve written. I’m unrepresented at this point by an agent or manager, though I have a new lawyer. I’ve submitted the script to the US Copyright Office and the WGA. I’ve labeled the cover page with copyright at 2024, my name. I sent a log line to an executive. He responded favorably and asked to read it. I sent it. My lawyer told me that I should get an NDA signed by anyone who wants to read the script before. Is that necessary or common? My instinct is that it adds friction to the process, and if it’s copyrighted, what’s the risk? Is it common practice to have people sign NDAs?”
John: Uh-uh, absolutely not. This is not a thing that happens. We’ve had many fabulous guests on the podcast. We had Christopher Nolan on the podcast. I bet you probably have to sign an NDA when you read a Christopher Nolan script, because he sends a person over with a script that you have to read in person.
Aline: I will say this. If someone sends you, John August, a script to read, and they are not represented, then they would have to sign a form. But just watermark it.
John: You’ve written the script. You own the copyright on it. Worry less, John. It’s just not a thing. It’s a thing that happens with super high secret projects where there can be NDAs on things. This is not that situation.
Aline: You’ve seen the scripts printed on red paper?
John: Yeah.
Aline: I once worked on a project where they insisted on printing it on that silver, iridescent paper. Do you know what I’m talking about?
John: I’ve done another different thing.
Aline: It’s silver, iridescent craft paper. 99 percent of the things that I’ve written are just – people are not digging through files to find romantic comedies or whatever. But this particular company, we had to send it out. And that paper weighs like 100 pounds. We submitted it to a director who’s a friend of mine, and he was like, “I’m not reading that. That’s insulting to me that it would be sent in 20 pounds of iridescent paper. I promise I’m not doing anything with it.” But in a world where things can leak… That’s not this though. Just watermark it. Really, watermarking it takes two seconds, and then you’ll feel like you did something.
John: I would disagree on the watermarking. Anything that gets in the way of a person’s picking up the script and reading it is a barrier, and I feel like that watermark could hurt you.
Aline: Maybe it makes it feel-
John: Special.
Aline: Special. I don’t know. But definitely, you don’t need an NDA. If it’s submitted through a lawyer especially.
John: I feel like if I got something that was watermarked from some person who didn’t have stuff, I’m like, “Wait, you don’t trust me to read your script? You think I am going to steal this thing? That I am going to do something?” I get when a studio sends me a thing that’s a little more secret to me. But also, I would say in this day, in that situation, you’re probably not getting the pdf anyway. They’re sending you some special link to some dumb thing.
Aline: Have you had that, where they can tell how much you’ve read and where you are on it?
John: Yes. That’s spooky.
Aline: That’s a weird feeling, because you want to feel like I’m spending enough time on each page. You don’t know how much data they’re getting. But you don’t want them to know if you were whipping through it. That hasn’t happened to me in a long time. I haven’t gotten one of those in a long… Maybe just because I haven’t done as many of those rewrites. But I haven’t had as many like, give us a vial of your blood, and then disappearing ink on your computer. Also, by the way, half the time I don’t know how to do it.
John: I don’t know how to do it. I was talking with a showrunner who was describing a situation where they were meeting with two different actors for something, and so they sent them that script through that process, in a situation where they had to read it in an app in order to read the thing. They said, “Oh, no, we’re gonna go with this one actor,” and so they pulled the script from the other actor in the moment.
Aline: Off the computer.
John: Off the computer. He tried to flip a page, and then it was all gone. That’s how he found he didn’t get the… Brutal. Let’s talk about some fairies. What does Chris in Ireland have to say?
Drew: Chris in Ireland writes, “I’m writing a spec animated feature set in Ireland where a group of fairies are the antagonists. In Irish folklore, fairies are seen as unpredictable, mischievous, and often malevolent, the complete opposite of Tinkerbell, who I feel has become the dominant representation of fairies in popular culture. I want this movie to celebrate Irish folklore and culture with people around the world. But as the primary audience is children, I’m wondering how to navigate the Tinkerbell issue with, A, potential investors, and B, with audiences. So do I stick to calling them fairies, or should I refer to them as something else?”
John: I say you just redefine what fairies mean in your world. I think it’s great.
Aline: Yeah. I don’t know. It depends on the tone. I was just thinking about that. You may not want to go too meta. If it’s a comedy, you can talk about the fact that people have a preconception about what fairies are, but they’re actually not. Tinkerbell is one of my favorite Disney characters, because she is kind of a pain in the ass. She’s jealous and she’s capricious, and that’s one of the reasons I like her. She’s giving a word I can’t say on this podcast. But I love that about Tinkerbell. I think mischief is part of it. But I know, he’s talking about van art fairies. And so I agree with you. If you can redefine fairies, that’s fun.
John: Absolutely. Obviously, what you’re trying to do with any movie you do is let the audience know what genre you’re in but also how you’re changing the rules of that genre and what you’re bending in that world, and that feels like that’s what you’re bending. So go for it. Let’s wrap up with Dave.
Drew: Dave writes, “I’m an Australian-based DP and I’ve been listening to the podcast for many years now. I’ve been shooting a Netflix show since it started in Australia, and this year I’ve been fortunate to come on board as DP of the latest season of the U.S. version. I moved to my Santa Monica apartment yesterday and I’m looking forward to my next five months in LA. A big part of why I felt comfortable saying yes to the job was because Scriptnotes has made the idea of being in LA a whole lot less intimidating, so thank you. I’d love to know if there’s any resources you’d recommend for looking up screenings or industry events that might be handy for someone like me with a bit of time on their hands.”
John: Dave, you chose to move in Santa Monica. I’m sure you had a reason for doing that. It probably feels most like Australia. You’re kind of a ways away from the center of town of stuff, but that’s fine. Hopefully, you can get on the freeway quickly. What things should he be doing in LA?
Aline: This is a good segue into talking about something I love, which is Revival Hub. Do you follow Revival Hub on Instagram?
John: No. Tell me all about it.
Aline: Revival Hub consolidates all the revival screenings in LA, so all the rooftop screenings, the cemetery screenings, the Alamo special screenings. There’s the Academy Museum, which is open to the public. Every day. Maybe we could put the link to that. It’s every one that’s happening. Back to the Future was playing last week, and E.T. If you go to those, it’ll be packed with industry people generally are the ones.
I’ll tell you a hilarious thing. On Memorial Day, when most would be barbecuing, me and my son and his girlfriend went to the Academy Museum to see Shiva Baby. There were a fair number of people there, but not a ton. That’s not the traditional way of celebrating Memorial Day. And in comes Phil Hay and Karyn Kusama and their son, who we know. Phil and Karyn and I have been laughing for weeks about – I saw them walk in, and I was like, “That tracks.” And they were like, “Yeah, that tracks,” that that’s what we’re doing on that holiday.
You’ll find like-minded people who want to go in a nice air-conditioned screening of Shiva Baby, which I loved – we all loved. You’ll find your people there if you’re comfortable chatting with people. And if you’re working on a project, maybe you’ll know some people there.
John: Absolutely.
Aline: Or you can put up on your Facebook page, “Hey, I want to go see this revival screening of Urban Cowboy or whatever. Does anybody want to come with me?” That’s what I would recommend, because if I had more time, I would be doing those all the time. Obviously, there’s New Beverly. There’s lots of them.
John: I was gonna recommend the Academy screenings, which you can just find online. We’ll put a link in the show notes. But Revival Hub sounds great, because there’s always a ton of them around town. There’s an upcoming July 5th Charlie’s Angels at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery with fireworks afterwards, so I’ll be going to that. There’s gonna be retrospective screenings of Go coming up. There’s always gonna be those things that happen.
Aline: It’s really fun. It’s great. It’ll make you feel like you’re in the biz, because LA is really dispersed.
John: Fewer things out in Santa Monica, but even out there, there’ll be some stuff.
Aline: Oh yeah, there’s places that are close to there. There’s the New Art, some of the places in Revival Hub. But also, summer is a great time for special screenings. In Malibu they do them on the cliff. It’s fun.
John: I love it. It’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is Malta. I just got back from Malta. Have you been to Malta?
Aline: I have not, no.
John: Malta is really cool. It is an island nation, of course, south of Sicily. It feels kind of impossible, because it is a foreign country that speaks English. You definitely know you’re in a foreign country, but everyone speaks English, because it’s the second language of the island is English.
It’s incredibly urban and dense, except for the parts that are totally rural. It’s really cool. All the names seem like they’re Arabic, because it’s Semitic language, and yet it’s not. It’s really a very cool place. I really dug it. A lot of stuff has filmed there over the years, like Gladiator stuff, a Popeye film there. They kept all the sets from the Robin Williams Popeye.
Aline: How do you get there?
John: We flew. I was in Italy for a conference, and we flew. We were so close. I could literally almost see it. But we had fly back to Rome, and Rome to Malta. Air Malta was good. I just dug it. I’m thumbs up on Malta. They have a nice big tax credit. I’m looking for a thing to shoot in Malta, because it’d be a cool place to do a thing. Everything is white limestone, and it feels like you’re in North Africa.
Aline: Cool.
John: That was great.
Aline: Love that. I did enjoy it on your Instagram.
John: Thank you. Game of Thrones shot some stuff there. Things like a lot of exteriors got shot for various seasons in Malta. So check out Malta.
Aline: Check out Malta.
John: I’m head of the tourism board.
Aline: Have we discussed that I am the other person who loves this drink?
John: She is pointing at caffeine-free Coke Zero, or Coke Zero Zero, as we call it in the house.
Aline: That’s the best stuff. I would drink 10 of those if I could.
John: What’s stopping you?
Aline: Because it disrupts my biome. It’s really not good for you. But that is the best one.
John: Craig Mazin does not believe me on this. I will bring it over to his house.
Aline: Incorrect.
John: He’s like, “Oh, I’ll have regular.”
Aline: No, it’s this.
John: He’ll have caffeine-free Diet Coke, which is not nearly as good.
Aline: No, no, this is the thing.
John: This is the thing.
Aline: It’s not my One Cool Thing, but it’s our one cool thing.
John: But Aline, it’s hard to find.
Aline: Oh, believe me. I have it always stocked in my office and at my house, so come over.
John: When people are shopping for you, they may have trouble finding it, but the one hint-
Aline: It’s red.
John: It’s red. You need to find it at the Ralph’s on Wilshire. Will always have about eight of them, and so I will always take seven, so I can leave one so they remember it.
Aline: I have two One Cool Things. They’re short. But I like to do something girly always on this most male of podcasts. I chose a color that was too dark today. I have two, and I picked the wrong one. There’s a thing called peel-off lip stain.
John: What’s this?
Aline: You put what looks like a very, very dark lipstick on. You’d actually like this, because it’s pretty cool. You put a lot of lipstick on, and then over the next 10 minutes it dries into a film, that you then peel off.
John: I like peeling off stuff. That feels great.
Aline: It’s a delight.
John: Like glue on your hands as a kid. Love it.
Aline: It’s like that. It leaves this color on your lips. There’s a few things you gotta master to get it right. You can just go to Amazon and write peel-off lip stain. It’s fun. The one I used this morning, as I said, is too dark, but look. It’s not moved since I’ve been here.
John: It matches your shirt.
Aline: It’s not moved since I’ve been here. It’s just a fun, silly thing that I got from TikTok, which leads me into my last thing that you would love. Are you a TikTok guy? You’re not.
John: I’m not. I’m a Reels guy, so I watch like TikTok two weeks late.
Aline: No, not two weeks late, my friend. Six months later. I love when someone puts up a funny song clip or something. There’s two that are really big right now. What happens is somebody will put up a funny song clip and then people will duet it. They’ll play along to it. They’ll sing along to it. They’ll rearrange it. They’ll do dances to it. There’s two right now that are big on TikTok. One is “I’m looking for a man in finance.”
John: Of course. Love it. So good.
Aline: You know that?
John: Yeah.
Aline: There’s a million remixes of “I’m looking for a man in finance” that are great. The newest one is a hilarious guy who does comedy songs. This one is (sings) “put a little dirt under the pillow for the dirt man in case he comes to town.” People have sung along to it, played along to it, danced to it. If you go to TikTok and you find the original – you’ll just put “a little dirt under the pillow for the dirt man” or just put “dirt man,” and then you’ll find the original one. Then what you do is you click on that sound. Watch the ones that have the most views. The ones that have like two views are not gonna be great. But “looking for a man in finance” has just taken off like a rocket. And Dirt Man, which is a real ear worm, has also taken off. I just recommend, especially if you’re new to TikTok and you’re trying to figure out what’s fun about it.
What I love about TikTok is that people are so creative. They are so creative. And so many people can sing. I really love the ones where people sing in harmony. But dancing, adding saxophone, they’re really fun. And maybe we can link to some of the better ones for those two sounds. But “looking for a man in finance” has now become iconic. Ariana DeBose did a parody of it for the Emmys.
I know that in a world where we are constantly afraid of what social media is doing to us, I see TikTok and other forms of social media too can be an area for great expression. YouTube is how I found Rachel Bloom. There’s good stuff on the internet.
John: My newest obsession in TikTok/Reels is I love seeing incredibly talented music producers take a thing and redo it. What I found this morning was a guy who could take a Dua Lipa, like, “What if Phil Collins had written this Dua Lipa song?”
Aline: Yes, I saw that. It’s fantastic.
John: It’s genius. We’ll put a link in the show notes to that too.
Aline: It’s great.
John: It sounds great. It’s like, I really love this. I want Phil Collins to have done this song.
Aline: There’s that Celine Dion remix that started on TikTok. Then sometimes things get popular on TikTok and it takes them a while to clear it legally so that they can stream it. But the Celine Dion one, which they turned it into a dance song, you can now get on Spotify. Humans are awful, but also wonderful and so creative. And there are so many talented people out there. And TikTok is a good venue for that and for some horribly useless things. But it’s also a venue for some wonderful stuff.
John: That is our show this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, with help from Jonathan Wigdortz. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Outro this week is by Matthew Jordan.
If you have an outro, you can send your link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions, like the ones we answered today. You will 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 Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts and hoodies and glasses and hats now. You can find all those at Cotton Bureau.
You can sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and Bonus Segments. Thank you to all our Scriptnotes Premium Members. We’re gonna be talking about journaling. But it’s always lovely to have you here on the show, Aline Brosh McKenna.
Aline: I’m actually Craig.
John: Yes, really, your commitment to the bit, Craig, I really respect that.
Aline: He did good.
John: He did good.
[Bonus Segment]
John: Bonus Segment. I want to talk about journals and journaling and this idea that we should be writing down what we did all day, because it feels right and feels useful and I’ve done it at times, but I don’t do it consistently. I’d like to do it more often. Aline, are you doing it?
Aline: I shockingly don’t. Not only do I not journal, I also don’t copiously write down ideas or bits of things. Very rarely do I do that. My husband is shocked at how little I record. I think I have this core belief that – I don’t know what the term for this is, but I don’t have a specific episode memory. I have a synthetic memory. That’s the term I would use, which is when I walk around the world, I’m noticing patterns more than I am trying to record actual instances of things. I find that if I concretize things too much too early, it prevents me from doing that process of synthesis.
Who doesn’t write in their diary when they’re a teen? “Nobody here understands me.” I certainly did that, but I have not found it useful. I know we’re gonna talk about journaling. I know I’m supposed to do it. I know it’s good for you. I know both those things are good for you. But I think it depends on what sort of person you are. I find that I do my ruminative stuff in a different way. We can talk about this on another episode, but do you narrate your life to yourself, or do you not?
John: I guess I narrate to the degree to which I am aware of the thing I’m doing. I have a very active internal voice, if that makes sense.
Aline: You do. I don’t. Some people are like, “Oh, here I am. I’m at the podcast. Look at Drew,” and they’re talking to themselves. I don’t, in a flow state. And I also can visualize things. I think that part of like – I’m gonna make up a word – synthetic memory, I assimilate things and sort them. I don’t dwell on specifics. Look. So many people do it. It’s probably better, and I should do it, but I don’t.
John: This is not in any way meant to be like, “This is a thing you should do.” I just want to talk about when it’s been useful and when I’ve done it and why I mostly don’t do it often.
A couple years back, I went through a really rough time. And one of the things that people recommended was this Five Minute Journal, which is this little white book. At the end of every day, you write down, like, here are some good things that happened today. It has these specific prompts. It sounds really stupid, but it’s just incredibly helpful, just by putting some context around stuff, like, “Oh, today wasn’t entirely shit. There actually were some good things, some things I noticed. Okay. Take a deep breath. It actually wasn’t awful.” Sometimes even over the course of the day, it got me thinking, “Oh, this is an actually okay moment.”
Aline: “Good latte.”
John: Take the small wins for what you got. I’m not using that book at all anymore, but it was useful for that. On the iPhone now, they have this app called Journal, which is a built-in app from Apple, which is surprisingly poor. It doesn’t actually do very much for you. But I thought, oh, that’ll be a good way to remind me to actually write down some stuff, because what I find I will do is I will happily email a person about the stuff I was working on or text somebody, but I won’t spend the time to actually text myself about, like, this is the thing that happened, and so there’s no record. I don’t have a good way of looking back, like, “When did that happen?”
Aline: My husband has an amazing book. We went out to dinner last night. He gets the card for the restaurant. He puts it in his journal. It says dinner with so-and-so at this restaurant. He has these little notebooks, and he’ll just paste them in. He has a record of the things we’ve done and the places we’ve been.
I think it depends on what sort of brain you have. But I had read a thing which is – and this is good for writers. You know when you’re working on a long-form thing and you feel like, “What did I do today?” Making a list of what you actually accomplished in a day, “Did a workout. Wrote four pages. Called my mother,” things that you to-done list. I did that for like three days.
John: Now, your husband is an attorney.
Aline: No, he works at a mutual fund.
John: For some reason, I was convinced your husband was an attorney. I was thinking there’s people who have billable hours who need to actually show the work they’ve done. That feels like a natural instinct.
Aline: He doesn’t have that. He doesn’t do that. People’s brains are a lot more organized that mine. I guess we’re at the age where you decide your faults or your strengths. I think I have more of a birds eye view than a day-to-day view, in a certain sense.
John: One of the things I recognized is that my photo roll becomes essentially my diary, because it’s like, “What was I doing in April?” Then I scroll back to April, like, “Oh, that’s what I was doing.”
Aline: Yes! John and I are sort of the same person. Have you noticed? ENTJs who like the exact same kind of Diet Coke. That’s exactly what I do. I love looking back and saying, “What was I doing a year ago?” Then you send it to a friend and they go, “Okay.”
John: “Okay.” But one of my frustrations I’m recognizing is that – I’ll get to what I’m actually doing and trying to do more now – but on my trip to Italy and my trip to Malta, I will think through, like, what am I gonna post on my Instagram stories, but I won’t do that for myself. I’m fine publicly presenting a history thing, but I won’t keep that for myself.
Aline: That’s what those social media things are. They’re like we’re writing our own lovely tribute to ourselves. I wonder if she would be okay with us name checking her, but Katie Dippold once said to me and Craig – we were talking about something, and she said there should be a button before you post something online that says, “Wait, but why?” It’s so true.
Listen. I started an Instagram for my dog, Sir Jimmy Jim. Why? I don’t know. I put one-second work into the caption. They’re terrible. But there’s a need to concretize. Now that you can publicly concretize, it’s very tempting. But you’re right, why not privately concretize?
John: What I’m using right now is called Day One. It’s an app that’s for iOS and also on your Mac. You can write some stuff in there about what happened. You can also link it to things. I use Strava for running, and so all my runs show up in there, and so it keeps track of that. You can add photos to it and make stuff work.
What I’ve found has been helpful for me to do is, on my iPhone I will start a new entry and then I’ll just hit the voice transcription thing, where you click the button and you just talk at it, because I don’t care that it’s perfect or that it’s exactly right. I just want to dump it out there and make a record, because I’m probably the only person who’s ever gonna read this again. That’s been useful. It’s one less barrier of a thing to do.
Aline: There’s a thing called the external brain that my husband talks about where getting things out of your brain into Evernote or into something-
John: I use Notion for that.
Aline: Because otherwise you wake up in the middle of the night going, “Oh.”
John: I’ve talked about it on the podcast, but I keep a stack of index cards by the bed, in the bathroom, and various places. I’ll write the thing down and then it’s done. I’ll put it by the bedroom door. It’s out of my brain. I can stop thinking about it.
Aline: You should do that. Again, these are all things that I should do and don’t.
John: Listeners, if you have suggestions for journaling things you want to be doing… Oh, but I do also want to ask you – several writers who we know do things called Morning Pages, where they write all the stuff… I see you shaking your head. That does not feel like an Aline thing. The idea behind these is that you unlock the artist within and fight the war of art and get all that stuff out of you. I’ve just never found it super helpful. I’ve tried it. It’s like, sure, I can vomit out a bunch of stuff, but my day isn’t better for me having done it.
Aline: The time that I’m writing, I want to consolidate into purposeful writing. I think it would make me feel despair.
John: Yeah, it could. Aline, always a pleasure having you here.
Links:
- ‘Bad Boys’ Settlement by Dominic Patten for Deadline
- Why did Sony buy Alamo Drafthouse — and is it actually a good thing? by Ryan Faughnder for LA Times
- The Nine Enneagram Type Descriptions
- Farewell – Casablanca
- Farewell – Past Lives
- Farewell – Lost in Translation
- Farewell – Weekend
- Farewell – Philadelphia
- Farewell – The Shawshank Redemption
- Farewell – Harold and Maude
- Farewell – Terminator 2
- Farewell – The Way We Were
- Farewell – The Wizard of Oz
- Farewell – E.T.
- Farewell – Toy Story 3
- Farewell – Dead Poets Society
- Revival Hub LA
- Visit Malta
- Peel off lip stain
- Dirt Man by Carter Vail, and some of Aline’s favorite remixes, via TikTok
- Phil Collins’ Houdini
- 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 and Twitter
- John on Mastodon
- Outro by Eric Pearson (send us yours!)
- Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt with help from Jonathan Wigdortz. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli.
Email us at ask@johnaugust.com
You can download the episode here.