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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/how-writing-credits-work).

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

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

**John:** And this is episode 193 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, you and I both this week were working on rewrites. How did yours turn out?

**Craig:** So far so good. I made it to the end. And —

**John:** That’s always a good place to end?

**Craig:** Well, but, you know, I’m fond of saying that “The End” are the two biggest lies that we can tell ourselves as screenwriters. So, all I’ve really done is reach the end. So, now, Lindsay Doran has the whole draft. I will be spending next week with her going through everything. And then off it goes to Scott Frank and to Working Title and to Universal. So, you know, high hopes. High hopes. How about you?

**John:** Yeah, I was doing the paper edit this week. And so, I like to print out the script and sort of go through it page by page, really read it, you know, do all of that sort of noticing of typos and mistakes, and then things I could cut, things I could change. And then as I’m going through it, and then figuring out like these are the new scenes, this is what’s swapping out there. I will sort of write on the left-hand page the new stuff that goes in there. So I’m just now typing in those changes. But I feel good about it.

**Craig:** Well, listen, man. I would like [laughs] for our movies to be out at the same time. They’re both family movies, I believe.

**John:** Oh, the same weekend.

**Craig:** Yeah, they’re both family movies. So I think we should go head to head. It’ll be the ultimate Three Page Challenge. It would be a two-hour challenge.

**John:** That would be fantastic. It would be a two-hour challenge. Speaking of hours, did you buy yourself an Apple Watch this morning? We’re recording this on Friday. Did you buy an Apple Watch?

**Craig:** Yeah. [laughs] So I don’t —

**John:** Me too. I wasn’t planning to, but I did.

**Craig:** No, I was actually planning on not doing it. So I was planning on buying the Apple Watch. Then I checked some reviews and things. And The New York Times was very favorable. There was a pretty good in-depth review that someone else wrote that didn’t seem quite as favorable. And then I remembered that I don’t care about reviews. So then I just thought, “Oh, you know what, I guess maybe I’ll wait. I’ll wait, I’ll check it out. I’ll hear from my friends.” And then, suddenly, there I was at midnight tapping away like a monkey hitting a bar that —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Spits out cocaine-wrapped bacon. It should be bacon-wrapped cocaine.

**John:** Yeah, I guess so. Because it’s really hard — you could dust bacon with cocaine.

**Craig:** Oh, I like that.

**John:** But you can’t wrap it.

**Craig:** Yeah, I’m hitting the bar like a monkey —

**John:** Or like a tempura sort of thing. Like a cocaine in a tempura batter.

**Craig:** Yeah, like cocaine battered bacon. So there I am. And so, I did it. Now, which version did you get?

**John:** I got the cheapest one I could get or almost the cheapest. I got the larger size. I didn’t get the little teeny tiny one. But I got the larger one with the sport band, space gray throughout. So it was like $399.

**Craig:** Is that the Watch Sport? Is that that version or —

**John:** I think it’s Watch Sport, yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. I went for a standard watch. So not the —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know, the [laughs] absurd collector’s item. It just —

**John:** You went for steel rather than aluminum.

**Craig:** There you go. So I went for the standard watch, the larger size with the Milanese Loop.

**John:** Fantastic.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Well, that should be a nice watch.

**Craig:** We’ll find out.

**John:** So mine is just to see what the watch is like. I haven’t worn a watch in 20 years, but this might be a watch I’ll wear. We’ll see.

**Craig:** I know. That’s the thing. I haven’t worn a watch either in 20 years. But, you know, I remember when I put my wedding ring on, I was like, “What the — what is this? I don’t wear jewelry. What am I, a gypsy? Now I’m wearing jewelry?” And —

**John:** And now it’s bizarre not to have my wedding ring on.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** I was the same way.

**Craig:** It’s just, it fits, right? So it’s just there and you feel it all the time. And I know that the watch will be that way, too. The real question is, from the summaries that I was reading, the great blessing and curse of the Apple Watch is that it uses this Taptic Engine to notify you when things are happening. So, little taps on your wrists of different kinds. Like here’s a tap for email, here’s a tap for text, here’s a tap… — well, sometimes, you’re just getting a lot of texts and you don’t want to and it’s annoying. So, it’s about adjusting how you get notifications. I don’t want my phone tapping me on the wrist every time some Facebook thing happens or something, you know, so.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** There’ll be a lot of customization.

**John:** A lot to learn.

**Craig:** Yeah, but it’s fun. And you and I are pretty hardcore dorks. So, it’ll be exciting.

**John:** Absolutely. One day, you’ll be able to like sit down in your fancy car and the car will recognize you that you’re in the car and will just start.

**Craig:** Well, yeah. I mean, it kind of already does that.

**John:** Right.

**Craig:** Yeah, my car does that [laughs] because —

**John:** Well, I mean, you have to have the key fob in your pocket to do that, correct?

**Craig:** Yes, I do have to have the key fob in my pocket.

**John:** And soon, it’ll be just your watch.

**Craig:** Yeah. But the nice thing about the Tesla is you don’t have to actually turn the car on. There’s no on button. You sit, you close the door, you put it in gear. You’re off. And there’s no gears, actually. You put it in mode.

**John:** Mode.

**Craig:** Mode.

**John:** All right, this podcast, this episode is in the education mode. Because this podcast, we’re going to be talking about screen credits. We’re going to be talking about how writing credits work. So this is going to be one of those really long in-depth episodes. I don’t really want to say long. I don’t know if it’s necessarily going to be long, but it’s certainly going to be in-depth. We talked about screen credits way back in episode 20. That was back when we had like five people listening to the show.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And it’s way back in the archives. And I’m sure everything we said in there was accurate. But my goal with this episode, and I think together we can do this, is that I want to have so much knowledge imparted that if you listen to this whole episode, you will understand more about screen credits than 90% of working screenwriters.

**Craig:** That’s exactly right.

**John:** Do you think we can do that?

**Craig:** I know we can do that. We are going to basically deliver the definitive walkthrough of credits, which I hope is not only listened to by members of the Writers Guild or prospective members of the Writers Guild, but also people who write about credits. Because, frankly, they often get a ton of stuff wrong.

So, we can really walk you through the whole shebang here, which is complicated but interesting in its own way so that whether you’re a fan of movies, or you’re a writer, or you write about movies, you will understand exactly what this credit arbitration thing is. How it actually works from top to bottom. You will be an expert when we’re done with you.

**John:** I hope so. And it was reports in the news this last week that sort of prompted this discussion. Because this last week in Deadline Hollywood Daily, there were articles about the arbitration process over the new Jurassic Park, Jurassic World is the movie.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And the final decision came down. And the final credits for Jurassic World when it opens in theaters will read Screenplay by Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver and, A-N-D, Colin Trevorrow & Derek Connolly. Story by Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver, based on characters created by Michael Crichton.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** At the end of this episode, we will understand what that means and sort of how they got to this place. We will also understand why writers are sometimes frustrated and confused, and sort of unhappy about the writing credit determination process.

This is what Trevorrow said about this whole process. “I have spoken with Rick and Amanda several times over the past few days,” Trevorrow told Deadline. “Though we may not agree on specifics of the ruling, we share a disdain for the arbitration process and the ugliness that it often breeds. Our conversations ended in a spirit I’d like to think the Guild would support — that a credit should be equally shared. Jurassic World is a special film, and I’d rather acknowledge these writers as co-designers of this adventure than bitter enemies who must be avoided at parties. That kind of animosity isn’t in the spirit of our craft, or our organization. Though I remain a proud member of the WGA, I encourage my fellow members to work together to find alternate ways to evaluate our contributions.”

So that is Colin Trevorrow, one of the writers and the director of Jurassic World talking about it. And I think by the end of our podcast, we’ll have a better understanding of what he was going into and sort of what the reality is of getting your name up on that screen really involves.

**Craig:** Well, let’s begin by taking a close look at something he said here which isn’t quite specific enough. And in doing so, I’m going to kick a little bit of a hornet’s nest. Because the WGA or the Guild does not determine credits the way people —

**John:** What?

**Craig:** Use those, huh? In fact, the WGA West or WGA East determines credits. So we have two unions, West and East. Now, a lot of people will immediately say why? And the answer is, don’t know, it was that way back in the ’40s when long distance was, you know, super expensive. It makes no sense now. That’s a whole other episode.

**John:** Wouldn’t the whole history, though, be that television was largely based out of New York and features were largely based out of Los Angeles and overtime that sort of changed. But that was — originally, they were very different beasts. Is that accurate in any sort of historical context?

**Craig:** No, kind of not really.

**John:** Yeah, I’m probably wrong.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean a little bit, but no. I mean, it doesn’t matter. The truth is, it’s one of those things we live with now and in an age where we’re constantly revising the world around us to be better this has resisted revision for political reasons essentially. But it is important to understand here that in this case, the credit determination process was messy, from what I can see. It did contain a very strange inaccuracy. There was a second review of it. And it was conducted by the Writers Guild East.

Now, let’s talk about who determines credits and why it matters. So, the Writers Guild West or the Writers Guild East determines credits. Here’s the way the rules work. If a majority of participating writers on a project are West members, the West handles it. If a majority of the members on a project are East members, the East handles it. If there’s exactly the same number, tie goes to the West. The West handles it.

Well, aren’t the two unions governed by the same collective bargaining agreement? And aren’t they governed by the same Screen Credits Manual and guidelines? Absolutely. So what’s the big difference? Well, the Writers Guild West has well over 7,000 members. And more importantly, it has probably 50 or 60 attorneys working at the Guild. The credits department of The Writers Guild West handles the vast majority of arbitrations and most of the principals in that department, principal staff members, are attorneys. And they are very, very good at what they do.

Now, I’m not a Writers Guild East member, but I can tell you this. I believe, last I heard, a few years ago, they had one lawyer on their staff. Their staff is something like 20 to 30 people. They really don’t like when I say things like this. They get very, very fussy about it. And generally speaking, this is my opinion, if I could choose which guild would be managing my credit arbitration, I would really, really want the West to do it.

In this case, a very strange decision came down initially where there wasn’t a story credit. There almost had to be a story credit. It was by the rules. I couldn’t begin to explain what they did or how it worked out that way.

But important for you guys to know out there, the West handles most credit arbitrations, but there are cases where the East does. So, be aware of that. In this case, I don’t know who the participating writers were beyond the credited writers, but I believe Colin is an East Coast guy. I don’t know Rick and Amanda.

**John:** I believe Derek is as well.

**Craig:** Yeah. So that’s an East Coast team. If there were no other participating writers and except for Rick and Amanda, then I presume they must be East Coast because this was an East jurisdiction. So, that’s right off the bat. There’s a funky little thing.

**John:** Yes. So let’s talk about why determining credit matters and sort of why we have this system at all. So if we didn’t have the Writers Guild West or the Writers Guild East determining credits, how would we figure out who got screenplay credit?

**Craig:** Well, we don’t have to ask. We know, because in our inception as a union, we did not have credit protection. And so credits were determined by the companies. And in fact, that system still exists today for feature films that are not covered by the Writers Guild, most notably animated films. So when you go to see a Pixar movie, there are credits up there for writing. And those credits are at the sole determination of Pixar. And if they think you deserve it, you get it. And if they don’t, you don’t. If they love you, probably that would be good. If they do not love you, probably that would be bad.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Similarly, if you have an arrangement in your contract where you are set to receive a bonus should you get screen credit, it would obviously be in the company’s interest to not give you screen credit if it would cost them a lot of money. And, of course, there are issues of abuse where they could theoretically put, particularly in the case of writer-directors and writer-producers who just say, “Look, I want this credit for myself and we’re all chummy here. You know, just give it to me.” So that’s the major thing we’re avoiding.

And then there’s also the secondary thing that’s actually written into our collective bargaining agreement that says that the WGA is in the business of protecting the dignity of the credit. We want our credit to mean something. It is a special credit. It is not like other credits on a movie, other crew credits. It is both a credit that says I wrote this movie and it’s a credit that indicates proper authorship of a movie. Even though we don’t have copyright, there’s an implication of authorship there. So our credits mean something and we want to protect their dignity.

**John:** Absolutely. So, while we’ve often talked about on the show how filmmaking is an incredibly collaborative process. So, at every level, everyone involved in the film is helping to make that film possible. People who are writing the film, people who are directing the film have an interest in defining some authorship, defining that their work is the principal creative driving force behind this film existing.

And it’s one of the reasons why, you know, you might see 15 different companies listed in the visual effects in a very visual effects intensive movie. But you should hopefully only see one writing credit that reflects who the individual or the team that was principally responsible for this movie. Even if more than one writer wrote it, there’s been a determination of who is most responsible for this film. And that is the process that goes through arbitration.

**Craig:** That’s right. And our credit isn’t manipulable the way that a lot of crew credits are where you could say, “Well, here’s 100 people that worked on visual effects. But these people are artists, these people are supervisors, these people are producers. The person is the, you know, the ultimate, the visual effects master.” Writing is writing. And so we don’t have junior writers, senior writers or stuff like that. We just have writers. Did you author this movie or not?

Directors are shielded from this to almost exclusive extent because the job of directing a film is singular. We don’t direct. I mean, by the way, it used to be that they would have three or four directors on movies, but we’re talking about back to the ’20s and ’30s. In modern filmmaking, one director makes the film. You cannot successfully replace that director once, twice, three, or four times on any regular basis.

So you will not really, I mean, there are occasional times where directors are replaced. And there are director credit arbitrations. They’re exceedingly rare. But because of the nature of what we do comes before production, it’s obviously quite common.

**John:** So the crucial sort of third piece of that creative triumvirate is the producer. And producer credits have, as we talked about on the show before, proliferated. And so one of the things you will start to see increasingly in films these days is a credit after the person’s name saying PGA, Producers Guild of America.

And the Producers Guild attempted to do something like what the Writers Guild already had for writers’ credits. It’s basically to identify who are the producers who were principally involved with the actual creation of the film. And so that if there are 12 producers listed, the ones who have that PGA credit are the true principal producers behind it. And that same sense of authorship. They are the ones who deserve some creative ownership, some creative recognition for what they did for the film.

**Craig:** Right. They recognize that if you have 14 people that say producer, then the credit producer means absolutely nothing. The PGA is not an actual guild. It’s not a labor union. It’s a club. But they do a good job of their primary goal, which is protecting the dignity of that credit.

So the PGA comes up with their own rules as they wish. We can’t do that. Because we are a labor union, the Writers Guild derives all of its authority and jurisdiction from its collective bargaining agreement with the companies. And so while most writers in the union will never look beyond our Screen Credits Manual, which is the manual the union publishes for its writers and arbiters to list all the guidelines. In fact, all that stuff derives from our collective bargaining agreement. It’s in an area called Theatrical Schedule A, which sounds sexy. It is. It’s —

**John:** It’s such good reading.

**Craig:** 50 Shades of Schedule A.

**John:** I just love it.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s pretty hot. So if you’re ever feeling randy.

**John:** Well, the fact that it comes from this collective bargaining agreement would explain why it actually feels so lawyerly when you go through it. So most writers will encounter these restrictions, these regulations, these, you know, they’re not even guidelines. They really are rules in something that’s called the Screen Credits Manual.

And that is when you are seeking credit on a film or if you are involved in arbitration either as an arbiter or someone seeking credit, you get the Screen Credits Manual. And it really lays out in very clear language exactly what the requirements are for different kinds of credits.

This is important for lots of reasons because this is how we’re going to determine the credit. And if we didn’t use those rules properly, writers would be up in arms. And writers would be not just disappointed, the way that Colin Trevorrow was disappointed, but might sue or might take actions that would potentially break the whole system.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s unfortunate because there are things in the Credits Manual that are clear. There are other things that are as clear as mud. And it is. It all derives back to its origin as a legal document and a legal document that is the product of negotiation with companies and lawyers on both sides.

So a lot of times, writers will look at this stuff and think, “My guild is ridiculous. They’ve printed this impossible to understand booklet. And they’re so legalistic and they’re treating me like, you know, I’m in court, and they’re the judge. And it’s very off-putting and it’s very disconnecting.” But it’s not the Guild’s fault. They have no choice.

This was the devil’s bargain. We get to do final jurisdiction over credits but we get to do it within the framework of a large document drawn up by a lot of lawyers.

**John:** If it were nicer and squishier, it wouldn’t hold up in court.

**Craig:** It would not.

**John:** And then we would be in a real bad situation.

**Craig:** It would not hold up in court. And ,in fact, a number of writers have sued the Writers Guild because they felt that they were unhappy with the outcome of going through the credits process for one reason or another. And in the Writer Guild history — Writers Guild’s history — they have never lost. They have never lost one of these credit cases.

And they have never lost in no small part because the credit staff at the Writers Guild West, at the very least, is full of lawyers who specialize in this area of law. WGA credits [laughs], that’s their area. And they follow those rules. It can, at times, be distressing when your own guild seems to be applying rules to you with no sense of mercy or fairness or rationality. But that is the job they’re tasked with, unfortunately.

**John:** So before we get into the process of determining the credits, let’s make it clear what we’re talking about and what we’re not talking about. So you and I both have a lot of experience with screen credits for feature films. And that’s mostly what you and I have done. I’ve done some TV, we’ve done some other things, I’ve served as an arbiter in some TV situations.

But mostly what we’re talking about here is theatrical films. And that’s really our sort of bread and butter. That’s where we have the most experience with. And you’ve also served on the screen credits subcommittee for the WGA. You’ve had like a lot more intense first-person experience with how these rules are made, is that right?

**Craig:** That’s right. I am the co-chair. There are three of us along with — I’m the co-chair along with Robert King who currently is a television guy because he and his wife, Michelle, have created and run The Good Wife. But prior to that, he was a feature guy.

And it’s a joint committee for West and East. So our East co-chair is Stephen Schiff who wrote a number of fine films as well, a sequel to Wall Street being one of them, Deep End of the Ocean I think. Maybe the other —

**John:** Yeah, that sounds right.

**Craig:** Great guy. Awesome guy. Very, very smart. So we have this joint committee. And over the years we have been tasked to take a look at our rules, consider revisions, put those revisions to the membership to vote on. And happily, they have approved all of our proposals. And I think we have done a very good job of fixing some things that needed fixing.

I also, because of the fact that I serve on that committee, I get calls all the time. People call me all the time with their problems, complaints, questions and suggestions.

**John:** Yeah. I will confirm that behind the scenes Craig is a go-to person for questions about is this how things are supposed to work. And if things are working improperly, Craig is the person who can help steer people towards better answers.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** The other thing I want to make clear that we’re not talking about is we’re not talking about copyright. So if you think back to the Gravity lawsuit, if you think back to other copyright claims, this is not copyright. This is… — copyright on feature films, the kinds of things we’re talking about, it’s the people who made the movie are going to own copyright. They are the people who are considered the authors of the film for copyright purposes.

So this is determining whose name shows up as written by or screenplay by or story by. We’ll get into specifically what those mean. It’s important for those writers because sometimes it is a form of compensation. It can influence what they are paid for the day the movie comes out, but it’s also a huge impact on what the residuals will be down the road.

So even though this is not copyright, it’s incredibly important, both creatively and professionally but also financially.

**Craig:** Yeah, you’re right. So we work on a work-for-hire basis. The screen credit is the as if version of your name on your book. And residuals are the as if version of getting royalties on your book. So we don’t have the legal copyright. But that’s so much of what credits are about are essentially compensating us for that and allowing us to have attribution which would be one of the moral rights that go along with copyright.

**John:** Great. Let’s walk our way through the process. And so let’s imagine a theoretical film that has gone into production, it is finishing production, maybe they’ve wrapped, or maybe they’re about to wrap. Let’s talk through the process and what the stages are of figuring out who should get credit on a given movie.

So Craig, start us out. What’s the first thing that’s going to happen?

**Craig:** Well, interestingly enough, the first thing that happens is the studio says, “This is what we think.” It begins with the studio. They get a chance to propose what they think the credits ought to be. They are restricted really only in one sense. They cannot propose credits that are essentially illegal or impossible.

For instance, there can be no more than three writers listed as credited for screenplay with a writing team counting as one writer. There can be no more than two writers credited for story by, again with writing teams counted as one writer. So they can’t propose something with three story bys and five screenplay bys.

So they report to the Writers Guild and they say, “Here it is.” And it’s a fixed form that is defined down to the letter in the collective bargaining agreement called the Notice of Tentative Writing Credits Theatrical.

Now, while this is going on, the companies do have a little bit of flexibility. You may, out there, have noticed that you went to go see a movie, and in the lobby saw a poster with some names on it for credit. And then months later, when the movie came out, the names were different.

Aha. Well, the companies are allowed to use their tentative writing credits for promotional purposes when they need to do things in advance. One of the rules that we have is that if they credit a director on something, they have to credit the writer. So if they put a poster out there and say, “From Jim Blue,” they need to also say, “Written by Alice White.” Well, they may not know the final credits, they’re allowed to use their temporary credits.

Once the credits are fixed and placed by the Guild, then those are the only ones they can use. So it’s all kicked off by the studio.

**John:** A tiny sidebar here. As we talk about those posters, those sort of teaser posters, it’s worth noting that the rules stipulate that the director’s name has to be equal to the writer’s name. So it has to be the same size, the same color.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** The director’s name cannot be highlighted in a way that the writer’s name is not highlighted.

If you know this rule and you start looking at posters, you will notice some really interesting trends. So the teaser poster for Big Fish says “From the visionary mind of Director Tim Burton”. And so Tim Burton is big there and it’s in the blue sky and brown letters. And then it says, you know, “Based on a novel by Daniel Wallace, Screenplay by John August”. And our names are also in that same type size and they’re also in brown.

But our names are like on top of like some dirt. [laughs]

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So it’s actually much harder to see our names. But technically they met every stipulation that we are the same font, the same size, same color.

**Craig:** Yeah. Sometimes, they will do things like that. Sometimes it’s a little embarrassing. When the promotional stuff for the second Hangover came out, they made a big deal about Todd Phillips’ name because he was so, he directed the first one, it’s his franchise. So his name was really big. So then suddenly my name and Scot Armstrong’s name were really big. And people were like, “Dude, who do you think you are?” [laughs] And I was just like, “It’s a rule. I didn’t ask for it. It’s a rule.”

So here’s what you get. The Writers Guild will receive this Notice of Tentative Writing Credits Theatrical and then send copies to the participating writers or their current agents if the participants so elect. And the sheet will list all of the participating writers that were involved, the title of the movie, the executive producer, producer and director, other production executives and their titles if they were participating writers.

And then here’s what we think the credit should be, here’s what a source material credit will be, like based on a novel by. And that’s basically the deal. And it kind of ends with this will become final unless a protest is communicated by this time. So that’s what the company thinks.

**John:** Let’s define what production executive means because that trips a lot of people up.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah.

**John:** So production executive does not necessarily mean a studio employee. It means somebody who was involved in the production of this movie with a different title or a different sort of controlling interest. Producer is often one, but so is a director. There may have been cases where an editor or somebody else has a —

**Craig:** No, no.

**John:** That was production executive. No? Is it only producer and director?

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s defined and it’s basically defined as anybody that has a producing credit or anybody that has — and it’s an onscreen producing credit. Or anybody that has a directing credit. And it is strange that they call it a production executive because in the real modern world production executives are basically studio executives who never write on movies. Well, extremely rare, rare exception.

But it’s quite common for there to be writer-producers and writer-directors. And so their presence in this process will — well, you’ll see why it matters. But, yeah, the way that they define these things is, yeah. You got to be a director or producer.

**John:** So let’s say you are one of the writers of this theoretical movie and you receive a Notice of Tentative Writing Credits. So hopefully, it went to your agent, your lawyer, hopefully, it went to you. And you see this and you say, “Well, I don’t think that’s actually the appropriate credit for this film. I believe I deserve, for example, screenplay credit.” Or, “Something about this does not strike me as being right.” Or perhaps there was a writer whose name was left off the list of participating writers. This would be a time for me to say, “Something here is not correct.”

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, first of all, let’s hope that you actually get the damn thing. So that’s been an issue.

**John:** It has been.

**Craig:** They should be just emailing these things directly to us. I think now they can do that, but they still need to send copies to your agents or your managers. You need to make sure if you’re working on a movie that the Guild has your current representative information. Must have it.

I have spoken to writers who have suffered because they didn’t get the statement in time. And it is a disaster. So make sure, if you’re working on a movie, the Guild has your proper information. But, yeah, basically, you’re looking at this. And if you agree, great.

And by the way, if everybody agrees, guess what? Done.

**John:** Done.

**Craig:** If one person, one single person says, “I don’t like this,” all bets are off and now you go to arbitration. So like I said, any participating writer can ask for a protest. We should probably define who exactly is a participating writer. Aha.

**John:** So a participating writer is anybody who wrote on the movie, was paid to write on the movie, correct? Because if they were just, let’s say, somebody’s niece wrote one scene and they weren’t paid for it, they shouldn’t have been writing the movie anyway, but they would not be considered a participating writer, is that correct?

**Craig:** I don’t think — well, probably, because she’s not a professional. But if you are a professional writer and you do write literary material, in the absence of a contract, I think what happens is the Writers Guild will go back and say, “Okay, they’re a participating writer. But they must — ” you have to go pay them. You have to get a contract put together for them.

But the way it’s defined in our collective bargaining agreement, it says, “Contributed literary material or employed under a WGA contract” which means, by the way, somebody could be employed and not actually write anything, and then suddenly they’re a participating writer. But it’s an exceedingly rare circumstance.

Typically, all the participating writers are people that were paid under a contract to write on the movie. Sometimes, though, there is an argument about that and we’ll get to that in a second. But let’s say nobody protests but one of the participating writers happens to also be the director. Automatic arbitration.

**John:** Yeah. If one of the participating writers was a producer or director, it automatically kicks into arbitration.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** And talk to me about the rationale behind why that is, that rule exists.

**Craig:** Well, the notion is that if you are a lowly writer — let’s say you’re just starting out, you’re 26 years old and the producer is a legend. And the producer comes to you at the end of the process and says, “By the way, you know what, I want credit on this movie.” “Uh, well, you didn’t write anything.” “Yeah, I want credit. I’ll tell you what, I’m going to put my name on there for credit and don’t arbitrate. Because if you arbitrate, I’m going to have to destroy you. I’m going to ruin you. Everywhere I go, I’m going to ruin your name.”

Well, that’s potentially quite horrible. And I wish I could say that there aren’t people that behave like that in Hollywood. But I think we all know that there are.

So the Guild’s solution quite elegantly is to say, “If anybody is in a producer or director position that is participating in this process, there is going to be an arbitration. Nobody has to make a choice. There’s no ability for anyone to say don’t do it. It’s happening no matter what.” So you will remove the potential for undue pressure —

**John:** Agreed.

**Craig:** From people with authority.

**John:** So going into these situations, if you are writing on a movie that has, you know, a writer-director or you wrote something and a writer-director came on board and re-wrote your script and it’s now going into production, you should know that will automatically trigger an arbitration.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** And so the situation with Jurassic World, Colin Trevorrow was hired on to direct this movie.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** He ended up re-writing the movie. That was always going to be an arbitration.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** There was no way that could have avoided arbitration.

**Craig:** That is exactly right. So that was a necessary arbitration. An arbitration will occur if any of the writers protest. An arbitration will not occur if all the writers agree.

And by the way, the writers don’t have to agree necessarily with the studio. If none of the writers are directors or producers, they can agree amongst themselves. They can come up with their own agreement. It happens quite rarely but it is possible.

**John:** It’s happened to me probably on three or four different movies. So, you know, I try to always have open discussions with any writers involved in the movies I’ve worked on, to talk through those issues before we get to arbitration.

And in some cases, we have decided like, “Oh, this would be a fair way to split the credit.” And that’s great and we all agree and we sign off on that and that’s done.

In other cases, we’ve had that conversation and disagreed but it was actually incredibly collegial. And we explained very clearly where we were coming from, what we thought the credits should be, we disagreed, and we went to arbitration. But there were no bad, hurt feelings. It was actually a pretty happy process.

So I would just encourage people to try that discussion if it makes sense.

**Craig:** Now, in the cases where you guys agreed on things, did you still have to write statements for an arbitration because it was an automatic arbitration or —

**John:** In those cases, it was not an automatic arbitration. I do recall writing a letter saying, “I believe these credits should be this credit.” And we basically all sent that in at the same time.

**Craig:** Yeah. So that would have been an automatic. So sometimes, in the case of an automatic arbitration where everybody really does agree, they can all send in one joint statement. And we’ll get to participating writer statements.

But before we can get to that, first, we can’t get to an arbitration if there is a disagreement about who is supposed to be in the arbitration.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** So what happens if somebody says, “I should be a writer and I’m not listed,” or somebody says, “That guy didn’t write anything. He shouldn’t be listed,” or if someone says, “Well, wait a second. She’s listed as the third writer but she was really the second writer,” or somebody says, “Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, that guy is submitting that material? That material wasn’t before me,” all sorts of issues.

So there is a procedure in place called a pre-arbitration. It’s also at times known as a participating writer investigation when that is the focus of what it’s doing. And these are the things that a Writers Guild member, hopefully a seasoned, well-informed Writers Guild member under the careful watch of the staff makes a decision about what material should or should not be included in the arbitration, who is or is not a participating writer, is the project really an original or is it an adaptation of source material, what is the chronology of the material. All of these fussy, fussy questions will get hashed out before it even goes to arbitration.

**John:** Now, this is a unique situation and it doesn’t happen all the time. But this is really an investigation. And so they may actually call you in to say, “Can you talk us through what actually happened here? Can you explain what this is? Where did this come into existence?”

And so I’ve been in some of these situations where I have had to literally go in and talk in front of some people and they would ask me some questions. I wasn’t there opposite the other writer who was seeking credit, but there were things that needed to be figured out. And so I’ve had to physically go in and do these kind of things.

**Craig:** They were somewhat rare when you and I started. They are growing increasingly more common, because the way that studios develop movies now has gotten loosier and goosier.

It’s actually quite common for studios to purchase spec screenplays and repurpose them as sequels to things. And there are quite a number of notable examples. For instance, Ocean’s Twelve started as an original screenplay written by George Nolfi and was then repurposed.

Well, what do you do about that? Is that still an original or is it an adaptation? There are all sorts of things that need to be figured.

Sometimes, studios will purchase a screenplay from another company. They’ll buy a company. That company has screenplays but they weren’t Writers Guild screenplays. What happens to those? By the way, answer, those become source material not subject to Writers Guild credits.

But there’s all this stuff that needs to be figured out. And as companies get stranger and weirder about how they suck up material from the culture and spit it back out in the form of movies, these pre-arbitrations will become increasingly common.

**John:** So there’s a lot to figure out. Especially, studios now are doing these kind of bake-off competitions where they’ll hire two writers at the same time to work on different drafts of things —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Which to me just feels like a disaster waiting to happen. And yet the studios are banking like, “Well, one of those drafts we’ll shoot, or if there’s things we like in both of them, we’ll piece it together.” And God bless them, but that makes it very, very complicated. And this pre-arbitration hearing could become a very important part of the process of figuring out who deserves credit, when stuff happened, which characters originated in which draft.

**Craig:** Absolutely, absolutely. And to be clear, as we go through this section, as we walk you through this section, the Writers Guild has a duty of fair representation. That’s a fact of law. They have to represent all participating writers equally, even when one of them is the director or one of them is a producer, or one of them is new, or one of them wrote a spec, or one of them is a re-write, it doesn’t matter.

At times, writers will feel like they’re siding with one person or another. And that’s only because they are [laughs], because somebody has to be right, you know. This is where, unfortunately, people get really emotional and upset about this because nobody wants to lose. And when you think you’re getting jobbed, it’s a terrible feeling. But, alas, it’s a dirty job, someone’s got to do it.

**John:** So, Craig, as we come out of the pre-arbitration hearing, as we come out of the participating writer investigation, what information should be agreed upon? It’s basically these are the writers who participated in this draft, this is the order in which the scripts sort of come in. And at that point, do we start to impanel real arbiters?

**Craig:** Yeah. So now we know that we have a number of participating writers. There are no more participating writers than these and no fewer. These are they. We have a chronology for the work that they’ve done.

And each one of them gets a letter because everything’s done anonymously. We’ll get into the why of that. And we have material assigned for each one of them. So we know what material has been allowed and what material is no longer there.

And now, we reach out to three writers who will become the arbitration panel. Before the guild can select them, all the participating writers receive a list of all the screenwriters in the guild that are eligible to be arbiters. And the participating writers can red-pen through people they don’t want.

Why would you want to strike people’s names? You may have had a bad experience with some of them, some of them you may not like, some of them you —

**John:** Some of them you may know that they are just a dummy.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** You may just realize like, “You are not a clever person and I would not want to trust your opinion.”

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** Now, keep in mind, you as the participating writer, you should be anonymous. They shouldn’t know which was your draft. So they shouldn’t be able to hold any personal bias against you. But in the Internet era, it’s very hard to have no idea of what a movie is or who might have been involved with it.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So there’s lots of reasons why you might want to, you know, not select certain people.

**Craig:** Correct. It’s virtually impossible at this point to presume anonymity.

The way the process is set up, the writers obviously are familiar with each other. But the writers will not know the identities of the arbiters. And that’s easy —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because they’re not going to see them or address them.

The arbiters receive materials and all the participating writers are identified by letters. So there’s writer A, B, C, D and E. They don’t know the names of the people who have written them. But if they go on IMDb and there’s only writer A and writer B, they’re probably going to be able to figure it out.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** The great hope is that they don’t do it. And certainly if they indicate at any point that they have, then they’re bounced. The double blind anonymity — arbiters don’t know each other, arbiters don’t know the participants, participants don’t know the arbiters, maybe triple blind, that has essentially been the cornerstone of the Writers Guild’s defense of itself.

Essentially, they’re saying, “We have fulfilled our duty of fair representation because the process excluded the possibility of some people being favored over others for any reason other than the material itself.”

**John:** So let’s talk about the requirements of an arbiter, because you and I both served as arbiters on screen credits decisions.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So to be an arbiter, you’re supposed to have been a member for five years, you should have had a minimum of three on-screen credits. So you should know what it is you’re talking about. You should have been through this system before. You should know what, you know, a movie looks like when it’s written down on a page. And you hopefully sort of have some exposure with what this whole process is.

Now I get the call to be an arbiter probably five times a year.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And I say yes maybe twice a year based on sort of like how busy I am. It’s a tremendous responsibility. And I will credit the guild as being very upfront about how much work it’s going to be and how many drafts there are to read, how complicated it is, how many writers there are on board. They will tell you the name of the project just so you would know, like, oh, I can’t do that because I know exactly who wrote. I know too much of the history of it.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Or like that was the thing I wanted — I was up for that job but I didn’t get it. Like, there would be really obvious situations where you should not be involved with it. But my instinct is to always say yes if I can say yes, because I know how incredibly important it is that smart and dedicated guild people take these arbitrations seriously.

**Craig:** No question. And so the struggle is always when they call and they say, “Well, there are seven participating writers, so seven drafts, plus a novel.” Oh, and you know you have a deadline and it’s just, you know — I try not to automatically say no to those. I have done a couple of those monsters. Generally, when they call me, I tend to get problem cases. [laughs] I’ve noticed.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They haven’t indicated this but I tend to get complicated ones. I tend to get big ones. And I often get comedies. So I don’t know if they’re doing that on purpose or not. It’s just the way it kind of comes.

Not everybody can be an arbiter. There’s three rules that govern this. One is, okay, you can be an arbiter if you’ve been a current member for five years, or you can be an arbiter if you have a minimum of three on-screen credits. So if you’ve gotten that in fewer than five years, Mazel tov.

And then the other issue is that of the three arbiters, two of them have to be what they call experienced arbiters. Meaning that two of the three have served on at least two other arbitration committees which you start —

**John:** Oh, I wasn’t aware of that. Wow.

**Craig:** Yeah. So there’s an interesting bottleneck there of experience. So in every arbitration, they can only put in one rookie. So every time — so once they put in one rookie, they’re like, “Okay, they can be a rookie one more time and then we get to use them as experienced.” But you can see how the pool of available arbiters is fairly compressed.

The Writers Guild struggles endlessly to find arbiters willing to do the work and willing to do it in the short amount of time we get. And the amount of time, that window has shrunk and shrunk and shrunk and shrunk and shrunk over time because post-production has taken longer and longer and longer and longer, there’s additional writing going on.

And then of course the studios are turning around. The release is incredibly quickly. And they’re saying, “My God, we need the credits because we got to do the — literally put the credits on the movie. We’ve got four days.” It can get really bad.

**John:** Yeah. And in television, just imagine everything is about 15 times faster.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So as tight as the schedules can be in features, television is nuts.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, the great boon for televisions is that in television the credits are often decided before the arbiters even get them, because in television when you work on staff everyone’s going to get a credit. It’s not the, you know, I would say that movies are like basically one episode television series. So, yeah, the credit is super important. [laughs] It matters. And if you don’t get it, you’re never getting it.

**John:** Yeah. So these arbiters and impaneled. They are receiving the scripts that are labeled writer A through writer F. Sometimes there will be multiple drafts given by a writer if the writer thinks it’s really important to show the progress from this thing or that thing or an idea that was taken out of a draft but then appears later on in a different writer’s script. There may be a reason why she wants to show that.

But the arbiter gets this big stack of scripts. The arbiter also gets a statement from each writer. And those statements can be long and detailed. Those statements can be short. But in that statement, the writer is laying out a case for why they believe the credit should read a certain way and hopefully making a good case based exclusively on the Screen Credits Manual why they believe that the credit should read a certain way.

**Craig:** This statement is essentially your only day in court as a participating writer.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** It’s your one chance to express to the people deciding your fate why you feel the way you do. And so naturally this document becomes loaded with all sorts of emotion. And that’s unfortunate because this would be the last time you’d want to do that. This is when you want to be as rationale as possible. Since you and I are both arbiters, I assume you like I have read some terrible, terrible statements from writers.

**John:** Absolutely. And you read these statements which are basically just explaining the hardship that they faced and sort of what the struggle was to make the movie and how unfair things were. And it doesn’t matter because that doesn’t help me reach my decision in which my decision is based on the words on the page.

So the great statements that I really enjoy are the ones that very clearly explain why the writer is seeking the credit that she’s seeking and can provide some roadmap for how she gets to that decision. Will I get to the same decision? Maybe yes, maybe no. But I at least one want to be able to see what the writer is thinking as I’m going through this.

In some cases that statement may help elucidate something that I might have missed otherwise. And so as I’m writing my own statement I try to provide just that same kind of this is the roadmap that gets me to this decision, maybe you will want to follow the same map. And thank you so much for your service. I think any statement that doesn’t acknowledge the incredible amount of time that the arbiter is putting into this is a foolish statement.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah. Well, I would argue that the most foolish statement is the one where the writer has paid somebody to write it for them. This is a scourge and I’m sorry to say it exists. And if you are in the Writers Guild and you’ve heard of people doing this and they’ve had success, yes, much the same way that Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc works in homeopathic medicine and so forth. It’s a disastrous idea and an enormous waste of money.

There are people out there who charge thousands of thousands of dollars to write a professional statement for you as you, analyzing all the material, making their case. These statements tend to be quite long which arbiters don’t like. But more importantly they’re the same. They’re the same. You’re getting ripped off.

So what will happen is for instance I did an arbitration recently. And when it was done and the decision had been rendered I then called the staff and said, “So I don’t know if you’re able to tell me but this particular statement smelled like a professional statement to me. It didn’t impact my decision one way or another. But it just smelled like it.”

And they said, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we see that statement [laughs] with like various versions of it.” I mean basically these people — you know how it works. You know the way the world works, right?

**John:** Absolutely. I will say that as friends go into an arbitration situation they will invariably email me saying like, “Hey, can you share one of your statements with me?” And I will usually do that but I always caution them that each statement needs to individually, you know, reflect the needs of that project. And so I’ve written long ones for things that really, truly were complicated where I came on and off the projects several times. And like without some sort of map it could be very easy to forget sort of what happened along the way.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But I’ve also written like the two-page statement. I’ve written the half a page statement that basically says, “This is how I think it should end up. I thank you for your service. God speed.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It really depends on the situation. So I would never urge people to write the long statement to spend, you know, six days writing a long statement because people will go crazy writing it.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, I mean, look a bad statement from you is always better than any professional statement. The arbiter will understand whether they realize the statement is a “professional” or not, they can feel a personal touch on a personal statement.

So I’m going to give my advice to people on general advice when they’re writing these statements what I think makes a good one. And then I guess by elimination what makes a bad one. Generally shorter is better. If you can keep it under four pages, you will be loved, you will be loved by your arbiter.

Avoid math. A lot of the guidelines refer to percentages. You will get screenplay credit if you hit 33% of a screenplay or 50% of a screenplay. Well, we actually don’t do math on our end. We’re kind of just 50% to I think a lot of us is half or more and 33% is a good amount, you know, I mean. So we’re not counting words or lines so don’t do it for us.

Don’t be a jerk. No matter how you feel about who rewrote you or who you rewrote, be polite and be professional about it. Don’t treat the arbiters like they can’t read. This is my biggest complaint about participating writer statements. They will go and on about some obvious point. And while I’m reading their statement I’m thinking, “Can’t I just read the screenplay? I’ll read it and I’ll know that. I don’t need your chart.” You know what I mean? Like I know how to read, I can do — yes there are certain things that it’s great that you track for me. But other things like a whole page about how this one thing is really just like this thing. It’s a scene, I’ll read it.

Context in small doses is helpful. It’s helpful although not determinative for to me to understand how you came on the job, what your task was, how you approach the writer’s material before you, how you may have been replaced. It doesn’t change necessarily what I’m reading but it can place it in some sort of meaningful context. It doesn’t matter that you’ve spent 12 months on it as opposed to another guy spending a week. But I think it’s at least interesting for the arbiter to understand some of that sort of thing.

And lastly just to remind people, they try this all the time and the guild has to bounce it back to them. You can’t send in recommendation letters, so the producer can’t send a letter saying, “Yeah, we’re backing this guy.” And other than that you’re free to write anything you want in your statement with one exception. You can’t breach anonymity. You can’t identify yourself and you can’t identify any of the other participating writers.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** And as the arbiter you get all these scripts, you get these letters. I tend to — I go both ways. In some cases I’ve read all the letters first. In some cases I’ve read all the scripts first. Both ways make sense. If you read the letters first, you have a sense of what the individual writer thinks is important about that draft. But if you read all the scripts first, a lot of times I’ll end up with like, you know, well, this is what sort of makes sense to me and then you’ll sort of see which writers are completely insane and which writers are like, “Oh, I can see how they got to this place.”

**Craig:** Right. And that’s part of the shock of doing the job of being an arbiter is that you will read the scripts and then you’ll look back again at the statements. And someone who’s truly contributed nearly nothing to the final screenplay will have written a seven-page passionate creed about how they really wrote it all. And it’s scary but I understand it.

It’s not — that is not a schizophrenic delusion. That’s just part of being a writer. They’re inner world is rich and fulfilling and everybody else is just a bunch of words on paper. And so this is why sometimes I think people are shocked.

There are ways to process the work if you have a bunch of scripts. You can choose to read the final script first, that’s the shooting script and then go backwards or can start from the beginning. It doesn’t really matter. The only thing that matters is you read all of it.

And while you’re doing that you’re in touch with somebody who’s called a screen credit’s consultant. That’s not a staff member. That is another Writers Guild member. Often they are emeritus. They’ve been doing it for awhile, they may be retired, they may live somewhere else.

And their job really is to just — they’re not reading the material. They’re just there to advice you on the applicable rules. Because there’s all sorts of rules depending on what kind of project it is. So they’re there if you have any questions about things. And they’re also there to collect your decisions. Because once all three arbiters have rendered their decision, if it’s unanimous, that’s it. It’s done.

**John:** You’re done. Yeah. You’re almost done. Each of those arbiters is going to be asked to write up their decision. But it is done. There’s not going to be any further discussion.

**Craig:** Correct, as long as that decision is in fact a legal one. And so staff is — the screen credit’s consultant will then convey to staff, “Okay, awesome. All three of them on their own came up with the same decision.” Staff goes, “Yes, that is a legal decision.” And then off we go.

**John:** It’s a permissible decision. It meets the requirements of what a screen credit can be.

**Craig:** Permissible, perfect word. There may be a case where all three arbiters have three different versions of the credits. So the screen credit consultant will sort of kind of horse trade a little bit and say, “Well, how firm are you on that? Would you be at all? Could you entertain the idea of adjusting your decision to be more like this person or this person?”

What they’re trying to do is see if they can avoid a stalemate. A stalemate is kind of a disaster. It’s incredibly hard as I mentioned to get three people to do this. If all three of them disagree, they got to basically toss them and start again with three new arbiters which they don’t want to do.

**John:** No one wants to do that.

**Craig:** Nobody wants to do that. But on the other hand, they don’t want to force writers into making decision they don’t want to make. So they’re very gentle about this. They just say, “Okay, well, could you or would you consider this?” And if they say, “Absolutely not.” “Fine, no problem. We’ll do another panel.”

If there are two writers, two arbiters that agree and one that doesn’t then what we do is we have teleconference. All three arbiters get on the phone along with staff monitoring. The arbiters are identified to each other only as arbiter 1, 2 and 3. And they talk it out.

And the reason they talk it out is to see if they can actually achieve unanimity because two to one is sufficient. Two to one means, yeah, that’s the decision. But if you can be unanimous it frankly sits better with everybody. So it’s worth taking a look to see if you can get to unanimity.

And there have been times where, you know, the person standing there in the one slot has pointed out to the other two, “Hey, you know, you actually probably agree with me more than you agree with each other.” And so interesting things can happen there. But it’s a chance for arbiters to agree more closely than maybe they would have before.

**John:** And so the arbiter teleconference is a relative innovation or something that’s happened new. It’s the last six or seven years?

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** How long has that been around?

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s about probably coming up on five years. This is something that we cooked up in our committee and brought to the membership and they approved. And it’s been extraordinarily successful.

**John:** And it really is. Thank you Craig for doing it. Because it actually does make the process much better. Because there’ve been times, twice in this last few years, I’ve been in one of these teleconference situations and it’s great to hear what the other writer, arbiters are thinking and sort of why they reached their decision.

Sometimes I’ve been able to sort of persuade people over to my side. Sometimes we’ve ended up in the two-to-one, but I’ve at least understood why we got to this two-to-one. It wasn’t just like who could possibly think that that, you know, it should be shared story credit. Like it seems impossible to me. It helps you really understand why they got to that decision. So I think it’s a really good process.

**Craig:** It also comes with another benefit. The staff is on the phone listening. And it’s their opportunity to hear the arbiters talk and defend their own positions. And if they’re hearing that one of them is a dummy or is nuts, or is ideological in a prejudiced way then they know not to ask that person to arbitrate again. So it’s another nice side effect of that.

**John:** Yeah. Because otherwise they would have the written decision but that’s not necessarily clear about what the thinking was behind it. The written decision that each individual arbiter makes is very carefully constructed to be sort of unassailable. That like you’ve reached this decision based on exactly these points and nothing more is said.

You’re not talking about the nature of the project. You’re not talking about the history of things. You’re talking about how you reached your decision. And at times the Writers Guild staff will ask you to adjust something in your statement just so it’s absolutely clear that you understood what you were doing.

**Craig:** That’s right. The statement is your — I think that is the evidence of your good work as an arbiter. In your statement, you know, certainly this is how I do it. I cite the rules, I go carefully through story and screenplay. I go carefully through why I felt some writer deserved something or some writer did not.

Some no nos. You cannot refer to anything that one of the participating writers put in their statement because other participating writers can view your decision statement. And we need to keep those statements completely walled off.

I think as an arbiter you need to really make a clear judgment because participating writers can ask to see your statement. They don’t always have to but they can ask if they are contemplating a Policy Review Board.

**John:** Uh-oh.

**Craig:** Uh-oh. Policy Review Board, what’s that Craig? I’ll tell you people. A PRB, a Policy Review Board, is essentially an appeals. Well, wait a second, how would the guild ever manage to that because everybody that loses will want to appeal, right? Isn’t that what’s destroying our nation’s court system as we speak?

Yeah. Well, here’s the deal. The Policy Review Board is an appeals process. Three different writers are now on that Policy Review Board. They are the new judges. But here’s the deal, they can’t read any of the scripts. They’re not there to decide if the arbiters had good opinions or good judgment or good taste. All they’re there to do is determine if any procedural errors were made or misapplication of rules. That’s it.

**John:** Yeah. So unlike a court of law where an appeals court can examine the facts of the case, can examine sort of testimony and other things. In this case the appeals process is only about like did they follow the rules. And that’s it.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s right. So, you know, if an arbiter writes something in their statement that’s seems fishy or strange and a participating writer asks for a PRB. Well, what will happen is the people at the PRB will call the arbiter and say, “Explain this. What did you mean by this?” And if they say something that’s wrong, the PRB will throw out the decision. It happens very, very, very rarely. Have you ever gotten called by a PRB as an arbiter?

**John:** Never.

**Craig:** I got called once.

**John:** You got once.

**Craig:** I’ve had PRBs before, you know, where they just go, “No.” One time I got called. It was a very, very complicated arbitration with so many bizzarities in it. I know it’s not a word but I don’t care. And but they did call and they just said, “We’re picking up this one line from your statement and we’d like you to explain it more.” And I did.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I [laughs] very clearly remember I explained it. And then I heard one of them go, “Yeah, I knew that’s — it’s obvious that’s what he was going to…” It was like, “Duh.” But they had to do it, you know. And then the PRB was the, you know, the appeal was denied.

**John:** So in most cases a Policy Review Board will not happen. It did not happen in the Jurassic World decision. In most cases, the arbiter’s decision will come in, the arbiters will file their statements and then what is the document that the Writers Guild East or West will produce that says, “These are the credits.”

**Craig:** Well, they will send — first they will call. If you’re in an arbitration, the staff member assigned to your case will call you and say, “The arbitration has reached a decision. And the screen credits will be as follows.” And then you go, “Yay” or “Huh,” or “Nah.”

And then they send a letter to the studios and to you that confirms the precise wording with a bunch of legalese about how it has to be presented and so forth. And those are the credits, period, the end, forever.

The IMDb has a deal with the WGA. Once the WGA credits are confirmed, it’s also piped over to IMDb. And those become the official IMDb credits. And then we have working rules as writers that govern us. Once the credits become final, we have to abide by them, we can’t contradict them in public and the studios must abide by them as well.

**John:** Yeah. So, what are some take homes we should have from this whole discussion of screen credits? So, one thing we need to really sort focus in on the end is we’re determining written by credit. And written by credit is of course two different credits combined. There’s screenplay by credit, there’s story by credit. If a writer receives both of those things and there’s no other people who will get a portion of those things, they collapse and become written by credit. Those are the two basic areas that an arbitration will be determining. But every once in a while, there will be weird, fluky kind of things that will show up on screen. Adaptation by for example.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** What are the other —

**Craig:** There are screen story by.

**John:** Screen story by.

**Craig:** Which is common. Adaptation by is extraordinarily uncommon and it also isn’t what it sounds like. It’s probably why it’s extraordinarily uncommon. Generally speaking, the credits that you’ll see are story by, screen story by, screenplay by, written by. Those are the various versions and various combinations.

**John:** Those are the permissible credits.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** And in permissible credits, a writing team may share one of those slots or share one those credits. That’s why you see the ampersands. So, in the case of Jurassic World, you see two writing teams, you see they’re joined by ampersands then the word and, A-N-D, combining the two of them to indicate that there were two writing teams involved in a film.

So now as you look at any poster, you will be able to determine which people who are credited as writers were working as a team and which people are working solo. In some cases, you will find weird situations where a person was writing solo and then they joined a team and so they have multiple credits in strange ways. But generally, the ampersand is the indication that those people were a team from the start.

**Craig:** Yeah. And these things I would imagine most — most Writers Guild members probably know, surprisingly — surprising number of them don’t. The arcane stuff almost no writers know which is always shocking to me because that’s the stuff that’s you’re subject to. You kind of need to know. So, you know, an appeal to — oh, do you want to play stump the ump? Want to play stump the ump? Let’s stump the ump. All right, John.

**John:** Great, do it.

**Craig:** Okay. John August, we have a case of a remake, a 1978 film written by some guy, he’s dead now. And they come to you. You write a draft of this remake and then they go to a second guy and he writes a draft. Then there’s a third guy who comes along and says he actually wrote a treatment before the two of you. Who is A, B and C?

**John:** I will ask you a question first.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Was the movie originally produced under the Writers Guild contract?

**Craig:** It was.

**John:** If it was, then writer A is the person who wrote the first movie.

**Craig:** The dead guy is writer A. What did he win? What did he win?

**John:** I hope something.

**Craig:** Nothing. You know what you won?

**John:** I get nothing.

**Craig:** You won my goddamn respect, sir. [laughs]

**John:** I would say that the treatment — if the treatment guy can prove that he wrote that treatment beforehand, that treatment guy became writer B, is that correct?

**Craig:** The treatment guy became writer B, yes. And then the treatment guy is basically vying for a shared story credit with the dead guy, I believe.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** If there’s going to be, you know, if he can show that he significantly changed the story. So, yeah, there are cases for instance, the remake of The Omen, sole screenplay went to the writer of the first Omen because they felt that the remake just didn’t change it enough. So anyway, see, these are the things you know. You’re smart.

I’m saying to our fellow writers out there, be smart like John August. Take a look at the book before you go into the movie. If you’re working on a project and you’re not the first writer, read the book. If you’re going into the project and you’re the first writer, and then somebody comes to replace you, read the book because it’s common. Right? Know what’s going on.

And similarly, if you do know what’s going on and you’re a smart writer, please do arbitrations. Serve as an arbiter. Let the guild know, if they haven’t called you, that you are volunteering, that you want to be an arbiter. But please, only do it if you’re smart and you’re rational and you know the rules.

**John:** The other take home I would like to urge our writers to keep in mind is if you’re going into a situation where there are preexisting materials, know that it could get bumpy down the road and I see so many people who they’re so excited to sign onto this movie and they’re going to get going and they were the person who wrote it in production and they’re like, “But what’s happening now? I was the person who wrote the movie, how could there be all this hubbub and Sturm und Drang?

Well, you weren’t the original writer. And those original writers, they feel the exact same thing you do. Like, “Well, I was the person who created that movie. You were just the person who delivered it over the finish line.” Very likely there’s going to be some issues down the road. And so as long as you go into it knowing that those could happen, that’s great. It doesn’t mean you need to change a single word of what you put on the page. You can’t — that’s never going to serve you well to try to change more things on the page. Just know that it could happen down the road so it does not blindside you. And you don’t feel like it’s some vast conspiracy against you. It’s the situation, it’s going to happen whenever there are multiple writers on a movie and the movie’s been in development for a while.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean this is — this is our court system guys. You’re a fool to walk in a court not knowing how court works. And you’re a fool to walk into credit arbitration not understanding how credit arbitration works. It is an awkward, ungainly, overly legalistic, rigid, and occasionally infuriating system, but it’s probably the best system that we can offer ourselves at this stage of the game.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So learn it.

**John:** Whenever I read an article that’s like the Jurassic World decision, it’s always the filmmaker who feels incredibly frustrated by how this all happened. And they are wishing and pining for a better system, a more fair system, a more just system. The frustration is, I don’t know what that system would be and no one has ever been able to articulate what that more fair system would be.

There have been overtures towards, “Well, what if we had professional arbiters so you knew the quality of the people who were going to be doing the arbitration?” Certainly that’s an idea. There’s been a discussion of, “Well, maybe credits should reflect all of the writers who worked on a film to acknowledge that there were other writers before this.” That’s certainly a possibility as well. For each one of these suggestions, there are many negatives that come along with it too. Any proposed change to the system is going to have a whole host of problems as well. So this is where we’re at. And Craig is on the committee trying to make this work as well as it can work.

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s this thing that happens where people perceive a problem in some system. Their local schools, the way their town is governed, the Writers Guild. And they see something and they go, “Isn’t it obvious what to do? Just do this. Everyone would agree on this.”

Now, actually, finding things that everybody agrees on is extraordinarily difficult. And when it comes to credits, nearly impossible. Simple common sense changes that we made took months and months of diplomacy and discussion and negotiation. And people should also be aware, there are some things that we can’t change on our own. We have to renegotiate those with the companies if we want to change any term that’s in the collective bargaining agreement. Well, we have to ask them for it. And you know what they say? “No.” [laughs]

**John:** They’ll say no. They’ll just say no to spite us.

**Craig:** They will say no to spite —

**John:** Because the negotiation committee —

**Craig:** Absolutely, they — if you said to them, “Well, we want the right to give you guys some nice warm tea,” they’ll say, “No.”

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** “No.”

**John:** Absolutely. It would be struck the very first day.

**Craig:** That’s right. You ask for it, you want it? No. Then the answer is no. It’s a —

**John:** Yeah. It’s absolutely no.

Craig. Yes. So, people have to understand, this may be the best we can do. Maybe it will get a little bit better. But it’s pretty much it is what it is. Again, just my personal bias, it’s not up to you. But I’d root for getting the Writers Guild West to run my arbitration.

**John:** Yeah. I’d also just, again, urge any smart writer who’s eligible to serve on an arbitration, serve on an arbitration. And Craig, I have a question for you. If a person has never been asked to serve on arbitration but they are otherwise eligible, can they reach out to the guild saying like, “Hey, I would love to do that?” Will they actually take an incoming call?

**Craig:** Yes. Absolutely. You just call up the credits department and they will check your eligibility and they will note your interest and they will put you in the hopper. They’re careful. They don’t want kooks, you know, and unfortunately, a lot of our members are nuts.

**John:** But if you are WGA member and you are — this podcast has encouraged you to try to do this. And you believe you’re eligible and you believe you could do a good job, call them and tell them that John and Craig urged you to do it because we really do want smart folks doing it.

**Craig:** [laughs] Only for smart. So, you really got to look in the mirror here people, really look in the mirror.

**John:** Yeah. We do. Maybe they’ll be emailing us to look through like previous people’s comments and things they sent in to make sure like, have they asked really stupid questions on the show?

**Craig:** Yeah. How many times in the last month did somebody call you stupid? More than two? Don’t call them.

**John:** Yeah, don’t call them.

**Craig:** Don’t call them.

**John:** I believe it’s time for One Cool Things.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** My One Cool Thing is also WGA-related because it’s just sticking with the theme. The WGA redid the residuals site. Basically, if you’re a member and you sign in to check your residuals, it’s much better than it used to be. And I’m not quite sure when they updated the whole system. But you can finally sort things by individual movies, by studios, by total amounts of checks. And so I spent, you know, a good hour on it this week looking through stuff, making sure that everything had actually gotten paid out right.

And it’s really fascinating to see what percentage of really my income comes from it. Like, when you actually see your residuals totaled up you realize how incredibly grateful we should be that the residual system exists and that we are paid for our work in the time after we’ve, you know, delivered it.

Not surprisingly, the single film that’s paid me the most residuals is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was, you know, successful out in the theatre but also of course sells really well on home video. The least successful by far is my film, The Nines, which has, you know, made almost nothing in residuals. And yet, it still gets tallied up. And I’m just incredibly grateful to the people who built this new system and who keep the system up-to-date to make sure that we are paid accurately and quickly for our residuals.

**Craig:** Huh, I wonder which one — I guess we should — do you want to guess which ones of mine are the most? And I’m looking at it right now.

**John:** I’m going to say Hangover II is your most rewarding residual.

**Craig:** Okay. All right. I’m looking career view by project.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** Had you seen this new whole thing?

**Craig:** Oh, yeah. Yeah. They sent me a beta of it. I just never actually thought to ask questions. So, no, you’re not right.

**John:** Oh, what is your most successful project?

**Craig:** Well, because here’s the thing. Remember, on Hangover II, I was splitting three ways.

**John:** Oh, that’s right. I forgot.

**Craig:** So, for me, it’s Identify Thief. Although I guess the total, if you’re looking at the total pie, Hangover II would probably be the biggest total pie. And then the lowest, well, poor RocketMan, it’s my first movie, RocketMan. You know, and it’s interesting, RocketMan came out actually — it was like pre-DVD era. So it wasn’t even out on DVD for a long time. It missed the boom. [laughs]

**John:** It missed the boom.

**Craig:** It missed the boom.

**John:** Just ranking through mine, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which obviously a successful movie, I’m also solo credit so I get 100% of that pie.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, I share with the Wibberleys, and so that also did well, but I’m sharing it with the Wibberleys. Big Fish is a solo credit but it is not anywhere near the success of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Then we can down to Charlie’s Angels, Go, and the rest. Including my TV show, D.C. which only aired three episodes in the U.S., it aired all seven episodes overseas. And so I will tell you that I made a total of $23,000 in residuals on a horrible, disastrous fail of a TV show.

**Craig:** That’s cool.

**John:** So residuals do matter folks.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** If you are a writer in WGA and you want to look up your residuals, I would say that the menu system to find this page is not the most straightforward. So we’ll have a link for this in the show notes. But if you’re on the WGA site, wga.org, it’s in residuals and then residuals look up is the page that we’re looking at now.

**Craig:** Yeah. Pretty cool.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** God.

**John:** Craig, do you have a One Cool Thing?

**Craig:** Yeah. What? [laughs]

**John:** What?

**Craig:** Huh? Hmm? What? Huh? No.

**John:** Your One Cool Thing can be my One Cool Thing. Bruce Joel Rubin, we did a whole episode about Ghost.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And I’m going to host a WGA screening of Ghost and Jacob’s Ladder on, what’s the date? April 25th?

**Craig:** It’s April 25th. Yeah, right there.

**John:** Yeah, you’re looking at the same thing.

**Craig:** I’m looking at the same thing you are. Yeah.

**John:** On April 25th, I will be hosting a screening and a Q&A with Bruce Joel Rubin. We’ll be looking at two of his films, Ghost and Jacob’s Ladder. So if you’re a WGA member, you can RSVP for that now because it may very well sell out. If it doesn’t sell out, there’s a chance that they’ll open it to the public, which would be great too. So, if it looks like it’s going to be available for other people to come to, I’ll let you guys know on the podcast or on Twitter. But it should be really great and Bruce is really wonderful and smart. And especially after our discussion of Ghost, I’m looking forward to sitting down with him and really talking through everything terrific he did in that movie.

**Craig:** Great. Awesome.

**John:** It’s time for our boilerplate. Our outro this week is by Rajesh Naroth who has written some of our great outros. Thank you for that. If you have an outro you’d like to send in, you can send it to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also where you can send questions. We love to answer questions, so please send those through.

On Twitter, I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. You can find us on iTunes and we just love it when you give us ratings.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So if give us some stars, that would be awesome.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Just search for Scriptnotes. You and also search for Scriptnotes to find the Scriptnotes app which lets you download all the back episodes back to episode 1 or even episode 20 where we first talked through screen credits. So you can see what we did then and what we did now. We also have an Android app. You can search to the Android app store for that as well. Our show is produced by Stuart Friedel. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. And we will be back next week to talk through more stuff.

**Craig:** Oh, we got a —

**John:** Craig, thank you so much.

**Craig:** We got a good one next week.

**John:** Oh, it’s going to be really good.

**Craig:** We got a good one.

**John:** If next week’s works out the way I hope it works out —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I think it’s going to — it could easily be in the top ten.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** Craig, have a great week.

**Craig:** You too.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [Scriptnotes, Ep 20: How credit arbitration works](http://johnaugust.com/2012/how-credit-arbitration-works)
* [Jurassic World Script Credits Resolved; Helmer Colin Trevorrow Speaks On Arbitration Process](http://deadline.com/2015/04/jurassic-world-script-credits-resolved-colin-trevorrow-speaks-on-arbitration-process-1201406086/) on Deadline
* [WGAw Screen Credits Manual](http://www.wga.org/subpage_writersresources.aspx?id=167)
* [Big Fish poster](http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2013/04/BigFish.jpg)
* [WGAw Credits Department contact information](http://www.wga.org/subpage_whoweare.aspx?id=809)
* [WGAw residuals look up](https://my.wgaw.org/home/Login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fhome%2fresiduals.aspx)
* [RSVP here for the April 25 WGAw screenings of Ghost and Jacob’s Ladder, featuring a Q+A with Bruce Joel Rubin moderated by John August](http://www.wga.org/content/default.aspx?id=229)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Rajesh Naroth ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-deal-with-the-gravity-lawsuit).

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

**Craig Mazin:** Uh…I am John August.

**John:** You’re not the only person who can change things up.

**Craig:** My name is John August.

**John:** Yeah, but it’s really not. He’s Craig Mazin, I’m John August, and this is Scriptnotes, Episode 183. Scriptnotes is a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

**Craig:** Look at this, you’ve shaken me up, you’ve shaken yourself up.

**John:** I know. Everything is upside down and topsy-turvy.

**Craig:** It’s crazy. The world has gone mad.

**John:** Before we get into the world going mad, one mad thing that happened this week is our insurance company was hacked.

**Craig:** Everyone’s insurance company, basically. Yeah, so no doubt you’ve seen the news. Anthem, which is a massive provider of health insurance to millions and millions and millions of Americans was hacked. They have yet to really indicate — they’ve indicated the scope of it. They’ve said about 80 million people, so not that many.

**John:** No, just a few.

**Craig:** Basically everyone. At that point I would say 80 million people, we’re discounting children, so everyone’s information has been hacked, possibly by the Chinese they’re saying. It wasn’t clear if they meant hackers who were Chinese, or the Chinese government. But, regardless, here is the deal — all of the major SAG, AFTRA, DGA, and WGA, our health plans, are funneled through Anthem.

The DGA sent an email — the Writers Guild did as well — and the long and short of it is that they don’t really know much yet beyond what Anthem is saying. Anthem is saying that they’re going to send out letters to people letting them know if their information was compromised, which I think is a fair bet.

**John:** That’s a fair thing to do. So, we’re recording this on Friday, February 6, so by the time you listen to this podcast may information may come out. But the information may include mine and Craig’s Social Security numbers, so who knows?

**Craig:** Yeah, great. I did take with Chris Keyser today who is the president of the Writers Guild of America West and he confirmed that they’re trying to figure this out. The only possible silver lining is that for the DGA and for the WGA, I assume it’s the same for SAG although I don’t know, Anthem actually doesn’t provide the health insurance. Anthem is processing some of it. I guess the deal is that because our plans are fairly small, for instance, the Writers Guild health plan — I don’t know how many people are members, but we’re talking under 10,000 I would imagine. That’s very small.

So, the health plan insures us — our health plan insures us. But they use Anthem’s purchasing power to get better rates and things. So, there is a question as to how much of our information actually gets funneled to them. There is a hope — and I’m basing this just on the fact that it’s possible — that what Anthem has from us are our names, addresses, and our health plan numbers, which aren’t Social Security numbers.

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** But, I mean, we just don’t know yet.

**John:** It’s going to be a mess.

**Craig:** It is currently a mess and everyone is saying, well, you know, you’ll get free credit protection. You know, these credit protection things, you know they don’t work, right?

**John:** Yeah, it’s basically an alarm. Basically like, oh, something is happening.

**Craig:** It’s not even that good. To me, as far as I can tell looking at what they provide, it’s more like you hired a security guard and when you get home he’s sitting there in a chair, on your lawn, drinking. Going, yeah, someone broke in.

**John:** Ooh.

**Craig:** Yeah, they took some stuff.

**John:** But someone has a job.

**Craig:** Right. [laughs] But somebody has a job. So, anyway, it’s the end.

**John:** It might be the end.

Today on the podcast we are going to be talking about the deal with the Gravity lawsuit which has been one of the most tweeted things that I’ve actually had in the last maybe six months. Like a lot of people asked me about it, and kept asking me about. And we promised that we would speak about it on the show today. So, we are going to spend most of the episode really talking through it because it’s a fascinating way of looking at what are contracts, what’s chain of title, what are books, what are movies. And so we’re going to spend a lot of time on that.

But I want to talk a little bit about writing, because that’s a thing that Craig and I both did a lot of this week. Craig, how was the writing?

**Craig:** Frantic and fast-paced, but so far so good. I’m in one of those production rewrite things where, you know, I finish 15 pages and turn it over to director and a production manager or studio executives, producers. It’s wild and wooly. But so far so good.

**John:** And I am in the opposite situation where I am in a first draft and I’m at a place now where I’ve assembled things together. It’s not all written, but like a lot of stuff is being assembled and there is still stuff to write. And I had to do this thing which comes up occasionally which is not my favorite thing is I had to start cutting stuff, which is normally I would love to write the whole draft and then like cut the stuff that should get cut. But I started to recognize like, oh wow, if I don’t cut this now, I’m going to be writing stuff that’s going to have to payoff — I’m going to try to payoff things that aren’t going to be in the movie.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s one of those situations where I think most writers who have written a couple of movies, you have encountered this where you’re still in that first draft but you’re recognizing that thing I wrote can no longer fit because it just can’t be there anymore, which is both sad because they’re like lovely little scenes and they’re moments that are no longer going to be part of the movie, but very, very necessary.

**Craig:** Yeah. I am far more of a cutter I think, just inherently, a writer-cutter. As I go I get really parsimonious about stuff at times, maybe too much, so it’s good to have somebody working with me who can read it and say, no, no, no, you’ve hit bone there. You don’t want to do that.

It is true. The process is one — sometimes people will say, “This is not the time to worry about that. Go ahead, explore, right what you need.” And I do, I want to, but there is — I was listening to Lord and Miller, Philip Lord and Chris Miller, were talking at an event last night. And they were talking with Damien Chazelle. They were talking about the theme of Whiplash which was, you know, do you have to suffer for your art. And something Phil said that was really interesting to me, he said on the one hand he’s always appreciated people who are incredibly encouraging of everybody because there is something in there that only survives in the environment of encouragement, even if it’s just you writing.

But that rigor is essential. And that word rigor I think is why at times we need to cut while we’re writing.

**John:** So, some strategies if you find yourself in this situation. And they could be when you’re done with a draft, or as you’re writing, is there are moments that I needed to cut out, including something I talked about on the show this last week which was that police interrogation which I was so proud of. I had written a great police interrogation scene that was different than anything I’d seen before. And I cut it last night.

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** I was supposed to be at the same event with you last night and I was writing and I cut the scene. So, if you’re going to do that, make a new file, call it Trim, and then the name of the scene, and paste that stuff in there. So, at least you’ve held onto it. It’s still there if you ever needed to go back to it. It’s existing in its own little universe. You remember that it’s there. But that scene that I was so delighted with, I recognized that it was, while I love it, it wasn’t absolutely essential. And it became time in the script that I needed stuff that was absolutely essential.

**Craig:** I do love that advice, though. I do that all the time. If I’m going to take out any significant chunk of something, I always save it in its own little file because you never know. And at times, that has come in handy.

**John:** What I was looking at in terms of pacing in this project I’m writing right now is a lot of times we talk about we’re not in Kansas anymore, so basically at the end of the first act and you come into your second act, it’s like Dorothy when she reaches Oz. Like, oh, we’re not in Kansas anymore. We’re in a whole new world. And my script got to Kansas really well, but then I recognized that, wow, I’m spending a lot of time with the Munchkins of Lollipop Guilds.

And so I needed the characters to sort of hit the road. I needed the things that needed to happen to happen. And there was just more setup that wasn’t going to be able to be paid off. So, those were the brutal scenes I had to cut last night.

**Craig:** Well, it’s part of the gig.

**John:** It’s part of the gig.

Let’s get to our big topic this week which is the lawsuit over Gravity and sort of what the situation is.

**Craig:** And we got bombarded by everyone on this one.

**John:** Yeah. And it felt like it was a slow trickle, so like a few little hits and then three days later I’d get another nine little bursts of things. And not just from our normal screenwriters. It was actually a bunch of novelists and sort of other fiction writers who were tweeting me saying what’s the deal with this. And even some DMs from like people who were genuinely freaked out. So, let’s give some context here.

We’re all familiar with the movie Gravity, directed by Alfonso Cuarón. It stars Sandra Bullock. It was a giant hit. There is also a novel called Gravity which was written by an author named Tess Gerritsen. And she’s not a random crank. She’s actually written a bunch of books, including a series of books that became the basis of Rizzoli & Isles, a TV series that I never saw. But it’s real.

**Craig:** It’s got —

**John:** Angie Harmon.

**Craig:** Yes, thank you. And also the other one.

**John:** Yeah. And now you have to tell me which character is which character.

**Craig:** From ER. I think it’s Julianna Margulies?

**John:** That’s not her. No, Julianna Margulies is on The Good Wife.

**Craig:** Oh. Oh, geez. Man, who’s on — I’m looking it up right now. [laughs]

**John:** Okay, while you look it up, I’ll continue on with this. So, on April 29, 2014 —

**Craig:** Sasha Alexander. I’m so sorry, Sasha Alexander.

**John:** I don’t know who Sasha Alexander is.

**Craig:** Oh. Oh. Yeah, she’s Medical Examiner, Dr. Maura Isles.

**John:** The other one is Rizzoli.

**Craig:** She does, by the way, looks nothing like Julianna Margulies. And Julianna Margulies is on a bit hit show. [laughs] This is like — it’s just a failure, a remarkable failure.

**John:** But everyone who is a fan of the podcast knows you don’t see any television or movies.

**Craig:** None.

**John:** None. So, the fact that you pulled Julianna Margulies out of the air, it was just kind of remarkable in and of itself.

**Craig:** Because I saw her in NYPD Blue, right?

**John:** I think you get a gold star for just even knowing who Julianna Margulies was.

**Craig:** I really do think that I’ve achieved something. Anyway.

**John:** So, Tess Gerritsen, the author, she filed a lawsuit on April 29, 2014 and she sued Warner Bros claiming that she was owed money for the film Gravity. And then on June 20 Warner Bros filed a motion to dismiss that lawsuit. And then just very recently, on January 30 of this year, the US District Court issued a ruling that seemed to mostly agree with Warner Bros saying that, yes, the suit is going to be dismissed, but there were some caveats in there that we’ll talk about.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But most of what people were tweeting at you and me about wasn’t about the lawsuit per se, but really one blog post that Tess Gerritsen had written about the lawsuit, and this is what happened this last week, and the repercussions. And so I read this, I read people’s responses, and I emailed you, Craig, saying like, well, maybe we should have Tess Gerritsen on the podcast.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And you said?

**Craig:** Uh, no. Because, and the reason why is not because — it makes sense to have her on the podcast, but it seems to weird to have one side of this argument on the podcast and not the other side. It would start to become a bit lopsided and biased of a discussion. And there is no chance that Warner Bros is going to be sending a lawyer to talk to us about this on our podcast.

I mean, frankly, the actual other party that would be of interest would be Alfonso Cuarón, who I also doubt would be available for the podcast. So, I thought that maybe we should sort of stay in the more neutral zone.

**John:** I think the neutral zone is a perfect place for us to stay. And the reason why I really want to talk about this case is that actually it gives us an opportunity to talk about contract law and what authors do and what adaptations are like. And we can sort of take what she’s written in her blog post and really look at it from that perspective.

If we had her on the air, we’d have to be sort of talking with her. And here we can sort of take the word she’s written and what everyone else is saying and have a discussion about what it actually really means.

So, if this were a blog post we were doing ourselves, it would be one of those things where we do a lot of block quotes, where we like sample from her things and put a block quote and then respond to it. That’s really awkward to do in a podcast. So, what I did is I asked a friend of the show, Christy Miller, if she would record just some snippets from Tess Gerritsen’s blog post so we could play those, you can hear it in not Tess Gerritsen’s words but in Christy’s voice so we could actually respond to what she was saying there and talk through the issues that are being brought up.

**Craig:** Very clever.

**John:** So, let us do the first of these clips. This is from Tess Gerritsen’s blog post about the lawsuit.

**”Tess:”** In 1999, I sold the film rights to my book Gravity to New Line Productions. The contract stipulates that if a movie is made based on my book, I will receive ‘based upon’ credit, a production bonus, and a percentage of net profits.

**John:** Great. So this is talking about she sold the rights to her book and let’s just sort of dig in on what that actually means. And it’s one of the unique things about this court case is all this stuff is public record. This has all been filed, so you can actually read what that document looks like. What does it look like when you sell your book to a studio?

Well, we have a link to it. So, in the show notes we’ll link to the actual contract for her sale of the book to this company called KATJA which was a subsidiary of New Line.

And have you looked at it, Craig? It’s a pretty standard contract. It’s 12 pages long with a lot of additional exhibits and things about music rights and publishing and other stuff. She notarizes it. You see where she signed it. But it’s a straightforward contract.

**Craig:** Yeah, it is. And this is why for those of you listening along who might be wondering well why — what’s in this for me? What in this podcast is of value for me? This suit is going to help us explain quite a bit of how the machinery of this business actually works. So, listen carefully because there’s a lot of good stuff here as we go through.

So, yeah, a novelist has copyright in their novel. Tess Gerritsen owns copyright in her novel. Unlike, for instance, screenwriters who almost exclusively work on a work-for-hire basis for the companies where they commission a work to be created by us, but they retain copyright. So, in the case of somebody who owns the copyright of a novel, they’re not giving their novel to New Line and saying you now own this book, you’re the author of the book. No, no, I am the author of the book. However, I’m licensing through a sale the rights to make a film of this book. And when you license the rights to make a film, almost always they are exclusive rights, of course. Why would anybody buy the rights to make a book that somebody else could also turn into a movie?

And then there is a negotiation of other rights that may be incorporated, how long you get to hold onto the rights, do you have the rights in the United States, over the world, throughout the universe? They literally will say throughout the known universe at times in case they start opening up IMAXs on Mars. And the idea being that you’re going to get money either if they decide to make the movie out of your book, or you may get money, period, the end. In this case, she gets some money, right, right off the bat?

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And then there is additional compensation that is provided to you if in fact the company does go ahead and make a movie of your book.

**John:** And we could see right here in this contract she is paid $1 million for the film rights to her book.

**Craig:** Which I’ve got to say, that’s a big sale.

**John:** That’s a huge sale. That would be one of the biggest sales of the year. And I should remind everybody, this is 1999. So, this is 16 years ago that this happened.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s a big sale.

**John:** That’s a big sale — in any year that’s a big sale. And there’s also a $500,000 production bonus if the movie goes into production. There is backend in there, which I didn’t look through really carefully, but Craig and I will just tell you in general the backend is going to be meaningless. Even on a movie as successful as this, it’s unlikely she would see net profits out of a movie like this.

**Craig:** Yeah. Net profits are sort of the imaginary things that — now, we should also mention that when she sold this to New Line, that New Line was technically part of Warner Bros, but here’s what was going on at the time: New Line existed as its own company and then in 1994 it was bought by Ted Turner, by TBS. So, they were not part of Warner Bros. In 1996, three years before this occurs, TBS, Ted Turner’s company, merges with Time Warner.

Now, interestingly, at that time there were some companies that were part of TBS like Hanna-Barbera and Castle Rock, which became full functioning units of Warner Bros itself. But, New Line was not. New Line, although it was owned by this parent company Warner Bros, was kept as its own entity until quite recently, about four years ago, or five years ago, or something like that.

So, it had its own kind of control within this parent company.

**John:** Yeah. If you look at the contract, the contract is between Tess Gerritsen and KATJA, but it’s care of New Line. So, this KATJA, which you will see referenced a lot, and New Line, I think we’re safe to look at them as being one entity.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** What’s going to become an issue later on is whether New Line and Warner Bros is one entity. That becomes a big issue.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** Now, let’s talk about, this is an outright sale. So, it’s $1 million for the film rights. They write a check and they own the film rights from that point forward. This isn’t an option. And if this had been an option, they would be paying her some money to hold onto the rights for a period of time, or to hold on to the chance to buy the rights at a certain price for a period of time. That was actually probably much more common for both spec screenplays that are sold and for novels that are sold is that for a period of 18 months, three years, you get to hold onto the rights to this thing and you can’t sell them to somebody else. But we don’t have to write you a giant check right now.

In this case, they wrote her a giant check.

**Craig:** They wrote her a giant check and what that tells me — this is conjecture — is that in 1999 when she went out with this book, that there was a bidding war. It tells me that multiple studios were interested, so the seller, in this case Ms. Gerritsen, had quite a bit of leverage. And that she was saying, look, I don’t have to option it to anybody. Somebody has to actually pay me for this if they want it. And New Line must have thought, yeah, we’re making this movie. Nobody spends $1 million on a book if they’re not going to make the movie.

Granted, in 1999, there was still a very healthy DVD market. An enormously healthy DVD market. And things were a little, well, the money ran a little more fluidly back in that time.

**John:** Definitely. So, let’s also talk about what chain of title means, and this is where the chain of title begins. And chain of title does not refer to the title Gravity, which is not the title of the movie. Chain of title is more like the title to your car. It is ownership of a property. And the chain of title begins with the original copyright holder, which is Tess Gerritsen, and then the chain of title on the film rights to it through this contract has been vested in New Line and KATJA, this production entity.

**Craig:** Yeah. Chain of title, and people get really confused because of the word title, and I don’t blame them. Because a lot of times you can tell what the chain of title is by the title of the project, you know. But in this case to be really clear, because it’s going to start to get confusing, title is really nothing more than your interest in certain rights. And why it’s important in this case is because when you are told something contractually like if we make a movie from your book you’ll get this, then a movie gets made, you need to be able to say that movie was part of the chain of title of this project.

You took my rights to my novel, you then hired somebody to write a screenplay based on my novel, you then hired somebody to rewrite that guy. Then somebody rewrite that guy. Now, you’ve made a movie. I can follow the chain all the way back to your initial interest in the title, meaning the rights to my novel. Therefore, you owe me the money.

**John:** And clearing the chain of title, which is that term you go through for making sure that you actually have the rights you think you have to something, can be incredibly complicated. And sometimes it will hold up — contracts will hold up a production or development because they’re trying to make sure all that stuff is done and done properly. Because when it’s done improperly, it can be a huge disaster.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Quite famously, the Dukes of Hazard movie, it turned out the chain of title was not clear and the Dukes of Hazard, the TV show, was based on some other property and they hadn’t gotten that property properly and it became a very expensive thing for, I think it was Warner Bros.

**Craig:** It was.

**John:** And I can also tell you from personal experience, I wrote an adaptation of Barbarella, and it became clear between the first and second draft that the chain of title was impossible to clear and that different people could claim different things about whether they had the rights to make the movie. And that froze it, because no one wanted to spend any more money because they were pretty sure they would never be able to make that movie.

**Craig:** Right. So, you can’t go out there with something based on something that you don’t control from start to finish. Every link of the chain has been cleared through you. My personal experience was a very odd one. And that was the tattoo in Hangover 2, which turns out that that tattoo apparently was very similar if not exactly similar to a tattoo that Mike Tyson has on his face. And the tattoo artist improbably had specifically retained copyright on that tattoo. And it was not cleared.

So, there’s its own little chain of title of a tattoo. And he got something, as far as I know. They settled with him. Yeah.

**John:** So, in 1999 when this contract is signed, the chain of title is about as clear as you could ever hope for it to be, because Tess Gerritsen wrote the original book and New Line/KATJA bought the film rights for it. Everything is happy and good.

**Craig:** And, I should also say, that when we are hired on a project that has underlying material, that’s our term of art for everything that you are basing a movie on — a book, a song, a play, a picture, whatever the hell it is. We know that the chain of title of sure as we get our contract because it always says that they’re assigning this material to us. So, we know in our screenwriting contract, yes, I’m writing this based on this novel. It’s assigned material to me.

**John:** Yeah. Everybody remember that, because that becomes an issue quite a bit later in this discussion.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** All right. So, let’s talk about what Tess Gerritsen’s book actually is. And so here is how she talks about her book in the blog post.

**”Tess:”** The book is about a female medical doctor/astronaut who is stranded aboard the International Space Station after the rest of her crew is killed in a series of accidents. A biological hazard aboard ISS traps her in quarantine, unable to return to earth. While my film was in development, I re-wrote the third act of the film script with scenes of satellite debris destroying ISS and the lone surviving female astronaut adrift in her spacesuit.

**John:** All right. So, there are two things to sort of get into here. First, her description of what the plot of her book is, and then this rewrite she did which is sort of unexpected and certainly makes it seem more like the Alfonso Cuarón movie we saw.

So, let’s get into her description of it, because from that quick summary description it’s like, ooh, I can see how that’s kind of like the Cuarón movie I saw.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But then as I looked online at other people’s summaries, and these weren’t people who were weighing in on the lawsuit, these are just like summaries that existed on Amazon or on Good Reads, they weren’t quite as similar. So, I want to read you two of the summaries that I found online about her book. And the first one is from Good Reads.

“An experiment on microorganisms conducted in space goes wrong. The cells begin to infect the crew with deadly results. Emma Watson struggles to contain the deadly microbe while her husband and NASA try to retrieve her from space before it’s too late.”

**John:** So, it’s odd that her name is Emma Watson.

**Craig:** I know, isn’t that strange?

**John:** Yeah, like the actress Emma Watson. But, no, that’s just a good name. And this is the summary from Amazon.

“Dr. Emma Watson has been training for the adventure of a lifetime to study living beings in space, but her mission aboard the international space station turns into a nightmare beyond imagining when a culture of single-celled organisms begins to regenerate out of control and infects the space station crew with agonizing and deadly results. Emma struggles to contain the outbreak, while back on earth her estranged husband, Jack McCallum, works frantically with NASA to bring her home. But there will be no rescue. The contagion now threatens Earth’s population, and the astronauts are stranded in orbit, quarantined aboard the station — where they are dying one by one…”

**Craig:** Now, you can see that the summary that she provides in her lawsuit or I guess is it connected to it through her blog post has been somewhat massaged to seem more like the movie Gravity than say what other people have read. And I haven’t read the book, but certainly this from the other summaries, it does sound like this book is more of the contagion in a spaceship kind of model.

**John:** Yeah. It sounds like Outbreak in space.

**Craig:** Right. Outbreak in space.

**John:** And, by the way, Outbreak in space is totally a book that would sell.

**Craig:** It did sell. [laughs]

**John:** It did sell. Exactly. I can completely imagine why someone would buy that. And, you know, there were actually several outbreak movies that were in development at the same time. Outbreak was one.

**Craig:** The Hot Zone.

**John:** Crisis in the Hot Zone. So, I can see what that movie would be, but I think she’s very carefully crafting something that’s not leaning in towards what her book sounds like it really is about, which is much more of a medical thriller in space and less about one person drifting through the whole movie.

**Craig:** But then there’s this interesting thing where she says she rewrote the third act of the film script, so somebody else was writing the script. And then she says, “While my film was in development, I rewrote the third act of the film script.” So, and when she rewrites the third act of the film script it says here from her complaint “to assist in the development of the Gerritsen Gravity project, Gerritsen wrote and delivered additional material that constituted a modified version of a portion of the book. The additional material included scenes of satellite debris colliding with the international space station, the destruction of the space station, and the surviving medical doctor/or astronaut left drifting in her spacesuit alone and un-tethered, seeking the means rather to return to earth.”

Now, what’s interesting is what she’s saying here is that she didn’t rewrite the third act of the film script, she’s saying she rewrote additional material that constituted a modified version of a portion of the book. She’s saying two different things.

**John:** I find it strange. I also find it kind of weird that we’re not ever talking about the development of the actual screenplay. So, I think you and I know who the screenwriter is, or at least one of the screenwriters who worked on this, and his name hasn’t been brought into it, so I don’t want to be the first person to bring his name into it, but there was active development on it.

At some point she claims to have written this material. We don’t see what this material is, but she’s talking about it because it makes it sound more like Cuarón’s movie.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that’s a change.

**Craig:** And this is one area where this is kind of like our version of Serial, I guess, because we’ll never know. But she says two different things. On her blog she’s saying I rewrote the third act of the film script. In her complaint, she’s saying I rewrote the book. And, now, she may have done both. So, one thing that’s interesting that has not been indicated by her complaint, as far as I know, is it doesn’t appear that she had a contract to write screenplay material.

**John:** Yeah. It’s not been introduced by her or by Warner Bros as far as I can see.

**Craig:** And if that’s the case, I mean, look, if she had she would almost certainly introduce that. So, I’m a little puzzled by this. But, let’s just take it face value that what she’s saying is, look, let’s say even if she didn’t write screenplay material, she did write essentially new book stuff. And that per her licensing agreement for the novel, New Line also had access to and the rights to this new book stuff.

**John:** Absolutely. So, I think part of the reason why she’s introducing it in this way is to make it clear that she didn’t just go off and write something else that no one ever saw that was more like the ISS stuff. She wrote it, she sent it in, and it was — to her telling of it — it constituted more of the underlying literary material from which the project was based.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** All right. So, next, let’s hear her talk about the Cuarón movie Gravity and sort of how that relates.

**”Tess:”** Sometime around 2008 — 2009, Alfonso Cuarón wrote his original screenplay Gravity about a female astronaut who is the sole survivor after her colleagues are killed by satellite debris destroying their spacecraft. She is left adrift in her space suit, and is later stranded aboard the International Space Station. I noted the similarities, but I had no evidence of any connection between Cuarón and my project. Without proof, I could not publicly accuse him of theft, so when asked about the similarities by fans and reporters, I told them it could be coincidental.

**John:** All right. So, here she’s saying that she was aware of the Cuarón movie Gravity and she assumed that it just had to be a completely different thing because she assumed that Cuarón would not have known about her book and that it was just a coincidence.

**Craig:** Yeah. She says, “Without proof, I could not publicly accuse him of theft, so when asked about the similarities by fans and reporters, I told them it could be coincidental.” That’s not quite her saying that she actually believed it was coincidental. That’s her just saying I can’t prove that he’s stolen anything.

Now, again, this is at a point now, sometime around 2008/2008 where, in fact, Warner Bros has now fully absorbed New Line. New Line is now not its own completely independent entity. They’ve now absorbed it and there’s a much closer interaction as Cuarón begins to write his original screenplay, Gravity.

**John:** But we should point out that Cuarón is not writing the original screenplay for Gravity for Warner Bros. This project, I believe, is at Universal at this point.

**Craig:** Yes. You’re absolutely right. It is, in fact, at Universal. Correct.

**John:** And so an interesting thing, so a year ago I actually hosted Alfonso Cuarón, the conversation about Gravity. And I talked to him about the early development and I don’t have any of the audio from our talk. This was for Film Independent. There are other clips of me talking with him, but like this part didn’t make it in, at least to the stuff online.

But, I did find Dave Poland talking with him during the run ups to the award season last year — last year — two years ago? — about Gravity and sort of how this all came. So, I want to play two little short clips from David Poland talking to Alfonso Cuarón about his development of the screenplay for Gravity. So, this is with his son, Jonás Cuarón, and sort of how they wanted to write a story about adversity.

**Alfonso Cuarón:** In this one, so we sat, we started talking about the themes and the set themes and there was space and we immediately recognized the amazing metaphorical possibilities that space would offer. So, we start pretty much mapping the story and it took us like three weeks to finish the script.

**Jonás Cuarón:** The first draft.

**David Poland:** That’s not bad. Do you usually write that quickly, or — ?

**Alfonso Cuarón:** Yeah, look, I believe that screenplays they take three weeks or five years to write. And, you know, usually I prefer to do the ones that take three weeks. I would like to do something about adversities. You know, I was going through a lot of adversities and it was just — I actually was in the midst of the adversities. And in many ways sometimes you do things just trying to make sense of where you are.

And so that we defined that that was going to be the theme. So, when we started coming out with the scenarios, like the debris as a metaphor for these adversities. But then many other elements, you know, was the first image that we had was this thing of an astronaut floating into the void. And so we started discussing the metaphors of that. You know, it’s a character who is drifting towards the void, a victim of her own inertia, getting farther away from human communication. Living in her own bubble. You know, so we started having all these elements. So, there was already kind of like — that was our — our springboard for where to jump.

**John:** Okay, so that’s Cuarón’s description of what Gravity was like when he and — or his project of Gravity was like when he and his son were writing the screenplay for it.

So, right now you could say like, well, you could argue that maybe these are just two completely separate projects and Cuarón would have no idea that her project exists. But, she says, she recently learned that he did know about her project and her book. So, here is her talking about that from her blog post.

**”Tess:”** In February 2014, my literary agent was informed of Cuarón’s attachment to my project back in 2000. Now the similarities between my book and Cuarón’s movie could no longer be dismissed as coincidence. I sought legal help, and we filed a Breach of Contract complaint that April. Please note: this is not a case of copyright infringement. Warner Bros, through its ownership of New Line, also controls the film rights to my book. They had every right to make the movie ó but they claim they have no obligation to honor my contract with New Line.

**John:** So, there’s a lot to unpack here. First she says that Cuarón was attached. Craig, what does attached mean?

**Craig:** Well, in a general understanding, attached means that someone said I am interested in working on this movie. If I’m an actor, I’m interested in starring in it. You can tell people that I want to star in it. If I’m a director I’m saying, yeah, I would like to direct this. But, I haven’t been hired to do it. My interest in it is more like planting a little flag and less like actually showing up and doing a job. From a legal point of view, people attach themselves to stuff all the time and it’s simply not even papered because no services are actually rendered.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, when she says “My literary agent was informed of Cuarón’s attachment to my project back in 2000,” what we don’t know is, well, we don’t know, A, who informed her literary agent. We don’t know, B, if that information is correct. But most importantly, C, if we stipulate that all of that is true, we don’t know the nature of his attachment.

**John:** Yeah. So, it could be anything from he read it and said like, oh yeah, that’s interesting. Or, he was like, I’m determined this is going to be my next movie.

So, I think it’s also important to look at, this is in 2000. So, let’s look t who Alfonso Cuarón was in 2000. He had directed A Little Princess and Great Expectations. Great Expectations, which was not a giant hit. This is before Y Tu Mamá También. It’s before Harry Potter. It’s before Children of Men.

So, if I were New Line would I go to Alfonso Cuarón to direct this probably expensive movie in space about a medical disaster? Maybe. Maybe I recognize that he’s so brilliant, that he’s the person who should do this, but I kind of wonder whether you’re going to him with a giant property at this point.

I’m not saying they didn’t, but it would be sort of surprising to me if he was attached in a sense of like scare-off all other directors because he’s our guy.

**Craig:** Well, that’s the problem with this phrase attachment because you never know really what it means. Sometimes people attach themselves to stuff and a studio will go, oh, have they told you that they’re attached to this? Not according to us. All sorts of funky things go on with that. But, I’m willing to extend the benefit of the doubt here and say that he was attached, which is not a — it’s nothing formal. You know, sometimes, and this is where the legal — these legalisms kind of hit the reality of the road. You know, they may say:

Hey Alfonso, what are you interested in doing?

You know what I really want to do, I’ve got this idea and I want to do this movie about a woman drifting in space.

You do? Guess what? We have a book. We have a book. It’s got that.

Really?

Yeah.

All right, let me read it. Oh, yeah, well this isn’t quite what I was thinking. This is more like, you know, Contagion — well, they didn’t have Contagion — it’s more like Outbreak in space. I’m not really thinking that. But, you know, maybe I could figure something out.

Well, you know what? We want to attach you to this and you’ll have some interest —

Yeah…okay.

**John:** To be clear, Craig is just conjecturing. We have no idea what the real situation was.

**Craig:** That’s the point. It’s all conjecture. Yeah.

**John:** And so I think what I would like to stress is that attached means maybe.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s really what it means. Because one of our mutual friends is a hot director and he’s attached to like seven projects. And so you ask him, what are you going to direct? He’s like, I don’t know. One of them.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. We hear this all the time. Sometimes you have a screenplay and the studio wants to make it and an actor says I want to do that. And then someone says, well wait a second, I hear that they’re attached to this. And then you ask them, well, how are you going to do my movie, you’re attached to that? Oh, no, no, no, that’s nothing. That’s not real.

You hear that every day. So, this idea of the attachment isn’t particularly — it’s not particularly compelling. But, what it does for Gerritsen is it obviously removes that roadblock that she felt was kind of between her and a lawsuit here.

And what she’s saying is that unlike most of the cuckoo nuts out there who say “you stole my life from me, you ripped off my script,” which is always — and 99% of the times bananas — she’s saying, no, no, no, I’m saying that what’s happened here is Warner Bros through its ownership of New Line has violated my contract. They made a movie that I believe is connected by chain of title to my book. They owe me money.

**John:** Yup. So, there’s really two ideas competing here and we don’t want to gloss over them. First off, “could not be dismissed as coincidence.” So, she’s basically saying like, oh, no, no, he saw it, I know he saw it, so you can’t just say that it was completely independent because I know he saw it. That’s not a fact we actually know, but she’s stating it sort of like it’s a fact.

And this third point which is Warner Bros, through their ownership of New Line, also controls the film rights to my book. And that weirdly becomes the whole issue here is whether they do, or don’t control the rights. What she’s I think very smartly saying in this block is, “Please note: this is not a case of copyright infringement.” So she’s trying to really lean into this sense of like I know you think I’m going to be one of those kooks who says that my book was stolen, and it wasn’t. It couldn’t have been stolen because Warner Bros owns it through New Line. And weirdly the case is about, well, maybe they didn’t. Or maybe they didn’t in the way that we sort of think they did.

**Craig:** Well, yes. Now, she’s also doing something — and her lawyers — are also doing something kind of clever here with this as well that’s a little more subtle. When she says this is not a case of copyright infringement, in addition to separating herself from the pack of lunatics, she’s also doing a little bit of a sleight of hand — these are not the droids you’re looking for.

In fact, down the line somewhere that’s exactly what’s going to need to be figured out. And here’s why — what she’s arguing is, hey look, Warner Bros is saying that they don’t have any responsibility for their contract with me because that’s a contract that was made with New Line, it had separate management, not them, they’re not responsible. Which, by the way, the judge has agreed with. They’ve agreed with Warner Bros’ argument there.

And she’s saying, no, no, no, but we’re going to come back and show that, in fact, they do control the film rights. If she is successful in that, that’s not going to be enough. Then, she’s going to have to show, okay, fine, okay, the judge has said we’re responsible for your contract. Great, we’re responsible for it. Still, this is a different project.

**John:** Yeah. So, it’s just the stage one. Let’s talk about what the judge actually did rule in this case. This is judge Margaret Morrow. And this is from her decision. I’ll just read one little quote here. “Even when her allegations are construed in Gerritsen’s favor, it is apparent that she cannot plausibly allege a claim under traditional contract law theories. Gerritsen pleads that she entered into contract with KATJA and New Line that entitled her to payment if KATJA produced a motion picture based on her book. And that Warner Bros, not KATJA, produced a film that is allegedly based on her book.

“No plausible inference arises from these allegations that Warner Bros was a party to the contracts or that KATJA produced the final film. Thus, absent an alternative theory of liability, Gerritsen’s claims must be dismissed.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, Morrow’s decision is about 48 pages long. It’s super long. And in it Gerritsen is now allowed to file an amended complaint within 20 days, so probably ten days from now. And one of the things that Gerritsen is seeking is discovery. Gerritsen is seeking the ability to look for things that sort of bolster her claim that this has happened, that it’s based on this. And Morrow is saying basically, no, like you haven’t shown enough facts to lead to discovery.

And there’s a quote here which is from somebody else, but I thought it was a really interesting quote. “The court will not unlock the doors to discovery for a plaintiff armed with nothing more than conclusions.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, basically saying like you kind of want to go fishing but I’m not going to let you go fishing because I think you don’t have enough to bolster your claims here.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, and just to make it really clear — that quote that you said was not from Judge Morrow.

**John:** That’s not Morrow. She’s quoting some other decision.

**Craig:** Right. But that’s what it comes down to. I mean, look, discovery is a really powerful thing. When you are involved in a civil case, discovery means, yeah, I get to actually look through everything. I can look through all your emails. I can look through all your stuff. You have to show it to me.

It’s not like a criminal case where you can plead the fifth. And, yeah, so Morrow is saying you haven’t actually given me any reason to think that you would discover something. You can’t just come up with a conclusion and then use that as some kind of pry bar to open up Warner Bros’ stuff to look for something that would fit your conclusion.

But, the judge did on some level at least, you know, this is what Gerritsen believes, kind of guide her to sort of say, here, if you sort of change things this way or this way, maybe then I would entertain your case. Well, not quite as sanguine about her prospects as she is there.

But, normally at this point it would be the end of it. And I should mention that Warner Bros has settled things before. For instance, the tattoo case. In this situation, they did not settle. They said, no, no, no, good, court. We like our odds. And they won. Typically it would end here.

But it is not what ended here. In fact, Gerritsen does something that people don’t typically do and she is a unique situation as far as these things are.

She went public.

**John:** She did. So, the snippets that we’re playing are actually from the blog post after she lost this case, or had most of this case dismissed. And she went public and the reason why we’re talking about it right now is because everyone tweeted this link to her blog about sort of what the situation was. And so this is the alarming language that was in there that set everybody off. So, let’s play one more snippet of that.

**”Tess:”** This is why every writer who sells to Hollywood should be alarmed.

It means that any writer who sold film rights to New Line Productions can have those rights freely exploited by its parent company Warner Bros ó and the original contract you signed with New Line will not be honored. Warner Bros can make a movie based on your book but you will get no credit, even though your contract called for it.

**John:** It’s a call to arms. It’s a call to arms to all writers who might sell their books to Hollywood.

**Craig:** Well, first, before I talk about her alarming comments here, I should say that if you’re listening and you’re thinking to yourself, boy, John and Craig seem a little hard on this lady and a little soft on Warner Bros, I want you to understand that every time these things happen I make a real effort to remember and consider that it is never a case of one writer accusing a corporation of ripping them off.

It is one writer accusing a corporation and another writer of ripping them off. And my feeling has always been that in our brother and sisterhood of writers we need to give all of the writing parties’ benefit of the doubt. There is no greater accusation to make than plagiarism. And she is accusing Alfonso Cuarón and his son of plagiarizing her.

So, everyone flipped out. And they flipped out because she said her case means that any writer who sold film rights to New Line Productions can have these rights freely exploited by the parent company, Warner Bros, and the original contract you signed with New Line will not be honored.

In fact, that is not correct at all. That is a ridiculous jump in logic from her situation. What she’s saying, to be clear is, because I failed to convince you that Warner Bros doesn’t have to honor this contract, Warner Bros never has to honor these contracts. That’s actually not true.

**John:** Yeah. It’s a fallacy of over-generalization. So, your one specific incidence of things that happen to you is a universal truth. So, if your Toyota catches fire, all Toyotas catch fire. And this was a really sort of unique circumstance. And I don’t know that she’s consciously doing a sleight of hand, but a sleight of hand has happened where she’s taking the results of this lawsuit and trying to say well this is what’s going to happen to everybody else in the future.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, look. Let’s say Gerritsen never sells her film rights to New Line Productions. Okay? She just publishes her book. She goes on her merry way. And then one day Warner Bros makes Gravity. Same situation. The only thing that’s different is that she didn’t sell the film rights to New Line. Would she not be able to sue Warner Bros? Of course she would. And what would the lawsuit be? It would be a copyright case.

Now, when she sells the film rights, she’s not giving up copyright of her book. So, when she says, well hey, it’s not a case of copyright infringement, what I’m hearing is I’m saying it’s not a case of copyright infringement because I know I can’t prove copyright infringement.

That’s what I’m hearing. Now, I don’t know if that’s true. But that’s what I’m hearing. So, what I want to say to you at home is, no, if you sell your film rights to your novel at New Line and then Warner Bros goes and makes a movie of it, if they’re using your unique expression in fixed form, you absolutely have legal recourse. No question.

**John:** Yes, so that legal recourse is complicated to a degree because let’s say it wasn’t New Line. Let’s say, oh, let’s pick Disney. Let’s say she had sold it to Disney and then Warner Bros makes Gravity. And Disney say, uh-uh-uh, that’s really based on this book that we control the rights to. Disney is the one who would go after Warner Bros.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** Probably more likely than Tess Gerritsen. So, in this case, New Line is not going to sue Warner Bros. And so I am sympathetic to — I can very much see how it feels to her, because she’s saying like, uh-uh-uh, I’m not — New Line should be suing you and New Line is not suing you.

New Line is not suing them I really think for one really clear reason that it’s probably not based on the book that they bought, but clearly even if they thought it was based on the book they bought, they would not be suing Warner Bros.

**Craig:** I still feel like in the case that you said, Disney says we’re suing you Warner Bros because we have exclusive rights to make a film based on this book. That’s fine. But if they have, in fact, made a movie based on a book that they don’t have rights to. The author, too, has a copyright case because —

**John:** They absolutely do.

**Craig:** Because the rights to make derivative works is incorporated in copyright. One of the things of copyright is the right to make copies, but it’s also the right to make derivative works, including films of your novel. So, if somebody goes and makes a derivative work of your book and you haven’t given them that right, absolutely you can sue them. What I feel like — and I can’t say this is true — but what I feel like is that she knows she can’t prove that, so she’s trying to basically get them from a chain of title argument. And the judge is saying you can’t.

**John:** Yeah. Let’s listen to the last little clip of this, and this is how she sort of wraps up. And this was the final call to arms, which I think is what got so many people tweeting this at us this week.

**”Tess:”** It means that any parent film company who acquires a studio, and also acquires that studio’s intellectual properties, can exploit those properties without having to acknowledge or compensate the original authors.

This is alarming on many levels, and the principles involved go far beyond my individual lawsuit. Every writer who sells film rights to Hollywood must now contend with the possibility that the studio they signed the contract with could be swallowed up by a larger company ó and that parent company can then make a movie based on your book without compensating you. It means Hollywood contracts are worthless.

**John:** Craig, are Hollywood contracts worthless?

**Craig:** No, of course not. Now, when you — look, I have to be fair and honest here. When you enter into a contractual agreement with a multinational, multi-billion dollar corporation, you know you are in an asynchronous state. You are an individual and they are not. And if they — if you perceive that they have violated your contract, it’s going to be a tough fight. There’s no question. And I’m aware of that. That said, I have never once in 19 years ever had a situation that even approached a company violating a contract. It costs them too much to violate there.

If they clearly violate the contract, they know they’re going to lose. In this case, what she really — here is how I would sort of express her argument. Let’s say you write a novel and you sell it to a studio. And then that studio is bought by another studio that makes a movie that you think is connected to your novel in some way, but doesn’t actually contain stuff that you think is pulled from your novel in terms of intellectual property, then they don’t have to compensate you.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s right. [laughs]

**John:** That’s really what it comes down to is that like in many ways what she doesn’t perceive is that her book Gravity is still a New Line property that they could still make into a movie.

**Craig:** Exactly. Exactly.

**John:** And so I think it would actually be really fascinating if just New Line said like, you know what, it still is a really good idea, because you know what, it kind of does sound like a good idea. They could just make it. They probably wouldn’t call it Gravity because that title has already been used, but I mean, she perceives that her book has been turned into a movie, and New Line says it hasn’t.

**Craig:** And let’s talk about what — okay, she’s alarmed by how she perceives reality now. I’m alarmed by the reality that she wishes to impose. And here’s why.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** So let’s say that Ms. Gerritsen gets her way and Warner Bros is held responsible for this and now Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity is no longer considered an original screenplay, but in fact it’s based by a novel by her, a novel that he may or may not have read, and it doesn’t matter. That’s the way it is.

So, now, let’s talk about what that means for screenwriters. You go to a studio and you say I have an original idea and I’m going to sell it to you. Or, I have an original screenplay, I’m going to sell it to you. And they say, great. We love your spec script. We want to buy it. However, because of Gerritsen v. WB, we have had to run through our archives of all material that we own, including material owned by companies that purchased it before we purchased the company, and we have found seven different books that we have contractual obligations to that are similar in topic.

**John:** In that sense that they involve horses.

**Craig:** Yeah. You have a horseracing movie. That’s a perfect example, because there have been about, I don’t know, one every three years. Okay? You have a horseracing movie. We have seven different books that are basically about the horseracing and they all include a character of a girl who falls in love with a horse. They include an alcoholic. They include a horse that nobody had — that was going to go to the glue factory. Basically we have seven books that include a lot of horse movie tropes. So, your original screenplay is now actually based on seven different books. It’s a nightmare.

It’s a nightmare.

**John:** So, let me give you a scenario that I think is actually much more plausible and likely, that you could really see happening. So, let’s say you are Sony and you buy a great book about Harry Truman and it’s like, oh, we’re going to make a movie about Harry Truman. And then two weeks later Aaron Sorkin comes out with a really amazing spec script and it’s like, oh my god, this is amazing, so you buy it. Do you then have to go to Aaron Sorkin and say, oh, Aaron, by the way, I know you wrote this original script but it’s now based on this book? That’s really the scenario that you’re running into now is that like anything that looks like it could be similar that you already own the rights to, well it’s suddenly source material for this project.

That does come up, by the way. There definitely are situations where a spec script — they’ll own a book and they’ll say like, you know what, we’re going to incorporate some of this stuff but I’ve also had it happen just in bizarre ways. I had a friend who was in production on her movie. And this was a pitch she sold and she was so excited and they were in production. And they’re like several weeks in and they said like, oh by the way, this movie is based on a book. And she had no recourse, essentially. This thing that she thought was an original thing is now based on a book.

**Craig:** Right. It happens. What we don’t want is for it to happen sort of post hoc, you know, where you sell something and then a book is thrown on top of it, or you sell something and somebody throws a book sort of in it as we have to, sorry. We mistakenly have the rights to a book that is sort of the same kind of topic. You know, we’ve talked about what is and is not unique expression in intellectual property. We’ve talked about how ideas are not intellectual property.

I’m a little concerned — the thing that concerned me maybe the most about Ms. Gerritsen’s complaint was what was not there. And what was not there was any kind of literary material that I could read, a passage, a paragraph, a sentence, and say, oh, you know what, I saw that in Gravity. Nothing. And what concerns me then is that she is suing, she is casting aspersions on the authorship of Alfonso Cuarón and yet she can’t actually back it up. And I have to say that is not a good feeling there. She may be right. And she may be proven right. And if that’s the case, then I hope she gets every dime she deserves.

But right now, I’ll tell you what, there is a very famous short story called Kaleidoscope by Ray Bradbury. Have you ever read Kaleidoscope?

**John:** I never have.

**Craig:** It’s probably on the web. We could probably throw a link on, well, actually, that’s copyright violation anyway, so we won’t do that. But it’s an amazing story and it’s about a bunch of astronauts on a rocket ship and the rocket ship explodes from something, meteors or something. And all the guys basically are falling through space and as they’re falling through space they can talk to each other. So, they’re basically above the earth, just like Gravity, and they’re falling in freefall towards the earth, just like Gravity, and they can talk to each other.

And the short story is entirely about what they say to each other in these last minutes knowing full well this is it.

**John:** Well, I can’t believe Cuarón ripped him off.

**Craig:** [laughs] Well, that’s the thing. You know, this is where we have to be so careful because, you know, if she got her way here basically everybody would just be locked into the strangest world, you know. It’s not feasible.

**John:** You know what it actually reminds me of? It sort of reminds me of patent trolls. You know how the way that technologies get patented and then people use them as weapons against each other. And I could definitely see if this were to actually come to pass where you could say like, uh-uh, you can’t do anything involving this little subset of intellectual property because I own all of these things. And that would just be a horrific situation.

**Craig:** Yes. I’m really curious if anyone has actually read the book and if they perceive any real specific connection beyond the fact that the hero is a woman and that she’s in space and falling. That’s not enough at all.

**John:** So, I want to address sort of like why I think so many writers are so freaked out about this.

**Craig:** Ah yes.

**John:** And I could totally feel why they were panicked because you look at it, especially look at it from how she is portraying it. And I also would say like I genuinely think and believe she believes what she’s writing. I don’t think there’s anything false about this. I think sometimes she’s optimizing her words that she’s using to describe her own book, but I think she genuinely believes what she’s writing. And I think if I were in her situation, I would kind of genuinely believe it, too.

Because I’ve been in situations where I’ve had to defend my authorship of a movie that goes into production, or arbitration where I say like, well, clearly this is my work. And it’s frustrating when sometimes that’s not acknowledged. But — and so, well, the writers who tweeted us this link, they felt like, oh my god, this is something that could happen? This is awful. And so what I’d love for people to remember though is there is a whole bunch of other writers that aren’t being acknowledged in this conversation.

There is the screenwriter who adapted her book who that movie never actually happened, but there is a script somewhere with this guy’s name on it that’s based on a book that could be a movie at some point. And there are the Cuaróns who wrote this movie. And to hold up on a pedestal this novelist for her book and for her idea, which is sort of a different idea, over the actual creative work and expression of writing a movie and making a movie feels like a — you’re omitting a really crucial part of the discussion.

**Craig:** Yeah. Everybody roots for the underdog. I mean, sure. And, you know, when she comes out and very candidly frames this as writers versus companies, of course every writer is going to go Defend, Defend, yes, circle the wagons. Always, I say, always defend the writer and circle the wagons. Just make sure that you’re not circling the wagons and excluding a writer while you’re doing it, or running over a writer while you’re doing it.

In that case, that’s what’s happening here. And the writers are — the writer of the screenplay that was actually based on her book and by chain of title and also Alfonso Cuarón, unless — by the way — unless in a court of law she proves that Alfonso Cuarón and his son plagiarized her work. And if that’s the case, well then, they ought to get what’s coming to them. I mean, you know, I mean, I’m all for that. But, you know, when we sign contracts, it’s one of my favorite little hypocrisies of the screenwriting contract is on the one hand we say, look, for the purposes of copyright, Warner Bros is the author of the screenplay. However, I also swear to you that I am the author of the screenplay. Nobody else. I am not stealing anything. I wrote this. Me, me, me.

Meaning, you can sue me. If I sell you a screenplay that in fact I’ve ripped off from somebody else. So, it’s not like we — when we get jobs that we are aware that we are warranting college honor code style that this is our work. And we’re not stealing anybody else’s work. The only work that we’re allowed to access is the work that’s assigned to us. The prior screenplays and the underlying material.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Well, Craig, thank you very much for a discussion, a very thorough discussion through all of this, and we’ll keep an eye on it. We’ll see what happens. There’s supposed to be another ten days or so before she has to file a new thing. So, if she files that and it goes to another round, we may see more about this.

**John:** Yeah, for sure.

It is time for our One Cool Things and keeping with our science-fiction theme, my One Cool Thing is two blog posts by Tim Urban on Wait But Why, his site. And they’re both talking about artificial intelligence and they’re very, very long posts where he just sort of goes through what modern artificial intelligence thinkers think is going to happen with artificial intelligence. And at what point we will achieve artificial intelligence that can sort of do what we do, and then at what point will we create a superior intelligence that can do things we cannot possibly imagine. And what the timeframes are for that and what the outcomes are for that.

And it’s just a really good, thorough deep dive into that whole area of discussion. So, I had read some of the books that he’s referencing, and Kurzweil, and your best friend, Elon Musk, has huge concerns about artificial intelligence.

**Craig:** Yes, I wish he were my best friend.

**John:** Well, yeah. But one day. And Bill Joy, who is famously sort of negative about the future not needing us. So, I think it’s just a great look at sort of where our thinking is for artificial intelligence right now. One interesting little statistic I’ll pull from it is they did a survey of artificial intelligence experts to f figure out — really asking them when do you think artificial intelligence will achieve human intelligence?

And the median answer was 25 years, which is really soon. The question then becomes, at what point after achieving our intelligence would it become super intelligent and those range from about two minutes to 20 years. And there really isn’t that — we cannot know, because it’s potentially an exponential growth that would fundamentally change everything. And so, while you’re there reading those two stories, it ties in well with the Fermi Paradox, which I’ve brought up before, about why we don’t see other civilizations. How it’s entirely possible that they are computers now and that’s why they’re not in our universe.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s possible that we are also computers.

**John:** This could all be a simulation anyway, so what does it matter?

**Craig:** Right. What does it matter. Well, while we’re here stuck in the matrix, my One Cool Thing — why not — let’s make it Ray Bradbury and his book The Illustrated Man, which was published in 1951, and it contained 18 science fiction short stories, including the aforementioned Kaleidoscope. Did you go through a science fiction short story streak like I did when I was a kid?

**John:** Absolutely. I think it was seventh grade that I read a lot of them.

**Craig:** Yeah, I just went bananas. I mean, I went bananas on Bradbury, Asimov, various collections, Heinlein, and Bradbury was, I thought, the best writer. Some of the writing of that time period isn’t great. A lot of times you feel like the people writing the stories are really good with plot, terrible with character and dialogue. Everybody speaks ridiculously and on the nose.

Bradbury was a very good writer. And loved actually the idea of what he did with Kaleidoscope. I mean, granted, it’s dated. It’s from 1951. But, definitely check it out if you can, literally, from your library. The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury, including Kaleidoscope.

**John:** Fantastic. So, you’ll find links to Ray Bradbury’s works and these two posts I just talked about. All of Tess Gerritsen’s stuff we’ll try to have links up to the PDFs from the lawsuits and from the original complaints, so you can see them and look through them and maybe even sort of read through them with us as we take a look at what the Gravity lawsuit means.

If you would like to talk to me or Craig more, you can tweet at him. He is verified —

**Craig:** Oh yeah!

**John:** @clmazin.

**Craig:** Who do we have to thank for this?

**John:** Well, weirdly, so we have to thank Brian Koppelman for it. But we also literally at exactly the same time that that was happening with Brian Koppelman, I was dealing with Twitter about a bunch of impersonators. And thank you to everyone else who helped me with Twitter and those other stupid impersonators.

But I got verified sort of at the same moment, so it was all a glorious blue check moment for us all.

**Craig:** Yeah, Brian Koppelman, he’s — I don’t know how he does it. He’s just like one of those guys that knows every person that you should know or that you would want to know.

**John:** Yeah. You sort of feel like, you know, if you were walking up to a club, Brian Koppelman will get you in.

**Craig:** Oh, no question. That’s like — that’s elementary Brian Koppelman.

**John:** And I saw that Rian Johnson also got verified at the same moment. So, I think it just all happens.

**Craig:** Oh, no, Rian did? Because he was unverified and dangerous.

**John:** Yeah, now he’s verified. I have a hunch that Twitter said like, oh you know what, these screenwriters, let’s just verify them.

**Craig:** [laughs] While we’re at it…

**John:** While we’re at it. Gary Whitta had one a long time ago, but that was because of Star Wars.

**Craig:** I’m looking to see if Rian still says he’s unverified. No, he says, “Dignity. Always Dignity.” He’s changed it. Oh, well, you know, the truth is the blue checkmark doesn’t mean a damn thing, but —

**John:** [laughs] No, I thought there would be like a giant parade or whatever. I thought they would send me a little sweatshirt with a little blue checkmark, but it was a momentary little adrenaline rush.

But, anyway, I am @johnaugust. He is @clmazin. You can tweet at us with your thoughts about this episode or other episodes. If you have longer questions, the place to send them is ask@johnaugust.com.

You can find this episode at johnaugust.com along with the show notes and all these links.

If you would like to listen to the premium feed and all the special episodes, including the dirty episode from last week, you can find that at Scriptnotes.net. That will also be playable through our app which is both on the App Store and the Amazon Android App Store.

We are on iTunes. You should subscribe there and leave us a comment. Just look for Scriptnotes there.

And I think that is it. So, I want to thank Christy Miller again for providing the voice of Tess Gerritsen for this. Our outro is probably by Matthew Chilelli. We’ll see. But he also edited the show.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** And Stuart Friedel produced it.

**Craig:** Oh, yeah! Stuart.

**John:** Oh yeah! Craig, have a great week.

**Craig:** You, too, John.

**John:** Thanks.

Links:

* [SAG, DGA & WGA Members Could Be Victims Of Anthem Hack](http://deadline.com/2015/02/sag-dga-wga-anthem-hack-cyber-attack-1201367324/), on Deadline
* [Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H83EUL2/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) on Amazon
* [Gravity: A Novel of Medical Suspense by Tess Gerritsen](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003WEA9P2/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) on Amazon
* [Warner Bros. Aims to Shoot Down Author’s Gravity Lawsuit](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/warner-bros-aims-shoot-down-715806), from The Hollywood Reporter
* [My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood](http://www.tessgerritsen.com/gravity-lawsuit-affects-every-writer-sells-hollywood/), from Tess Gerritsen’s blog
* [DP/30: Gravity, co-writer/director Alfonso Cuarón](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c2EQP5nIAA) on YouTube
* [Judge Morrow’s decision, dated January 30, 2015](https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/wb-gravity-lawsuit-order-wm.pdf)
* [The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence](http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html) and [The AI Revolution: Our Immortality or Extinction](http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-2.html), from Wait But Why
* [The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1451678185/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) on Amazon
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes editor Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/critics-characters-and-business-affairs).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. So today’s episode has the F word in it like four times because we read this letter aloud. So if you have your kids in the car, maybe don’t listen to this episode with the kids in the car because it’s kind of not safe for kids or for work. But it’s safe for almost everywhere else. Thanks.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

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

**John:** And this is episode 166 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, this was a really busy week. I saw you a lot.

**Craig:** You did. We first delved into a cavern together that contained a Nothic.

**John:** Indeed. We did some virtual spelunking and did some D&D. It was fun.

**Craig:** Yeah, it was fun.

**John:** We kind of made a mistake with the Nothic.

**Craig:** We made a huge mistake.

**John:** I’m not sure we —

**Craig:** We made a huge mistake.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** We have a tendency as a group. Not my character. My character is [laughs] to a fault wants to love everyone.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** But as a group we seem to want to just kill everything we see. And I don’t think we should have attacked that thing.

**John:** Perhaps we shouldn’t have. I mean, it looked gruesome and so therefore we killed it. But that may not have been the best choice.

**Craig:** Yeah, it was kind of racist.

**John:** Yeah, it could have been a little bit racist.

**Craig:** Yeah, it was racist because he had one eye.

**John:** Speciesist, yeah.

**Craig:** Speciesist, yeah. So we did that but then we also saw each other at the Live Slate Culture Gabfest event —

**John:** In downtown Los Angeles.

**Craig:** In downtown Los Angeles. And that podcast has already aired. They turned it around right quick.

**John:** They did. So that was a tremendously fun evening. It was at The Belasco Theatre. We had a good crowd. It was us. It was Jenny Slate. It was Natasha Lyonne.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** There were the hosts. So thank you, Slate, for having us there. Thank you, Andy Bowers and Julia Turner and Dana Stevens, Stephen Metcalf. It was fun to be a guest on someone else’s show.

**Craig:** It was fun. They ask good questions and we had a lively discussion.

**John:** Mm-hmm. It was fun for me not to have to segue all the time so that somebody else could be the person responsible for “And now let’s move on to the next topic.”

**Craig:** Yeah, he wasn’t necessarily better at segues than you.

**John:** Well, I think it’s one of my true callings is the ability to get from this place to that place.

**Craig:** The Segue-ist?

**John:** I am The Transitioner.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But that transition is a good way for me to get into talking about today’s show which will feature our little package from the Slate Culture —

**Craig:** [laughs] You just did it, you did it.

**John:** I can’t stop transitioning.

**Craig:** The Transitioner.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** That’s like Marvel’s worst movie in 40 years and they’re really just out of everything. They’re like, um, The Transitioner.

**John:** He’s really good at the cocktail conversation.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Or it can also be like, you know, it’s the next thing after Transparent which is apparently a really good Amazon show. It’s like they could make The Transitioner who’s like constantly moving from one thing to the next thing.

**Craig:** Oh, I like that.

**John:** So today, we are going to have the audio from our section. So in case you didn’t hear it in Slate, you can listen to it on our thing and then we’ll talk a little about what we talked about after that. But we have some new topics as well including something you and I talked about after our segment on the show which was that I was writing something this week and I realized that the problem I was having is I had sort of one character too many.

It’s a recurring theme that I’ve seen again and again, it’s like sometimes you have too many characters and rarely too few characters and figuring out what that problem is can be a real solution for many screen emergencies.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And then we’re going to talk about business affairs.

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** And that’s going to be a happy conversation.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Hmm.

**Craig:** Argh.

**John:** But first, some follow-up. Tonight, October 14th, if you’re listening to this the day the podcast comes out, Tuesday, October 14th at 7:30 PM, I’m going to be talking with Simon Kinberg at the WGA as a benefit for the Writers Guild Foundation.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** And we’re going to be talking about X-Men: Days of Future Past, Sherlock Holmes, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the upcoming Fantastic Four movie, Star Wars Rebels and producing movies and writing things and it will be a great conversation. So join us if you’d want to join us. There’s still like maybe 10 tickets left?

**Craig:** Well, you should grab those tickets. Simon Kinberg is a rarity, I believe, in our business in that he is a very good writer, he’s a very good producer, he’s extraordinarily successful, and he’s really nice.

**John:** He’s a really nice guy.

**Craig:** How about that? Just a good egg. I really like Simon a lot. You know he’s English?

**John:** I do know that he’s English.

**Craig:** Yeah, but you wouldn’t know it because he has no English accent.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I’m very —

**John:** Just like you, you had a New York accent growing up —

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But you completely lost it.

**Craig:** Just completely lost it.

**John:** He shed his —

**Craig:** He shed it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** He shed it, but that’s an extreme shedding.

**John:** It’s an extreme shedding. Well, you can’t talk about British accents without bringing up the Nolan Brothers because one of them is British and one of them is not British and it’s so odd.

**Craig:** I know. It’s weird. And I always think to myself, well, if somebody’s lost a truly foreign accent, that’s verging on sociopathic behavior. [laughs] They have the potential to be a villain.

**John:** They do or they are a Canadian actress because we actually had a Canadian babysitter this last week and I detected something like — something is — you’re really, really nice in a way that you’re probably not American. And she was in fact Canadian. But she was an actress and so she had very — I asked her like, you deliberately got rid of your accent? She’s like, yes, I worked really hard for a year to get rid of all my Canadianisms so that people can’t tell I’m Canadian.

**Craig:** Losing a Canadian accent is a bit like losing a New York accent. In fact, a strong New York accent is probably more violently different than standard American English than a Canadian accent.

**John:** A strong New York accent is pretty much an assault.

**Craig:** It’s an assault and I had one and then I lost it. So I guess I’m one of those sociopaths, too [laughs].But I’m fascinated by people… — We were talking about this, people who can and can’t lose accents. You know, there are people who have lived in, like Dr. Ruth Westheimer is a good example. Brilliant woman, speaks many languages, has lived in New York for decades, has the strongest German accent.

**John:** Another great example is Arianna Huffington.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Who, you know, incredibly successful in the US and yet, she’s thoroughly Greek in sort of how she talks and presents herself. And it’s become sort of her signature. You can’t imagine her without that accent.

**Craig:** Right. And then you have Madonna who spends four days in England and suddenly she’s like, [British accent] hello mate.

**John:** Yeah, there’s that middle of the Atlantic situation that happens sometimes when Americans cross over and it doesn’t all together work.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** So last bit of follow-up is if you ordered one of the Scriptnotes t-shirts, they’re in and they’re actually out. Stuart and Ryan are packaging them up as we speak and so they’re going to be leaving the Quote-Unquote offices because that’s where — they really are offices but our company is called Quote-Unquote Films.

They’ll be leaving the offices today, so you should be getting them this week, the week that you’re hearing this podcast if you’re in the US, maybe a little bit longer if you’re overseas, but thank you so much for all the people who bought those because those help keep the podcast going.

**Craig:** And, of course, reduce the amount of money that we lose but not to zero [laughs].

**John:** Never to zero.

**Craig:** Never to zero.

**John:** All right, first segment. Let’s talk about the Slate Culture Gabfest. So let’s just set it up for listeners so they know what it is they’re going to listen to. Craig, could you set the scene for us, like let us know where it is that this event is taking place and what it feels like?

**Craig:** Sure. So The Belasco Theater is downtown, it’s a small theater but it’s very typical for Los Angeles downtown. You don’t know it’s there until you arrive. You walk inside and you think, oh my god, what a great space. It’s old, it’s obviously been around since I would guess the ’20s, gorgeous space, very dark and cavernous. There was a green room downstairs which, in fact, was illuminated entirely with red light bulbs, so it was a bit like, I don’t know, what I imagined No Exit to look like or something.

Large stage, very nice audience with a bar in back to keep people liquored up. And so we sat up there on stage with the hosts of the show. It was a little hard for me to hear. They didn’t have monitors. So when you’re on stage, usually you want a couple of speakers that are facing back towards the people talking so they could hear themselves.

All I could really hear was the echoey sound that was traveling above my head and out. So in a way it kept you on your toes and you had to really pay attention. But it was terrific. Jenny Slate was very, very funny and we did our thing and Natasha Lyonne was very, very interesting. So we had a nice chat and you can hear the audience, you know, fairly, they were —

**John:** Yeah, Craig got laughs and it was good that you got laughs. I liked that.

**Craig:** I got laughs, yeah [laughs]. Well, I was trying to, well look, I was trying to be on my best behavior. And I really did think I was on my best behavior. I got a couple of little shots in but they weren’t really shots as much as just —

**John:** Yeah, they were playful taps.

**Craig:** They were playful jabs. Playful jabs.

**John:** And so the other thing I should set up for our listeners so they understand is that each guest was up sort of in their own segment but not the other segments, so you’re going to hear me and Craig but you’ll also hear Stephen Metcalf, Julia Turner and Dana Stevens. So let’s go to that and then when we come back we’ll have a little recap and wrap up.

Julia Turner: I’m such a fan of your podcast.

**John:** Thank you.

Julia: It’s so fun to have you guys on the same stage. I’m sorry Stephen.

Stephen Metcalf: Please, dig right in. Actually, I want to start by saying I had my very — this is actually a true story. I had my very first Hollywood pitch yesterday.

**John:** So how did it go?

Stephen: Do you know the phrase, “Bought it in the room?” That didn’t happen. [laughs] You know what, I’ll give you, and I had another one today. I’ll give you a very honest response was, there was — I kind of loved it for the reason that it was like nothing I’ve ever seen depicted in all the silly movies that depict Hollywood. And in fact, they were just professionals who knew their business and it was no drama Obama.

**Craig:** No Weimaraners, no crack, no OxyContin.

Stephen: Exactly right. And no Jaws meets this or whatever. It was like very, very, very intricately smart people who understand the relationship between narratives that work and people who will pay money to go see them. I mean, right —

**Craig:** And so they rejected you? [laughs]

Stephen: Mazin. I just want to say, Craig, I love the movie Go.

**Craig:** Oh yes, I heard that.

Stephen: That movie is —

**Craig:** I heard, yes.

Stephen: Perfect, it’s like Swiss watch work.

**Craig:** It’s the most adorable thing you’ve seen ever.

Stephen: It’s Swiss clockwork lubricated by butter.

**Craig:** Yes.

Stephen: Just gorgeous.

**Craig:** John’s films are gorgeously lubricated.

Stephen: It went by like that.

**Craig:** No question.

Stephen: Anyway, we want to get into the subject of who authors the film which is a rabbit hole we can kind of go down, half down, or ignore completely but it’s an interesting one to me. But I want you to just, if it’s okay, really quickly to describe your careers and how you got where you are. You’re having a dream career. How did that come about? John, why don’t we start with you?

**John:** I was a journalism major. I went to journalism school at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. I realized halfway through that I didn’t really want that major but I loved the writing I was doing. I loved that sort of structured writing that journalism is. And I found out there was such a thing as a screenplay, that there was such a thing as film school and I applied and got into USC, moved out here with my rusted Honda and started, you know, reading scripts for people and I started writing. And I started writing Go, the screenplay that first got made, while I was still in film school. And so it was very much that experience of being 26 years old and seemingly immortal. And that became my first movie.

Stephen: That is fantastic. And the Weimaraner was suddenly seated next to you in the car.

**John:** [laughs]

Stephen: Craig, what about you?

**Craig:** I was a pre-med student in college and around my senior year, it became very clear that I just did not want to spend — I was going to be a neurologist and I just… — I still am fascinated by the brain and by neurology but not by people with neurological disorders.

It’s a bummer, I don’t know how else to put it. They do die on you a lot. And I was fascinated by the entertainment business. I was fascinated by entertaining people. I loved movies and I loved television shows. And so, and you had a rusted Honda, I had a rusted Toyota. I drove out here, I didn’t know anybody and I got a job because I could type and sort of worked my way into a position where I could pitch movies and write movies. And I’ve been doing it since 1996, now, 1995/1996.

Stephen: That’s amazing.

**Craig:** Yeah.

Stephen: Okay, so you’ve just watched a movie, let’s say the credits come at the end, you admire it, you think it was, you know, in some ways, narratively elegant, the characters were very alive, you got lost in the world, no fat to be trimmed, and the name comes up and it says, Screenplay by, you know, and it’s a single credit, a credit to a single person. How confident are you that what you just saw was authored by that person?

**John:** You don’t necessarily know whether that screenplay credit reflects what actually made it on to the screen or not. Credits for films are determined by the Writers Guild and there’s a whole process you go through. It’s as good as we can make that process but it’s still not perfect. That you’re competing, there’s two competing forces. You want the credits to accurately reflect who wrote the movie but you also want to not dilute the credit by sharing it among a bunch of people who, if 12 writers did little bits on it, you don’t want to sort of necessarily make it seem like 12 people did little bits on it.

So what I will say is different is when we see that credit going by, we already know. We sort of, actually everybody really does know who did the work on the movie. And so there’s lots of movies that will not have a certain writer’s credit on them but everyone in town knows they’ve worked on it and that’s very helpful for their career.

**Craig:** Yeah, I think it’s actually gotten better. We have changed. I’m one of three co-chairs of the credits committee that reviews the rules and then puts rules changes to the membership. And we’ve had about two or three rounds of rules changes that have been successful. And they’ve been good changes and I think that they have made the credits more accurate. It’s a difficult situation. There have been miscarriages, no question. But John’s point is absolutely true. We know who wrote the movie. We, who are in the business, we know.

Stephen: And what do you — I’m curious what you especially admire about a screenplay, what makes you wish you had written one when you get to the end of the film or you read it on the page? What elements of story or character or shape or —

**Craig:** Well, you know, when I think of movies where I’ve really zeroed in on what I thought was fundamental to the screenplay, it was a question of harmony of elements. That there were scenes that internally were using plot to reveal character, character revealing plot, plot and character revealing theme, conflict revealing potential resolution. And then taken as a sum, those scenes all work together to create some sort of thematic whole out of that. That often is what I admire, but sometimes I just am entertained.

And more than anything when I go to the movies it’s to be entertained.

**John:** When you read a screenplay, you recognize that it’s a form of incredible efficiency. You have to be able to convey with just a few words in 12-point Courier what this whole world feels like and what these characters are like and so every word counts in ways that doesn’t necessarily in a novel. A novel can spend three pages talking about how soft the sheets were. The movie doesn’t actually have those senses, you can’t describe things you touch or feel. It’s only what you can see and what you can hear. So you’re finding ways to describe and set up this whole world with just these very limited windows into it.

And so, the best screenplays I’ve read, they have these characters that take these amazing journeys through amazing worlds and you can’t believe that they did it all just on the page there.

Stephen: Give me a couple of names of movies that you wish you had written or that you especially admire?

**John:** You know, it’s one thing to see a movie on the screen because that’s the finished product and you have to remember that a screenplay is really the blueprint for this building that’s not built yet. And so one of luxuries, we sometimes get to read screenplays well before they’re filmed, or things that never got filmed. And so I remember in film school reading Quentin Tarantino’s original script for Natural Born Killers. And it’s just brilliant. And I got to the end and I flipped back to page one and started reading it all over again. It was incredibly important.

People, you know, these guys might not recognize that like Aliens is an incredibly important script for people in our business. We read that script and it actually transforms sort of like how you describe action on the page.

Stephen: And this is the second in that —

**John:** This was James Cameron’s Aliens.

Stephen: And James Cameron did the screenplay as well as directed it?

**John:** Yeah and so the way he described action was incredibly important and so all action movies from that point forward probably owe some debt to sort of what he was doing on the page.

Female Voice: Wait, so what was the innovation? What did he do differently?

**John:** There was innovation, there’s a way of talking about the camera, talking about like how we’re moving through things. Cameron wrote both a scriptment which is like a 70-page document of the movie without the dialogue, sort of. And then he wrote the full version of the script and sort of everyone of my and Craig’s generation who read movies at that time, read action movies, that was the one we sort of kept going back to.

**Craig:** Yeah. And, you know, John is making a really interesting point that the question that you’re asking is a little impossible because the truth is I never see a movie and think I wish I could have written that movie. You can’t write that movie. That movie is not just written, it was written and it was then rewritten and it was performed and captured and edited and scored, so it’s not possible.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But what we can do is we read screenplays. Jerry Maguire is one of the best screenplays I’ve ever read. Absolutely just perfect for me. Not objectively perfect, but for me, it was perfect. I saw Ocean’s Eleven, I saw Out of Sight, and I thought I would love to meet the guys that wrote this movie, you know, and I did, that was great. But I understand that it’s not possible to say, well, I wish I could have written that experiences.

Stephen: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dana Stevens: That brings me to something that’s seems like, it’s key to your podcast which is really great for somebody on the critical end to read which is, I mean, to hear on your podcast, which is that, you’re sort of anti-auteurist, right? I mean, you are really not so focused on a movie as the production of one director and you really know from the inside out that it’s a collaboration and that vast numbers of people have to be on the same page in order to make a good movie.

**John:** There was a podcast that you guys did about two weeks ago with Jeff Koons, the artist and the visual artist, and you guys saw Balloon Dog and all that stuff. And it was amazing as you’re walking through with this curator and he was talking about sort of the intention and sort of how things came to be. It was a great episode. But it struck me that you can talk about a virtual artist that way because even though he has a team of people doing stuff, it’s really all his vision, like that thing is one person’s thing. And I think there’s this instinct sometimes for press and for critics to think about works as having a single creator. You guys are almost creationists sometimes.

And really the process of getting movies made is almost like this Darwinian survival thing. There’s all these movies competing to get made, and you’re only seeing the ones that sort of got made. And it doesn’t mean they were the best ones. It doesn’t mean it was like clean or pretty how they happened, but they are the ones that made it to the theater.

**Craig:** And even the product itself is the function of an internal evolution among a lot of people fighting. I mean, for instance, you guys just had a discussion about Gone Girl and you disagreed about some things. You really thought one passage was cool, you thought that was weak. You liked the parents, you thought they were not so great. These fights happen constantly on every movie except that one of you is the boss.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Okay. This is a problem obviously but some decision has to be made. The movie is — anybody who thinks that movies are authored by one person is higher than the highest crack can take —

Stephen: Has never gone anywhere near the moving-making process.

**Craig:** Yeah, they’re just so divorced from the process of what it means to make a movie.

Stephen: Okay, but I have a question for you. Sorry, I’m stepping on you, boss, lady.

Julia: Go for it.

Stephen: Because I’ll forget it if I don’t ask it right now. Okay, so we are all post-modernist Darwinian evolutionists, anti-authorship, you know, post-auteur, cognoscenti.

**Craig:** Stipulated.

Stephen: And yet, it begins with a room of one’s own. It begins with you doing the paradigmatic writer thing. You’re alone with the blinking cursor and your own conscience and the Internet and email and on and on and on. I mean, you have all the, you know, classic struggles of self-battling that a writer has. How is it to then also be in a medium that’s utterly collaborative and evolutionary and your darlings are going to get killed, but not even by you?

**Craig:** Well, it’s an endless struggle. And this is why screenwriters are stereotypically whiny. I mean, watch Adaptation, you know. It’s very difficult and it’s incredibly difficult because it’s emotionally painful. We are required to create something that we believe in that is entirely within our control and is in fact authored.

And then we are required by the nature of film making to cede control of it and to see it re-authored because unlike any other form of writing, screenwriting is not meant to be read, it is not meant to be consumed by anyone, it is meant to in fact be transformed into something else entirely. So we are always on the razor’s edge of this emotional pain. And then of course somewhere down the line after we’ve survived the many, many —

Stephen: You get paid $900,000.

**Craig:** I get to Dana’s review. That’s my reward.

**John:** [laughs] That’s the reward, yes.

Stephen: You made me laugh so hard that my gap flashed the whole room. That was good. Okay, well let’s end it on a positive note. I could talk to you guys all night but unfortunately we’ve got to move on. But Craig Mazin and John August, thank you very much for coming.

**John:** Thank you very much.

**Craig:** Thank you for having us. Thanks guys.

**John:** Great. So that was lovely and there were applause which is always a fun thing. I really enjoyed being a guest. It’s so nice to be able to have the chance to like make my own points and not have to elicit points from other people.

**Craig:** Yeah, for sure. I thought it was very valuable. It was a good conversation to have. I think frankly the more that critics can personally interface with the people writing and directing movies, the better they will be at their jobs.

**Craig:** I agree with you.

**John:** I don’t think it’s going to make our jobs any better or worse but it’s going to make their jobs better. Frankly, one thing that kind of surprised me was the discussion was predicated on this question, what is it that we critics don’t know but should know about the way movies are made? And I found the question fascinating because, mostly because I thought why are you asking this now? I mean wouldn’t you have thought to ask it a decade ago or 20 years ago or whenever you started doing this?

There is such a gulf, I mean, even in the beginning of the show before we came on, Stephen and Julia Dana were talking about their, what they called LA alter egos and it was essentially their spin on what they thought Los Angeles is all about. And it was very cartoony, but you could tell really that they are quite proud of the fact that they’re out there and we’re out here and the gulf is cultural.

There is a cultural gulf. It’s interesting. It’s very interesting and worth studying.

**John:** I think it comes back to the question of intentionality is that you’re looking at this work as it’s finished and then you’re trying to ascribe intentionality for like this is what they meant, this is what they were doing, this is what the artist was attempting to voice or achieve. And ultimately I think that’s sometimes unknowable, or if it’s knowable, the only way you’re going to actually find that out is by asking the person who made the thing.

So instead what you’re really doing is you’re looking at your own reaction and saying, well, this is my reaction to this thing and that’s completely a valid experience but it doesn’t necessarily give you any insight into what the intention was behind something. It goes back to what we talked about before, the difference between journalistic writing and academic writing. In academic writing, you often find yourself trying to ascribe intention and motivation to things that are not really part of the text because you’re just desperately searching for something.

And so you find reasons to believe that the plot of this book is really about this other thing that you wouldn’t necessarily notice. And it’s like you’re trying to ascribe, trying to create logic after the fact.

**Craig:** That’s exactly right and what was driven home for me more than anything by interacting with them is how academic they are. And I imagine that for many film critics, I’m not even talking about reviewers but people who are doing film analysis, that their background is academic. And in academics, you’re precisely correct that the whole name of the game is to take some arena and find some angle on it that you can make your thesis and support it. So it’s rhetorical.

However, it’s a very poor instrument in my opinion, academic analysis. It’s a very poor instrument for something like movies which defy the meaning of which is really not in that kind of literary analysis or academic analysis, for me at least. And certainly the process of it makes many of the literary analyses absurd.
And even, you know, I mean, you could see they’re trying, like… — By the way, it’s partly our fault in the business because when there’s a success, somebody will attempt to take credit for it and say, me, me, me, I am the author of this, it all comes down to me. But that’s not ever true.

**John:** The other thing I definitely noticed is you’re talking about cultural criticism, but culture is a thing that is constantly moving. So I sometimes get frustrated when I read a film review and they’re talking about current events in relation to this movie and seemingly unaware that this movie was green lit two years before those events came to be.

So there’s, you know, if there’s a school shooting and this movie comes out, it’s in reference to this school shooting or, you know, Gone Girl in the reference of like this domestic violence case. I understand that it’s cultural criticism because you’re looking at sort of how does this movie fit in to the current cultural conversation. But you can’t therefore take a time machine back and say like, well, that is the reason why this movie exists. The movie is coming out at a certain place and time but it doesn’t mean that this movie is reacting to those events or this place and time.

**Craig:** Yeah, I’ve, because I’m going to see Gone Girl this weekend and they have a big discussion about Gone Girl and I’ve been seeing essentially headlines of gobs of critical essays about Gone Girl and what it means about, or what its implications are for marriage, for misogyny, for the relationship between men and women, domestic violence. And all I keep thinking is these people are talking to each other. I don’t know who else cares.

The people that got to see, the people that read the book, appreciated the book for what it did for them, it’s a personal experience, it is not an academic experience. No one goes to a movie in order to contextualize the world around them. They go to a movie for the opposite, I believe, which is to contextualize something within them. It is a personal experience.

This is why movies are made the way they are. You can go see Argo and what you are taking away is something about what’s inside of you. It is a personal story set against the backdrop of the world. But a lot of times I think critics and film analysts ignore all that to talk really about what they’ve been trained to talk about. In the end, I think they are talking to each other. I think they are engaging in a kind of a cross debate.

**John:** Well, oftentimes, I think they’re talking about the conversation rather than the thing itself. And so in the case of Gone Girl, you’re talking about misogyny or what it means, or the feminist meanings or anti-meetings in the film. The degree to which it’s worthy to talk about in a culture context isn’t necessarily the film itself, but why we are talking about it.

So, the degree that Gone Girl being the incredibly successful popular movie out there in the world right now is sparking a cultural conversation, yes, sometimes by just the people who are writing these articles. But I also think just actual audiences are coming out of the movie thinking like, wow, I’m not sure how I feel about the characters I just saw and particularly that movie which has, you know, again no spoilers, but an unsettling ending and sort of a resolution that is unexpected does provoke things. And so the degree to which a movie can provoke a conversation, well, that’s a thing that’s happening in culture, so if your job is to write about culture, then it’s great to write about that movie. But you have to be mindful: are you really writing about the movie or are you’re writing about people talking about the movie which are sort of different things.

**Craig:** And the movie exists specifically to inspire people to examine their relationship with it. Individual relationship, how did that movie make me feel? Did I feel anything and if I did, what did I feel? Do I agree with it? Do I not agree with it? A good movie isn’t supposed to be like a good historical explanation of why things happen.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s not supposed to be, whatever, a Doris Kearns Goodwin book explaining how Lincoln’s cabinet worked. It’s entirely about individuals.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I don’t think that’s the way they approach it sometimes. And they can’t because what does that come down to? It’s sort of exposes the fatal flaw here which is, well, so you have your opinion? Good. I do too, you know.

**John:** I guess, it’s a chance for people to listen in on what someone else’s opinion is and sometimes a very well-articulated opinion can get somebody thinking about what their own opinion is. So that is, I would say, as a defense of the kind of work that they’re doing both in writing and in the podcast is they’re having a conversation about their reactions to things and sometimes that may trigger a person to have their own reactions or give new thought to something else. And if that happens, then that’s a good thing.

**Craig:** I agree. It’s fun listening to smart people talk about stuff.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I tend to like to listen to smart people talking about things that are not cultural because I do experience culture in a very personal individual way. I like listening to smart people talk about politics, economics. But, and I was very struck by how their conversation between the three of them was no different than any other kind of conversation people have about movies.

I mean, essentially, regardless of the level of their vocabulary, they talked about the movie and then one person said, I really like this and then another person said, really? That was the part I didn’t like at all. Well, these are exactly the kinds of conversations we all have.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And ultimately, that’s all there is. There is nothing more to it. It’s supposed to be individual and personal, which, again, I think is the fatal flaw sometimes of the — it’s not of criticism, but rather it’s the fatal flaw of the critical style which is to say, this, let me illuminate you as to what is happening here. That is a fatal flaw because in fact, you can’t. Because what at least on our side, what we are intending to happen is for an individual to have an individual relationship with the movie. We know some of those are going to be bad and we know some of those are going to be good. But we also know there is not one illuminated correct response.

**John:** Absolutely. So, again, I want to thank Slate for having us on. It was just tremendously fun to be there and it was a really great event. And thank you for people who showed up for it because it was really neat to have some of our fans in our t-shirts out there in the audience.

**Craig:** For sure. Always good to see. And, boy, a very lovely woman came up to us afterwards and she — I won’t go into her story, but she said some very nice things. So she’s gone through some hardships and happily she’s better now. But it was very, very sweet. It’s nice to hear, and look, honestly, endlessly surprising to me that anyone listens to the show at all [laughs] but that for a lot of people who do, they really get something out of it. It’s very, very uplifting for me and I’m sure it is for you.

**John:** It is. Now just to cut into that tender emotion, I thought this might be a great opportunity for us to read a letter we got from one of our listeners.

**Craig:** [laughs] It’s the best letter ever.

**John:** It really is the best letter ever. So people sometimes will write in, sometimes on Twitter — I’m @johnaugust, Craig is @clmazin. Or they’ll write longer emails that they’ll send to ask@johnaugust.com. And this is one that we got this week which I thought was great. So I shared it with you and you said in all caps MUST READ ON AIR IN TOTALITY.

**Craig:** [laughs] I know. So it’s a little long, so bear with us. The subject essentially is we talked a couple of weeks ago on the podcast about a video that somebody put on the Internet. It’s very funny. All they did was they stripped out John Williams’ score from the final scene of Star Wars: A New Hope where Luke, Han and Chewie are getting their medals.

And it’s a very long scene and there’s no dialogue. And so when you take away the score, it actually becomes this beautiful opera of awkwardness. [laughs] It’s fantastic. It’s very funny. And I thought frankly the spirit, I mean, we had a whole discussion about why it was interesting. And my whole takeaway was, hey, directors don’t panic when you see your footage that’s intended for score because it’s going to really look weird. But then look how great it will look when it’s done.

**John:** Yes. And so perhaps we didn’t stipulate as clearly that we thought the scene as it shows up in the movie is fantastic. And I would not change a thing. But Patrick from London, England did not take it that way.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** And in fact, well, why don’t you start, Craig?

**Craig:** Sure. “Subject: Star Wars Umbrage.

“Dear John and Craig, I have to take extreme umbrage at your mocking the final scene in Star Wars in your last podcast. I get that it’s mildly amusing someone took the music off the final scene and it seems strange because it’s so iconic. You could do that with any number of famous films and achieve the same effect.

“What is distressing is your assertion the final scene in Star Wars is somehow strange/weird/bad because it has no dialogue. That scene is one of the things that makes the film iconic for fuck’s sake!” Exclamation point. “Sometimes when I think about that scene it baffles the brain. What major blockbuster film would end on a scene driven entirely by visuals and score? None.

“We’re always told film is a visual medium, show don’t tell, blah, blah, blah, yet when a film achieves a satisfying conclusion through moving images and music alone like a silent movie, you mock it as strange/weird/bad. What more did the film need to do? They blew up the Death Star. Obi-Wan said the force will be with you always. Han came back and displayed some honor and loyalty. I emphasize displayed. He didn’t say it. The end. What more did you want?

“Did you want a speech like the end of Independence Day? We will not lie down. Today’s our independence day against the empire. God bless America, blah, blah, blah. Would that have approved the ending of Star Wars?” [laughs] You want to read the second half?

**John:** “I think the problem is you work in Hollywood where everything is decided by committee. So anything idiosyncratic or unusual is viewed with suspicion or derided as strange/weird/bad. I noticed on your Raiders podcast when you pointed out that today the opening five-minute exposition scene wouldn’t fly and would be watered down by committee. And that this was perfectly acceptable.”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** I don’t think we said that at all.

**Craig:** No, I think the point was that it was not… it was unacceptable. [laughs] Oh man, this is great. Keep going. It’s awesome.

**John:** “When the final scene in Star Wars was produced, maybe someone said, err, is it strange/weird/bad?”I love the strange/weird/bad.

**Craig:** I know. So he —

**John:** I’m omitting the slashes —

**Craig:** I know. It’s this thing that he does when he goes strange/weird/bad all as one thing. And it’s like his mantra.

**John:** “That there’s no big speech at the end. And maybe George Lucas said, ‘It’s my film and that’s how I want to end it. So fuck you.’ Or George and Spielberg said, ‘We want there to be a really long exposition scene at the beginning of Raiders and if you don’t like it, money men, you can go fuck yourselves.'”

Well, so now we have to have this — I have to record a little warning at the start of the podcast —

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** Because he said fuck three times.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** “Depressingly on your podcast, you seem to advocate conformity — ”

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** “And do not encourage idiosyncrasies’ originality. It’s kind of like don’t rock the boat. This is what is expected of you by the committee, so this is what you should do? The final scene in Star Wars should be something you celebrate, not mock. Star Wars is one of the most exciting and amazing films ever made and definitely the top 10 most influential. So it doesn’t need my or anyone’s sympathy or support. But it’s sad that one of its fun quirks is derided on your podcast because it doesn’t fit the present day studio formula you bow to.”

**Craig:** We bow to.

**John:** We bow to. “However, the controversy over why Chewie didn’t also receive a medal has not gone away and is a troubling aspect to the film’s conclusion up for debate.” Well, good. I’m glad we got to the Chewie of it all because that’s really what I’ve been focusing on.

**Craig:** [laughs] I like that this guy’s like, well, let me let you off the hook on the Chewie thing, great point.

**John:** “Anyway, end umbrage. I’d like to echo your other listener who praised the podcast for informing and inspiring people. It’s a great thing you do and an essential resource for anyone who’s interested in writing films. Cheers.”

**Craig:** Cheers. [laughs]. Okay. Well, Patrick —

**John:** Patrick is great. So, I genuinely thank you for writing this letter.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** We’re really kind of not mocking you but just one of those things we’re like, oh, I can’t believe you thought we were —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** You know, slamming on that scene because we weren’t at all.

**Craig:** No, I think, Patrick, the reason I wanted to read this entire thing is because I think unwittingly you managed to satire an unhinged Star Wars fan. [laughs] Look, to be clear and I think it was clear because, frankly, out of all the people that listened to the show, you were the only person that had this issue or at least spoke about it.

No, we love the ending of the movie. All we were saying was that it was funny to watch it without the music because it is funny. And I remember specifically saying, in fact, I said — I sent that video to Rian Johnson. And I said, Rian, when you see your first dailies, don’t freak out, right?

Because a lot of times, science fiction, epics, when they don’t have all of the post-production trappings laid over it, can look ridiculous. I mean, for instance, there’s footage of Darth Vader when he first enters the diplomatic ship and he interrogates Princess Leia. And it’s the actual dailies. And so I think it was David Prowse I guess is the guy who was in the actual, so it’s his voice.

And it just sounds like a bunch of English guys and it seems ridiculous. And the point is, but okay, as filmmakers, we deserve to have faith that the full process will make it come to light. That was our point. I don’t think it’s weird/strange/bad. I don’t want everything to be decided by committee. [laughs] I don’t want there to be a speech at the end about God bless America. I do love —

**John:** I think it would be kind of great if there were a speech about God bless America —

**Craig:** God bless America.

**John:** At the end of Star Wars.

**Craig:** It actually would be cool.

**John:** I think Star Wars is not American enough.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I want to start a whole campaign about that.

**Craig:** Like there should have been —

**John:** No one is wearing a flag pin.

**Craig:** Like if they had unfurled a big American flag behind them as they got their medals, it would have been awesome.

**John:** Visual effects, we can do it.

**Craig:** Visual effects, we can — he can get back in there, you know, if Greedo shot second then we could do that. No, I love the, I wouldn’t change a frame of Raiders and I wish modern movies would take more time in their opening exposition. No, I don’t believe that John and I advocate conformity or discourage idiosyncrasies’ originality. Quite the opposite.

We don’t really like the committee. We do celebrate the [laughs] last scene of Star Wars. It’s amazing how wrong you are, Patrick. I mean you really are, I got to give you credit. You’re batting a thousand so far. [laughs] But really, why I wanted to read it out loud was this bit about Chewbacca because that was just — you’re like, okay, you got through your umbrage but then you’re like, well, now, granted there is a serious [laughs] debate about why Chewie didn’t get a medal. Dude, no one cares why Chewie didn’t get a medal, whatever.

**John:** Once again, racism.

**Craig:** Yeah, nobody cares. No one cares.

**John:** Chewie is the Nothic of the whole Star Wars saga.

**Craig:** You know why Chewie didn’t get a medal? Chewie don’t need no medals.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Chewie doesn’t care about medals. Maybe that’s why he’s yelling. Anyway, fantastic. Thank you for the kind words at the very end. Patrick, I’m sorry, you just got it all wrong here. But we love you anyway and we thank you for listening and please come on back and just know that the people that you want us to be, we already are.

**John:** Awww. So our next topic, so after we did our segment at the Slate Gabfest, we found this little outdoor terracey patio thing which is really nice at the theatre.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so you and I were just sitting and chatting for a bit. And I brought up that the thing I’m writing right now — we’re both in our first drafts. And the thing I was writing, I was sort of stuck because I was trying to — I realized it was because I was trying to service a bunch of characters and things just weren’t fitting right.

And so there’s an exercise I do every once in a while which I’d recommend to anybody is basically, what happens if I killed the hero? Like right now, what if the hero died? And I would go through it like, I thought through like what would actually happen if the hero were to die right now. And that didn’t help the situation so I just go sort of one by one and I kill off all the characters and sort of mentally run through what would happen.

And I realized if I killed off this supporting character, life would be so much easier and happier because it would force the other characters in the rest of these sequences to do more of the work. So I didn’t end up killing her but I ended up just getting rid of her because she could do her function that she needed to do and we kind of just didn’t care anymore. She had recurred, she was done, she’s gone.

And it was incredibly helpful and useful. And I thought in a general sense it would be great to talk about sort of how many characters you need because — so I read scripts that aren’t working. A lot of times I find they’re trying to service characters, too many characters too long in the script and they just sort of get muddled.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Craig, have you found this to be the case?

**Craig:** I have. And this is another reason that I do like to outline beforehand because every character — I think that there’s times when we get a little, our appetites get a little big. You know, we have this idea of all these wonderful characters. And the problem is that every character has to be there very, very intentionally. They each need to serve some very important purpose.

Some characters are single-use K-Cup characters. They show up and then they’re gone. We talked about the Ghost —

**John:** I like, Craig, I have to single out the K-Cup metaphor.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Terrific.

**Craig:** K-Cup.

**John:** One shot and they’re gone, throw them away.

**Craig:** One shot. Throw them away. So they show up, they do their thing and they’re gone. Movies are full of great characters that show up like that. But for the characters that you’re going to be traveling with, they need each of them to have their story. They need to fill a place. They need to provide you with a tool to tell your story.

There are all sorts of tricks. I mean, some people will tell you, well, every character is just an aspect of the protagonist, which is, you know, it’s interesting. Sometimes I suppose in some kinds of movies that might be true. But for the most part, it’s not. So the questions you have to ask yourself are this. What does, for every character, what do they want? What’s their problem? Who are they really into? Who do they have a big problem with? How are they going to end?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then if I understand those things and on top of that I know what they do for the plot, they must do something for the plot, then, well, I’m not going to have a problem writing them am I?

**John:** No, you’re not. And in my case, you know, I had outlined up to a certain point. But I sort of knew who the characters were going to the last section, but I hadn’t thoroughly figured out sort of who was responsible for what things. And it was as I was trying to write the outline for this section that I realized like, argh, something’s not working right here.

And I wouldn’t have singled out that this character was the one who needed to go away because she served an important function and I thought I would need to bring her through to the end of the movie. What should have been my tipoff is that I didn’t really have any specific place I wanted her to end.

**Craig:** Ah.

**John:** There was no sort of great way to send her out of this movie. And that was a good sign that maybe she didn’t need to make it to the end of the movie, that maybe she could leave. And the functions that she would have been doing in this last section of the film, someone else could do them. And probably someone more important could do them and would have more reason to be in those moments because it’s a challenge for her to be performing these actions.

So a lot of times I’ll avoid having too many characters in a scene, but a lot of times if a scene isn’t working it’s because you have too many people in them because you’re trying to service these characters who don’t have enough time to speak. This was a case where I had too many characters in this whole sequence and one of them had to go away.

**Craig:** And sometimes in a circumstance like that you can fold some characters together.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** You can reassign a duty to another character which can help a lot. One of the danger signs that you’ve triggered here is the too many people within a scene because there’s too many people in general. But then there’s the other problem with too many people in one scene. And you can feel it when suddenly you realize a bunch of people aren’t saying anything.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And on set, I’ve seen this happen and it’s a very scary thing. When you’re writing a scene, you may say the five of them sit down, you know, at the table. The person that they’re talking to begins talking and then the leader of the group begins talking back to them. And it reads fine because what these two people are saying to each other is fascinating and moving the story forward and all the rest.

And everybody is like, cool, great. There is a, you know, a second AD who’s going through the script and going, okay, let’s see, who’s in each scene because I need to make sure they’re there that day. Okay, they’re in that scene, they’re there that day. And there they are. And then everybody looks and goes, why are all these people here? And why are these actors sitting around? How do I shoot the scene so it’s not the most awkward thing in the world while a bunch of people are sitting there quietly?

Naturally, as an audience, if we see you, we want you to do something.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s not like real life [laughs] where we sit around do nothing all the time. If the camera is on you, it needs to be on you.

**John:** Yeah. There has to be an intention.

**Craig:** Right. So that’s a warning sign that you’ve got too many people in your scene.

**John:** Yeah. And you’ll see that happen a lot. And there’s cases where you want all those people around that dinner table because that’s part of the stakes and the drama of that scene is people’s reactions to those things. Wedding Crashers has a great, really complicated dinner party scene where a bunch of people are around the table and each of those reactions is important.

And, by the way, if you’re trying to ever shoot one of those things, you will go insane because you’re having to shoot angles for everybody looking at each other and trying to match eye lines and you’ll go mental. But sometimes that’s really, really important.

Other times, it’s not and you need to look for ways to sort of get those people out of the room so you can have moments between two characters be between two characters or three characters. I think one of the reasons why we have this instinct to now add a lot of characters to things is we’re used to great TV dramas. We’re used to things like Game of Thrones where you have these giant casts.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Well, you couldn’t have that giant cast in the feature version of Game of Thrones. It wouldn’t make any sense at all. The feature version Game of Thrones would focus on like three guys and like Daenerys and John Snow and somebody else. It wouldn’t be all those people. It’s because you have 20 hours to explore all these characters that you can do that in a one-hour show. You can’t do it in a movie.

**Craig:** That’s absolutely correct. I mean, you’ve called out an interesting thing about the dining room scene because we’ve all done those. And for those of you, if you’re going to write one of those, obviously everybody needs to be there. And John’s right. Not everybody needs to say something, but everybody needs to have a reaction.

So if someone’s there and they say nothing, they’re there because they’re the person who’s going to deliver a key reaction and you should write those reactions. It’s a big thing with me. That’s how the actors even go, okay, I understand, I’m participating in this, I’m there for a reason, the camera will be on me and I have a job. Actors understand that their job goes beyond mouth moving, sound coming out. Reactions, I mean look, comedy-wise, people tend to laugh at the reactions to lines, not the lines themselves.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** So write those. Then what you’re talking about with Game of Thrones is interesting to me because in television, since you have essentially endless episodes — they’re not endless, but as many as you want — you get to carve your space up and then drill down. So Game of Thrones does have a hundred characters, but really it has four characters. And the four characters are the characters within that segment.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So if there’s a story going on with Tyrion, that has to do with Jaime and his father and his sister. Those are the four characters.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So they’re only, they’re reducing down as well. In movies, when you have large casts, inevitably what happens, because there’s no other way to keep people’s attention, is you have a protagonist, like at the top of a pyramid, right? And they have the most focus, the most depth, the most richness. Then underneath them are two people that have a little less. And then underneath them are some other people that are little less. And eventually you get to people that are one note.

So eventually, like for instance if you think about Police Academy [laughs], you know.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know, so at the top you’ve got Steve Guttenberg and he’s, you know, for a broad comedy, he’s a typical broad comedy protagonist, a man-child who doesn’t want to grow up. He wants to crap out of this thing, but he’s kind of into a girl and lo and behold, he starts to find that he is going to grow up and he is going to live up to the expectations of all the people that believe he’s something special and he’s going to win the day.

At the bottom of the pyramid, you have somebody whose entire character is making funny noises. That’s it. Because that’s all you can bear after, you know, you’ve placed your 15 people in the script.

**John:** The story could not have withstood that guy having a whole plot line and whole thing.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** If it were a TV series, yes, give them business, give them ongoing things that, you know, let us know who he is as a person. But for the feature version, he’s the guy who makes funny noises and that’s all you kind of need to know.

**Craig:** Like in the TV version, he goes home —

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** We actually see that he’s got this like really tough life. He’s got a girlfriend, but she’s been, like she’s actually been sick and he’s taking care of her.

**John:** And she’s deaf.

**Craig:** Right, so —

**John:** So she has no sense of what noises he makes.

**Craig:** Which is really troubling. He tells her that he’s doing great there and everybody really is impressed with his intelligence, but he knows that’s not true. And then he sits there at night alone and learns new sounds because that’s what the guys kind of like.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But he’s so sad and morose because he really doesn’t feel like he’s good at anything except that.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That would be, that’s a cool, that’s the —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Let’s watch it.

**John:** The saddest Police Academy movie ever.

**Craig:** I like sad Police Academy, so I should make that movie. [laughs]

**John:** And just to circle around again to the movie you haven’t seen, in Gone Girl, I’d read the book and I saw the movie, I like them both very, very much. Gone Girl, the author, Gillian Flynn, she removes one character, Ben Affleck’s best friend, from the movie entirely. And I didn’t even know he was missing until someone pointed it out. And that’s a great example of like that character was important for the book because it gave Ben Affleck’s character some grounding and lets you know sort of what was going on there. But he would have gotten in the way in the movie. He would have just been standing around for too much of the movie. So getting rid of him made a lot more sense.

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly. And so you can see there is a case of an author. It’s her book.

**John:** It’s her book. And she’s smart enough to know.

**Craig:** Yeah. She meant that character to exist, but she also understands that a movie is different. Now, there’s the opposite syndrome which is the not enough character syndrome.

**John:** We talked about that with Ghost.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Ghost feels a little light.

**Craig:** Well, yeah. So what happens is the movie begins to feel a little small. You’ll hear this from executives sometimes. And they’ll say, the movie feels small. They sometimes say this if the movie is, it’s very located in interiors. They’ll start to say it’s smaller, claustrophobic or if there aren’t enough characters, the movie feels small. And what happens is, if you’re telling the story of a movie and you’re shooting in the great wide world of planet Earth and you only have three characters that are really noticeable as human beings at all —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It starts to feel a little bit more like a play.

**John:** Mm-hmm, it does.

**Craig:** And that’s a little rough. I mean look, Ghost wasn’t off by much. I think it was really off by one, you know, one other character to make that red herring work and all that stuff. It would have been great. But if you start to feel like your movie is just three people and no one else feels real or fleshed out or purposeful to the story, you know, you have to sort of stop and ask yourself, are there enough obstacles here? Is this is world well-fleshed out? Who am I one-noting that really should have some life in this because a movie can bear more than that?

**John:** Yeah. These are challenges I think you find when you have too few characters in your story is that the audience just gets away too far ahead of you because we start to be able to figure out everything that those characters could do. And so then when they do them, it’s like, well, well yeah, we sort of knew that was going to happen. It becomes harder to surprise your audience because we kind of know who all these people are and what they’re capable of doing.

**Craig:** John, that is a genius point. That’s a genius point.

**John:** Thank you.

**Craig:** You’re absolutely right, because when we only have three people to look at, we are studying them so carefully, yeah, of course we’re not going to miss anything. Part of misdirection is shifting our focus, just like magicians are constantly misdirecting you, they’re waving their hand around or yapping while they’re stuffing a bird in a vegetable or something. [laughs] I don’t know whatever they’re doing, cutting up cards behind their backs. Your ability to misdirect people is vastly reduced. Excellent point.

**John:** Thank you. So our last topic of the podcast of this episode is business affairs. And this is something that you and I both talked about. So let me explain what business affairs is. If you are hired to write a movie for somebody, so it could be a first draft, it could be rewrite, it could be sort of anytime that you are employed as a writer for a studio, business affairs is the lawyers who make your deal.

So your agent and your lawyers are talking to business affairs at Sony or Fox or some place and trying to come to a deal for your writing services. And that may just be scale. You may not be getting sort of above the normal rates. But you have to get that all figured out, basically how long you have to write, what they’re going to pay for each step along the way, other sort of deal points. There’s boilerplate, but it’s not all one standard deal.

So these business affairs people are important. And they are vanishing. I’ve become increasingly frustrated. I think over the last few years, that it feels like takes longer and longer and longer to make deals. And it’s not because we’re being difficult or they’re being difficult. They’re just not there. They’re overworked. And it feels like there’s not enough business affairs people.

**Craig:** Yeah, this is the general squeeze down on the business. We know that there are fewer and fewer movies made, fewer and fewer executives. And yes, I’ve felt it too. I don’t have numbers obviously. We’re not privy to the payroll of the companies. But it does seem that business affairs has been narrowed through fewer and fewer attorneys. And it is frustrating. Look, it’s a frustrating thing to deal with business. The phrase business affairs is unique in our business because other than the fact that it sounds almost sexy and yet so it’s the opposite of sexy.

**John:** Ooh affairs.

**Craig:** Ooh, business affairs. It’s a great title for like a Skinemax movie, but in fact it’s not sexy at all.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But it has this incredible binary emotional impact. When you are trying to get a job or trying to sell something, when you finally hear okay, business affairs will be calling, you go hooray.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s happening. I’m getting paid. I’m being hired. I got a job. And then business affairs makes you hate them. [laughs] Because, you know, you have, and this is by design. Just as we separate creative from business by hiring agents, the studios separate creative in business. So the creative people say, we love you, we love your idea, love, love, love. Artists come here and let us kiss you all over your face. And the business affairs people are like, uh-huh, according to my spreadsheet you get half of what you think you deserve or so on and so forth.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then you start to grind your teeth.

**John:** But that’s how it, I would say that’s how it’s supposed to work in a weird way.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah.

**John:** And it’s supposed to be that horrible, uncomfortable, like it’s negotiation. And no negotiations are fun. That’s just the nature of it. What is frustrating is that I feel like the negotiation it just doesn’t even start because there’s just no one to actually even begin the negotiation or you end up waiting a really long time because those poor guys are just overworked.

Now why does this matter? Well, it matters because as a writer, you’re not getting paid. Well, that’s obviously a huge headline concern because you can’t get paid until the contract is figured out. They’re not going to cut you a check until there’s a contract to sign.

But more importantly, I think this is actually the bigger crisis in the industry right now is, you know, projects will just stagnate for a long time while these deals get done. And so you could go in and just like kill them with a pitch and it’s just fantastic and everyone is so excited to have you start writing this thing. And then it’s six months before they actually get these contracts figured out.

And in that six months, you haven’t been able to start because you’re not sure the deal is going to be possible to make. And that is awful because by the time you actually get to start writing the thing, it’s done, like your motivation has —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Has left.

**Craig:** I haven’t experienced that kind of lag, but I certainly have experienced more of a lag than has been there before. There are some tricks you can do. If all the major deal points have been agreed on then you can sign a certificate of authorship, get paid and then everybody works out all the inky-dinky details in the long form contract. But the wheel does seem to turn much slower than it used to.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know, I do sympathize. Business affairs people are in a tough spot. They know that they have to be the heavy. They also know that sometimes they’re being used. So creative people will give everybody a big hug and tell them that they love and then turn around, call business affairs and say, we do love them but we can’t really, we don’t want to pay more than this. So can you please just be the heavy?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because the deal is, if we do end up making a deal, I have to work with these people and I don’t want them to be angry at me the whole time. I just want them to angry at you. [laughs] So —

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** A little of that goes on. But yeah, it’s gotten slow.

**John:** Absolutely. I completely sympathize with business affairs people. I know they have to be heavies. I kind of in a way just want there are going to be more heavies. And I wish studios would hire more people to do that job because I think they’d be able to move faster and more nimbly if they actually could make deals for the things they want more quickly and get their scripts back faster.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So often, studios will say like, oh takes us forever to get this, we’ll make a deal and it takes, you know, eight months for us to get the script from the writer. It’s like, well you know what, it took six months for you to make a deal. So maybe you could speed up a little on your side.

**Craig:** And to give folks out there context who are maybe attorneys, these are not complicated deals.

**John:** They really aren’t.

**Craig:** They are nearly boilerplate contracts by the time you’ve been — either you’re a new writer and it’s fairly boilerplate or you’ve been around for a while and your deals have a ton of precedents and they’re fairly boilerplate. And what it really comes down to is how much are we paying you? The rest is baloney, you know, like how many tickets you get to the premiere and do you fly first class or business? I mean whatever.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s not hard.

**John:** And ultimately, you and I both had the experience where deals are dragging on for a long time then finally in one afternoon, there’ll be a bunch of phone calls back and forth and it will be done. And that afternoon of phone calls could have happened several weeks ahead of time. And it didn’t.

**Craig:** Yeah, which also makes me feel bad for business affairs because then I feel like they’re living their lives in a constant state of crisis because they’re understaffed. So the deal that they’re doing today is the one that’s about to literally blow up because they couldn’t get to it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So every day is a crisis. It’s no way, but this is what these companies have done. They’ve just cut, cut, cut everywhere. And, you know, the other thing that’s rough is like, it’s hard when you’re negotiating deals because, you know, if you’re like a new business affairs lawyer, you know, I don’t know what you’re getting paid. I don’t know what the starting rate is for a brand new business affairs attorney, but my guess is it’s, you know, I don’t know, a couple 100 grand or something? And, you know, some writer is like, “What, $300,000, screw you, you’re a jerk.” And they’re like, “Ugh, am I, am I the jerk?”

You know, it’s a tough gig. And I feel bad for them.

**John:** And do too.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** All right. We won’t solve this problem, but I just wanted to bring it up and shine a spotlight on it. Craig, and it’s time for One Cool Things, do you have a One Cool Thing this week.

**Craig:** No. [laughs]

**John:** Oh you forgot about it.

**Craig:** I totally forgot.

**John:** Yeah. I’ll stall for you and I’ll tell you what my One Cool Thing is.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** Mine is this movie that I’ve meant to watch for a long time that I finally watched on the plane. I’m in Montreal as we’re recording this. I’m asked to give a speech at Çingleton which is a great conference. But on the plane, I watched Indie Game: The Movie which everyone had recommended and they were right. It’s a really good documentary about these guys making indie games, indie games for, in this case, Xbox.

And it follows the ups and downs and the travails. And even if you’re not a gamer or a person who would make video games, it’s a great look at sort of that part of the creative process where, you know, you’re living that delusion of like, okay, there’ s a game out there that I can make, that I can deliver and it’s going to happen and then you have a launch day and then you just see.

And that’s what the experience is of making movies and the experience of making Broadway shows and all sorts of creative endeavors is that you are so internally focused for so long and you’re killing yourself to make this thing and you’re exhausted and then finally that day comes and you can’t believe it’s finally here. But you have sort of both excitement and post partum depression and it’s all out of your hands. And the variables are unforeseen.

So it’s a really well-made documentary. If you watch it, then you can look up about the people involved. You’ll see there’s other controversy about sort of the nature of the documentary, but I thought it was just a terrifically a well-made thing. It’s on Netflix right now, so if you have Netflix streaming it is free for you to watch.

**Craig:** Awesome. Well, I guess my One Cool Thing, it’s, you know, we try to make One Cool Things accessible to people. This is not, but it is so so cool. So did you see that Tesla came out with the Tesla P85D model?

**John:** I have no idea what it is. So tell me all about it.

**Craig:** They took a Tesla. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They took the model S. They added a second motor to it. So it’s now all wheel drive, two motors. They added a ton of driver assistance features that essentially make the car able to drive itself.

**John:** Great, love it.

**Craig:** It reads speed limit signs. It sees the lane markers. It keeps distance from the car — basically, I think Elon Musk said, “If you punch in your address and fall asleep in the car, it will get you there,” which is pretty amazing.

**John:** Wow.

**Craig:** But more importantly, it goes from 0 to 60 in 3.1 seconds. It is as fast as a McLaren F1. It is in fact a supercar.

**John:** Well.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So Craig, how does it feel to have a shitty Tesla now?

**Craig:** Well, the thing is I just already, [laughs] begun the process of seeing how it might work on a trade-in because —

**John:** Oh, that’s good. Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So we’re a very accessible podcast here. I talked about free movies on Netflix. And you’re talking about supercars.

**Craig:** I’m so sorry.

**John:** It’s fine. If you would like to ask Craig more questions about his supercar, you can tweet at him.

**Craig:** I don’t have it yet. I don’t have it yet.

**John:** He’s @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust on Twitter. Longer questions like the one we got today, well it wasn’t really a question? It was just a venting of umbrage.

**Craig:** [laughs] It’s so great.

**John:** You can send those vents to ask@johnaugust.com. We’re on iTunes. So if you’re subscribing to us through iTunes, that’s awesome. If you’re not subscribing to us in iTunes, like maybe you’re just listening to us at the johnaugust.com site, go over to iTunes and click subscribe and leave us a comment while you’re there because those are lovely.

You can find show notes for the things we talked about on this episode and almost every episode at johnaugust.com/scriptnotes. We have a premium app on iTunes and for Android. There’s a premium site at scriptnotes.net. If you sign up for that, you’ll hear all the back episodes and little bonus things that we do every once in a while. That’s also where you’re going to hear the dirty episode when we hit 1,000 premium subscribers which we’re getting pretty close. We are going to do a dirty episode. So people sent some really good suggestions for who we should have as a guest on the dirty episode.

**Craig:** I thought the funniest one was Mike Birbiglia because he’s so not dirty.

**John:** He’s not. He’s the sweetest, nicest, not dirtiest man.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** But we’ll find somebody. I have some hunches about some really great people we can have on the show.

**Craig:** All right, good.

**John:** All right. And I think that is our show for this week.

**Craig:** Awesome. Good show.

**John:** Craig, thank you so much.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**John:** All right. Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [A few tickets remain](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/writers-writing-simon-kinberg/) for tonight’s Writers on Writing event with John interviewing Simon Kinberg
* [The Belasco Theater](http://thebelascotheater.com/) is gorgeous
* John and Craig [on the Slate Culture Gabfest](http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/culturegabfest/2014/10/slate_s_culture_gabfest_is_live_from_l_a_the_critics_talk_to_jenny_slate.html)
* [Star Wars Minus Williams – The Throne Room](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj-GZJhfBmI) by Auralnauts
* [Çingleton](http://cingleton.com/)
* [Indie Game: The Movie](http://buy.indiegamethemovie.com/)
* Jalopnik [on the Tesla Model S P85D](http://carbuying.jalopnik.com/will-the-tesla-model-s-p85d-be-the-best-overall-car-you-1644727868)
* Get premium Scriptnotes access at [scriptnotes.net](http://scriptnotes.net/) and hear our 1,000th subscriber special
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Jonas Bech ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: And this is Episode 163 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Now, Craig, on previous episodes we talked about Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Craig: Yes.

John: We went deep on Frozen.

Craig: Yes.

John: We talked about Groundhog Day.

Craig: And The Little Mermaid.

John: And The Little Mermaid. Actually, The Little Mermaid was our first one.

Craig: That’s right.

John: So, it’s another one of those, and this was your idea from last week.

Craig: It was my idea?

John: I think so. We said Ghost and you said we should do that.

Craig: Yeah, we should do that.

John: We should do that right now. So, our episode this week is talking about the 1990 film Ghost.

Craig: Ghost.

John: And talking about it in sort of the kind of depth that only we would want to talk about it in.

Craig: Only we can do what we’re about to do.

John: Yes. We will unchain our melodies and get into Ghost.

Craig: [sings] Ooh…my…

Okay.

John: But first a little bit of follow up. John Miller wrote in and said, “What is the 12 Days of Scriptnotes I see on the back of the sexy new t-shirt?” So, he’s talking about the Scriptnotes t-shirts. Craig, we sold a whole bunch of these Scriptnotes t-shirts.

Craig: I’m not surprised. It’s a great t-shirt. I think everybody should own one, whether they listen to the podcast or not.

John: Well, it’s the softest t-shirt we’ve ever made. And if you remember the first batch of t-shirts we made, they were supposed to be just the world’s softest things. And they were really incredibly good. But I challenged Stuart Friedel that, you know what — we need to make an even softer t-shirt. And Stuart’s sense of softness is just remarkable. And so he found the t-shirt. He says the paragon of softness is this American Apparel shirt from 2008 that doesn’t exist anymore.

Craig: That was the 10 on the scale. That’s the diamond —

John: Absolutely.

Craig: I see.

John: Yeah. And so like nothing can actually, like if you were to scratch something against it, it couldn’t even scratch. It can scratch nothing.

Craig: Yeah, it’s maximum soft.

John: I think the reason they don’t make that t-shirt anymore is they use it to swaddle newborns.

Craig: Because air scratches the shirt.

John: Yes. So, the closest we were able to come to it is actually not an American Apparel shirt. It’s the next level shirt. It’s a blend and it’s kind of great. And so I tested it and it’s really a wonderful shirt. So, we’re making them only in gray, only with or sort of Sons of Anarchy tour band, just sort of world tour logo kind of thing. So, they’re only available for one more week, so people need to click on them to get them. So, store.johnaugust.com and you can order them.

And they run sort of in American Apparel sizes. So, if you are between a medium and a large, you get the large, so aim up is what we’re saying.

Craig: And what is it actually — do we know what it’s made out of? Is it some kind of chemical? How else is it so soft?

John: It is a blend. And so that’s the thing, to make really soft t-shirts they can’t be 100% cotton. They have to be a blend of cotton and two other fibers. So, it’s a tri-blend.

Craig: But they won’t say, because those fibers are — they’re made in a lab, deep in a lab under micro —

John: No, I think actually, I’ve listened to another podcast that was talking about sort of how fabrics were made, because I listen to a lot of other podcasts, and so it’s actually not —

Craig: Wait, there are other podcasts? [laughs]

John: There are other podcasts in the world.

Craig: I thought this was it. I thought this was the —

John: There’s us and the Slate Culture Gabfest, then one that we’re —

Craig: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John: October 8.

Craig: So, there’s two now?

John: So there’s now two podcasts.

Craig: Great.

John: And so it must have been on the other podcast where they were talking about how fabric is soft or hard, sort of how fabric works is really about the way you’re twisting the fibers. So, it’s not about the things that it’s actually made of. It’s how you’re twisting it that makes the biggest difference.

Craig: Well, I’m educated.

John: You’re educated now. So, remember, pre-orders. If you want this t-shirt, you have to order this week or else you’re not going to get one because we’ll only print as many as people order for them.

Craig: Now, what is the answer to this question? What is the 12 Days of Scriptnotes on the back of the shirt?

John: So, we were trying to figure out what to put on the dates. The back of the t-shirt has all of the live show dates that we’ve done in the past and in the future, because we didn’t want this to sort of immediately be out of date, because a real tour shirt is talking about the future events, the future live shows.

And so we knew we had Austin, so that’s on there. We knew we would have the Slate Live Culture Gabfest. But we knew there was going to be some kind of Christmas show, and so we had to figure out what to call that Christmas show that would be funny on the t-shirt. And so we had all sorts of discussion around the office, and so one of the top contenders was The Passion of the Craig.

Craig: I can’t believe that didn’t…

John: So, my argument against The Passion of the Craig is that that’s really an Easter thing.

Craig: Well, that’s true.

John: So for the Easter show we can call it The Passion of the Craig.

Craig: Yeah. That’s true. Technically, theologically, that’s correct. Although —

John: I want to be a theologically correct podcast.

Craig: I mean, as long as I’m compared to dying Christ, then I think it’s accurate. It’s fair.

John: Craig died for our sins.

Craig: Every day.

John: Every day.

Craig: Every day.

John: Another correction. On the last podcast we were doing questions-and-answers and there was a question from John Schurmann, the Playwright, but it wasn’t John Schurmann, The Playwright. It was John Schurmann the TV Writer. So, he had deliberately in his question said, “I’m not the playwright, I’m the TV writer, and I completely reversed it. So, anyway.

Craig: Well, that’s a disaster.

John: Yeah, so I apologize to both John Schurmanns.

Craig: I assume we’re getting sued?

John: Well, actually we fixed it in the transcript so that when they Google it it will never actually show up wrong.

Craig: Oh, thank god.

John: So, I should say, the reason why we sell t-shirts in the first place, sort of to back into this whole the thing is we are a money-losing podcast. We don’t have ads or anything like that. So, we sell t-shirts, and the t-shirts really help pay for things like the transcripts, the hosting, and for Matthew who does such a great job of cutting our shows. So, it’s kind of the only way we kind of pay for what it is that we do.

So, if you’d like a t-shirt, it helps us pay for the whole show.

Craig: And just be aware, if you buy five shirts, if everybody you know buys a shirt, don’t worry, we’ll still be losing money.

John: We will still lose some money. Even if you are a premium subscriber for $1.99 a month, we will still manage to lose some money.

Craig: Yeah. That is our promise to you, the customer. We will never be profitable. [laughs] We will always lose money.

John: Yes. We will always meander for a long time before we get to our actual stated topics and we’ll always lose money.

Craig: [sings] Ooh…my love…

Okay, so Ghost.

John: The film Ghost is written by Bruce Joel Rubin and directed by Jerry Zucker, which I always forget that he directed this movie.

Craig: It’s Jerry Zucker [pronounced Zooker].

John: Oh, Z[oo]cker’d it instead of Zucker’d it.

Craig: It’s Z[oo]cker. I don’t know, okay, so I have the new iPhone, this is awesome. I have the new iPhone 6 and you know how they have this thing where like you can tell Siri to start talking to you without pressing any buttons?

John: Yeah.

Craig: Well, I said something that made it think that I wanted Siri to come on and it, oh well, that’s interesting.

John: Jerry Zucker sounds like Hey Siri.

Craig: It’s Jerry Zucker.

John: Zucker. I’ll never get —

Craig: Zucker. So, the first time I met David —

John: So, David is David Zucker.

Craig: David Zucker, his brother. I was talking to a guy who works for him and I said, well this is very exciting meeting David Zucker and he said, “It’s Z[oo]cker. Rhymes with Hooker. If you say Zucker it’s going to go poorly.”

John: Ah! Yeah. Because Zucker rhymes with another word.

Craig: It does. And they’re very finicky about it.

John: Okay.

Craig: They’re very finicky about it. So, it’s Jerry Zucker. Yes, directed by Jerry Zucker, coming off of all the spoof movies.

John: Airplane!

Craig: Airplane! And Top Secret! And I don’t know if The Naked Gun had — had The Naked Gun come out prior to this?

John: I think Naked Gun is after that, because Naked Gun happened after the TV show, didn’t it?

Craig: It did. Yes. So, this was after Police Squad and Kentucky Fried Movie. So, obviously not at all continuous with his other work with David, his brother, and Jim Abrahams.

John: So, this movie comes out in July 13, 1990. It’s a long movie. It’s 126 minutes. I looked up budget and box office for it. So, back in 1990 it was budgeted at $22 million, which inflations up to about $40 million.

Craig: Right.

John: Box office, it made $505 million, which in modern terms would be $900 million.

Craig: Wow. Unbelievable. And that is a worldwide number I assume?

John: Uh…yes. I think it’s a worldwide number.

Craig: That’s just unbelievable. Can you imagine a $40 million movie today making nearly a billion dollars? Wow.

John: So, Whoopi Goldberg went on to win the Oscar, the BAFTA, the Golden Globe for her performance, and Bruce Joel Rubin, the screenwriter, won the Oscar for Best Screenplay.

Craig: Well deserved by both.

John: So, I also wanted to look and see how was this movie perceived when it came out. And so challengingly it’s actually kind of hard to find the reviews from that time, because a lot of times there will be links to those old reviews and they’ll be completely dead. So, when you try to go through everything sort of disappears.

But I was able to find the Ebert review and Peter Travers. So, Peter Travers first. His little quote, he talks about sort of the antecedents for Ghost, which I think is actually useful framing for this. He talks about “Blithe Spirit, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, just to name three classic movies with the same theme. And there have been many sentimental botch jobs, including Kiss Me Goodbye, Chances Are and Steven Spielberg’s dreary Always.”

Ooh…

Craig: Yeah, okay. All right, Peter.

John: But I think it’s worth noting that Ghost wasn’t the first time we ever had the sort of romantic movie with the Ghost and the living woman.

Craig: No, it is not. And The Ghost and Mrs. Muir probably the closest, although they’re not — what this, this one is very different than The Ghost and Mrs. Muir because she’s sort of inherited a ghost. And she falls in love with a ghost because it’s like she has a meet-cute with a ghost and then they fall in love. Peter Travers says, and I quote, “Ghost belongs with the treacle…Zucker dutifully pushes all the buttons — romance, thrills, laughs, tears — that have been pushed before by more assured hands…There is little else to admire other than Whoopi Goldberg, except for some nifty special effects,” which in the lens of today not at all nifty. “For the rest, Ghost succeeds only at being insubstantial.” And I think with this review we can say that Peter Travers, once again, has succeeded only in being insubstantial.

That’s just a dumb review of a much better movie than what he’s talking about.

John: I think it’s a better movie than he’s seeing, but we do have the benefit of knowing that it became this incredible phenomena and sort of touchstone movie. And he had to review it in the week that it came out. And so sometimes —

Craig: But then to be fair to us, we were alive in 1990. We were young adults. I was 19 years old. And I loved this movie. I remember loving it in the theater, crying and laughing in the theater, and feeling like it was one of the best movies I had seen ever. And it wasn’t my kind of movie. And I loved it. I just loved it. And I watched it again in preparation for this, and I still love it, and it’s so — I mean, we’re going to talk, obviously because we’re a screenwriting podcast I want to talk mostly, I’m sure you do as well, about Bruce’s script. I’m going to call him Bruce even though I never met him, and how good it is, and how sad it is to read some dumb review like this.

This review, you have to dig up and find in some dusty archive, look at it and laugh at it as an absurdity. And happily the movie lives on and I haven’t shown it to my daughter yet, but I bet she will love it. This is her kind of movie. She will love it.

John: The thing that really struck me as I watched the movie again is you can take a look at the movies that came before it, but what I think this really paved the way for is movies like Twilight. It’s really one of the first breakout supernatural romances that sort of had audiences, especially women audiences, going to see it ten times in the theater.

And it just hit all of those notes exactly the right way so that people loved it and that people wanted to see it again and again. And they wanted to sort of live through all of those experiences again and again with the movie.

Craig: Yeah. Ghost, to me, is a masterpiece of tone. Bruce Joel Rubin is writing and his entire oeuvre seems to be centered around questions of death. So, he wrote Jacob’s Ladder, and I believe there was another movie called My Life I believe which was also — which are meditations on death and how we handle our own mortality.

And obviously this movie has a supernatural fairy tale approach to death, but it concentrates on the living to some regard. So, you have this very deep tone of a dead man and the woman who loved him and they cannot be apart. And it’s a tragic romance. You also have a comedy. You also have sort of a crime/caper mystery. All of those things are handled perfectly well by his script. And where I think Ghost triumphs is in its precision point tone.

John: I agree. One of the criticisms of the film as I looked through sort of people who are not fans of it, they say that it shifts gears too often, or shifts tones too often. But what I think is interesting is you talk about the different things that it needs to do. It needs to have this much plot so that it makes sense. It needs to focus on the romance in these ways. It needs to have humor so that you can sort of have the relationships between Whoopi Goldberg and Patrick Swayze, and Whoopi Goldberg and Demi Moore, and sort of what’s going to happen. And it manages to do those very deftly.

The comedy works in the ways it needs to work without going so big that it eclipses the actual threat and it makes it feel like this isn’t a serious movie where people could be facing true harm.

Craig: Well, what Rubin does so well is avoid — so he avoids a mistake that I see all the time in screenplays that I get sent. And he embraces the opposite. And that is a question of reorientation to extraordinary events. A character faces an extraordinary event and the — sometimes I read scripts and the characters simply don’t behave in ways that you or I would behave in the middle of an extraordinary event like that.

John: Yeah.

Craig: There’s no time for them to behave. This movie takes its time and has no problem saying, okay, you’ve just been killed. We’re just going to spend 10, 15 minutes with you absorbing that. We’re going to spend 10 or 15 minutes with your not-wife but your girlfriend, your surviving girlfriend, absorbing what this means.

When you discover someone who can actually hear you, and a wonderful choice to make the psychic a fraud until this moment, she’s going to spend time just absorbing the fact that this is real. He’s going to spend time absorbing that she can hear him. Everything is allowed to just breathe and people are allowed to react the way I think you would normally react. And that’s why we go along for the ride, even when it gets wild.

John: It would be fascinating if we could somehow take a development executive and remove Ghost from their experience, so basically they’ve never seen Ghost, they have no idea Ghost exists. Then give them the script, because I really do feel like their instincts are going to be to make huge cuts to the first act and really the start of the second act. And basically get plot started much faster. And they would want Patrick Swayze’s character killed as soon as possible.

Craig: Yes.

John: They would want to skip over a lot of the little sort of comedy beats and sort of get things going and really ramp up the tension and the stakes and all the things that you’re supposed to do. And it would really be to the detriment of the film.

Craig: I think also that they would force a genre on it.

John: Yeah.

Craig: They would say, look, either this is All of Me, which was, you know, All of Me was a similar kind of movie that was all about being a comedy.

John: Yes.

Craig: And all about a dead person moving inside of a live person’s body. So, either do All of Me and make it a total comedy, or so this is a sad, weepy tragedy. But what’s this whole thing about where you want to have your cake and eat it too? Well, you can, as long as you give the characters time to absorb what’s happening. [laughs] Then I think it’s okay.

John: So, let’s start in. I have the movie here in front of me. I’m going to be skipping through some things, but I really want to see how the movie unfolds as it plays because it’s not what I remembered it being, and it begins in a very different way than I expected.

So, it’s a Paramount movie. You’ve got the stars flying in. Then we’re fading into what seems like we’re in a scary movie.

Craig: Right.

John: And I did not remember this at all. And I don’t know if you remembered it when you saw it, but it’s dark, it’s shadowy, we’re not quite sure what this place is that we’re in. It’s a pretty font, so it doesn’t look like scary murder font, but it’s one of those long opening title sequences.

So, it’s dusty and what we’re ultimately going to see is that Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, and Tony Goldwyn are sledge-hammering down this wall to open up this new loft that they’re going to be moving in to.

Craig: Right. And as we’ve talked about, these opening moments, this is why even though we don’t insist that your first three pages be the pages you send in for a Three Page Challenge, it’s good often that they are because those are the pages that are teaching us how to watch the movie. So, when the title comes on, it comes on with a jarring jump scare tone. And then the credit sequence is giving you a horror movie vibe. And by doing so it’s saying, hey, take this seriously. This is not going to be what you’ve expected from Jerry Zucker before.

John: True.

Craig: It’s not the just light romance or romantic comedy. We’re actually taking this real. When we say Ghost we don’t mean like Wocka Wocka Ghost. We mean there is going to be some serious stuff going down. And when the credit sequence ends, what we are revealing is essentially three of the four people that are in this movie. And this is a movie with very few characters.

And here we are meeting three of them and learning very quickly that Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore’s characters, Sam and Molly, are together. And then there’s this friend that they have, Carl, who is played by Tony Goldwyn.

John: Yes. So you see the three of them smashing through the wall. Essentially they all have weapons. They’re not using them on each other quite yet. It’s sexy. I mean, Tony Goldwyn is in really great shape here.

Craig: I mean, both of those guys are ripped.

John: They’re ripped. I mean, Patrick Swayze you always sort of knew was the, but I mean Tony Goldwyn, this was his moment. And so it’s going to be this love triangle between the three of them is the sort of central drama of this thing. And the music sort of threw me, but I think you make a good point is that starting in this movie, if you had sort of the more romantic sort of music, or if you had the comedy kind of music, you would be expecting this to be a funny movie right from the start.

So, in a weird way the misdirect of sort of the — it’s not Aliens, but so it’s Maurice Jarre, sort of his more sort of mysterious — it’s an interesting way to start the movie. And it sort of gets you taking the movie seriously.

Craig: Right.

John: We meet our three main characters. So, Patrick Swayze’s character is named Sam Wheat. Wow. There’s a name.

Craig: It’s just a bad name. It is, especially because it’s said over and over and over. I mean, look —

John: Has anyone in the world ever been named Wheat?

Craig: I mean, I’m sure there are people named Wheat, but Sam Wheat sounds like a bad cereal. So, I mean, look, these are the things you point out when you love a movie because there’s like little things that stick out as wrong. And there’s very few of them, but I’ll point them out as they come. But Sam Wheat is just a dumb name.

John: Molly Jensen, which is sort of a perfect name for a Demi Moore character.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

John: And then Carl Bruner.

Craig: I mean, what a great villain name, right?

John: It’s sort of a great villain name. It sort of tips that he might be a villain.

Craig: Everything tips that he might be a villain.

John: And it’s Carl with a C which is especially — you don’t really see that in the movie, though.

Craig: It’s like a Nazi name, you know, Carl Bruner.

John: Yes. So, she is an artist. We don’t sort of know that she’s a potter yet, but they are living in scary New York, not sort of modern New York. And it’s going to become important that they’re living in a not yet gentrified neighborhood.

Craig: Right, so in the late ’80s, or this movie comes out in 1990, so they shot it in the late ’80s, downtown areas, downtown that we think of as super hip now like Meatpacking or even Tribeca or so, were kind of scummy. Alphabet City, totally off-limits. And it seems like they’re living down there. Yeah.

John: So, we see their new loft and sort of the plans for the new loft. They’re moving in together for the first time.

Craig: Right.

John: Next scene we’re seeing Carl and Sam in the elevator. They’re dressed up in suits and we see that they work in Wall Street banking, some sort of financial thing. It’s a first comedy bit really which is faking that Carl has a terrible disease in a crowded elevator and they make everyone really uncomfortable. So, we’re seeing that they’re buds, and they feel like kind of frat boy buddies.

Craig: That scene is the one thing I know for sure is that that was not Bruce Joel Rubin’s idea. That was something that Jerry, and Jim, and David would do themselves in elevators to entertain each other. I think that goes all the way back to their time in college. And I’ve actually been in elevators when they’ve done it now, which is even scarier because they’re older now. So, god knows what they’re hacking up. So, Jerry just has these two guys do it.

But what I love about it is that it is essentially pushing a button in the audience’s brain. And it’s saying here’s kind of a cliché scene of two guys yucking it up. And while it is cliché and has nothing to do with story, doesn’t move the plot along at all, what it’s doing is it’s tapping you in a spot that goes, oh, these two fit into this cinema box of wacky buds. And that’s going to help kind of misdirect us until the movie can’t bear any more direction in part because they seem to be missing one character. [laughs] I feel like the movie is short one red herring character.

But, regardless, that does help quite a bit.

John: It does. So, the elevator takes us into the financial offices which are the saddest financial offices I think I’ve seen in this kind of movie. It’s just such a little set. And it feels more like a bank in Wichita than a high stakes financial office. Partly, the fault of movies is movies really kind of, from the time of Wall Street, but really as long as we’ve always thought about big New York City corporate movies, they always have the glamour shot, like windows that look out over the city.

Craig: Right.

John: It’s always this high power thing, and this is not that at all. It’s like they sort of ran out of money for like trans lights or things, so that you don’t really see out the windows. It was odd to me that it was just such a boring office set.

Craig: It is a bizarre space. There’s a weird lavender carpet. It probably actually is more accurate to what those spaces look like, because real estate is a premium in New York and only enormous firms can afford these super fancy looking places.

But, I have to say that while sometimes the movie does seem a little cheap, and frankly it wasn’t made for a lot, I mean $40 million today is not a lot of money to make a movie like this, there was some already — even before we got to this point, or maybe, I’m sorry, just following there’s going to be some really nice directorial touches. You can see that Jerry is pulling some cool moves.

But in this sequence, we learn a couple of facts that are fairly nicely layered in.

John: Agreed.

Craig: We learn that Patrick Swayze’s character, Sam, seems to be a little more senior than his buddy, Carl, and that Sam is in possession of certain codes that allow the transfer of money and, in fact, he’s changed one of those codes and maybe there’s a little bit of that later, but we’re learning at least there’s a hierarchy here. They’re in charge of money. And Sam has a code.

John: Exactly. And so this ability to put stuff into accounts is something that Sam has and something that Carl needs. And we’re going to learn down the road that Carl put some money into an account and then can’t get it back out. And that is the reason for the plot of Ghost in terms of the villain plot of Ghost is just about this code got changed.

Craig: Correct.

John: So, we see their offices. We see what that is. There’s the Japanese. We are coming back to the beautiful loft apartment which Molly is fixing up.

Craig: And is this where the angel is being…?

John: Yeah, the angel.

Craig: Right. So, it’s a nice little visual thematic thing. They’re hoisting this wooden angel up. You know, and listen, foreshadowing comes in all sorts of flavors. Sometimes it’s punch you in the face foreshadowing, but I didn’t mind it so much here. There’s a nice moment where we see Sam go to help get the thing in and you almost think like, oh my god, is he going to die here? But he doesn’t die here.

There’s a very nifty little shot that Jerry does with a mirror. I don’t know if you noticed that or not. I liked that one a bit. But, again, we see they’re all together and they’re all buddies.

John: Yeah. It is actually a very clever shot. I was playing it right as I’m watching this right now. So, essentially Sam’s helped get the angel inside and there’s a shot which you think is real but is actually in a mirror that’s being carried back away from you. And that took probably half a day to choreograph, but it does help give you sense of the space really nicely.

Craig: Yes.

John: So this is our first apartment together. It’s all about sort of their love and sort of their being together. It’s the first time we have the I Love You words spoken, I believe.

Craig: Yes.

John: And the lack of that.

Craig: Yeah. So, there’s this exchange that they do here, and we’ve talked about this before. You can’t write great dialogue. You can’t. You can write dialogue that becomes great. But you can’t sit down and say now I’m going to write an iconic line. I can’t sit down and say I’m going to write, “You had me at hello.” I love you and Ditto became a thing.

It was just so perfect because it wasn’t as blatant as I love you and then, “Oh, you know, you mean so much to me, too,” and this very on the nose thing. He’s saying ditto and she’s laughing. It’s their gag. But there’s a little something missing there and transitions into this very interesting expression of pessimism from this character. And maybe that pessimism kind of gives a hint as to what his little journey is going to be all about. But essentially saying every time things are going well for me it seems like — he’s kind of discussing the sort of Damocles and the idea of the other shoe dropping and he’s worried just that the good times will end.

John: Yeah. If I had a criticism of the movie up to this point is that I haven’t had a very good perspective on what he wants. And I know he has a job. I know he has this beautiful wife — or not wife — girlfriend. This is one of the few moments where he’s talking about his inner life, but we don’t get a lot. And it would be better to see sort of what his flaws are before this moment. But, movies only have so much time.

Craig: Well, that’s true. And I would also say that I’m not sure how I would have done it differently, because in the way the movie is going to work we know that what he’s going to want is such a big want. I want to save the woman I love from a terrible end, that that would dwarf anything that comes before it. And so what he’s expressing here is an inability to just be happy with what he has.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And I think that that’s a nice thing to do for a character that’s going to lose everything and then appreciate even the smallest thing, like being able to just touch the person you love.

John: Yeah.

Craig: So I thought that was a good choice actually.

John: So, 13 minutes in is where we have our iconic pottery scene.

Craig: [laughs] Right.

John: And so what’s so funny, obviously everyone knows this scene. But watching it again, I had never realized how incredibly phallic it was. Because I always think about it being like sort of sexual touchy, but you realize she’s crafting a giant penis in front of her.

Craig: That’s right. Uh-huh.

John: And then the penis will collapse.

Craig: Yeah. What she’s doing is she’s jerking him off in this scene.

John: Yes. She is. And the young me did not recognize that.

Craig: No. I don’t think young me recognized it either, [laughs]. But in watching it now, it couldn’t be more obvious. She’s masturbating him. But, so a very — there’s just so much about this scene that’s fascinating to me.

Okay, first of all, again, does absolutely nothing to move the plot forward. And when we talk about rules and how rules are rules until they’re not rules, this is a great example. This doesn’t move the plot forward. It doesn’t even really move the information of their relationship forward because we already know he loves her. Or, he may be conflicted in not being able to express it, but he certainly likes her a lot. They’ve moved in. They’ve been hugging and kissing.

So, what is this for? And ultimately it’s for a feeling. It is a scene that evokes something that is more than just information. It makes me believe that these two people are soul mates.

John: Well, the moment is actually genuinely cinema. It’s not just story. It’s the thing that can only be captured by sight and sound and the great music playing underneath it. It’s all those things put together as a package.

And reading this on the page would not have anywhere near the impact of seeing these two attractive people rubbing their hands all over this clay and being intimate with that song playing. It is truly a cinematic moment.

Craig: It’s gorgeously done. I love what she’s wearing. It’s so sexy. You know, that kind of like overall but no shirt underneath. It’s great. And the music — when you get a song like this, and it doesn’t happen often. This is an old song, Unchained Melody, had been around forever. It was from the ’50s. And yet it was one of those “what’s old is new again” songs. I love the way that they have the old style jukebox moving the record around, which is gorgeous.

But, a song like that you get like I Will Always Love You, from The Bodyguard, My Heart Will Go On, from Titanic — it’s just one of those things that is so right for the moment that the movie becomes defined by it, you know?

John: 100 percent. And so sometimes they’re songs. Sometimes they are poses. Sometimes they’re just little snippets. I mean, Flashdance, she pours the water down on herself. That’s the iconic image from it. It’s not that it was the one sheet, but it sort of had to be the one sheet, because that is the thing sort of encapsulates what the experience of the movie is. And the pottery/clay moment is that moment here. And it’s interesting because if you look at the posters for it, a lot of times it’s like Patrick Swayze all glowy, but that’s not really what the movie is about. It’s about the two of them, and touching is what you want to see them be able to do, because of course we’re about to take away their ability to touch each other.

Craig: And, again, you could play the what would the studio executive say game, and they would probably say, “Well, yeah, but this should end in a fight. Somehow move the story, Make a change in this.”

But, no, this scene is why the movie works. I really believe that in my heart. We would not care so much if we didn’t see the two of them actually have sex without having sex. And it’s like great sex. It’s great movie sex. It’s spectacular. And it’s the buy-in for women, for men, for anybody that knows what passion is, this is the thing that gets your heart pumping for these two characters so that when they are rendered asunder it matters.

John: Yup. Immediately after this scene it is daytime and we’re going to a new plot moment. So, like we’ve had our love and now it’s plot. We are close in on a green CRT monitor and someone is trying to access an account. And stuff has been changed. And so this is where Patrick Swayze suddenly looks like, wait, something is wrong. There’s too much money in this account. He has to change the codes on things. So, he’s going to fix this thing and he’s going to tell Carl, huh, I’m going to have to stay late tonight to figure out what is wrong with these codes.

Craig: Right. And Carl is asking, oh, I could do it for you. No, no, I’ll do it. No suspicion there whatsoever. I don’t think we’ll ever understand, we’re ever made to understand why there is extra money in the account, where it came from.

John: Yeah. The sort of thrown away explanation is that Carl is laundering drug money. And so whoever the people are, they’re incredibly dangerous. But, we never see them. They never become a real threat. Apparently they’re enough of a threat to Carl that Carl is willing to do terrible things. But, we don’t know this yet.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, the fact that we never see them is probably a good thing because it would just end up being a guy. Carl’s plan to use these accounts to launder money is not a particularly good one if it could be that easily discovered, plus in order to launder the money I would think you would need to be able to actually move money around, which he doesn’t have the ability to do. So, there’s a lot of issues with that and we don’t care.

John: We don’t care.

Craig: No.

John: It’s one of those things where it has to be — it’s movie logic. Do you believe that it could kind of happen? Yeah. Is it crucial to your understanding? Nah.

Craig: I mean, yeah, it’s like one of those things where, well, it’s possible that if you work for the SEC this movie just wouldn’t work for you, but most of us don’t. And we understand essentially that there’s a crime going on here and it doesn’t flout logic, it’s simply leaving things out. Essentially the movie is saying you don’t need to know.

John: Many science fiction stories sort of do that sort of shorthand with science where it’s like, okay, we’re skipping over 15 steps and because we’re skipping over all these things it’s actually impossible, but most people say like, “Yeah, that feels good enough.” And that’s what it probably feels like to anyone who has any sort of accounting background. It’s like, wait, no, no, that’s impossible. And yet…yeah. Because it’s not important.

Because what’s going to happen next is that Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore are walking through their dangerous neighborhood. A guy comes up to them, insists on his wallet. He’s going to hand it over, but a scuffle breaks out and suddenly Patrick Swayze is collapsed to the ground.

Craig: Right.

John: He gets up. He chases after the guy. And as he returns he sees Demi Moore huddled over his body and he is not himself.

Craig: Right. So, a good misdirection here. There’s a struggle. We’re on Demi Moore when we hear a gunshot go off. And then the next thing we see is the bad guy running away, followed by Patrick Swayze chasing him. We presume in that moment perhaps the gun just didn’t hit anyone and was just a random.

But then when Patrick Swayze comes back, he experiences something on his face and then we see what he’s experiencing. That’s the way to write movies like this, I think, so that everything is through the perspective of a character and we’re watching them absorb this. And this is the first moment where I was so grateful that the movie said what would people actually do. You know? What would they actually do?

And what they would actually do is spend a lot of time doing nothing except watching and feeling what’s happened to them. And that’s exactly what this movie does. A great choice by Bruce Joel Rubin.

John: Yeah. So, a moment of glorious light comes. Patrick Swayze has the opportunity to follow that light and leave, but he does not want to leave. And so he stays with Demi Moore. And ends up in the hospital, which is where we’re getting a little bit more of the sense of the rules behind things.

Craig: A little bit, yeah. So, what we see is that another person dies and he goes into the light. So we understand that that’s an option. And Patrick Swayze encounters another ghost, so we know he’s not the only one. Which, again, you’d think like, well, okay, there’s this other ghost that shows up. He’s like an old Jewish man. It’s played for comedy, which I love by the way that it’s played for comedy.

But it’s a very smart choice. It’s not just a random thing. Because these are the little questions that sometimes we forget to ask when we’re writing a movie. We know the movie is about a ghost and da-da-da. Well, here’s a question: is he the only one?

John: Yup. Can ghosts talk to each other? Can anyone see ghosts? Can ghosts walk through things? Yes. But it’s not easy and it’s not necessarily easy to walk through things. They can’t magically appear places. They actually have to travel and walk places.

Craig: Right. And all of those things are answered in the scene without really being expository. It’s a very different kind of scene than what we saw, for instance, in Beetlejuice, where they go into a place and someone delivers a whole bunch of exposition to them. They literally sit at a desk and are told things.

This is much more impressionistic. Somebody just sits down and just starts talking to them, an old man starts talking to Sam as if he’s known him his whole life. Says a bunch of things that are cryptic and yet informative. And then he’s gone.

John: Yeah. So we see another patient die. The patient goes up into the glorious light. The old man says, “Oh, it’s better than the other way.”

Craig: Right.

John: So the sense of like, oh okay, so there is a heaven and a hell concept in this universe. A guy with a gurney walks right through Sam and it’s horrifying, because he sees sort of all inside the body. And then we’re not rushing the plot ahead. We’re not — Sam’s not looking for his killer. He’s just sort of hanging out with his wife.

Craig: He’s doing exactly what somebody would do. The whole point is I’m not ready to move on, and by the way, I don’t believe in any of this baloney, but it’s fun for the movie. He’s not ready to move on, so what would you do? You would stay there and just stare at your girlfriend while she cries. And that’s exactly what he does.

And by doing that, our heart already starts to go — because we’ve put ourselves in our shoes. And every person in the audience was imagining this with their partner. Guaranteed.

John: So, we are — this is classically the end of the first act, start of the second act. And this is sort of where you would expect this to be time wise in the movie. We’re about 30 minutes in. And so Patrick Swayze is dead. He is in this new land of being a dead person and sort of having to learn new rules which is what it’s like to be a ghost among these living people and what other ghosts are like.

He is looking at his life from the outside, so he sees his beautiful girlfriend going through his stuff. He sees his best friend there to help her out. He is sad. He’s lonely. He’s despondent. Demi Moore is sad, and lonely, and despondent. And neither is able to help the other one.

Craig: Exactly right. And we feel it and we buy it, we believe it. We have absorbed with ease the supernatural incursion. And we’re perfectly happy.

John: One bit of rule logic we’ve encountered is that their cat is able to sense him. And so the cat knows that Sam is around and does not like it one bit. So the cat will hiss and snarl at him. This becomes important because Demi Moore and Carl, or Molly and Carl go off, leave the house. They leave Sam in the apartment. And the guy who killed Sam shows up at the apartment. He’s going through things.

So, suddenly we are back in a thriller. This is actually a point of danger. Who is this person? Who is this person who is in our house. Molly comes back. She is now in danger. He is powerless to keep her from being in danger.

Craig: Right.

John: And that sense of really emasculation is incredibly frustrating. So, he’s able to use the cat to scare off the intruder, but it’s the first sense that the A plot has not ended because he’s dead.

Craig: Right. So, obviously some big information is learned here. The person that mugged him and killed him was not just a mugger. Something else is going on. He was- – this was intentional. And if you haven’t at this point already figured out that Tony Goldwyn is involved, your brain isn’t functional well because, again, he’s the only other character in the movie. Who else could it be.

But the emasculation you describe, that’s dead on. And a lot of what’s going to happen now is watching someone be frustrated their inability to save the person they love. And this is a very lovely escalation because when you die that’s enormous, right? That’s a huge problem. How do you top that?

Well, I’ll tell you how you top it. You’re going to have to sit there and watch the person you love mourn you. Oh my god. Well, how do you top that? Ah-ha, you’re going to have to watch passively as somebody tries to hurt them.

John: Yes.

Craig: And that’s a great escalation. I mean, talk about how do you escalate something that’s already fairly well escalated? And, of course, the wonderful concept of stakes comes into play. When you have a movie where your hero is dead and cannot die what are the stakes? Somebody that he loves dying.

John: Yup. Just thinking aloud here, I mean, if you look at this first half of the movie as basically being the emasculation of Patrick Swayze’s character. It’s all about sort of like he’s bringing this big statue into his apartment, building this clay phallus that collapses. He’s being killed. He is powerless to stop this person from hurting his girlfriend. And he’s giving chase to this guy who he can’t even sort of stop.

So, it’s a frustrating thing. And I think you’re exactly right. You would think like, well, there can’t be anything worse than dying. It’s like, oh yeah, there actually can be something worse than dying. It’s dying and being powerless to fix the things around you.

Craig: Mm-hmm. And this is also where I think when you talk about a movie that makes what the equivalent of today’s billion dollars, you don’t make a billion dollars off of one gender or the other. This is where I think men are watching this movie and completely involved.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Because there’s this protective instinct that has been — either it is innate or it is a gender role and a construct. I don’t care. All I know is that it’s there. And this is tweaking that in men. This protective instinct and the inability to protect is enough, I think, to make every man in the theater lean forward in their seat and be involved.

John: Yes. So, in giving chase to this guy who invaded his apartment, he goes into the subway. And so one of the weird rules of this movie is like he can take the subway to get around places. And it’s on the subway that he meets another ghost, a really crazy sort of aggressive ghost, Vincent Schiavelli.

Craig: Vincent Schiavelli.

John: We’re not sure [how to pronounce].

Craig: Well, Schiavelli would be the proper Italian pronunciation.

John: But we’ll see how he pronounces it.

Craig: Yes.

John: If he’s still alive. I have no idea.

Craig: He is not alive, sadly.

John: Sadly.

Craig: No, he died actually fairly young. Vincent Schiavelli’s character emerges here. And this is maybe my favorite scene in the movie and it’s very, very short. And it’s followed by another Vincent Schiavelli scene later, which is terrific, but I love this scene. I love the way that Rubin did it.

So, up until this point it’s been fairly procedural. Our ghost is wandering around, following people, and we understand that in some ways he has this omniscience. He can be anywhere and hear anything. But on the other hand he has this powerlessness. He can’t actually touch things or move things or impact the physical world around him. So, it’s an interesting collision of ability and disability.

He’s following this guy, but for what? What could he possibly be able to do? Well, he’s following him because he wants to know the truth, I suppose. And he’s on this train and we are completely in that moment and then suddenly out of nowhere this other ghost starts screaming at him in the most frightening way, “Get off my train,” and it’s frightening.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And he pushes our guy, not only pushes him off the train, but as he pushes him off the train breaks physical glass, which is making us think, wait a second, perhaps there’s more that ghosts can do. Tonally speaking, it was a reminder for me in this movie that we’re dealing with serious stuff and potentially very scary stuff. And Vincent Schiavelli is so — his face is frightening. The way he yells at him is frightening. The whole thing is creepy and it’s very Bruce Joel Rubin. It’s the closest scene in this movie to the sort of creepy stuff we see a lot of in Jacob’s Ladder.

John: Yes. So, following the subway moments, we get to the mugger’s apartment where the mugger is on his phone, his sort of powder blue classic rotary phone, which is so great. It’s one of those things like your daughter would see it, it’s like, “But what is he talking on?” Oh, that’s a phone. Phones used to look like that before the iPhone 6.

And so he’s saying, he’s calling someone and saying, “I wasn’t able to get it,” and basically letting us know that he wasn’t a random — obviously we knew it wasn’t a random thing because it’s the same guy from before, but he’s in cahoots with somebody. And who that person he’s in cahoots with, that’s the question.

Craig: It’s probably the other character in the movie.

John: [laughs] Exactly. There’s almost no one left. And so —

Craig: There’s no one left.

John: And so if you were to add in, because I was thinking like sort of how do you put in a red herring there. I wonder if there is some way to take the character who is the banker, who is going to show up later in the story that Whoopi Goldberg has to deal with. If you could somehow bring him into the story earlier on, like somebody who is fulfilling that function so you think like, oh, there’s another person who it could be.

Craig: I’m with you 100 percent. That’s the way to do it. You take that guy and you put him in the beginning of the movie as a jerk. As a bad guy. And he should be a bad guy. He’s just not a criminal but he’s a jerk. And he’s sleazy. And there’s something off about him. And we just assume it’s him and it’s not him at all.

John: Yeah.

Craig: You need, I mean, this movie really could have used that red herring because when the big reveal comes it’s such a, well yeah.

John: Well, yeah. There’s no, “Oh my god.” Even in the moment I’m sure it didn’t have that kind of impact.

Craig: No, we’re literally out of people that have names [laughs] by the time we get to that.

John: Another sort of small criticism, there are a lot of like single use characters in this. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but like Stephen Root shows up as a police detective and, well, he gets one scene.

Craig: Yeah, he shows up in one scene. And curiously in that scene he is accompanied by a female cop who has I think one line, which I don’t know, maybe they were doing somebody a SAG favor and then that was it. It just didn’t need to happen.

Although, because I know David and Jerry, I know that for instance the woman at the bank who — we’ll get to Oda Mae — does her signature card with, that’s their mother. And she’s always in —

John: That’s awesome.

Craig: She actually does a very fine acting job I have to say.

John: No, she’s great. I have zero complaints. And so that’s not a blanket dismissal of using characters and then never seeing them again. That’s completely good and valid. I just felt like there was an opportunity to take one of these characters from later in the story, pull them back earlier, and let them be useful in your story.

Craig: I agree. It would have helped.

John: So, one of the things I found fascinating, which I hadn’t remembered until rewatching the movie, is that Patrick Swayze encounters Oda Mae, this is Whoopi Goldberg’s character — well, first off, he encounters her quite late in the story. We are about 40 minutes into the story before Whoopi Goldberg’s character shows up. And it’s just location coincidence. It’s right across the street from the mugger.

And you say like, well, that’s just really convenient, but it ends up becoming very, very useful because later on in the story she’s in danger because she’s right across the street from the mugger.

Craig: Yeah.

John: So, it’s one of those things where it feels convenient in the time that you first introduce it, but then it ends up having a plot consequence that’s actually genuinely helpful.

Craig: So, Oda Mae Brown is this fascinating character. And, again, the confluence of good choices. Physics in movies, I mean, look, they could have just gone the easy way and he gets in touch with a psychic and so forth, but she’s a fraud.

She’s not only a fraud. She’s a fraud with a backstory. She’s a fraud, but her mother, and her mother, and her mother who we presume before her, the whole line was supposedly had the shining as they say. And she doesn’t. She’s never had it. She’s a complete fraud until suddenly she can hear Sam. And they play it for comedy. And we believe it because, again, they let Oda Mae, they let Whoopi Goldberg react as somebody actually would. And they let her play it.

Everybody in this movie is constantly denying the call to action as cowards would and then finally getting pushed into it reluctant. Everyone feels like a reluctant hero to some regard.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And that was a great choice because we believed it. We also then understood that she had absolutely no idea how to navigate this.

John: Yeah. So, I think Whoopi Goldberg is fantastic in the movie. I think it’s a really good character. Looking back at the reviews at the time, and sort of the reviews since that time, there’s criticism that her character sort of falls into the magical negro problem. And very quickly summarized, it’s when you have an African American character in a story whose function is to sort of help the white people do their things and sometimes teach them a wise, valuable lesson. But they’re supposed to put their entire life on hold to help the white people.

And you can level that to Oda Mae Brown, but I think she actually transcends it in ways that are really interesting. She seems — she wants her own things. We don’t know her whole life, but she didn’t just show up at the start of the movie to help the white person. She would have had a whole story if Patrick Swayze had never entered into that room.

Craig: Yeah. I don’t think she fits. I think that she fits only nominally in that she is African American and she is magical, which you would think would be enough to fit the checkboxes of the magical negro stereotype. But, she isn’t magical. The point is that she’s not magical until this moment. And so that surprises her as much as it surprises him.

She clearly has her own volition. She does not exist to serve this guy, and in fact, doesn’t want to. And is continually convinced to continue to help him because she’s in danger. She makes choices based on what is good for her. Granted, she’s presented as a kind of sexless woman living a spinster life with her sisters, which is — that is magical negro territory. But she’s not particularly wise. She’s not coddling this character. She doesn’t particularly like him for most of the movie.

What I was struck by, actually, was how different her performance was here than what we would come to see from Whoopi Goldberg as her career went on. And interestingly, I found at times that when she was doing some of the comic runs that at times she seemed like she was copying Eddie Murphy a little bit. Certain Eddie Murphy intonations and moves that she was doing, because he was like at the height of his powers.

And it felt like she was kind of doing some Eddie Murphy stuff here and there, particularly just the way she would say certain words, or kind of pull a couple of things. But so much of it then is her own deal and it is that — she is a unique character. And watching her relationship with him develop is one of the pleasures of the movie.

And one last thing. Another argument against magical negro-hood for this character of Oda Mae Brown is that she gets something from him. And that is a realization that she actually is more than she thought she was.

John: And that in helping people, ultimately she’s going to help not only him but sort of other ghosts who need to contact the living, she has a purpose to her life, which is a good thing as well.

Craig: Yes.

John: One of the other things that’s remarkable about her performance, which you sort of can easily forget because she does it so well, is that the rules of the movie is she doesn’t see him. She can only hear him. And so whenever they’re having a conversation, she has no eye contact with him. And so we have to believe that she’s hearing him and yet not seeing him and being fully engaged with the people around her instead.

And she does that incredibly well and that’s not a simple thing.

Craig: No it’s not. It’s completely believable. And you have to give Jerry credit for keeping everybody on point there with that and moving Patrick Swayze around so that Whoopi’s eye line doesn’t change, but Patrick’s position changes quite a bit. It’s done very, very well.

You know, occasionally the shtick between them gets a little recycled.

John: Mm-hmm.

Craig: She has a tendency too often to go to the well of the joke of I’m talking to you in front of somebody else who doesn’t know that you’re there, so I sound crazy.

But by and large it feels natural.

John: Yes.

Craig: And so it doesn’t grate.

John: If I were to have a — this is a terrible thing to say about an actor who is no longer here with us, Patrick Swayze’s character I feel is better than Patrick Swayze’s performance. And watching this again, there were moments where I could imagine, wow, a different actor, that could land better than it did right there. He felt sometimes just a little light for the movie.

Craig: I agree. And it is — listen, never speak ill of the dead. This, at times, he was not able to convey what I would call the most convincing agony. He struggled with the agony part. The confidence part, the romantic part, nailed it. The agony at times felt a little forced.

Now, interestingly with Demi Moore, let’s talk about her performance for a second. It’s not screenplay stuff but… — So, I mean, a couple of moments here and there where, okay, particularly when he died she seemed a little too dead for the moment. But, throughout the movie she actually does what I think is a terrific job of quietly expressing this grief. And she cries better in this movie than just about any actor I’ve ever seen in any movie.

John: Yeah.

Craig: There’s about seven times where she very naturally produces like two or three tracks of parallel tears from her eyes, moving at like a perfect uneven — it’s gorgeous.

John: Her tears have this amazing viscosity of sort of how they fall. It really is remarkable.

Craig: It’s amazing. And she’s so beautiful. And I love her hair in the movie. And I talk with Lindsay Doran all the time about hair. Because Lindsay, you know, her whole thing is, you know, all the stuff that we do, if it’s bad hair the movie is dead. She’s got great hair in the movie. Much better than his hair. And her crying is just like, it’s so good. It’s hard to do that.

John: Have you met Demi Moore at all?

Craig: No, never met her.

John: So, my only experience with her was for the second Charlie’s Angels. And so while we were writing the first Charlie’s Angels I said if we ever make a sequel, the villain is, her name is Madison Lee and it has to be Demi Moore playing an angel from the ’80s. And everyone was like absolutely that’s what’s going to happen.

And so then we got Demi Moore and it was great. And so I had a meeting with her over at the Peninsula Hotel with McG and it was on my birthday I just remember because it was my birthday. And we were just sitting around the Peninsula Hotel and she managed to drink like three large Starbucks coffees. She’s just a person who drinks a lot of coffee.

But she’s really — she’s really cool and fascinating. She was ultimately I think, because it was at the time of the Bruce Willis — she had split from Bruce Willis. She was there with Ashton Kutcher. She ended up overshadowing the movie in ways that wasn’t helpful. But she’s still kind of great. And in the right things she’s an amazing actress.

Craig: Someone once said, I don’t know who said this. Ted Elliott told me this, but I can’t remember who he was quoting, that we don’t cry when we see actors crying. We cry when we see actors trying to not cry.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: And when she’s crying, she’s trying to not cry. You can tell. So, it’s so real and so all that’s sort of — all you’re getting are the two tears that slop over the resistance, which is just beautiful. I mean, she just does such a good job. All right.

John: All right. So, we’re 47 minutes into the movie and Patrick Swayze has convinced Whoopi Goldberg to go to my apartment, tell my girlfriend what it is and I will tell you things that only I will know. And so this is a moment that happens. Whoopi Goldberg is yelling up to the apartment. Demi Moore finally comes down. Says Sam’s here. I’ve got this information.

And Demi believes him. I mean, Molly’s character does seem to believe that this is real in this moment.

Craig: Yeah.

John: And so if everything had gone exactly this way, the movie would be over. Well, actually, Patrick Swayze doesn’t actually have information. Doesn’t know how her life is in danger. Just saying her life is in danger.

Craig: Yeah. There’s still this plot that’s going on. But what we’re playing now is this reconnection between these two. And this is where I think Roger Ebert lost his mind in his review where he was complaining that, “Well, this is what people do when they’re dead? They come back and start telling people about what shirt they were wearing to prove that they’re really there?” Yeah. I think so. That’s probably what they would do, because they care about the people they love and they want them to know that they’re still there and they’re trying to warn them that they’re in danger. Yeah. It’s totally okay. I love this stuff. I think it’s great.

I mean, and by the way, absolutely necessary. I won’t like her if I think she’s just a nut that naturally believes in ghosts. I only like her if she’s convinced. Similarly, she becomes unconvinced when Tony Goldwyn’s character kind of does a number on her, and then also Stephen Root shows her that Oda Mae is basically a criminal. She’s a fraud with a record. And so, yeah, of course this is emotionally you’re going to be caught between wanting to — am I fool for believing this? Or am I fool for not believing this? It’s a very normal, Demi Moore plays it perfectly. I believed it the whole way. And so enough with these critics who don’t understand how the human mind works, frankly, or the heart.

Because, again, I’ll just point to a billion dollars of people loving this movie. I mean, it’s just.

John: Yeah, people who love it. Another example of how this movie feels like it’s missing a character is like Demi Moore has no friends. It does feel a little bit strange that like there’s no one else she can turn to for help other than the guy who is ultimately going to be the villain of the story, Carl, who comes by, very deliberately spills off his coffee, and takes off his shirt.

Craig: He does. So, here he’s going to do the seduction. But you’re making a very interesting point. This is under-populated movie in a large sense. As we’ve said, the movie opens on three characters. We’re going to add a fourth character in Oda Mae. And that’s it. There’s the bad guy, Willie Lopez, who is just, you know, he’s just a bad guy. He’s not a real character.

And there’s no one else in the movie.

John: Yeah. And this may be partly why it’s so successful.

Craig: I was going to say that. Exactly. Because really the movie is boiling down a certain kind of tragedy to its barest essence. It’s just mainlining it into your veins. There’s no reason for funerals. You know what I mean? There’s no funeral, no burial. Oh, there is, I’m sorry.

John: Oh, there’s a burial, yeah.

Craig: You’re right. They did a quick funeral and burial. And actually a very beautiful moment where this one ghost sort of smiles at him and walks off, which I loved. But there’s no like we don’t — all the people at that burial, we never meet them again. Although one of them is Jerry’s sister I know. [laughs] So, the Zuckers show up. The entire family always shows up.

But it’s under-populated for a reason and I kind of think it works that way. It’s very atavistic. This is the romantic man. This is the romantic woman. This is the snake. And this is the sage, I guess, you know. This is the wise — even though I’m now going against my whole thing about how she wasn’t that wise, but regardless.

So, now, in order to crank this thing up yet even more, not only is Tony Goldwyn a murderer who is placing her in danger, he’s now also seducing her sexually which is just like — and poor Patrick Swayze has to watch.

John: Yes.

Craig: And now he realizes —

John: This is the hell he’s in.

Craig: And now because the stakes have been ratcheted up even more, and because the frustration is ratcheted up even more, he now pays off my favorite scene in the movie. He goes and he finds Vincent Schiavelli.

John: Well, importantly, before he goes to find Vincent Schiavelli, he’s so angry that he dives across and ends up knocking a photo off.

Craig: Yes.

John: And so it’s the first time where he’s actually been able to affect the physical world. And there’s a light bulb moment like, wait, this is something I can do.

Craig: It’s something I can do, but I can’t reliably do it.

John: Yeah. How do I do it?

Craig: I don’t know how I just did that. How do I — wait a second, where have I seen that before? That’s right, that lunatic ghost on a train who scared the hell out of all of us and this is Bruce Joel Rubin. This whole thing with Vincent Schiavelli is so Bruce Joel Rubin to me.

John: So this would the training montage. In other movies this would be sort of like the wax on/wax off, this is how you do your thing. There’s that moment that I think Patrick Swayze does a really good job with, because it suits his physicality really well. And so he’s learning how to move things, how to make things as a ghost affect the world around him.

So, kicking the can, hitting the signs. He’s gradually learning how to touch things.

Craig: Right. And I like that the movie makes a choice to reduce him down to this very, very tiny thing. You’re going to be able to just now move things around in small ways, but we’re going to force you to go through that. We’re going to start with a bottle cap and work our way up to bigger things. But, of all the scenes, I think this is the one that may be the most useful to consider for those of you who are screenwriting and getting into screenwriting and trying to make your scripts better.

Here’s a ghost, an angry ghost, who tells you, okay, if you want to learn, you stubborn son-of-a-bitch, I’ll teach you how. You have to focus all of your anger and emotion and then you push the thing. And Patrick Swayze pushes a thing and it’s a success. Good job. That could be pretty much the end of the scene. I think a lot of people would have ended it there and Vincent Schiavelli would have said, “All right, kid, go get ’em.”

That’s not how it ends at all. How it ends is that Patrick Swayze asks him have you been here, how long have you been here. And suddenly Vincent Schiavelli makes this angry speech about he was pushed and he was pushed onto a track in front of a train. And Patrick Swayze says, “You were pushed?” And Vincent Schiavelli says, “What? You don’t believe me? You think I jumped? You think I jumped!”

And you realize, oh man, this is what happens to you if you never resolve your life.

John: Yeah.

Craig: He obviously did jump. He can’t handle the fact that he killed himself, and now he’s stuck here forever. And that is scary stuff.

John: So, the lesson, I think, the take home for this is obviously the purpose of the scene is to teach Patrick Swayze how to do these things. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the scene needs to only be about that, or has to end there. It should have some other secondary story purpose as well.

So, not just functional, but really fill in the sort of tonal details, the themes of your piece. And ending it that way is exactly the right choice there.

Craig: Yeah. You can feel everything coming together and working hand in hand here. It’s not enough to give your character a tool. When we watch movies and somebody goes somewhere and someone says, “Here is the blade of blah, blah, blah that will slay the dragon,” and you walk out of the cave with it you think, oh, well, good. I’m glad I got the blade of blah, blah, blah. Was there anything else there except that you needed him to go get the blade of blah, blah, blah?

Well, this is that scene. He’s going to basically be taught how to move stuff around, but then you get this thing that impacts his understanding of his own circumstances and does so in a tragic way. And the tragedy of failure here as relayed through Vincent Schiavelli’s character is palpable. And it’s disturbing. And it’s exactly right. It’s so smart the way that Rubin wrote that and Vincent Schiavelli — it’s the performance everybody remembers. He was a character actor that was in so many things, including One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I think a lot of people remembered him from that. But this one, this is the one I think people remember and always will.

John: The other nice thing about sending off his character that way is we don’t ever expect to see him again in the movie. So, it’s a nice way to like that was his moment, he’s gone, he’s done, let’s keep going with our guy.

Craig: That’s right. And thank god the imaginary studio executive that we keep proposing didn’t exist, because that person would have said, “And then at the end of the movie can we see him come back and he’s happy now and he goes into the light?” No.

John: No.

Craig: [laughs] No we can’t.

John: So, Patrick Swayze now with the ability to move things goes to find Oda Mae Brown and Oda Mae Brown has a very crowded room because a bunch of other ghosts have shown up now because with her ability to really see ghosts and talk with ghosts now, a bunch of ghosts want her help to contact their loved ones.

Craig: Yeah. Exactly. And she’s frustrated with this whole thing. And this is a scene where we learn some information. One of those ghosts occupies her body and it’s funny. We do bits, you know, again, this is an Oda Mae bit.

But when he falls out of her body, he’s on the floor, he can’t get up.

John: Exhausted.

Craig: He’s exhausted. And another character says, “Don’t you know that occupying bodies wears you out, and that’s not good.” That was a not good moment where somebody just announced a rule that we just saw. And announced it in a way where we thought, right, so Patrick Swayze will be doing that later and it’s going to be a problem.

John: It’s hanging a little lantern on that.

Craig: And I’ve got to say, also, not necessary.

John: Yeah.

Craig: I think if we had never seen that happen and if she had just said, “Why don’t you come into my body and let’s try this,” and he had done it, and then been exhausted from it we would have just assumed it’s part of it.

John: Yeah.

Craig: It just didn’t need it.

John: I agree. We can’t sneak in there and cut it out of the movie.

Craig: Well, no, we could.

John: We could. Totally can.

Craig: I spent time with Jerry and David and Jim talking about how they were re-cutting Top Secret!

John: Good.

Craig: Yeah, maybe we can re-cut this, too. [laughs] Just get rid of that line.

John: So, meanwhile Carl Bruner is back in the really boring office and he’s freaking out. He’s sweating. He’s on the phone and he’s got to get that money. He’s got to get that money transferred. He has a plan for transferring that money which involves putting it in this other account and he’s going to open an account with this other name. So, that plot is still happening. But things are ticking.

Craig: Yeah. So, here’s where, I mean, at this point in the movie you would imagine the plot sort of starts to take over. And it does. And it’s all fine. It works out well. Basically, he goes to the apartment, gets the code that he was looking for. You know, a little convenient that he just walks in, opens a box gets it. But fine. He then follows instructions to put the money an account under the name Rita Miller. And that he’s going to transfer it at this certain time. And, of course, Patrick Swayze is there to hear it, so when he goes to Oda Mae he’s able to say, look, I have a plan.

And their plan is simple. And, again, it involves comedy. Pose as Rita Miller and following the instructions I’m going to be whispering into your ear, go ahead and essentially withdraw all that money so that Carl won’t have it and then he’s going to face a terrible end. And that’s exactly what happens.

John: And what is fascinating about this moment is that it’s played as comedy. There’s suspense in the sense of like will she get found out, but race underlies all this as well. So, not only is she really flamboyantly dressed, but she’s this black woman impersonating a presumably white person, or fictitious person, in this all white establishment bank.

This is a case where like the bank really looks like a bank. You know, that stock office didn’t look like a good stock office, but this totally feels like a bank, and a big old, fussy bank. And she is the bull in the china shop in the ways you sort of want her to be in this comedy/suspense moment.

Craig: Yeah. And this is the scene where I felt most like she was kind of doing a version of Eddie Murphy because it felt very Beverly Hills Cop. A black guy in the middle of wealthy white territory kind of flimflamming them and with sort of a fast talking attitude and getting away with it, but it works.

John: Yeah.

Craig: You know, it works. It’s the funniest stuff in the world, but there’s so much charm to her, you know. It’s remarkable how charm can get you by. And she’s so goodhearted. You can just tell, like the character and Whoopi Goldberg herself is just so goodhearted about it. There’s a wonderful moment where she smiles this beautiful smile and it just makes the whole scene work.

John: Yeah.

Craig: I think it’s to Jerry Zucker’s mom, I think. She just smiles this great smile.

John: So, they’re able to get the money. They get a cashier’s check for the money that was in the account and Whoopi Goldberg thinks she’s rich and Sam convinces her, no, no, you have to give it to the nuns because it’s not your money.

Now, I don’t think you would necessarily give it to the Catholic Church.

Craig: [laughs] And that actually did feel very Jerry Zucker to me. The idea of nuns. Those guys have always found nuns funny. And just the idea of nuns on the street somehow representing the best use of a $4 million charitable donation. But, you know, it’s a little dated. The moment is dated. And there’s a button on it that is, you know, you can see coming a billion miles away. But, again, it’s charm. You know, there’s just a charm to it.

John: Yes. Well, with the money withdrawn, Tony Goldwyn’s character is not happy. He’s looking at this monitor and all the money is gone. And he’s going to smash his monitor. Now, that monitor probably cost $3,000 in those days.

Craig: And incredibly expensive 10-inch green CRT monitor. But in this scene now, finally it appears that Sam Wheat has full possession of his Vincent Schiavelli learned powers. And he can knock things around. He can make his presence known and he uses the computer keyboard to let Carl know that he’s there. He says murderer and then his own name — Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam. So, now he’s all confident.

He feels like he’s done it. He’s won. And that carries through when Carl returns to Molly because now he’s freaked out and he wants to know if this is real, is Sam real, what did that lady tell you. And Patrick Swayze is kind of acting out here. He’s pushing him around. He’s proving to Carl that he’s real. And Carl makes this threat basically because now Carl knows that Oda Mae was at the bank and she took the money. And he says to nobody but assuming that Sam is there — I’m going to come back at 11 and if the money isn’t her I’m going to kill her.

So, now, once again, we have that final escalation. And we can feel that the movie is essentially presenting us with our climax. That at 11 o’clock everything will be figured out, for better or for worse, but before 11 o’clock comes Sam knows that the first thing Carl and his henchmen, Willie, are going to try and do is kill Oda Mae and get the money from her.

John: Yup. So this is a very classic sort of screenwriting thing you do is you state a destination or a time. And so you publicly say what needs to happen before this or we are going to this place. And it gives the audience a sense of, okay, I know where we’re headed. I know what to expect. And I can sort of forecast the time ahead of me and therefore the stakes feel increased because there’s a clock ticking.

Craig: Right. So, it’s not particularly great screenwriting to have a character say, “I’m going to come back here in four hours to finish this when I could just probably do it now, or maybe in an hour,” I don’t know why 11 is so important. But one thing that it really provides the audience with is comfort that this is ending. Just so that everybody knows like, okay, if you’ve gotten a little squirmy in your seat, don’t go pee now, this thing is pulling into the station. It’s going to happen. Everybody settle in for the big final showdown.

John: Yes. And this big final showdown is going to happen because Sam is going to have to go get Oda Mae. Oda Mae’s life is in danger. Of course, she lives right across the street from the mugger. The mugger is going to come after her. This is a moment where Sam Wheat gets to use his powers to harass and sort of throw the mugger around. Honestly some very clever sequences where opening doors, closing doors, riding on things, making this guy think that he’s crazy. Ultimately our mugger is going to get hit by a car, smashed, and he will himself die, be a ghost. And then we see what happens to a bad person.

Craig: Right.

John: They get dragged by the shadows into the abyss.

Craig: The Rotoscope shadows. And I have to say as cheese ball as the Rotoscope shadows are, it made me kind of yearn for those days because the more realistic you make those things oddly the less threatening they seem to be. I just find that like perfectly rendered CGI shadow demons are just not as scary somehow. I don’t — isn’t that odd?

But we can’t go back. We can’t show like lame-o Rotoscope shadow demons anymore, so we’re kind of in this weird middle ground. It is interesting that the movie very carefully follows a certain PG-13 ethic of only really bad people murdering. So, for instance, when Carl shows up and meets up with Willie Lopez for the first time in the least climatic reveal of the bad guy ever, he announces that all he intended for Willie to do was just to mug Sam and steal his wallet so that he could get the code. He never meant for him to be killed.

Similarly here, this is a classic movie trope. Good guy chasing bad guy. We want the bad guy to die, but we don’t want the good guy to kill him, so let’s have the bad guy run in front of a car. Which they always do. And he gets killed. But again, they let it play and I like the way they let it play. And they let Willie have his moment.

John: Yes. So, the witching hour has come. Sam and Oda Mae show up at Molly’s house, Molly’s apartment with the news “You in danger, girl.” And this is sort of the iconic moment of, oh, that’s right, she can be possessed. And this is the one moment in which Sam will be able to touch the love of his life.

Craig: Yeah. So, we bring back this little bit of nice foreshadowing. The very beginning of the movie when they break through the wall they find this old jar with an Indian head penny in it. And then sort of in the middle when Molly has had her experience with Oda Mae and then I think she’s already been to the police and they’ve told her that Oda Mae is a fraud and she’s starting to question whether or not any of this is real, she rolls that jar down some stairs where it smashes.

So it’s this idea of like the lucky penny and all the rest of it has kind of been going on through the movie. And here, in order to finally prove to Molly that he’s really there, he has Oda Mae push a penny under the door and he lifts it. And it’s beautiful. It’s just so small. Sometimes when you can focus all of this tragic loss and yearning into something as simple as this penny, and then as the penny is floating across to her, because we see him carrying it. And then the reverse is just the penny floating, because of course he’s invisible in her perspective. And she starts to do that perfect two-tear thing. That’s when I think everybody starts balling for the first time. It won’t be the last time in this climax.

John: Yeah. The original tag line for Ghost was Believe. And this is belief. I mean, it’s a way of visualizing that sense of even though I can’t physically see this thing in front of me, I believe it’s there. And it’s a way of just cinematically showing something that you cannot otherwise see.

Craig: Yeah.

John: So, it’s love. It’s faith. But belief is sort of the combination of the two of them here. And so it’s a single shot in which the penny floats in towards her face. And, again, I’m watching this right now. She’s got the perfectly —

Craig: Perfect.

John: Viscous tears that are clinging in her eyes.

Craig: And they’re real, by the way. Those aren’t like glycerin. Those are real. You can just tell.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Even if they’re not real, then whoever came up with them is a genius. But they just seem so real to me. I mean, god, it’s so good. So good.

John: So, here’s the trick. You tilt your head up, the tear falls down, and right as it touches the edge of your mouth you sort of taste it a little bit. That’s a great cinematic tear.

Craig: So good. She just is the best crier. And we do believe it here. This is, by the way, one of those moments as a screenwriter that can be very frustrating for us because we see this so clearly. We understand that he will be there, we’ll see him lift the penny, we’ll see him carry the penny, and then we’re going to do a reverse shot — so she’s not in that frame. And then we’re going to come around and then he’s not in the frame that’s on her on her single. And the penny will float to her. And he’s invisible. And I cannot tell you guys how many times we will write scenes like this and people will go, “Wait a second. Why can we see him sometimes? Why can’t we see him other times?”

It’s like oh my god. This is where it gets so frustrating because you know, you’ve seen the movie, you know it works. Of course it works that way.

John: Yeah.

Craig: You know, I’m so curious to hear if they ran into those kinds of frustrating discussion when they were writing this. Because it’s exactly the way it should be done. It’s gorgeous.

John: Yes. Because what it is, as you’re looking at the moment from Demi Moore’s point of view, that’s why he is not in the frame and the penny is floating by itself. And it’s so obvious.

Craig: So obvious.

John: And yet before you shot the scene, if you were to try to describe it that way, you would encounter resistance.

Craig: You would encounter resistance, confusion. It’s amazing how — look, there’s a skill to screenwriting and directing. And I would imagine that this is where it’s like, okay, if Bruce and Jerry together were like, “No, no, no, we’ve got this. Trust us on this,” everybody would be quiet. But when it’s only a screenwriter, sometimes people are like, “Wait, I don’t get it…”

It’s the worst.

John: Oh, the classic thing I stole from somebody and I say a lot is that you have to remember that as a screenwriter you’re the only person who’s already seen the movie. And so your job is to reflect on the page that movie that you see, but oftentimes you will have to go back many, many times and talk through people so you can make sure you are seeing the same movie that they are seeing.

In this case, clearly Bruce Joel Rubin and Jerry Zucker —

Craig: Well done.

John: Did see the same movie, especially at this one moment which is crucial.

Craig: Yes. So, following this there is this — we’ve been told that they’ve called the police. The police never show up, by the way, because again New York in the late ’80s —

John: [laughs] They’re in a bad neighborhood here, so —

Craig: There’s a bad neighborhood and there’s crack and, you know, they’re busy.

John: So the police never show up, the drug dealers never show up.

Craig: The drug dealers never show up. None of the people that are supposed to show up show up. But, in this pause, he occupies Whoopi Goldberg’s body. She lets him, which is a big deal because she’s starting — now that she knows that these two are together and they believe, you can see her just softening and giving herself up to it.

And in that moment it’s done perfectly. And, again, Roger Ebert completely wrong, felt that this should have been done with — the entire thing should have been done with Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg dancing together and caressing each other’s faces, which is ridiculous.

John: Yeah.

Craig: They did it exactly the right way, which is start with Whoopi’s hand and Demi’s hand intertwining to understand what was happening there. And then to go to a single of Demi, and then bring in actual Patrick Swayze, which we know is — her eyes are closed, which that’s key. That’s what direction is, by the way. That’s great direction. Bad directors would have had her eyes open and then it wouldn’t have made sense. And, by the way, I’m sure that Bruce called that out in the script as well.

And then , so this is her imagination, Roger Ebert. It’s her imagination! That’s why it works.

John: Yeah. It’s her point of view on what the moment is. And that’s crucial.

Craig: Right. Why would we give a damn watching her dancing around with Whoopi Goldberg? That would have been bizarre.

John: Yeah.

Craig: It just would have been so dumb. So, of course, now we’re just crying because finally at last they’re holding each other and they’re together. And, of course, what do they do? He starts playing — and it’s an interesting choice — he starts playing Unchained Melody. That is Jerry starts playing Unchained Melody. And now, what’s the word? Is it like…what’s that…Stochastic? Diacaustic? Diastolic? What’s the word for — ?

John: Oh yeah, when something plays in the scene.

Craig: Right. So the first time we heard the song it was playing on a record in the movie. Now it’s score. It’s imposed from above by god, which is an interesting choice. Regardless, it works. We all just start balling because it’s paying off that moment from before. And we believe it and it’s gorgeous. And then as we knew it happened because of the bad line, [laughs] —

John: I’ll be back at exactly this hour.

Craig: Exactly. He comes back at this hour and the other bad line that says when I fall out of a body I’m weak, he falls out of the body, he’s weak and helpless at the worst time because here comes the bad guy with the gun to chase Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg.

John: Yes. So, the chase goes outside the window up to another level. And I honestly got really confused at the geography because I started feeling like, wait, is this still their apartment? Is this the apartment above them that’s half done up? It felt like the set that I saw originally when they were first moving in. I got a little bit confused about where they actually were in this final sequence.

Craig: I had the same confusion. And I think what’s intended here is that it’s just this building is a lot of those rooms. Like old boarded up rooms. Again, different time in New York when there were just empty lofts available for anybody. But, I think that it was meant to say like, oh no, it’s on a floor above.

So there’s this chase and Tony Goldwyn grabs Whoopi Goldberg and he’s got a gun to her. And I want my money. We already know she doesn’t have it. He doesn’t believe her and he’s going to kill her. And then like Han Solo, here comes Patrick Swayze who has, I guess, gathered up enough of his energy. And he starts slapping Tony Goldwyn around, knocks the gun out of his hand, pushes him backwards. Tony Goldwyn tries to escape, or gets thrown into a window. And, again, I’m going to chase you and then you’re going to get yourself hit by a car —

John: Exactly.

Craig: I’m going to chase Tony Goldwyn and you’re going to get yourself gutted by a falling piece of plat glass which, folks, you really shouldn’t have.

John: You should not have plate glass. There’s a thing we’ve learned in movies. You should not have plate glass.

Craig: Plate glass, super dangerous. You got a put a film on that or replace it with tempered glass. [laughs] But anyway, he dies. He comes out of his body. He sees his friend. Patrick Swayze gives him an “Oh Carl,” like, “Oh, boy, this isn’t go well for you.” And the shadow —

John: The shadow comes and Tony is dragged back by a dolly and then handed over with shadows.

Craig: Dragged back by a dolly, painted over with shadows, and now we get our final moment where Patrick Swayze is okay with going into the light now because he’s done his job. And this is just about the best way to end the movie.

John: Now, it takes a while here. And so I will say that watching this movie again, looking at this ending, so Demi and Whoopi are sort of huddled together. And so Sam comes over. First he talks to Demi. Then he talks to Whoopi. Then he talks to Demi. Then the light comes. And then he goes. And it feels like a stutter step and yet I understand why ultimately they did it. Because you need to wrap up both of those relationships and it feels weird to sort of start with Whoopi.

Craig: Exactly.

John: So you kind of had to do it.

Craig: That was the only way to do it. And, you know what? It was a stutter step but it worked. I mean, there’s a small uncomfortable moment when he turns to Oda Mae and sort of says kind of “I’ll miss you most of all, Scarecrow,” kind of moment. And you think, but your wife. Your almost wife, she’s still there. Why are you talking to Oda Mae, you just met her?

But then he comes back to her and delivers one of the great, I mean, first of all they kiss.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And it’s so gorgeous because you know that they’re not really touching, but they are. And he’s now — now he’s a ghost. He’s not like fake ghost, but he’s like an actual glowy ghost, and she can see him, which is awesome. And they kiss. It’s so romantic and it’s just so right. And they’re committed to being super sentimental about this, which is what it should be.

And then he says this great, great final line, which I just love. “It’s amazing, Molly, the love inside you. You get to take it with you.” Which is a really nice refutation of you can’t take it with you, the idea of the things you can’t take with you, but that you get to take love with you.

And with at line, what he’s saying, and this is why it’s such a great line. Not only is it nice in and of itself, but he’s giving Molly permission and the audience permission to not be sad.

John: Yeah.

Craig: To be happy that he’s going, because he’s taking all this love with him and it’s over. Naturally I feel terrible for whoever the next guy is that has to date the character of Molly Jensen, because how do you beat that?

John: That’s tough.

Craig: It’s tough! But it is the perfect end because he’s giving everybody permission to feel good about the fact that he’s leaving.

John: And he’s walking away into Close Encounters of Third Kind.

Craig: He walks away into Close Encounters of Third Kind, which is appropriate, because the movie is giving that moment dignity. It’s saying this should be awesome because the truth is after all the kooky stuff that’s gone on, we are suggesting that there is some great, beautiful thing waiting for us all. And the movie takes it seriously so that we can take it seriously.

John: Yeah. I agree. And we get the final Demi Moore tears, which are crucial.

Craig: Perfect.

John: Those are perfect. So, this is Ghost. And, you know, it’s so fascinating because I think we’ve — obviously when a movie is this incredibly successful it has an impact that resonates, you know, sort of kind of forever. And we are making movies differently because of this movie.

So, some things you can see in this movie is like, well, that’s obvious, but they weren’t necessarily obvious when Ghost was made.

Craig: Yeah. They’re obvious because Ghost was made. They’re obvious now because Ghost did it. But like I hope that people get a sense from the way we’ve talked about this that there were a hundred ways they could have gone wrong. So, we see what’s right, we don’t see all the ways that it could have been wrong, whether characters weren’t reacting appropriately or at length enough to the moments. Or whether the rules had been discarded. Or whether some scenes had just been sort of on the nose like, here, let me teach you how to move things and not layered in with tragedy and that character being a real character.

All those choices made this thing great. And if there’s a lesson for today, I think it’s this: original movies can make a ton of money.

John: Mm-hmm.

Craig: And this movie was not a book. And it was not a remake. And it was just original to itself and it connected in such a huge way. Romance has been taken over at the box office by YA. And this is an adult romance.

John: Yeah, it is.

Craig: And I would love to see some adult romance come back. I think it’s gorgeous.

John: I would argue that it’s an adult romance, but it’s not — I mean, their love is real and they’re kind of grownups, but they’re also kind of — they’re a little simplified versions of grownups. The same way that the movie feels like there’s not enough people in it. They’re somewhat perfected grownups. I think it’s part of the reason why it is so successful. This feels like a great YA novel before there were great YA novels.

Craig: Yeah, but they’re not teenagers.

John: They’re not teenagers. That’s exactly 100 percent.

Craig: They’re 30 years old in the movie I expect, something like that. They feel like they’re 30 years old. They have jobs and lives. You’re right. They don’t have children. They don’t have friends. They don’t seem to have like — they don’t go to doctor’s appointments or, you know, and they are idealized.

And, you know, it’s funny. As you go back, even 1990 which to you and I, I expect we feel similarly about this, that doesn’t seem like that long ago at all. It is long ago. It’s nearly 25 years ago. And just as movies 25 years before 1990 felt old fashioned and kind of fake, this feels fake in that regard, too. Like they’re not as real as we ask our characters to be now. But unfortunately this overdose of reality has kind of killed romance a little bit in movies.

So, it would be nice to see something like this again, I would think.

John: I agree with you. So, Craig, thank you so much for talking through Ghost with me. This was really fun. It was a good sort of spontaneous suggestion last week. And it’s still a good movie.

Craig: It is. It was fun to watch again. I thought that Jerry and Bruce did great work. The cast did great work. And, by the way, great to see a screenwriter win an Oscar for a movie that at least was partly a comedy.

John: And a movie that was hugely successful. Because so often the screenwriting award kind of goes to this was a really, really good movie that we’re not going to give other awards to, so therefore we’re going to give it to this. So rarely does the most commercially successful movie reward with Best Screenplay.

Craig: Yeah. We used to give Oscars to big Hollywood movies. And now we find that distasteful somehow. We have to give an Oscar to the small Hollywood movie, or the small not-Hollywood movie.

John: Exactly. And we give it to really great movies, but it’s also nice to celebrate great movies that are also huge successes.

Craig: Yeah. Fun. Fun. Good stuff.

John: So that’s our show this week. You can find us on iTunes. Just search for Scriptnotes. While you’re there subscribe and also leave us a comment. We love those. If you would like to listen to all of the back episodes, including the Raiders of the Lost Ark, and The Little Mermaid, and Groundhog Day, you can find those at scriptnotes.net. There’s a subscription for $1.99, the premium subscription, that lets you listen to all of those back episodes and bonus episodes. You can also listen to it on the apps for Android and for iPhone.

I think there’s a new iPhone app coming, which would be great because the current iPhone app is not fantastic, but it’s out there.

If you would like to say something to Craig or I, Craig or me —

Craig: Say something. To Craig or me. To Craig or me.

John: I said that aloud. You can write to Craig. He’s at @clmazin on Twitter. I am @johnaugust. Longer questions are at ask@johnaugust.com.

You can find show notes for the things we talked about at johnaugust.com as well.

store.johnaugust.com is where you need to go if you’re going to get a t-shirt. Because you should get a t-shirt, because why not get a t-shirt.

Craig: Yeah.

John: While you’re there, we still have a few more of the USB drives which now have the first 150 episodes of Scriptnotes on them.

Craig: Damn.

John: You can buy those all at once if you’d like to. Scriptnotes is produced by Stuart Friedel. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. And we have outros every week, so if you want to give us a new outro, just send that to ask@johnaugust.com.

Craig: Oh, yeah, baby.

John: Hooray.

Craig: Woo-hoo. By the way, this movie was edited by Walter Murch.

John: I know! Isn’t that sort of amazing?

Craig: Amazing.

John: Famous for many other things.

Craig: Many, many other things. Great book, In the Blink of an Eye. I believe it’s called In the Blink of an Eye. A great book on editing by Walter Murch.

John: Yes. He’s also one of the first proponents of Final Cut Pro. And so he was one of the first people to cut features, big features, on Final Cut Pro. Craig, thank you so much. We’ll talk to you next week.

Craig: Thank you, John. Bye.

John: Bye.

Links:

• Our episodes on Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Little Mermaid, Frozen and Groundhog Day
• New shirts are available for pre-order now through September 30th in the John August Store
• Get tickets now for October 8th’s live Slate Culture Gabfest with guests John and Craig
• Planet Money’s T-Shirt Project and the Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt web app
• Get premium Scriptnotes access at scriptnotes.net and hear our 1,000th subscriber special
• Ghost on Wikipedia, IMDb, Netflix, Amazon and iTunes
• Ghost on Box Office Mojo
• Reviews by Peter Travers and Roger Ebert
• In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch
• Outro by Scriptnotes editor Matthew Chilelli (send us yours!)