Search Results for: lindelof

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2020/too-much-at-once).

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

**Craig Mazin:** Hi ya’ll. My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 456 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the program we’ll be following up on a bunch of topics we’ve been discussing, include police on screen, assistant pay, short seasons, and restarting production. We’ll also be answering some listener questions assuming we have time because we’ve got a lot on the Workflowy here, Craig.

**Craig:** Let’s just mulch through this. Let’s go with expedience.

**John:** We will speed with heed. But no matter what happens in our bonus segment we will be talking about computers. I’m curious what Craig’s initial experience was with computers, what he’s using right now, and what he wishes to use in the future.

**Craig:** Yeah, sure. I love listening to a computer talk about computers. [laughs]

**John:** Ah, it’s good stuff.

**Craig:** Beep-boop-boop.

**John:** Boop-boop-boop-boop.

**Craig:** Beep-boop-boop-boop-boop.

**John:** Last week on this program we were talking mostly about police on screen, police on TV. And we covered a lot, but a thing we didn’t talk very much about was some of the shows that are doing an interesting or better job of depicting police on screen.

**Craig:** Yeah. Which is always good to call out people that are doing well.

**John:** Yeah. So I’ll link to an article by Bethonie Butler in the Washington Post where she singles out some shows that had good approaches to it. Some of them are not classically police shows. But she mentions Atlanta, Blackish, New Girl. Obviously people talk about The Wire, which wasn’t focused exclusively on police but sort of everyone around the community.

Craig, you did a whole podcast on Watchmen with Damon Lindelof. I thought that was a fascinating depiction of police and policing.

**Craig:** Yup. Very much so. I mean, it’s interesting. Every show that will touch on policing and the community and any issues regarding police brutality and specifically as it interfaces with the Black community is going to be scrutinized. And I think that’s fair. When you make – let’s call it, I think sometimes people misuse the word brave when it comes to culture. We’re not actually going in and facing down bullets or anything. We’re making shows and things. But when you are being let’s just call it creatively ambitious you’re going to open yourself up to scrutiny.

And it was interesting watching over the last couple of weeks as some people attacked Watchmen, which was curious to me because I thought they actually did quite a brilliant job. But then again that’s how things go. I mean, everybody kind of looks at things from different points of view. I thought that one of the things that was great about Watchmen, at least I thought, was that quite a number of the writers were people of color. So, you at least felt like you were getting this accurate representation of different viewpoints as opposed to just the standard Hollywood “and now white people explain everything” kind of point of view.

So, big fan of that show, and all shows, but you know, I think we should all be aware that as we tackle these issues that there’s going to be pushback all the time. And that’s healthy.

**John:** Yeah. And I also want to acknowledge that we probably aren’t talking about a lot of shows that really did try to some of these things and just never caught on. Like public defender shows or other things that were trying to take a very different approach and didn’t work because they got drowned out by police procedurals. And I’m sure there are a tremendous number of conversations happening in executive suites and writer’s rooms around town as these shows start up for another season about like can they change, will they change.

And it’s just really difficult based on how a one-hour procedural is set up to imagine what the better version of that show could be. Because as we talked about it’s a problem-solving show. And because it’s a problem-solving show you want to end the episode with a success. And you want things to happen, not not-happen. You don’t want to have interventions that mean that there is no gun fight.

**Craig:** Whereas of course in reality the problem doesn’t end. It is not solved. And all of these – anyone making a show, I think, especially if they’re in any kind of procedural format is going to also face a reasonable suspicion that they’re doing it cynically. No one wants to imagine that anyone is going to try and capitalize off of something. And yet, you know, Hollywood makes culture and it follows culture. So, it’s a tricky one.

You want to try and now make art that addresses the way we’re thinking about policing and how police function in our communities, but you don’t want to be seen as somebody that’s just doing it because it’s “the hot thing.” And I have to say I don’t have a lot of faith that that won’t happen. I think that is going to happen. And I think it will be interesting to watch people react.

**John:** In a strange way I feel like American culture in the last two weeks to a month as the discussion has focused on what do we actually really want the police to do, so this discussion of defund the police, or sort of how we’re going to change and reform how policing works is that I think Americans would like to see police actually do the kinds of things that they are sort of limited to doing on their on screen depictions. Which is to solve crimes. To stop murders. To protect people who are about to be killed by some outside force, and not do all of the other things which we sort of put on the police to be responsible for.

**Craig:** Well, you know, much like as is the case with the medical profession, what we see on television is not what the average day in a medical professional’s life is. And that’s because we wouldn’t want to watch that. It’s boring.

Reality and I would argue responsible, good, careful, thoughtful policing in a community should be boring. Meaning it’s not exciting to watch. It’s not titillating. You’re not eating popcorn. You’re not leaning forward. It’s supposed to have a different function. It’s not supposed to be dramatic. So when we make drama out of these things we are hashing it up a bit automatically. It’s an interesting – this is an interesting conversation that we are just starting to have which is how our culture interfaces with reality to make things either better or worse. Hollywood tends to over-emphasize or imagine how much impact it could have on the world in terms of good.

I think it under-emphasizes how much impact it can have in terms of bad. And I’m going to be watching this discussion carefully. This is an interesting one. And a necessary one.

**John:** Absolutely. So policing is only the first part of the criminal justice system. We got a letter in from a listener who works in the second half of the criminal justice system. Do you want to read what Lisa Steele wrote?

**Craig:** Yeah. Lisa writes, “I’m a special public defender for Massachusetts and Connecticut working in appeals. Yes, the public defender offices are busy. And, yes, most cases are resolved by plea, not trial. But if a client says “I didn’t do it” or “I want a trial” their attorney will do their damnedest to get them a fair trial. There are huge institutional roadblocks to overcome. But I’d be hard-pressed to see a public defender unhappy about taking a case to trial if there’s any hope of success. The ones with no hope, yes, we’ll try to persuade the client that trial is a bad idea.

“I’d love to see a dramatic series with an ethical public defender or a criminal defense attorney at the center. Better Call Saul is entertaining but does perpetuate the sleazy lawyer trope.”

So, what do you think about that, John?

**John:** Well, I think we have many listeners who could rise to this challenge. So it’s the question of what does the show centered around a public defender look like? And I know there have probably been shows every season developed along this line. Different pilots that have been shot. Some things that have gone to series and I have not seen them, so I apologize to listeners who said like, “I had that show.” But this does feel like a moment at which the right show, the smart show that did this could break out. And so it’s the way that Scandal broke out. The way that you have a show that this is your central character but there’s something else there so that it’s on a weekly basis. We’re not tuning in just for the public defender of it all, but for who these characters are.

**Craig:** Yeah. I have no doubt that Ms. Steele is correct about where she is working. One thing to be aware of is that our country does not have any kind of unified or therefore equitable justice code across the United States. Obviously that is true for federal statutes. But local, state-level, different laws. Different functions. Different ways of administering justice.

So for instance there’s a story in the third season of the Serial podcast about a public defender whose client is innocent. He knows she’s innocent. She knows she’s innocent. She wants to go to trial. And the DA is saying, “No.” And the DA offers a plea bargain and the public defender in one of those rare moments says, “No. She didn’t do it and we’re going to trial.” Just as Ms. Steele is describing here.

But in Cleveland, where this occurs, public defenders receive their assignments and therefore their salaries from the judges. So a case comes in, the public defender charges somebody, the judge assigns a public defender. And if you want to go to trial you’re going to have to answer to the judge who does not want to conduct a trial, because it’s too much work. So, what happens in that case? The public defender says, “I want a trial,” and one of the bailiffs comes to him and says, “The judge wants to see you.”

And the judge basically says, “What are you doing. Just, no.” [laughs] “Don’t do this.” And it’s not that you can’t, it’s more like quietly implied if you do maybe I just won’t be picking your name out of the hat anymore. And there goes your salary. There goes your livelihood.

Well, that’s insane.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s just a terrible system. So, we have problems. Something like that I think is just an easy one. Like we should get rid of that. But easier said than done as our entire nation is fragmented into 50 different codes. And then within those 50 codes lots of other different codes.

So, I think Lisa is right. And I also think that in other places what she’s saying is not exactly as clean as that.

**John:** Yeah. And you’ve listened to the Serial podcast which is based on True Stories, I can imagine though if this were put into a fictional context we would not necessarily believe it. Like I feel like it’s only television true story that would get me to take any action to say that that is outrageous and that has to change. If I just saw it happening in a TV show I don’t know if I would believe it in a way.

**Craig:** You need it to be based on facts, right.

**John:** Yeah. Dramatizing it is just not enough.

**Craig:** Dramatizing it is not enough. We just presume that drama is drama. And we presume that because the characters that we’re seeing are not real people. So, obviously nothing that happens to Jimmy on Better Call Saul is real because Jimmy is not real. It is a great show, though. I do love the show.

**John:** Cool. Now, Craig, I just want to remind you and remind our listeners that behind the scenes of all of this there’s still Coronavirus. There’s still a pandemic raging.

**Craig:** Oh boy is there ever. Yeah.

**John:** There is. So as we’re recoding this, middle of June, LA is reporting its highest number of cases ever. Deaths are up. And, yet, we’re opening up the town. We’re doing new stuff. So, it’s a challenging time.

So, personal news here. I got my first coronavirus test and antibody test this past week. This was the classic swab up the nose for the coronavirus and the antibody test is a finger prick. The antibody test, right there they can give you preliminary results, and then the afternoon, like a couple hours later, they give you the official results. So I did not have antibodies for coronavirus. I thought it unlikely but possible because I was in Korea for Big Fish right as the outbreak was happening. And my husband and daughter did get sick while we were there. So, that seemed possible. But all of us did not get coronavirus. So, we are like most Americans, did not get coronavirus.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, so good and bad news. You can still get it. Although, of course, people who have gotten it can also still get it. We’re not quite sure how long that immunity lasts. It appears that our country in its absolute vacuum of leadership has just said, “Meh, I guess people are just going to keep dying.” Because we are selfish. I don’t know how else to put it. We’re selfish. And we want what we want. We meaning the general public seems to just want to do what they want to do. And they’re selfish. And also they’re not thinking straight.

And people are going to die. So, the numbers are going to go back up. The numbers were going to go back up anyway in the fall. So this is already bad news. And there’s no question that the size of the protests and the lack of social distancing between protestors is going to exacerbate the problem. In no way am I saying that we shouldn’t have been protesting, but that’s just – you know what shouldn’t have happened was police murdering a guy. That would have been preferable.

So, it’s bad. And it’s going to get worse. No question.

**John:** So, when we first talked about this topic it was a bonus segment if you can remember that. Like way back in the day. That’s a bonus topic. We’ll talk about the coronavirus, this thing that could potentially happen.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And it’s funny going back to think through what my assumptions were then. So I wanted to record some of my assumptions right now just so six months from now I can listen back and say like, oh my god, I was so incredibly wrong. So, the assumptions going into this epidemic was that handwashing was super important. We all learned to wash our hands for 20 seconds. To maintain six-feet of social distancing. To be scrupulous about wiping down surfaces. And some people were doing like mail quarantines and all this stuff. And eventually the instruction came out like, oh, we said don’t worry about masks but, yeah, now do wear a mask. Masks are good.

I would say my assumptions right now, and this is again middle of June 2020, I think we’re going to find out that masks are actually incredibly important. And that we should have done those from the start and that that is probably more important than the other things I’ve put on my list in terms of keeping this thing from spreading. I think we’re figuring out that it’s more of a thing that is spreading through the air rather than you pick it up off of things.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But that’s my guess. That’s my guess right now.

**Craig:** I think that is – we can upgrade that from a guess to an educated guess. And I think in part we were told so much about handwashing and wiping down surfaces simply because there were no masks to give. So, I’m fairly certain that people like Dr. Fauci looked around and said, “OK, the number one thing we should do is the number one thing they’re doing in Asia already which is wear masks to prevent airborne transmission.” And then someone said to him, “We don’t have any. And the few that we do have we desperately need to conserve for medical professionals.” At which point we were told other things. Part of – and then we get frustrated. Why are we being told “yes mask, no mask, no mask, yes?” Because we screwed up.

Because we didn’t have this. We should have a national stockpile of personal protective equipment. Of course we should. We spend billions of dollars on a single jetfighter. And we don’t have masks to give people? God, we’re stupid right now.

So, I think you’re absolutely right. Now that masks are plentiful they will be crucial. If you wear a mask and other people wear a mask your chances of contracting COVID do reduce dramatically.

**John:** Yeah. And it just basically makes sense. The simplest description I’ve seen of this is the someone pissing description. So, if two people are standing next to each other and they’re naked and one of them starts urinating the other person will get sprayed by urine. If that person who is not pissing has pants on they’re less likely to get wet. But if the person who is pissing is wearing pants that urine is not going anywhere. And that’s really the simplest description of why you wear a mask. It stops it from getting out of your body so easily.

**Craig:** I would have used the example of someone – it’s like if someone were sneezing as opposed to somebody sneezing with a mask. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah, but I think pissing is more fun.

**Craig:** Listen, the fact that we started with two nude people–

**John:** Yeah, got to start with two nude people.

**Craig:** You start with two nude people and then one of them is just like, “Here we go. It’s happening.” I love it.

**John:** It’s going to happen. So, again, the backdrop for why we’re talking about this on this podcast is the entire production of film and TV has shut down because of coronavirus and now there’s – well, Craig, it’s all back.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** The governor put out guidelines this past week.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And I’ll just read you the guidelines. “Music, TV, and film production may resume in California recommended no sooner than June 12, 2020,” a couple days ago, “and subject to approval by county public health officers within jurisdictions of operations following the review of local epidemiological data, including cases per 100,000 population, rate of test positivity, and local preparedness to support a healthcare surge, vulnerable populations, contract tracing, and testing.” Wow, that was a long sentence. I can’t believe I got through it.

**Craig:** The government tends to not truncate their clauses.

**John:** No. “To reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission, productions, cast, crew and other industry workers should abide by safety protocols agreed by labor and management which may be further enhanced by county public health officers. Back office staff and management should adhere to office workspace guidelines published by the California Department of Public Health and the California Department of Industrial Relations to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission.”

That just says not a whole hell of a lot. The interesting part here is you should work with safety protocols agreed to by labor and management, so let’s talk about labor and management and safety protocols and what we know.

**Craig:** Well, to start with the fact that the state government is saying you can resume film production doesn’t mean that it’s going to. And the biggest concern of course is with actors. Everyone on a set can be – people on a set can wear a hazmat suit if they want, except for the actors, who can’t even wear a facemask, or gloves, or keep any kind of social distancing. In fact, they may need to kiss each other.

This is a huge issue for them and they are going to drive this. There is a whitepaper – I’m still stuck on your peeing guys – so there’s a whitepaper from the AMPTP that was done in conjunction with every union except the Writers Guild here in town. And it’s about how to do this all safely. Of course, writers will also be required to be on set for televised work. It’s going to be driven almost entirely I think again by the actors. When the actors agree to do this it will be done. This also may start happening ad hoc. In other words the actors union is likely to say, if they haven’t already, “It’s up to the cast.” And then it’s about the cast.

Now, that’s tricky because this is people’s livelihood. This is their income. And when you start to say to people are you willing to trade your safety for your livelihood that puts them in a difficult spot. Especially when they aren’t what we think of – when we think of actors we think of George Clooney, or Meryl Streep. But in fact, you know, most working actors are making a living wage. Meaning they need the wage to live.

**John:** Yeah. When you’re number 13 on the call sheet you don’t have a lot of leverage there.

**Craig:** No. And so you may be willing to put yourself in danger. That’s difficult. And I sympathize with the position that SAG/AFTRA is in. Because on the one hand they don’t want their members to feel jammed into trading safety for employment. On the other hand if they ban it entirely they are also then curtailing the economic welfare of their own members in a way that may be just as detrimental.

This is a tough one. And I think probably one of those situations where there is not a perfect answer at all.

**John:** No. So let’s talk about the solutions that are being proposed and sort of what the general areas of discussion are. So we’ll link to the AMPTP paper. We’ll link to Lionsgate put out their guidelines. And it largely tracks with what our friends who are showrunners are discussing with their production entities about how to get back into production. So, it’s a lot of testing. It is a recognition that actors are masked until they can’t be masked and then you are keeping as few people on set as possible. You are maintaining social distance.

We’ve talked before on the podcast about French hours which is a limited timeframe. It also skips over lunch. There’s different ways to do that kind of limited timeframe. But that feels like a good idea to get rid of that break where everyone is congregating together. And also just get you off that set sooner.

Some of these things are just kind of frustratingly bullet pointy. The lines get things a little bit more of a template, a little bit more of a this is how we’re going to do it. But it’s really difficult. One of the things I found fascinating about the Lionsgate document was talking about what to do when you’re on location. And like if you’re going to a set that’s a practical location how do you know that that set itself is actually safe on a COVID level. It’s really complicated.

So the shows that can film on a soundstage that would normally be sitcoms but you just don’t bring in the audience, that feels much more controllable. It’s the things that do need to be out there in the world that are going to be challenging.

**Craig:** Yeah. And there are about six of those left? So most stuff is going to be done in a way that is challenging. And, by the way, even a sitcom set, all you need is one person to just start coughing and that’s it. And, again, all of this, no matter how much ink is spilled and no matter how many bullet points are dashed off and whitepapers are printed out, the virus doesn’t give a damn and will do what it does. And we are living with it now and like you and I said I think this is pretty safe to say this is going to get worse before it gets better. I do feel like we are in for some more trouble.

And until there is a reliable safe and effective vaccine this is kind of how it’s going to be.

**John:** Yeah. Before we close out this topic I do want to circle back to this idea of protests and sort of mass gathering. I, too, was really nervous when I saw a bunch of people together. What gave me some heartening was that when I saw these mass protests I saw a bunch of people in masks. And that made me feel better about that than a bunch of folks not wearing masks and sort of protesting against wearing masks in other parts of the country. So, including Orange County which is right next door.

**Craig:** Orange County, they are nuts.

**John:** So, it will be hard to suss out exactly to what degree protests were involved versus the general easing of restrictions. But individually I think we need to be really thoughtful about – like the description of a risk budget. How much risk is it appropriate for you to take given your circumstance and who is around you? And really figure out ways to mitigate that risk and not spend that risk budget when you don’t need to.

**Craig:** I don’t know if you saw this video. There’s an amazing video of a Karen in Orange County. I don’t know how else to say it. She’s a Karen. She gets up at some sort of city hall meeting where they were talking about imposing a requirement for masks in public spaces, which they should. And her argument against it was that god, so this is already great, god had given her the ability to remove carbon dioxide from her body by breathing out. And a mask would make her breathe the carbon dioxide back in.

And I thought it’s rare that someone could say something and every part of it is wrong. Every single part.

**John:** If she were to write it down the punctuation would be wrong. That’s just how wrong it is.

**Craig:** Everything. It’s just like, god? God? I mean…

**John:** All right, Craig, I think we deserve some good news. So let’s move onto our next bit of follow up. A few episodes back we asked our listeners, hey, if you were a previous Three Page Challenge entrant who we talked about your entry on the show we’re curious what’s up with you. So write in and give us an update. And so we had an update this week from Ashley Sanders. Let’s take a listen.

**Ashley Sanders:** Hi John. Hi Craig. I’ve just listened to Episode 449 of the podcast. I’m a few weeks behind because of lockdown. And you were asking about any follow up from people who had been on the Three Page Challenge. My TV pilot 419 was on the challenge about three years ago and you were both ludicrously nice about it.

After you discussed it on the show I got some [unintelligible] from TV companies over in the States. I’m in the UK. Sent it over and then panicked. I realized I didn’t know what I was doing and suddenly thought I might need someone to protect my interests. So it gave me the kick in the pants I needed to call an agency.

An agent read the script and [unintelligible] signed me. The most wonderful agent has been so proactive. My career has since – I couldn’t wish for a better agent. And I wouldn’t have made that phone call if it wasn’t for Scriptnotes and the Three Page Challenge. I’m now writing a couple of movies I wouldn’t be writing if I hadn’t made that call off the back of being on the challenge. 419 got optioned by a great UK indie super smart, developed it further, and ended up with an absolutely killer product.

Unfortunately we failed to find a home for it in the UK as the show is a little high concept. It’s currently joined with a US company and will hopefully get made.

So, really your challenge was responsible for giving me the shot in the arm to jumpstart my career. So, thank you. I can’t thank you guys enough. From me and everyone else out there like me please keep doing what you’re doing. It’s unbelievable.

**John:** Well hooray. Congratulations Ashely. We are looking forward to seeing this project and other projects. Listen, I am glad that your being on Scriptnotes gave you some exposure. I don’t want to claim any more credit than that. You clearly were a good writer. You were a good writer when we read you. Someone else would have discovered that you are a good writer as well.

It sounds like you’re doing the right things to keep moving forward. And even when you have setbacks in the UK figuring out a way to do that same project here is good. So, again, it sounds like this one thing you wrote is attracting some attention. But you’re also focused on what else you could write and how to get hired writing other things. That’s exactly what you should be doing.

**Craig:** Yeah. I feel like at best what we’re doing is maybe speeding along something that would have happened anyway. That’s the most credit I’m willing to give us. But we do love hearing this because, you know, we’re doing this pointlessly. [laughs] I mean, most of the time I must admit I’m just doing it pointlessly. But then again sometimes every now and again you’ll see like, oh yes, there is in fact a point that you are impacting people. And even if while we’re talking to – how many people listen to our show now?

**John:** Oh, like 50,000 a week.

**Craig:** 50,000 people a week. Even if five of those 50,000 people a week are going to end up being professional screenwriters, I’m glad that we’re talking to those five. Even more glad I hope that we’re bringing in some other people that may have not considered doing it and now are. So that’s always lovely to think.

So, I guess the point is that Ashley Sanders has proven that we guarantee success for you. [laughs]

**John:** Oh my, yes.

**Craig:** Statistics.

**John:** Yeah, statistics.

**Craig:** 100% of people that wrote us about this have gotten jobs.

**John:** Oh, good stuff. One core constituency of our listenership are assistants. Assistants in the film and television industry. And over the last year we’ve been talking a lot about assistants and particularly assistant pay in this town and how low it is. And how it needs to improve. And we made some progress on that. We actually got some major employers to raise their rates and actually start conversations about how to be paid better and really what people should be thinking about as their minimums. And then a pandemic hit. And so a lot has changed.

So, to explain a little bit about sort of how assistants work here and the different kinds of assistants, on set we talk about PAs. PAs generally have no union, but they’re often reporting to the AD which does have a union at the DGA. But in writer’s rooms and people who are just working for a writer like a showrunner we’re really talking about sort of classically two jobs. There’s the assistant who is taking notes in the room and a PA type who is running and getting the lunch order. And we talked a lot about the lunch order on the show and people not paying the PA back for lunch order orders and stuff. Those are classically two functions you would need to have happen.

One of the strange things about this pandemic is as all of the writer’s room stuff have become virtual those writer PAs who were getting the lunch order, there’s no lunch order anymore. Like that’s a whole big part of the job gone. But there’s still a lot of need for someone to be taking notes and sort of organizing things. And so that’s been a challenge. And a lot of the virtual rooms that I’m hearing from, they basically just got rid of one job entirely and now they just have the one person taking notes.

**Craig:** Yeah. Like many segments of the population assistants have been impacted significantly and very negatively by the shutdown. It does seem like when these things happen unfairly it’s the folks at the bottom of the earning pyramid who take the biggest hit.

I have heard and seen with my own two eyes honorable, decent, good people at the top of the pyramid who have gone out of their way and made personal sacrifices to ensure the health and welfare of the people at the bottom of that economic pyramid. I like seeing that. It does happen. I don’t want people to think that this is just a town where rich people mouth slogans and then give nobody a dime. That’s not what’s happening. People are being gracious. Sometimes. [laughs]

There are some people who are not. And it would be great if the multinational corporations with hundreds of billions of dollars in market value did it anyway. But they don’t.

**John:** Now, Craig, as I introduce the topic this is how long we’ve been in this state of emergency that I forgot that at the very start of the pandemic you and I helped raise like a half million dollars to pay support staff.

**Craig:** We did do that.

**John:** I completely forgot that was a thing we did. And so–

**Craig:** We did that.

**John:** Those checks went out and those people got paid a little bit more. They’ve been getting unemployment insurance in many cases which is fantastic, which is great. But now stuff is starting up again and it’s challenging for these assistants, many of whom are aspiring writers, to be employed properly. So, I had Megana reach out to her assistant boards and her contacts to sort of get some feedback about what’s actually happening. Do you want to start with this first one, anonymous, who wrote in?

**Craig:** Sure. Anonymous writes, “There’s been some chatter among assistants that even though the bulk of writer’s rooms plan on working remotely indefinitely, some are planning on meeting in person now that production is starting back. I’ve seen a few posts in which assistants are being put in a position where they must weigh the risk of going back to work, especially PAs, who will have to expose themselves while picking up lunch and groceries.

“I’ve also seen job postings looking for drivers and personal assistants. One of the posters even commented that their boss was ‘breaking away from social distancing’ as they start preproduction and are scouting locations. With studios and production companies impacted by the shutdown, they’re offering assistants even less pay while asking assistants to potentially risk their lives.”

Well, I certainly don’t like the less pay part. I mean, if you’re going to ask people to risk their lives you’ve got to at least give them what they were being paid before. Good lord.

**John:** Yeah. There’s so many elements at play here. So part of that is I think a thing that’s been happening since the pandemic began which is that we offload our individual risk onto someone else. It’s like someone else who is delivering our food to us is taking the risk for us. And that’s a whole complicated set of issues. And I think the change here is that these assistants who were staying home are now sort of being put into that role of being the person who goes out and gets the thing and brings it to a place and is absorbing some of that risk for the showrunner, for the other writers in that room.

But really you can generalize this second part of like, OK, if we are going to start getting together in person that is going to increase our risk overall. And that risk may be disproportionate for different people in that room because some people might be immunocompromised or have someone in their family who is immunocompromised. And it’s a bigger gamble for certain people than others and it’s really uncomfortable to say that in a room.

And just as we said 13th on the call sheet for actors, there’s going to naturally be kind of a hierarchy of writers in that room. And some people who would be confident speaking out if they were the co-EP wouldn’t speak out if they were the staff writer or story editor.

**Craig:** This has always been the situation, right? And we’re as an industry trying to improve things. Assistants and people who are entry level who are struggling to either get or keep these very small number of desirable jobs have always been put in these situations where they were exploited.

And there’s different kinds of exploitation. And as an industry we are trying to improve kinds of exploitation. I mean, the fact that everybody used to say the phrase “casting couch” like it was a goof and now we understand that just the words themselves are referring to a very serious crime is a sign of how we are improving, one would hope.

But then there’s stuff like this, which is new. This was not a problem. Hollywood in the ‘60s didn’t have a COVID problem where PAs were coughing and dying because idiots made them get lunch in ways that were unsafe. So, we have this new avenue of potential exploitation that we have to struggle with and we have to come to grips with. And, again, this is not going to be easily solved until there is a vaccine. It’s just not.

**John:** Now thinking through this, that assistant who is running out to get the lunch order every day, like they were assuming some risk because they were driving in LA traffic. There was some risk that was naturally there. It was lower than what we’re talking about with COVID-19, but there was some risk there. And I guess we really weren’t thinking about that risk that that assistant was taking.

I do feel like we’re getting closer to understanding what the risks are for going to a place and picking up a thing and leaving a place that is pretty secure the way that our food handling has seemed to have gotten. So, I’m concerned for that person who has to do it, but I’m more concerned about sort of the novel situations, or the situations where like well because Chris is already doing that thing and picking up the lunch order we can also send him to do this or to do that or to do this third thing and just increase his exposure and increase his risk. That’s troubling for me.

**Craig:** Yeah. And there’s a continued possibility of risk shifting, so if the PAs on a show say we’re not comfortable going to get these lunches then the show will say, great, we’ll just use Grub Hub. And so those people will now be getting lunches. Some humans will be getting the lunches. And, yeah. So it’s going to be trouble. There’s going to be trouble for a while. And I think the least that we could do, that we must do, is if we cannot solve the state of safety because the world is inherently unsafe, we have to at least compensate people fairly and decently, or we are compounding the problem. We have to. We can’t offer assistants less pay. That’s insane.

**John:** Yeah. So, Megana also added to our Workflowy a list of other questions and concerns that she was hearing from assistants as she was talking with them. So, I’ll just sort of read through these.

Is everyone getting tested prior to showing up to work?

Are people isolating outside of work?

Will assistants get hazard pay?

How will safety protocols be enforced?

How are we communicating about sick leave?

What are the daily systems in place to check how everyone is feeling on set or in the room?

Will someone be taking people’s temperatures?

If someone isn’t feeling well how should they communicate that? Are we still paying that person?

Are we requiring everyone to wear masks and gloves? What about people who are already choosing not to? How will this be enforced?

And, finally, many assistants don’t have insurance. Most of the people are not 871 script coordinators. So, are we paying them some sort of healthcare stipend because of the situation?

**Craig:** Well, in terms of that last one they already should be paying them that.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** These are great questions. And much as we were referring earlier to the United States which has this uniform federal code and then four billion different state and county and municipal regulations, so too are our businesses fragmented among various networks, studios, and then inside of those, shows, and production companies, all of which are going to probably be approaching things in their own way. There is no simple answer to this. I mean, ideally you answer these questions moving the dial as far to the right as you can on the safety-ometer. Yes, everyone should.

I mean, I’m not sure about gloves because there’s an argument that gloves actually make things worse.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But masks – I mean, if it were me, if I were running a writer’s room, I would require masks. If we’re all sitting around the table talking at each other for hours, yes, I would require masks. Yes. I think taking temperatures in the morning, checking in with a thermometer is a great idea. Yes, if people got sick they should get sick pay. Yes, everyone working in your office should have health insurance. Those all seem like good policies to put in place.

**John:** Yeah. Also I feel like we’re in California. You can be outside. Try not to be in a room for a super long period of time with people if you can possibly do that.

**Craig:** Now everyone has skin cancer, so good job.

**John:** Tents. Tents. They’ll have tents.

**Craig:** Ah, tents, yes.

**John:** Finally, Charlie asks, “Are there any resources that can help people navigate working remotely? I think a lot of what’s happening is that writers don’t like the online boards. We all bought laptops so now one has a monitor that can see what’s actually happening in the room. So what software are rooms using and liking and can we share best tips and practices?”

This is a request out for if you’re listening to this right now and your room is working really well because of something you’ve discovered that’s working great, write in to us and let Megana know what you’re using and we’ll share this on the next episode or the episode after. Because different rooms are trying different things in terms of duplicating the experience of what would be on the whiteboard, what would be cards, how stuff is working. Some people are using Zoom. Some people are using other stuff. So next week or the week after we’ll do a segment where we talk about what writer’s rooms are using and liking because we’ve got to share this information.

**Craig:** Yup. No question.

**John:** Cool. So next up is equity and inclusion. Every year the Writers Guild publishes a report that shows who is working in town in terms of writers and the demographics of those writers who are working. And so we’ve talked about this I think every year of the podcast. The report came out this last week. It got overshadowed because of everything else happening in the world. But there was some interesting stuff in here. Craig, have you had a chance to take a look?

**Craig:** Yeah. This is what I have traditionally called the Bad News Report where we read it and go, yup, more bad news. But it’s not all bad news this time. There is clearly a positive trend going on. So, we’ll just sort of do the top line stuff here. The most encouraging statistics are along the axis of gender. So currently television writers for the 2019/2020 TV season, so reflecting what we just had, it broke down 44% women, 56% men. Is that parity? No. Women, however, are up 5%. And those numbers were not anywhere near 44% ten years ago. This is a really encouraging trend. I think we’re doing excellent work there. And I have no reason to think that that trend won’t continue. We should be able to get to gender parity in rooms.

Let’s talk about race. People of color at 35% and white at 65%. That’s also not disastrous given the actual racial demographics of the United States of America. It’s not perfect by any stretch. Good news though. Up, again, 5%.

And this is an area where I think we can actually do better than the demographics of the United States because we’ve done so much worse than the demographics of the United States. So, I think this is an area where we do need to aggressively not worry about the scale per se and matching. I think it would be nice to see that number actually also at 50%.

**John:** Absolutely. And we will link to this whole report. But if I’m talking about a page number it’s from this PDF which will be linked here. Page 11 talks about TV writers by level and that’s where you can see where there are still some glaring disparities, particularly in race in terms of as you move up the ranks from staff writer to showrunner the percentage of people of color in those different roles drops. Drops after like supervising producer. It starts to slip a lot.

Some of this is just the climbing the ladder issue. It’s a number of years and credits that sort of move you up that ladder. But as we’ve talked about on the show before sometimes the ladder in the pipeline is kind of broken. So there’s a real question of like with time would this get fixed? Or is there something more fundamental that needs to happen to make sure that writers of color can move all the way up to the top of showrunners?

**Craig:** I’m sure it’s a combination of both. So, on the one hand you would expect this that there’s going to be a lagging effect because as people enter the industry they enter at entry levels. And so over time in theory if the advancement scheme is fair then those numbers will improve. If it is not fair, those numbers will not improve. Or we’ll be lagging behind the process in the entry level stuff. So we’ve got to keep any eye on it. In general we know that the more people of color in positions of leadership the more likely it is that more people of color will then be promoted to positions of leadership.

We’ve always had a vicious cycle that’s been downwards, and now we’re hoping for sort of a positive spiral going upwards.

**John:** A virtuous cycle.

**Craig:** A virtuous cycle. Now, all of that applies to television. However, in the screenwriting business, so features AKA the Bad News Business. Not good. So, OK, plus side of things, 4% more women employed as screenwriters in 2019. 2% more people of color employed as screenwriters in 2019.

Bad part. 27% of screenwriters were women. Only 27%. And only 20% of hired screenwriters were people of color.

Now, some things to think about, aside from the fact that that’s horrendous. The job market in screenwriting, of course, continues to sort of be retract-y and regressive. And not as attractive honestly as the television business. So, one consideration is that when there is an unfair system people who are traditionally discriminated against are going to go to the avenues where they are being less discriminated against. So there is some sort of natural movement there.

It is only, therefore, more evidence that the way people are hired in the feature business is just not good. It’s just not good. And I don’t know why it has gone up slightly. I can’t get too excited about it because when you look at the numbers of employment, I mean, these percentages are a little bit of a lie. When we say 2% more people of color were hired as screenwriters in 2019 that 2% is applied against a very small number compared to the 5% increase of people of color in television, where the base is much bigger.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, just in sheer numbers that 2% more people of color could mean four people. It’s just not great.

**John:** Now so one thing I do want to single out here, we have a perception that the feature business is falling and that few people are working in feature, but that’s actually not the case. There’s more writers employed in features this past year than the year before. There is actually an uptick because even as the studios have sort of compressed Netflix and Amazon and other people have come online. So there’s been more folks working in features than before.

But you look at sort of the work that you’re actually doing and our own experience we’ve talked about so much on this podcast is that it is structurally not very appealing to work in features. And if you are a young writer of color who is making a choice between like do I want to work on this TV show, or do I want to work on this feature given that I’m going to be doing so much free work on this feature. I’m going to be – I don’t know when I’m going to get paid for this feature.

**Craig:** It’s also certainly true that there are writers of color who want to work only in the feature business and who are struggling and one of the institutional issues you have with the screenwriting business is that it’s not room-based. It’s individual-based. And when it’s individual-based the compounding factor of experience dramatically multiplies.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So you and I have written dozens and dozens of screenplay. We have been hired many, many times over the course of 20 years. So, when someone is looking for somebody to write a screenplay, at the very least they know that you and I have done it a whole lot. And the experience gap is enormous because there is no room. There is no entry-level position. There is no ladder. There’s nothing to climb.

They will continue – even as they increase the number of jobs available the pool of people that are experienced will dwindle. And so you have a lot of repeat business among a narrowing group of people and that will always, given the way that the businesses function, benefit white men. So, there has to essentially be an overt effort to get people experienced. And I was talking about this the other day here in the office. And it’s interesting you have to give people the right to stumble and fail. You’re not going to be able to get experienced writers of color in the feature business if you don’t give them the same right to stumble and fail that the feature business has always given white guys.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It just needs to happen. You just need to absorb it. Because you’ll hear people, “Oh well we tried, you know, we tried hiring but then this person didn’t do a great job because they’ve never done it before.” And I’m like, mm-hmm.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** Do it again. Do it again.

**John:** As we’ve talked about on the show the first thing I was hired to write I got through three official drafts on it. So the movie never happened, but I got to actually get paid for multiple drafts in ways that new writers never get these days. And so one-step deals and the lack of a guaranteed second step creates this impossible situation where that writer is never going to be able to deliver the thing that makes everyone happy, that everyone has a good experience with. They’re not going to get the experience of how to do multiple drafts and how to sort of work through a feature in development.

**Craig:** That’s such a good point. And that’s exactly why we need to get this clause through negotiations and the companies need to do this. Give writers earning under a certain small multiple of scale a guaranteed second step. You need to. It’s the only way you’re going to learn. You can’t learn writing one script and then rewriting that script for some dopey producer who has no clue. You work for the studio and the need the ability to be trained through experience. It’s the only job in Hollywood where most people who do it have never actually done the other half of it. The first half is writing a script. The second half is writing a script that gets turned into a movie. And working on the movie as it’s in production.

We need to get more people who are not just white men into those slots and the only way to do it is to increase the on-the-job training. Because there’s no room to follow.

**John:** I agree. All right. So that is our quick look at the equity and inclusion report. But there’s actually a lot more in here, so do follow through the link in the show notes to see sort of what’s there and where progress has been made, but where progress is sorely lacking.

We’re going to skip over our little bit here about short seasons. I will say that short seasons are related to the problem of experience and sort of developing experience in television. A writer I follow on Twitter was saying that like by the time he was running his own show he had worked on 100 episodes of TV. And no one can work on 100 episodes of TV easily these days with so many short seasons, or get the longevity of things. So, I feel like short seasons are a related factor to sort of the challenge of equity and inclusion in the TV business.

**Craig:** Yeah. And they’re not going anywhere. And they will become the new norm because also creatively speaking I would argue that creatively short seasons are why television is producing the best work it has ever produced. But, yeah, there are costs.

**John:** So one thing I do have some hope about is that as I see people who have big deals at streamers and other places, I’m thinking of the Berlantis and the Ryan Murphys, those writers do tend to hop from show to show, same with Shonda Rhimes. Those writers do tend to hop from show to show within that little ecosphere and I feel like even if these shows have short seasons I hope that those writers are getting an ongoing experience of making a bunch of stuff because that’s really what they need.

**Craig:** Yeah. I absolutely agree. And they do have an opportunity – I mean, Greg Berlanti is kind of his own network. So, Greg and Ryan and Shonda, these folks are continuations of this like what used to be the old school, like a Stephen J. Cannell where there was like a producer who had tons of shows. And so they’re still there. They still exist. And they become their own networks. And they are uniquely positioned to advance these causes and improve the diversity of the workplace. And I think that they do. It doesn’t hurt that Greg and Ryan and Shonda are all people that are in traditionally underrepresented categories in the business.

So, it’s good to see and you have to hope that it will continue that way.

**John:** Yeah. All right. Two last little bits of news. This Saturday I’m doing a local author event at Chevalier’s which is the bookstore in my neighborhood. It was originally supposed to be a couple weeks ago but then sort of the world happened and it was not an appropriate time for a happy discussion of kids’ books and local authors. So that is happening on Zoom this Saturday at 2pm. So, join us. So, Aline will be there. Derek Haas will be there. A bunch of local authors. Some of them are kids and middle grade authors. Some are grown up authors. We’re talking about our favorite books. We’re talking about summer reading lists and things we’d recommend people read.

There’s a link in the show notes. You can see my summer reading list, but also other authors about what they are recommending.

Finally, David Koepp, was a guest on Episode 418. We talked about his book a little bit on that episode, but I hadn’t really read it yet. I finished it this last week. It’s really, really good. I started reading it and worried it was going to be a pandemic book because there’s an outbreak of a thing, but it’s actually not. It’s a thriller. If you can imagine Jurassic Park but in an underground storage unit. It was really well done. So, check that out. And check out his movie, You Should Have Left, which is based on a book that I really liked, a German book I really liked. And that was supposed to come out theatrically. Now it’s coming out on video everywhere June 18. So check out his movie. The trailer looks terrific.

**Craig:** Fantastic. Love that David Koepp.

**John:** Craig, One Cool Thing time. What do you got?

**Craig:** Oh. This one is easy this week. My One Cool Thing is The Last of Us Part 2. It is a masterpiece. Obviously I’m a big fan of The Last of Us. I think that much is clear by now. I have had a chance to play The Last of Us Part 2. I’m in my second play through now. It’s a shattering, brilliant piece of art. And in the videogame business reviews are essential. Nobody really cares about television reviews. They sort of care about movie reviews. But I made a career of movies that critics didn’t like but people did.

So you can get away with that. It’s not a necessary aspect. But in the videogame business it’s huge. And specifically Metacritic. That’s what everybody looks at. Metacritic compiles, aggregates all the videogame reviews. Calculates them on a scale of zero to 100 and gives you an aggregate number. To get really good games I think you’re talking about the high 80s. Excellent games you hit a 90. The Last of Us clocks in at 96.

**John:** That’s great.

**Craig:** And it deserves it. It is a spectacular game. And it is a thought-provoking challenge to what we understand to be the function of heroism and villainy in narrative. I can’t say enough about it. I hope to god that Neil and I do a good enough job on the TV side of things to be able to tell that part of the story. Because it’s something else. I don’t think you’re a big PlayStation guy, but–

**John:** I’ll definitely get it. So I downloaded The Last of Us Part 1.

**Craig:** Oh great.

**John:** I guess it wasn’t Part 1 because they didn’t know there was going to be a Part 2. I downloaded that this past week and I haven’t started playing it yet, but I will. So I’m looking forward to checking it out.

**Craig:** Excellent.

**John:** Cool. My One Cool Thing is an episode of Decoder Ring. It’s a podcast hosted by Willa Paskin and written by Willa Paskin. And this episode I loved so much was about the Metrosexual and sort of the branding and a discovery and creation of this concept of the metrosexual. This man who cared about fashion and taste and seemed gay in a lot of ways but was not gay in other ways. And the birth of Details Magazine.

It was just a great time capsule of this little moment that happened. And the importance of how applying a word to it defines a space. And without the word metrosexual all that stuff would have been there but it wouldn’t have coalesced the way that it happened at its moment. So a terrific podcast, but especially this episode on metrosexual I thought was great.

**Craig:** Excellent.

**John:** Cool. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao.

**Craig:** Ka-boom.

**John:** It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Joey Hillenbrand. If you have an outro you can send us a link to it at ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust.

We have t-shirts. And they’re great. So go to Cotton Bureau and look for them, or just there’s a link in the show notes for them.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find the transcripts.

You can sign up to become a Premium member at Scriptnotes.net where you can also get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record. Also, you can gift memberships to Scriptnotes. And so a lot of people have been doing that this last week for whatever reason.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** So if you want to give a gift for that there is a link in the show notes for giving a gift of Scriptnotes to somebody if you’d like to give them something for a birthday or some other celebration.

**Craig:** Mm. Spectacular.

**John:** Nice. Craig, thanks for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** All right, Craig, let’s talk computers. What was the first personal computer that you used?

**Craig:** Excluding like goofing around on a friend’s Atari 400 with the membrane keyboard and the tape recorder storage, my father and I went into Manhattan in I want to say 1983 and we purchased a Franklin Ace 1000.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** Which was a clone of the Apple 2. Franklin then was quickly sued. I believe the price was $1,400, which for my family was a lot. But, you know, it was just something that my dad really wanted. But I was the only one that used it. And I used it every day. I have one, by the way, in my office.

**John:** Oh that’s great.

**Craig:** Yeah. I went online years ago on eBay and was like I’m going to get myself a Franklin Ace 1000. It won’t turn on or anything. I’m just going to stick it in a corner. And I bought it for $1. Yeah.

**John:** $1,400 to $1. My first computer was an Atari 800. So no the membrane keyboard, but the one that actually had a keyboard-keyboard. And what younger listeners probably don’t understand is that those computers actually hooked up to TVs. And so you’d wire it into your TV. Rather than having a separate monitor they hooked up to the TV. And the picture wasn’t great. None of it was great.

We originally didn’t even have the tape drive to save stuff on. So basically we would type up programs from the magazine and watch them run. Or play the game and then we’d turn off the computer we would have to retype the whole program. That’s how it all worked for us. Fast forward to a couple different Ataris along the way. That’s what I did my first early writing on.

Then my first Macintosh which was in high school using it for my school newspaper. And that was just a revelation. It was the first computer that just truly adored using on a daily basis.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** When did you get your first Mac?

**Craig:** Let’s see. I think I got my first Mac actually for college. So, I was using – I can’t quite remember what version of Apple I was using at home with like a daisy wheel printer to clackety-clack out the term papers and things. But when I went to college, so that was 1988, I got a Mac SE20.

**John:** I had the same computer.

**Craig:** Pretty standard.

**John:** And did you have a hard drive or two floppies?

**Craig:** Oh god, no, no, no. Floppies. No hard drive.

**John:** I sprang for the hard drive.

**Craig:** Actually, I take it back. That’s what the 20 was. The 20 was a hard drive. I think it was a 20 megabyte hard drive.

**John:** Yeah. That’s what it was.

**Craig:** Which would now hold one file of – it would a PDF.

**John:** It would not hold this episode of Scriptnotes.

**Craig:** Good lord, no.

**John:** No. What’s crazy is I remember I ended up buying that at a University of Colorado bookstore, or the computer shop at the bookstore, and my had come with a check for me to buy it, like a cashier’s check or something. And it was like $3,000. It was so expensive to buy it and yet it was worth every penny of it. Because just the amount of writing and stuff that I got done on that computer was remarkable.

**Craig:** Hugely necessary. Do you remember when – because when I bought it I believed I got a little bit of extra memory? They were running a deal for students. To get the memory in there they had to use a special tool to crack the case open. They had a special Mac case-cracker. Like a Slim Jim for a car. And then they would pop the whole thing off. It was quite a process to do any of that stuff. Now, of course, you can’t actually do any of that at all. When you buy a laptop it’s sealed.

**John:** Yeah. Things tend to be sealed now. So, what got me thinking about early computers is I put in an order for a new Macintosh because my iMac that I’m recording on right now is like four years old, maybe five years old. It’s pre-Paris that I had this computer. And it’s a little bit old. As we’re playing Dungeons & Dragons on this there have been times where it’s sort of spun out a bit. Like, OK, I think it’s time for this computer to move on.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So I put in an order for a new iMac and then it became clear that, oh, you know what there’s actually going to be a whole new iMac coming because they’re switching to a new processor so I canceled that order and now I’m waiting to see what the next Macintosh will be. And I’m kind of excited about it. What I find so fascinating is that the Apple hardware and Apple chips and the iPhones and iPads they really are more powerful than many of the Macintoshes we’ve become accustomed to. So I’m curious what’s going to happen once I can get this into my computer.

**Craig:** I mean, if you have an iMac that’s four years old whether you get an iMac today or whatever the next gen is that they release in a couple of months it will be – OK, this one is 1,000 times better and this one is 1,500 times better. The difference is going to be vast. I don’t have an iMac. I have a MacBook Pro. So I run everything on that. And it is pretty astonishing what it can do and how fast it can handle things. I mean, we used to have concerns about like speed and memory. When was the last time, well, I mean, you have an old iMac, so maybe you do. But I never think about speed or memory ever.

**John:** And honestly I don’t think about it that often. It was a rare case where like the Dungeons & Dragons stuff was overloading the system here. And truthfully, listen, my company makes Highland and Highland runs incredibly smoothly on my computer. There’s very little that I’m encountering with my iMac that makes me feel like, oh, this thing is too slow. It’s a dinosaur. Partly because I have an SSD in it. So, that’s making everything feel a lot faster.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Weirdly a thing I have noticed though is that the front-facing camera in it is pretty terrible. And so it’s a small thing, but well it was a small thing until the pandemic and now that I’m using this a lot for video camera stuff it’s not good.

**Craig:** I mean, most front-facing cameras suck. But, yeah, the older ones really suck. That is an area where when my son was born in 2001, you know, I was like I better go get a camera. Got to take pictures of my kid. So I went and got myself like a Casio 3 megapixel. That’s what we would do. And had a little digital card inside of it. And over time they have essentially made that camera but ten times better and the size of my thumbnail. It’s incredible. Absolutely incredibly the way that that technology has evolved. So, yeah, the four-year difference on camera will be pretty remarkable.

**John:** Yeah, I saw on Twitter this week a 1 terabyte SD card and that’s like the little mini SD card, but it’s one terabyte. The amount that we can cram into these small spaces.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. Awesome.

**John:** So, lastly, the other thing I’ve been working on a lot is the new version of Highland, internally we have a version of Highland for the iPad. And it’s been fascinating to look at making this app that I use every day and making it work on an iPad just because you really recognize how differently you work on devices based on whether it’s an iPad or like a MacBook.

And so even like I got the iPad that has the new laptop-y kind of style keyboard. It folds together. It’s really a terrific–

**Craig:** It’s cool. I like it.

**John:** It’s a really good system. I think it’s great. But it’s still not the same as a MacBook. And there’s things just do work differently and your expectations about files and not having menus, it does such a brilliant job with the cursor. It’s just remarkable how clever they figured out how to make the cursor work. And yet still figuring out where to put certain things that would normally be in menus has been a real challenge design wise.

**Craig:** Yeah. I am reliant on the finder. I like finder.

**John:** Yeah. I do, too. Because we grew up in the finder.

**Craig:** Yeah. We grew up with finder. I mean, there’s files on the iPad, but that’s really just like your cloud storage. If they could make finder that would be nice.

**John:** Yeah. That’s what we want. We want a finder.

**Craig:** Yeah man.

**John:** We solved it all. Craig, thanks.

**Craig:** Thanks John. See you next week.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [Chevalier’s Local Author Event, Saturday June 20th at 2pm](https://www.chevaliersbooks.com/local-authors-060620)
* [Police officers are often glorified on TV shows. Here’s what it looks like when they aren’t.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2020/06/10/police-officers-tv-episodes/) by Bethonie Butler
* [WGA Inclusion and Equity](https://www.wga.org/uploadedfiles/the-guild/inclusion-and-equity/WGAW_Inclusion_Report_20.pdf)
* [Shorter and Fewer Seasons, Is TV Sabotaging Itself?](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/06/is-tv-sabotaging-itself)
* [The Metrosexual episode of Decoder Ring by Willa Paskin](https://slate.com/podcasts/decoder-ring/2020/06/the-metrosexual-craze-david-beckham-queer-eye)
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Joey Hillenbrand ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/456standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2020/what-were-up-to)

**Craig Mazin:** Hi folks. All of you I presume are listening at home, which means that children are about. Unfortunately for them this episode does contain some strong language, so put in those ear buds, put in those headphones. Keep those children safe.

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 443 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show we’re going to be talking about working from home, a subject Craig and I know very well. We’ll talk about what works for us and what might work for you if you find yourself in this situation. Then we’ll be hearing from some of our favorite guests about what they’ve been up to during this period of uncertainty. Not surprisingly they’ve had a range of experiences and some surprises.

And in our bonus segment for Premium members we’re going to talk about math. What we remember from school and what we actually use.

**Craig:** Woo-hoo!

**John:** Woo-hoo! Craig, this is not any different from our normal recording situation. We are usually on Skype. We are back on Skype. It’s just nothing is different.

**Craig:** Yeah. You and I have been social distancing from each other since the very beginning. And so I’m at home, so the microphone is not quite as professional but hopefully is holding up OK. And, I mean, technically my office is safe because I’ve sent my employees home. Bo is working from home and Jack is working from home. But I don’t think technically I’m supposed to be going there now because we have this full shutdown other than essential workers and people that are staffing stores with essential supplies.

**John:** Exactly. So, Megana is also home. She’s going to be getting this episode together. Matthew is cutting this at home as he usually does. So it’s all going to work out. It’s just some differences and changes along the edges. But this is not unusual for us and we can share our experiences and some tips for folks at home.

But first and most importantly we should talk about what did happen this past week, because actually a bunch of stuff did go down. Last Saturday I was texting with you, Craig, about this Go Fund Me that Liz Alper was setting up. Liz Alper is the woman behind #PayUpHollywood and that whole movement.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So as we started talking about assistant stuff she started talking about assistant stuff. We did a town hall together. She was trying to raise $100,000 for assistants, readers, and other support staff laid off because of COVID-19. I proposed to you that maybe you and I could each agree to match the first $25,000 that were raised. So together we raised $50,000. Hopefully we could get the rest of the industry to kick in $50,000. And it went really well.

**Craig:** It did. So we reached out to all of our friends that we thought that were of the sorts of means that could make significant contributions. And pretty much they all came through and did, which was amazing. Currently we’re looking at over a half a million dollars that we raised in basically a week to distribute to the assistants and I think readers and support staff as you said who have been laid off.

Now, that’s amazing. And congrats to us and everything. But there is a message I’d like to send out to the world through our podcast which is simply this. You and I and our friends are after all employees in Hollywood. And the companies that employ us have enormous resources, billions of dollars of resources. Now I’m not suggesting that they can deplete all of their money. I don’t really know how money works. I’m going to be totally honest. They can’t just dump it all out there. But it does seem to me that they could be doing more. And at the very least they could be contributing to funds like this one, or creating their own for that matter.

So I am calling upon Warner Bros and Universal and Paramount and Sony and Disney/Fox and all their associated businesses to put some money toward this and if you can’t keep people on the payroll at least help support them during this time, because this is going to go on for a while. And you’re going to want those people back when it’s over.

**John:** Yeah. So when Craig says put some money towards this we don’t mean towards this Go Fund Me. No, we mean actually continuing to pay the people who had been working for you. And when at all possible to not lay them off. So, in this Go Fund Me it was really structured around those workers in Hollywood who are not kind of full time employees. Those people who are like between jobs, those folks who were hired on to work on a production and then production just went away because everything got closed down. Or folks who had been laid off.

And so this was really targeting the most vulnerable population and trying to get some money into their hands as quickly as possible. So, again, support staff, PAs, folks who are really vulnerable for this. But Craig and me, our job is to remind people listening to this podcast who do employ others, find a way to keep them employed. Find a way to keep them protected because we will need these people when we come out of this situation.

**Craig:** Absolutely. And the fact of the matter is for a lot of folks there is a way to actually keep these people working, like I’m keeping my staff working. Now, it’s a little easier for folks like you and me, John, because we’re writers. And we can do a lot of our work without lots of people around us. It’s a little more difficult when you’re carrying a lot of folks that are specifically connected to something that cannot happen, that cannot continue to go on. But do your best. Argue with your employers to hold as many of those folks on the payroll as possible for as long as possible.

This business has made a lot of money off of a lot of people. And it would be nice in a moment like this if they could give some back. Just give some back. That would be really good for a moment if maybe profit wasn’t the most important thing. Just give a little bit back.

**John:** Absolutely. One of the things I want to stress as well is that over the past few years we’ve been trying to make more and more efforts on equity and inclusion, making sure that we have people working in this business who better represent the wholeness of America. And that includes people who don’t have the economic background to be able to weather this storm without outside help.

As we do these surveys for the situation with assistants before all this started everyone was living paycheck to paycheck. So these people are the most vulnerable. If we don’t step in right now and tide them over through the storm a bunch of them are going to move back to wherever they came from. They’re going to leave. And we’re going to lose out on a generation of talent who should be here. The people who are going to be winning Oscars in 2035, well right now they are PAs. So the next Shonda Rhimes, she is probably a script coordinator on some show who might have to move back to Texas. We need to make sure that we are protecting them at this time.

**Craig:** And when this is all over I think there’s going to be a long discussion, a very long discussion, about why people have been living paycheck to paycheck in a business that generates so much money and has generated so much money so consistently for so long. And I’d like to point out that while a ton of other businesses and industries in our nation are shut down, you can still rent or buy just about every single movie or television show that has ever been made.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** It doesn’t stop. Right? The production has stopped momentarily, but as someone once said to me, “If you want to make money in Hollywood have a big library of stuff and don’t make new stuff.” So it’s all money coming in now and very little going out. So it would be really great if these corporations rose to this moment and did something good for people. It would be great.

**John:** Now I would say what we were able to do this last week was the best I’ve felt since this whole thing began. And so as we were able to hit those numbers and we saw over a thousand donors chip in money on this campaign it was phenomenal and it was the best I’ve felt throughout this whole experience.

The next steps for this is getting the money out the door. So we’ve hired on a production accountant to sort of go through and make sure we’re rigorous in sort of how we’re tracking the money that comes in, the money that goes out. But the goal is to start getting money out the door by the time this episode drops so people can actually know that they’ll be able to make their rent or get through this next week or two of troubles.

So, that’s the goal. I want to thank everybody who chipped in. It was sort of weird that we couldn’t – we didn’t have time to get an episode out to sort of encourage people to do the Go Fund Me. So, enough people followed us on Twitter and other places, so thank you to all our listeners who chipped in. It was a good thing.

**Craig:** And of course a huge thank you to all of the writers that we know who stepped up and made these very significant contributions. And we should probably say all of their names, but I don’t have the list in front of me, do I?

**John:** I don’t have the list in front of me, either. And there’s a few more who might still be coming in. So, maybe next week we’ll do it.

**Craig:** Next week we will do the honor roll. For sure.

**John:** Great. All right. We still have some trappings of a normal show. So this will be the follow up segment. Mitch from Marvel, Tennessee wrote in, “In the recent How to Listen episode I heard John say Appalachian. This is certainly an acceptable pronunciation but I wanted to point out for your possible future usage that most who live in this region tend to pronounce it Appal-ah-chian. There are those around here who will argue the other way is correct and they’re not flat out wrong, but I moved to East Tennessee 30 years ago and have noticed over the years that most people I know who are native Appal-ah-chians pronounce it the latter way. That’s also what you’ll hear on local TV news outlets who pronounce it.”

**Craig:** That is true.

**John:** So, Appal-ah-chian.

**Craig:** Appal-ah-chia. Appal-ah-chian. Yeah. That’s how they do it.

**John:** Great. And so that’s kind of the distinction that is really hard to make in a script. You generally wouldn’t make it in the script. And so it got me thinking back to when we were doing Big Fish and Big Fish is set in Alabama. The past elements of it are sort of a storybook Alabama. And we had to make decisions about how all these actors, most of the British actors, what accent we were going to do. And so we brought in a dialect coach who was working with each of them. And I had to work with her about sort of are we pronouncing Rs. Like did Edward Bloom go fight in a wah or in a war? And the rhotic R was important. So we had to sort of get everyone on the same page.

Generally in the script you won’t do that. You might get a sense of like the rhythm of speech, but you won’t get down to the details of Appalachian versus Appal-ah-chian. So, it would generally be a dialect coach or someone else who is working with production in preproduction to figure out exactly what the accent is going to be for everyone who is speaking.

**Craig:** Yeah. Really the only time I draw any attention to specific pronunciation is if it’s part of the moment. That it’s important for people to know that the character – for instance it’s very common for people to mispronounce the word Nevada. They will say Ne-vah-da. But in Nevada, Nevadans call it Nevada. They don’t like it when you call it Ne-vah-da. OK.

So if somebody is going to say Ne-vah-da that way you might have to say they pronounce Ne-vah-da as opposed to the way – and everybody stares. That kind of thing.

**John:** Exactly. So if it is an important story point then you do call it out in the script. Generally you won’t call it out in the script. Those kind of regional pronunciation differences.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** Cool. All right, now to our marquee topic – working from home. Something I’ve been doing for 20 years or so. In thinking about this segment an article I read this last week actually laid out a lot of really good points. So I’m going to start with this article by Alice Goldfuss about working from home.

Some of the points she makes are to recreate your rhythm, to get dressed, to separate your desk from your sleeping space. To keep your stuff tidy. To think about social spaces. Think about not just working from home but the degree to which when you are working in an office there’s a social component there, so not to neglect that social component. And most importantly to put some boundaries on things. Recognize a time when you stop working and actually to start living your life because that can be one of the toughest things, especially if you’re dealing with people overseas is that there’s no boundary between being at work and being at home.

**Craig:** Yeah. And, listen, it is hard. When I first started working at home I think I was, yeah, 23 years ago maybe. And there is an adjustment period. And one of the things about working from home that’s tricky if you haven’t it before is you don’t quite know if you’re doing it well. Meaning, am I working too much? Am I working not enough? There’s a little bit of a sense that you had when you were first off to college and suddenly there were no report cards and no parents over your shoulder. Am I studying enough? Too much?

There’s going to be an adjustment period. Give yourself a little bit of a break because you’re not going to know for a while how you’re doing.

**John:** Absolutely. And I think when I first started working at home it was just me in my studio apartment. And I could – as a writer I could write all night. I could sleep all day. That was sort of the life I was in. But most people’s jobs now do involve some interaction with people. And so you’re going to have to find something approaching a work day to make, OK, this is the time at which I can actually get this people to email me back or sort of get word back on sort of the projects I’m working on. That becomes an aspect that wasn’t true when it was just me as bachelor guy writing.

I think my working at home also changed a lot when I moved in with Mike, when we had a kid. Things got much more routinized because I couldn’t stay up all night suddenly because then I couldn’t actually be a responsible father. So, you find yourself getting into a rhythm that actually makes sense for your current life situation. And given the pandemic everyone’s current life situation is just understandably confusing.

**Craig:** Yeah. And by the way I don’t know about you, I’m scared to ask you this question. But I don’t have necessarily any more or less time per day to do the writing that I’m supposed to do. These last couple of weeks, it’s been hard. Really hard. I mean, I’ve done work. I’ve written. I’ve moved the ball forward. I’m not like falling terribly behind or anything. But it seems so much harder. And I wonder if that’s true for you. And then I also wonder by extension if it’s true for everybody, no matter what their job is, because we’re all upset.

**John:** Yeah. We’re going to hear from a bunch of our previous guests and I think that’s a common refrain. It’s been difficult to sort of get the work done. Even though the format of the work changes, the actual getting writing done has been more difficult. I fall back on my writing sprints a lot, which is just I’m blocking out an hour of time in chunks and I’m only going to write during that time. And doing that has gotten me back into a place where I can head down focus on the thing I’m writing. But the chaos of every day has been a big factor.

Having my daughter home from school is a big factor. So it feels like we’re on a spring break or a summer vacation, but there’s no sort of relaxation/enjoyment quality to it all. It’s all just a big stirred up.

**Craig:** Yeah. And this is also probably a particularly difficult time for extroverts. There are people who need – I know this is going to sound weird, but just hear me out, John. There are people that need to be around people. Like they need it. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I feel bad for them.

**John:** Absolutely. And you know if you’ve worked in an office, you know who those people are. They’re the people who will come over and sort of linger by your desk. And those people who linger by your desk that is just sort of how they’re wired. And so how they linger by your desk if they can’t do that? And so those people probably need to recognize that in themselves and plan to take some walks. Even though you can’t actually hang out with – you should maintain that six-feet distance between people, you need to see some other people. You need to sense you’re in the world or you feel like just too floaty and disconnected. That’s definitely something I’ve been noticing.

I mean, I haven’t left the house in a week and there is a weird unreality that does set in. I remember I was reading this new D&D book that I got which is great. And I had this strange moment where I realized, wait, am I actually married with a kid and living in a pandemic? Or am I some other person? And just for a moment it did all sort of – this seems very unlikely. It seems strange that this is who I am and this is where I am. So, yes, acknowledging that this is a strange moment is important. And yet even within this strange moment there are some basic principles we can remind you of.

So, when I was living in France for the year we moved into this apartment and it was so hot. It was like 100 degrees. I was writing the first Arlo Finch which is all a winter book. And we didn’t have our desks. We didn’t have any place. But I knew I needed to get those hours of writing in. So what I would do is I would put on my headphones, I would play this ambient track from YouTube of like winter storm sounds. And I would just sit there and listen and I would sort of psychologically make myself cold. And then I could just write.

And there was something really calming about just being able to do the work. And so I would say that even though this is a stressful time and you should forgive yourself if it’s hard to get work done, I would say do try to do some work because you may find rather than it being frustrating it’s actually sort of calming to get back into a place where you can focus on something that is not the outside world.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s a good idea. We are going to need to kind of astral project a little bit.

Yeah, especially if you live in a neighborhood where it’s going to be tough. I happen to live in the relative sticks of Los Angeles County. So, you know, I took the dog for a walk today. I saw some people from a distance. But, you know, mostly I could just be alone and not worry about being on top of people. That’s not going to be true if you’re in a really tight urban environment. So, yeah, you’re just going to have to astral project.

**John:** So, one thing that’s been different in this experience is Zoom. So this was my first week using Zoom. I had two directors meetings and a meeting on a different project. And it all actually went really well. And it made me realize that when this is all over I think there’s a bunch of meetings that I’m going to ask to take place online versus going in person. Because if I never have to go to a five o’clock meeting on the west side again, hooray. Because some of what I was willing to put up with in terms of getting face time in a room with people just it wasn’t worth it. And these two directors meetings I had on Zoom, they were productive. And we got through stuff. And these people were on different continents and it was a pretty good experience.

So, I don’t want to say there’s any silver linings to what we’re going through, but it was a good lesson that you can adapt and sometimes in adapting you actually get to some smarter choices.

**Craig:** I mean, you know I love me some HBO. But they’re in Santa Monica and I’m near Pasadena. So five o’clock isn’t – forget five o’clock. I can’t even go there if it’s two o’clock. So, yeah, I mean, I think I’m going to be requesting Zooms frequently. It works really well.

The first kind of group video chat I had when this all started was on Google Hangout. Not a fan. Got to be honest.

**John:** It’s not as good.

**Craig:** No. The Zoom people have figured something out. I don’t know what it is, but hats off to them. So, anyway, point being, yeah, I’m with you. I don’t want to drive to the west side ever again either.

**John:** I will tell honestly there was a project that I was considering doing with a company that was on the west side. And it was going to be a TV thing that I knew was going to be a ton of meetings. And I did not go with that company because it was on the west side. I liked the people involved, but I just knew that I would need to be at that office and, no. My life is worth more. And the number of hours that I’d spend in the car getting there are hours I could spend writing or doing other stuff. So, yes. The more Zoom the better. I will take it.

**Craig:** More Zoom the better.

**John:** So, Craig, other tips for people in terms of working at home? Things you think might be helpful.

**Craig:** Sure. So, a few things that are going to come up that you probably weren’t expecting. Well one is a bit specific to the time we’re in now. Suddenly I’m getting a lot of calls from people that are just calling to say, “Hey, how you doing?” Because they want to talk. Because they are probably people that like talking to people. And I’m, you know, I’m fine with that, but I’m not really that person. And more importantly some people may not understand that you’re still at work.

There are some people who cannot work right now. They are essentially on a forced furlough. And so they’re not working. And they may make the mistake of presuming that you’re not working. So, you’re just going to have to figure out how to boundary that off. Maybe just not answer the phone for a while. Like John said, carve out some time. And I think it’s important for you to – if you can – get some exercise. If you can get outside.

I mean, even here in California where we’re on essentially a statewide lockdown, exercise is allowable. Walking the dog is allowable. You’ve just got to practice Safe Six. Do you like that? Safe Six. I didn’t come up with that.

**John:** I like Safe Six a lot.

**Craig:** Yeah. That was Jeanine Tesori. Tony award winning Jeanine Tesori was the first person that used that near my ear. And I was like, ooh, I’m using that. I’m going to steal it.

I do think that if you can support local businesses, ordering in is a nice thing to do. It’s not something you have to do for every meal. You’re not obligated to hold up an industry at the expense of your own waistline. But ordering in is fine. Food safety wise, from everything I’ve read, food does not appear to be a major vector of COVID-19. That said, to be on the safe side when we order in we’re sticking to food that has been cooked. And we’re taking it out of the containers and doing some reheating which should be enough to kill any microbes.

If you have time on your hands and you’re at home, take a look at that room that’s got a lot of clutter in it. Get to work.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** This is a good chance for some COVID cleaning.

**John:** My daughter’s spring break is not this week but next week. And we are looking forward to – there’s shelves in our library which we’ve never actually dusted the shelves. So it’s taking all the books off and actually dusting those shelves. Getting to the places that you never actually get to. This feels like a good time.

We pulled all of the various Arlo Finches in different languages off, and so they’re all on the office table now. And we will find something to do with all these Arlo Finches because I don’t need four copies of the second book in Swedish. One will be plenty.

**Craig:** I think so. I think you should be OK with one. And for people who are fortunate enough to be able to employ housecleaners, well they’re not coming to you right now. So, this is a chance for you to dig in and use a little elbow grease. For everybody else, maybe just pick a project. Even if it’s just once a week pick a project, do a little tidying.

**John:** On the housekeeper front is that if you have somebody who normally cleans your house and you don’t want them coming to your house to clean your house, they shouldn’t. For your safety and for their safety. Pay them anyway.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Find a way to pay them through this time. Because they rely on the money that you’re giving them to make a living. So, help them make their living. Pay them. And then what we did is we just made a schedule of like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, this is the thing we clean on those days. So Thursday is bathrooms day. It sucks. But it’s just one day. And it’s 30 minutes and we’re done. So, making yourself a cleaning schedule feels very Little House on the Prairie, but it does also provide some structure. Because that’s one of the most frustrating things about being home when you’re not expecting to be home is that there is just no structure.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And every day feels like a Sunday.

**Craig:** That’s right. So without a doubt if you can continue to pay – if you can afford a housekeeper I’m guessing you can afford to keep paying your housekeeper for a bit. There are quite a few people who pay their housekeepers under the table as it is. I don’t. My housekeepers are actually on a salary with the payroll service that I use. Either way, if you can – if you can – please do keep paying them. And it was really important for us to say, before the lockdown happened where it wasn’t even a possibility for them to come by, to say to them you don’t need to come. If you have even the slightest whiff of a bad feeling you don’t need to come because you have a job still. You’re getting paid.

And that leads me into my final thing. Which is give. While we are locked down and you’re working from home and we’re all inside our homes, try and give. That doesn’t necessarily mean money. If you have means and you can give money that would be great. If you have items that you can donate that would be great. For instance, I have a friend who knows someone who works in the prop business. And he happened to have boxes of masks. Hospital masks. Because, you know, if you’re doing a hospital show you need them. He donated them all. Dug them up out of storage. Donated them all to a hospital.

If you can give somebody one-on-one attention. If you can offer somebody an ear to cry into. If you can teach somebody something online. If all you do is just give thanks to somebody that would be great.

But please think about going outwards with the technology that we have that allows you to do it. It’s going to make you feel better. I guarantee it.

**John:** Absolutely. My mom is in a senior living place in Boulder. And one of the things they’re starting to do is have the residents call all the other residents every day just to check in and see how they’re doing and have those conversations. Because isolation is a really necessary thing for this pandemic that we’re in, but it’s a really unhealthy thing overall for people and their mental health and their physical health. So anything you can do to keep people from feeling so isolated and so lonely during this time will pay off dividends. And you will feel better for having done it.

**Craig:** 100%.

**John:** Great. Let’s take a listen to what some of our previous guests are up to this week. And so I emailed out to a bunch of our previous guests and asked if they would record a minute or two about what they’ve been doing since this all went down. I was not surprised that they had a whole range of experiences and that they were really generous sharing what they’re feeling and what they think our listeners can take from what they’re encountering out there in the world.

So, this is going to be an usual segment because we’re not going to be coming in between all these people speaking. I’m going to start off with Emily Zulauf who joined us for our live show in Seattle. And we’ll just let them introduce themselves as we go through this. Also I should clarify that a lot of these were recorded on Wednesday before the official lockdown sort of happened in Los Angeles. So, if you hear people talk about going from house to house that’s not really happening right now. So, here we’ll start with Emily Zulauf.

**Emily Zulauf:** Hi John. Hi Craig. I hope you guys are well. I am…not sure where to start when, John when I got your email asking for an update on how we’re all faring in this. So I live in Seattle. [laughs] That probably doesn’t need a lot more explanation. I work a block from the Kirkland border. So I think we have been in triage mode a little bit longer than everybody else.

My office has been pseudo closed now for a couple weeks. My daughter’s school was canceled. We are on our second week of that. It’s surreal. It’s completely surreal here. I think I’m feeling the same level of helplessness that a lot of people are feeling right now. Wanting to help and literally physically not being able to go out there and help is paralyzing and scary and I find myself reaching out to my friends and trying to sort of feeling this sort of ache to connect with people and just make sure that people I love are OK. And feeling scared for all of us and feeling also so connected to everyone in the same breath. So isolated and so connected. And I want to hug everyone. [laughs] Although hugs are not something that we do anymore.

But I am thinking about you guys. I’m thinking about all of my friends. And just, you know, sending love and wanting to connect with everyone and tell everyone that I love them and that somehow this is going to – this is going to work out. And that I’m here for anything that they need.

**Mike Birbiglia:** Hey, it’s Mike Birbiglia. Friend of Scriptnotes. Writer. Comedian. I just want to say hey. I’m holed up in Brooklyn with my wife and daughter. And on the screenwriting front I’m not doing much because the screenplay I was writing I’m not kidding or exaggerating is about a global pandemic. [laughs] It’s a comedy about a comedy pandemic. That’s the backdrop for the whole plot. And so we have to sort of see how things go before I figure out how the movie makes sense and in the new normal. What is the new normal and how does the movie differ from that?

And so what I’m doing on a comedy front is I’m trying to figure out who is in need in the comedy space. And so on my Instagram, which is @birbigs, I’m doing live livestreams where me and another comedian – this week it was Roy Wood Jr. and John Mulaney, Gary Gulman, Jacqueline Novak, and others. Next week Nicky Glazer and a bunch of other comics. And I do a chat where we pitch new jokes to each other. And then give feedback in real time. And then people watch the livestream and then can contribute to a site called tipyourwaitstaff.com.

And it’s a way to help comedy club wait staff that is currently not working because all the clubs are shut down across America. Because the restaurant and bar industry is obviously really struggling. So, I’m just trying to sort of be positive and be creative but also look around for who needs help right now.

That’s it for me. Continue doing this great, great podcast. Love you guys.

**Megana Rao:** Hey John and Craig and our Scriptnotes friends. This is Megana Rao, Scriptnotes producer. I’m currently socially distancing or safer at home in Los Angeles. And I guess a lot of us feel a bit like the “everything is fine” dog in that meme where the room is on fire. I’ve been working from home, sitting at my dining table. I really miss going into the office and seeing John and our office pup Lambert. But I’m so grateful I have a job where I’m able to work from home.

We’ve also been working with #PayUpHollywood and our support staff initiative. So, this is for those in our industry who have lost their jobs because of the shutdowns. I’ll definitely put a link so look in the show notes for information on how to donate or reach out for assistance if this fund applies to your situation.

Otherwise I’ve been rereading the books on my shelves. Going for walks. Checking in on my parents. Facetiming with friends. And generally trying to be as optimistic as possible. Normally it feels like social media creates this digital barrier between us, but right now I’m so happy that I can see my friends and my mom’s face. You know, it’s just so comforting because I think our instinct or mine at least when I’m worried or processing crisis is to be with loved ones, to be with people and gather a community. So, something I have to keep reminding myself of when I’m driving down a street like La Brea and it’s empty and completely surreal is that the way we’re coming through this and looking out for one another is by staying home. And as someone with family who works in medicine it’s heartening and encouraging that in what I’m saying seeing is this negative space, you know, we actually are united and doing our part to support the medical community, allowing those who need treatment to get it, and our healthcare providers a fighting chance in an already under-staffed and under-supplied situation.

So, you know, even though it’s hard for us to see it, I’m taking solace in that we’re each doing our part to contain the virus and protect our community. So thank you to everyone who is staying at home and thank you to all of the people who are going to work with essential functions. I’m especially grateful for the ways we’re adapting and able to stay connected.

I’m personally relying on my podcasts for a sense of normalcy. So if you think there’s anything we can do to support the Scriptnotes community please let us know and thank you to each of you for doing your part. Stay safe and be well. Thanks.

**BJ Novak:** Hi. This is one-time Scriptnotes guest BJ Novak responding to the request to share with listeners how I’m spending the time. I will say that although I am feeling very appreciative and lucky that my creative profession is one where I can do things at my own pace and I feel for producers, actors, let alone people not in our field who need to be more collaborative. I do feel very lucky.

In addition to having a long list of things that I want to watch and write, I am also making a point to be open to the moment, which I think is natural in a moment like this to just be overwhelmed. And there’s one instinct to think, oh no, I’m not pursuing things on my own schedule like I said I would. But there’s something very important to being an artist that is just being open to the moment and letting things surprise you and responding from somewhere deep in your subconscious to whatever is going on and creating something that you hadn’t expected to do. And that can be hard for writers like myself who are kind of more Type A.

So I think relaxing, not doing anything, and worrying, and thinking, and waiting for something to come to you out of necessity and truth rather than self-drive might be something really important.

**Chris Nee:** Hi. This is Chris Nee. And I’m the creator and executive producer and Doc McStuffins and Vampirina. And about a year ago I moved over to Netflix where I’m on an overall deal. We got sent home last Thursday. My staff is primarily the writing staff, so we were one of the first ones out. Obviously Netflix has been shut down about a week.

The weird thing about animation is that we are oddly situated to be able to keep going. You don’t have to shut down production. So Netflix has been really working overtime to get kind of kits and computer stations installed in all of the animator’s homes. Same thing is happening for my overseas studios. The biggest problem we’re having is voiceover records. That’s a little bit more of [the stumbling]. So I will be doing a lot of scratch that will live with our animatics and animation for quite some time until we can get our cast back in, which of course is totally fun for me.

And other than that it’s weird because everyone suddenly has all this time and they’re knitting and they’re learning to play the banjo and to be honest my days have been completely full. I have four shows that are going. And they’re all still going. You just get this very weird version of now seeing inside everyone’s homes. Seeing their pets. Seeing their wives and boyfriends and girlfriends. And that is a really funny version of it. I have found the need for people to chat more, doing a lot of emotionally trying to take care of my staff, and do check-ins and make sure that we have like a good texting feed going.

So all of that. Also, you know, there’s some hearts of darkness shit going on. I have spent some time recording all three parts of like English Madrigals that I remember from my childhood on Garage Band and I’ve spent hours doing that. And no one will ever hear that. That will never make the light of day for god’s sakes. And, you know, anyone who follows me on Twitter @chrisdocnee knows that my son is also home with me most of the time and is very much a 13-year-old boy. So his favorite thing is connecting to my Sonos with this which is just the opening licks of Eye of the Tiger. Here I go. So that will just show up on my Sonos very loud and very long by the way. This is half an hour. And no the beat never drops.

So, that’s kind of what I’m up to. It’s a little bit of business as usual without it not being business as usual at all. And I think kind of like finding that middle ground of taking care of people, giving them a purpose. So that’s what I’m up to. Animation continues. I wish it could come out faster. But around the world everyone has moved home and they are animating in their kitchens, their bathrooms, their bedrooms, their living rooms. Onward in these very, very strange times.

**Charlie Brooker:** Hello John and Craig and all your listeners. This is Charlie Brooker. Black Mirror person. And Londoner. And that’s where I am. I’m in London. Indoors, like lots of people are. Quite sensibly at the moment. I’m supposed to be focusing on doing a script. Quite a comedy script actually, which is both a challenge in the current climate, but also a welcome distraction at the same time.

Now I’ve also been an anxious person and a catastrophizing kind of person. Who would have thought that the brain behind Black Mirror was a paranoid flipping prick?

And oddly when things like this actually happen in the real world I find sometimes I’m kind of calm almost like I expected it. And I don’t know if that’s just me, or if there’s other – any of your other more anxious listeners feel like that. And I think strangely what that does mean is I’m staying optimistic. I’m sure that when this epidemic is over – I would like to be sure that when this epidemic is over we all will have had quite a wakeup call about our interdependence on one another about the need for investment in healthcare and each other. And, you know, I’m sure we’ll all get through it and I hope that we see a better world on the other side of it.

Now that’s the uncharacteristic, optimistic bit. Another weird thing that happened was quite a few people alerted to me to the fact that in Germany there’s a series of the reality show Big Brother where the contestants didn’t know anything about the coronavirus happening outside. Because they’ve been kept away from the real world. And people pointed out that this was very similar to the storyline of a show that I wrote before Black Mirror. A show called Dead Set which you can see on Netflix in the US and elsewhere I think in the UK.

And it’s a zombie show based around the real Big Brother house in Britain. And it does have eerie parallels. So, there’s been lots of things we’ve done in Black Mirror which have sort of come true. So if I am going to be – if it turns out I am Nostradamus, first of all I apologize. And secondly I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that I made a positive prediction a few moments ago. And let’s hope that comes true.

I hope everyone stays safe and well. Washes their hands. And let’s try and set up some virtual writer’s rooms worldwide. I don’t know. Write a fucking sketch show or something. Because otherwise, you know, what else are we going to do? Grow our hair? Take care. I’d say peace out, but that makes me feel like Ringo Starr. Bye!

**David Iserson:** Hi Scriptnotes. This is David Iserson.

**Susanna Fogel:** And this is Susanna Fogel.

**David:** And this is how we’ve been spending our quarantine. So, yeah, we had scheduled what we assumed was going to be like the last in person pitch at Netflix on two Thursdays ago.

**Susanna:** And brownnosers that we are, we got there an hour early and we were excited to get ready to really knock them dead.

**David:** And then we got like an email, or a phone call like ten minutes before we walked in that said, “Oh, yeah, they found somebody in the building who tested positive.”

**Susanna:** Oh, we had walked in. We had walked into the building.

**David:** No, we’d walked into the building. Before we walked into the pitch. Yeah. Ten minutes before they found somebody in the building who tested positive for coronavirus so get out. And then just like the flee and the flood of people heading to their cars. And we got mixed into that.

**Susanna:** So we figure that now they owe us a sale. They owe it to us to buy this high concept and rather mid-budget to high budget movie that they may or may not want to make. But now they really should.

**David:** So since then we’ve kept the sort of pod of people we interact with small, but we have chosen to continue to interact in person with ourselves. So, Susanna will come over to my house most days. And, you know, we try to get our work done.

**Susanna:** Yeah. You know, I think like most people we spend some time actually getting things done and some time dicking around on the Internet, which is not really any sort of change from what we were used to doing. Only now we’ve saved several hours a day in traffic that are now spent staring into space, indulging my Etsy obsession.

**David:** Yeah. We’ve found a lot of time not taken up driving from place to place. I’ve been posing my dog in like elaborate photographs, like a photo series of how we’ve been spending our time in quarantine, which I would not be able to do if I was busy trying to commute to things.

**Susanna:** Or busy being judged or how productive and employed you are. So, yeah, we spent some time talking about the end of the world like we all do. We spent some time then talking about what scripts we can write about the end of the world. Then we spent some time wondering if anyone else is writing about the end of the world and how many other people, particularly people that we feel competitive with, and whether they’re writing about the end of the world, and if they’ve already got a three-picture deal to write three scripts about the end of the world.

And lastly if people are listening to this podcast now and stealing our very unique idea to write about the end of the world.

**David:** Yeah. Someone like was I should write about the apocalypse that’s going on right now. That’s what our week in social distancing has been. Thanks guys.

**Damon Lindelof:** Hey John and Craig. Damon Lindelof here. How are you guys? I’m great. Just awesome. Fantastic. I’m just treating this whole thing as an opportunity for self-reflection. And I know I’m going to come out of this the other side as a better human. But seriously I’m scared and I’m worried. And I’m wondering how much I should project confidence that everything is going to be OK. Because I think being scared and worried is the more appropriate headspace for all of us to have in terms of just being safe right now. I guess the point is I’m Jewish.

I’m catching up on a lot of reading. I recommend Dave Eggers’ short new satire, The Captain and the Glory. It’s delightful. It made me laugh a lot. I’m listening to way too many podcasts about politics which are now kind of about the pandemic and I have to stop doing that. And the thing I’m enjoying most is that I’m finally binging The Crown. I don’t really care about the monarchy and I’m not an anglophile, but I love The Crown. And it’s excellent. And it’s actually gotten me to care about the monarchy and why the monarchy is important. And more importantly I guess it’s gotten me to care about the people in the monarchy. They’re quite miserable.

If you’ve seen anything that I’ve written I like writing about miserable people. And it is not easy being the Queen. I just started the third season a couple nights ago. I’m into the third season. And Olivia Colman has taking the rein – the reign – from Claire Foy. That’s reign, Craig. It’s a pun. Because taking the reins is when you hand over control. But it’s like reins when you’re steering a horse cart. But this is the kind of reign, R-E-I-G-N, that a royal person has, which is why it’s so, so clever.

I’m going insane. I love you guys. I’m glad you’re doing your Scriptnotes. Please stay safe. Bye.

**David Wain:** Hi, this is David Wain. I am spending my time in quarantine doing a series of things like solving jigsaw puzzles, going for walks, trying to read books, making YouTube videos, drawing, playing the piano, thinking of ways to make a whole movie starring myself in the house. Thinking about if I should start a dating website just for the COVID-19 infected. Throwing out everything in my house. Going through to-do lists from 2008. Putting on my own episode of Cutthroat Kitchen in my home with my children. Taking my bicycle apart and putting it back together. Writing thank you notes to people who have helped me out with things over the last 40 years. Checking out Breaking Bad for the first time. Answering emails from the ‘90s. Catching up on the college admissions scandal. Meditating. Binging General Hospital from the beginning. Planning a dinner party for August. Practicing magic tricks. Playing poker with friends online. Thinking about the record number of screenplays that are probably being written right now. Practicing the Rubik’s Cube. Watching The Wire. And conceiving of a new career path that involves not leaving my house.

**Mari Heller:** Hi. This is Mari Heller. I am surviving the coronavirus isolation as best I can. I’m with my kid and my husband out in the country in Connecticut with another family and we have been self-isolating since middle of last week. And we’re home-schooling our kids together. And the way we’re trying to get work done, because we’re all in the middle of writing scripts, is the dads are taking the morning of school, the moms are taking the afternoon shifts. We’re trading off working. And we’re sticking to a pretty strict schedule. Trying to keep the kids in a routine and give them a lot of outdoor time, but also give them expectations that they can trust in. And then we’re all trying to get work done.

And none of us are getting enough work done. Isn’t that a huge surprise? It’s pretty hard to concentrate when the world feels like it’s falling apart. But we’re trying. And that’s my update. Also next week I’m going to start trying to edit a project remotely with my editor, Anne, who is in a different part of the state and we’re going to see if we can figure out some kind of an Evercast or some system like that where we remotely edit. So we’ll see how that works.

All right. Hope everybody is staying safe out there.

**Rawson Thurber:** Hey Scriptnotes, it’s Rawson Thurber checking in from Atlanta, Georgia. Down here making my movie. We got put on hiatus for a couple weeks. Looks like it might be a bit longer than that. I’m here with my lovely kid, our two girls, or brand new baby boy, our dog, couple other folks. And we’re hunkered down and holed up here in Ainsley Park. And we’re using this period as sort of an ad-hoc vacation, looking at it as sort of forced time to not work. Spend time with each other. Read books. Watch movies. Catch up on the little things that maybe we don’t quite pay attention when we’re so busy all the time working, working, working.

So, kind of a strangely welcomed respite from the grind of shooting a movie. We were about halfway through when the plug got pulled. So it’s sort of interesting to be sprinting a marathon and suddenly have the finish line about halfway through it. Anyhow, looking forward to getting back to work. Please everybody out there stay safe. Wash your hands. And try not to lick any doorknobs. OK. I’ll talk to you later. Bye.

**Liz Hannah:** Hey guys. It’s Liz Hannah. I hope everybody is safe and healthy over there. It’s been a very weird week. For my part, you know, my husband and I are trying to just stay active, stay positive, and for me a lot of that is staying off of the news and social media as much as I can. That doesn’t mean that I don’t check it out or try and stay informed, but when this started I just found myself spending all day watching MSNBC and that was not healthy for me physically, mentally, or emotionally.

So I’ve tried to tune that out. We go on long walks with our dog. And obviously in practicing social distancing in all of the parameters that we’re instructed to do, but try and get some vitamin D in there. And then, you know, I’ve honestly found it really hard to focus. I think a lot of it was at first feeling this pressure that because we’re all stuck inside we should be writing that next great American screenplay. And there’s enough pressure to just put a cohesive sentence down on a piece of people that somebody can read.

So, I think, you know, kind of the end of this week I’ve found myself getting into a better place, of being able to remove that pressure and remove that instinct to make everything perfect. And I’m writing again and trying to give myself kind of a routine. Trying to stay healthy. Trying to watch something new so it’s not just the same ten minutes of the last ten minutes of a movie I’ve seen 47 times on HBO. Read a new book. I’m reading Kurosawa’s autobiography right now which I couldn’t recommend more. And I’m watching a lot of stuff on the Criterion Channel.

There’s the puppy. Yeah, so I don’t know. I think the only thing I can recommend is try not to put pressure on yourself to make this situation perfect. Just do your best to stay healthy mentally and physically. And get outside if you can. And if you can write, you can write. And just know we’re all in the same boat and we’re all doing this together.

**Malcolm Spellman:** John August and Craig Mazin and the Scriptnotes people this is Malcolm Spellman, arguably the greatest guest in the history of Scriptnotes, and most underrated for sure of all time. Dealing with corona on Thursday. The update is writer’s rooms are being handled through Zoom. It works. It’s definitely not as good as being in the room with people. There’s just a thing that’s lost with it. But it’s way, way – it’s closer to being right than it is being wrong. Dealing with a lot of fear from the people around us. We still got a lot of folks that are dealing with, you know, real shit. People with regular jobs, not in Hollywood. And you can already see some of that shit falling apart which is very, very sad and, you know, this is just starting. So, we kind of feel like we’re getting a preclude – me being me and Nichelle. Getting a preclude to what’s coming.

Our mood is good though. My dog – I’m in a battle right now where I bought my dog like a leather chew toy, not toy, but kind of thing that’s leather that you – whatever. I’m fighting with my dog over this thing. He doesn’t want to eat it, but he bites if you try and take his shit from him. So, it’s a deadly dance right now up in here.

Let me think. Music wise, Nichelle controls the music. It’s a music of hip-hop and ‘80s rock. That’s the norm over here. Sometimes some blues. We’re watching War of the Worlds on EPIX. Our mood is good though. And, you know man.

**Alison McDonald:** Hello Scriptnotes. Alison McDonald here. Prisoner of Second Avenue. Actually I have a deadline today but wanted to fire off this dispatch because I adore John and have a saint-like tolerance of Craig. Social distancing has always existed on the continuum of being a writer in my experience at any rate. So, the plague redux hasn’t been all that disruptive to my daily routine. And fortunately New York City has just made it legal for bars to deliver cocktails, so look for the silver lining people.

Apart from becoming Tennessee Williams – not in terms of talent or career, obviously, just temperament – I have been mainlining books. And I think most writers would agree that reading is the most purposeful form of procrastination. I read three books this week and have two on tap for the weekend. And because there’s such a great deal of economic peril for small businesses as entire cities shut down I have made it a point to purchase from independent online booksellers as much as possible and encourage you to do the same.

**Ryan Knighton:** Hey Scriptnotes. It’s Ryan Knighton. Unscripted in the quarantine. Where am I now? I’m actually back up in Canada and it was a very strange couple weeks as it has been for everybody. I was in the writer’s room on the third season of In the Dark. We had just started when the room was dissolved and we moved to working remotely. So, I went back up to Canada to try that instead of being in Los Angeles. So, I’m in my house in Ucluelet which is a small fishing village on the coast and has naturally enforced social distancing because there’s no people.

And that’s where this blind guy is. I’m in the woods. And so what am I doing? I am on Zoom a lot doing the writer’s room through Zoom these days. And writing in the day. And then, you know, basically killing time by going for walks on the beach and in the woods and things in between. So far so good. I’ve got my white cane with me and I haven’t gotten too lost yet, unless this isn’t my house. But, I think it is.

And in the evenings what do we do around here? Well my teenage daughter and I kill time in a horrible way. She’s been trying to teach me TikTok dances which is horrible if you can’t see. It’s sort of like doing origami but you can only describe, you know, how to fold things. So, that’s what Tess and I have been doing. And she’s sitting beside me right now and she can tell you that I’ve been doing an amazing job at it.

**Tess Knighton:** To be honest I really love to watch you fail because it’s really, really funny for me. It just makes me laugh in the evening.

**Ryan:** So that’s how we do the quarantine. She laughs at me failing. [laughs] I hope you guys are well.

**Riki Lindhome:** Hi John and Craig. It’s Riki Lindhome. I’m just here at home like everyone else. What I decided to do was I took out my idea board, which is just this corkboard I have of every idea. Every time I think of something I just put it on the board. And I looked at it and was like which idea have I been sitting on the longest. And I saw this one that’s kind of been on there for probably ten years. I never take it off because I’m always like, oh, maybe I could crack that someday. And I figured right now is the time to try. So, I’ve decided to tackle it.

And basically I just write first thing in the morning. I wake up. Have coffee. And I start. And I try to write for three or four hours. And then after that I’ve got the rest of the day off and I just watch movies or do whatever. But yeah, so that’s what I’m doing. I hope everyone is staying safe. Bye guys.

**Chris Keyser:** Hey John and Craig. This is Chris Keyser. Thank you for inviting me back to Scriptnotes on this, I guess, somewhat inauspicious occasion. I don’t think I’ve really settled into any kind of rhythm yet to be honest with you. I just got back into town just a few days ago. Top of the week. I was in Boston shutting down a couple of productions and saying goodbye to people which I guess is sort of par for the course now but nonetheless.

And now I’m trying to figure out what to do. I usually begin my day the same way. I have a friend, Glenn Sonnenberg, who has been putting out this kind of newsletter-y thing via email called Notes from the Bunker, which is a combination of stories and suggestions about movies and TV and things like that. And it’s been a great way to actually connect to people and hear what people are thinking about in quite the same way as you’re doing right here. That’s been nice. That’s probably the best thing about everything which is I’ve been spending a lot of time getting back in touch with people from as far as back as high school and college and law school and obviously writers that I know, particularly important because I just got into town, so I have to stay away from my own wife which is kind of strange.

We’ve been arranging virtual dinners with friends. We haven’t done it yet, but I think that will be fun when we get around to it. And I’ve been working somewhat. I’m lucky to have some work left to do on some of these projects. So I’ve been talking to the writers on my show and some producers on the other shows that I’m working on. And that’s been good. Not because any of the work actually needs to get done, but because I just actually need something to do every day and feel like I’m productive.

And then we try to go for a walk about once a day. An hour or so. And then usually at the end of the day we do a FaceTime call with our kids who are far away on the East Coast. And that’s the nicest but also the hardest part of all of this, not being able to touch or see my kids, knowing I won’t see them for months.

But, everyone is safe and fine and trying to be productive and reconnecting and that’s the new life for a while. So, I hope everyone who is listening is OK as well and I appreciate you guys doing this. So, thank you.

**Lulu Wang:** Hi John. Hi Craig. It’s Lulu. I have been thinking about what to say about what I’ve been up to because the truth is I think I’ve mostly just been trying to adjust to this new reality. Except that the reality seems to shift every day, every few hours. And so much develops in such a short period of time.

You know, tonight a friend of mine her sister is a doctor in the ER at a hospital and she and many other healthcare workers have been asked to procure their own masks because the hospital doesn’t have a supply, or enough of a supply. It’s one of the few times that social media has actually been really wonderful because so many people replied to my request for N95 masks that they might be willing to donate. And my friend spent the night driving around the city picking up these donations. And it really made me think about how important it is for us to be creative right now and to think about what skills we might have, what resources we might have that we can contribute because so much of what happens in the next few months in this country is going to depend on the choices that we make as a community and as individuals that make up that community.

Well, thank you. It’s one o’clock in the morning and I hope everyone stays safe and healthy. OK, bye.

**John:** Great. So our editor Matthew Chilelli was the one who cut all that together. Matthew had a big week himself. And so I wanted him to have the last word in terms of things that went down this week. Here’s Matthew Chilelli.

**Matthew Chilelli:** Hi, my name is Matthew Chilelli and this is what my boyfriend Tao and I have been doing during this lockdown. I’ve read a lot of stories about how some people are already running out of shows to watch, or getting bored while practicing social distancing. One activity that I can recommend that is definitely not boring is trying to get married during a quarantine.

So, Tao and I have been together for four years and on Wednesday, March 18, we were planning to get married. It was going to be a small civil ceremony at the Beverly Hills Courthouse with family and friends flying in from out of town. Then a nice dinner. Then drinks with friends at a rooftop bar. We thought this would be a nice, cozy wedding day and that was the plan. Right up until March 12 when things started to change.

Now Tao and I had a lot of conversations back and forth. Should we cancel the drinks? Should we cancel the dinner? Should we ask our family not to come here? We spent so much time going back and forth on each of these questions that a lot of the questions were answered for us. First, the bars and clubs closed. We sent out a sad email to our friends. Then the restaurants closed. We sent out another email. Our family wisely canceled their flights. Instead they asked us to record the ceremony so they could see it. And we promised we would.

The celebration was canceled but the wedding was still on because surely they wouldn’t close down the courthouses this soon, right? Well, on Monday March 16 just to be sure I checked the Beverly Hills Courthouse website and they closed it. And so just like everything else our courthouse wedding was canceled.

Now, when I was on the phone with them they did mention that we could still get married somewhere else if we had an officiant. But finding an officiant right away in the middle of a quarantine seemed impossible. Tao and I spent a few moments just staring into space.

Maybe we weren’t going to get married on the 18th after all. Maybe it was going to be weeks, or months, or who knows how long before we could marry each other. It felt like we had lost. We had tried so hard to get one step ahead of the coronavirus. We pared down the wedding. We limited the number of guests. But the coronavirus was one step ahead of us. All our plans had been canceled.

Now eventually we shook ourselves out of our funk. Tao reminded me that eight is a lucky number in China, so the 18th must be somewhat lucky so something has to go right with the wedding eventually. And eventually something did. I remembered I know an officiant. John Bassinger-Flores works for my alma mater Ithaca College. And in his spare time he’s a professional officiant. I gave him a call and he’s such a great guy that even though this was ridiculously short notice he agreed to marry us on the 18th. We just had to find a place. So we thought instead of getting married indoors we could use social distancing to our advantage and get married outside in a park.

Once again, luck was on our side. We held our ceremony at eight in the morning on the 18th at the Lake Hollywood Park right below the Hollywood sign. So with the sun rising over the Hollywood Hills, the smell of morning dew in the air, and no one but us at the park, Tao and I got married. John performed a wonderful ceremony witnessed by our best friend who also took pictures and video so we could share it with our family later.

This ceremony was so different from the courthouse wedding we were expecting just a week earlier. Instead of a large group there were four of us. Instead of being in a courthouse we were in a park. It wasn’t what we were expecting. It was better. Tao described it to one of his friends like this. Our wedding was so quiet and peaceful. We were able to just enjoy each other and focus on each other during this moment that was meant for just the two of us. At the same time we had all of nature as our witness. It felt like the whole world was just quietly listening while we both said I do.

**Craig:** I mean, my heart. Right?

**John:** Yeah, my heart just breaks. Matthew is one of the kindest, most gentlest wonderful people I’ve met. And I met him through Scriptnotes. So he was coming to our Scriptnotes Live shows. He was a video editor. I had a hunch he could probably cut podcasts so I asked him to cut a demo podcast. He did a great job and he’s been cutting ever since. I’m so happy for him.

**Craig:** Yeah. Congrats guys.

**John:** Matthew was in Japan for a year. They made it through all of that. So it’s just great when great things happen during challenging times, so I’m so happy for the two of them.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes. Yes. Love still blossoms.

**John:** All right. Now it is time for our One Cool Things. I listened to a lot of podcasts, a lot of political podcasts, news podcasts, and you’d guess what they’re probably about. They’re about this pandemic that we’re in. And sometimes as I’m walking my dog in the morning I just don’t want to hear more about it. So I’ve started looking for other podcasts I can listen to that don’t freak me out as much. And so one thing I’m starting to listen to is Dead Pilot Society. So this is a not weekly show but an occasional show that goes through and they bring in people that have written pilots that never aired or never sort of got shot, but they were good pilots. And they bring them in and they do readings of pilots that never made it to air.

So, it’s a good thing that has nothing to do with this current moment, but is just good writing from good writers. So Dead Pilot Society is a thing to check out.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s awesome. We’ve been talking to a bunch of our friends to try and get some more dead pilots over there. So let’s see how that goes.

My One Cool Thing this week really is cool. Now, word of fair warning, hopefully you’ve all played the game Codenames. It’s great.

**John:** It’s phenomenal. So describe Codenames for people who haven’t played it before.

**Craig:** Super simple game. You have these cards with words on them. And you make an array, a five-by-five array. So you have 25 cards out on a table. And there are two clue givers and everybody else is a receiver. So you divide everybody into two teams. You have two captains that are giving clues. My job – and I can see on a little grid which one of the words on the table, there’s seven or eight that belong, or eight or nine that belong to my team. And the other clue giver has another eight or nine.

So our job as clue givers is to say one word to our teammates and then a number. That’s the amount of words that we’re asking them to guess on our one clue word. And then they have to figure out which are the words on this table that they are clueing us toward with their one single word.

It’s so much fun. It takes about ten seconds to learn. It’s really fun. And there is a fantastic way to play this now online. But I don’t think that this is some sort of official sanctioned thing. So what I’m asking is if you have not purchased the physical Codenames game do it. Then you can do this. OK? Be fair and kind to the geniuses that made Codenames. The website is horsepaste.com. That’s right. Horsepaste.com.

It works brilliantly. So we’ve already done this once. We’re going to do it again tonight. The best way to play is by combining a laptop with Zoom so you can see everybody and then keep the game running maybe on a tablet. And everybody is all looking at the same words. It’s quite brilliant the way it functions. Super fun. Online Codenames, horsepaste.com.

**John:** Excellent. I’m looking forward to trying that. I like Ticket to Ride the game a lot. I like the board game. And the iPad version is quite good and you can do shared games on that. So we are making some play dates with friends to do a game night with Ticket to Ride and other things like that.

**Craig:** Fun.

**John:** We’ll make it work. And a reminder that our Premium subscribers are going to be listening to me and Craig talk about math after this. But this is our show for the week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli.

**Craig:** Congrats.

**John:** Our outro this week is by Ryan Dunn. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts. We try to get them out about four days after the episode airs.

You can sign up to become a Premium member at Scripnotes.net where you can get all the back episodes and bonus segments.

I want to thank all of our previous guests who sent in their updates on what they’ve been up to this week. There are a few more trickling in so we might save those for next week. But we love you all. We miss you. And we hope you are doing great.

Craig, thank you for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John. See you next time.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** OK, Craig. Math. This is two screenwriters talking about math.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** So, I thought about this because over the last couple of weeks I’ve been reading two books by Matt Parker who is a British mathematician and comedian. Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension and Humble Pi. They’re both good. I’ll have links in the show notes to both of those. But it also got me thinking how much or how little I use math on a daily basis. My daughter is home from – she’s obviously doing school at home right now. And she is in algebra 2 honors right now. And she’s doing stuff that I kind of half recognize, but I’ve never done anything like that since high school. What’s been your experience of math as an adult?

**Craig:** Well, and I was a pretty mathematically-inclined guy. Yeah, I was a Mathlete. And I went as far as calculus. I didn’t go any further than that. I other than obviously simple arithmetic, generally I will use geometry more than anything else. Geometry actually does come in handy when you’re measuring things or trying to figure out the distance between things. If you need to know the hypotenuse because you’re like, well, if I hold this up high how long will it go there. Radius and diameter, often very helpful to know. Oh, statistics. Understanding how statistic generally function is a good thing.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I’m not sure I use it for much more than simple averaging and ratios, also very useful.

**John:** Yeah. I would say like when we did the Kickstarter for Writer Emergency Pack I had to deal with a lot of big numbers. And so I guess you should probably distinguish between like building spreadsheets of things versus sort of like the real figuring out math and figuring out variables.

Every once and a while I’ll come into a situation where like, oh, this is two equations and two variables. But that’s every like two or three years I’ll come into a situation where like, oh, there actually is an X and a Y and there are two formulas. There’s a reason why this thing in the real world requires this kind of math. I’ve not needed the quadratic formula in a really, really long time. I get it. I know why it works. But I’ve not needed to use it.

Now calculus I never actually had. So I stopped at algebra 2 honors and as a journalism major, this is kind of embarrassing, I never had to take any more math beyond that. So I took a physics for majors class my freshman year of college and it required that you be concurrently enrolled in calculus or already had it, so I kind of faked my way through it. And so I understood that calculus is about rates of change and higher functions, but I never really got it.

**Craig:** So many mathematicians just started screaming. [laughs]

**John:** Well, OK, it’s fair for me to say that calculus is about rates of change. That’s fair.

**Craig:** Yes, I mean, that is definitely part of what’s going on. How do I – geez, I’m trying to figure out how to say it. It is. Certainly change is an enormous part of it. No question. But, yeah, there’s differential and there’s integral and they’re two different things. So integral is more about the kind of growth of variables, quantities and things. And also a huge part of calculus is just figuring out how much is under a curve.

It turns out that–

**John:** That’s complicated.

**Craig:** Yeah. So figuring out the area of a triangle is easy. One-half the base times height I believe.

**John:** Height. Yeah. Because if you think about it a triangle is just half of a rectangle. So therefore you just, yeah.

**Craig:** Half of a – yes, that’s assuming that–

**John:** Half a quadrilateral. Yeah.

**Craig:** Yes. If it’s like a weird scaling one I guess it still works.

**John:** It works.

**Craig:** It still works somehow. But, yeah, I’ve already forgotten that one. But figuring out the area under a curve is hard. Until they came across calculus. But super helpful when you’re working in physics. I mean, really what it comes down to is calculus has great application for people who are mathematicians and it has great application for people who are working in physics.

**John:** Yeah. Or engineers. People who need to send rockets up. All that stuff does track and make sense.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** Now people always define themselves as being algebra people or geometry people? I guess I define myself as a geometry person because the thing I got most out of probably all my mathematical education was how to do proofs and just the importance of like what is an actual logical proof and how you sort of make a thing happen.

And I’m guessing that you are also that kind of person because as a puzzle solver that really is kind of what proofs are, isn’t it?

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, proofs, well yes. They are exercises in logic. And it is true that there are a number of puzzles that I’ve thought about are very much like geometric proofs in that they rely on certain axioms. So in geometry an axiom is just something we know is true. Well, in the way that geometry works is every axiom is something that had to be proved first. Really simple. Simple things like A plus B equals B plus A. That had to be proved.

And so everything is built on a series of proofs. So if you’re playing Sudoku you may know, well, if there’s one number here and one number there and you can make a square out of those little pairs that are exclusive and everything else. Then you get rid of the other ones. Yes, it becomes another axiom that you can figure out how to prove. Geometry was fun. I liked it.

**John:** I liked geometry, too. And I think people had a bad experience with geometry because they weren’t introduced to it at the right time, the right speed. They might have had a bad teacher. And so they throw it all out. And I do feel like that sort of rigorous thinking was incredibly important for just being a logical person sort of going forward and recognizing fallacies. And recognizing unsupported conclusions which people can fall into even if they don’t – you might not think they’re gullible people, but they will jump from A to F without actually thinking are B, C, D, and E all really supported along the way.

**Craig:** I mean, I will go out on a limb and say something that is probably going to get me screamed at. But it seems to me that we have inflicted an amount of math upon children that in many cases is just not purposeful. It is incredibly important for any kid who has a general interest or affinity for it even, the STEM subjects, science, technology, engineering, math. But if you’re looking at someone who wants to be a musician, well, I mean there’s some math involved in music I suppose, more on the engineering side. But if somebody wants to be an actor I’m not sure they need math.

If somebody wants to be a salesman, I mean, there’s some math involved. Again, everybody should know basic arithmetic, of course. But algebra 2 where you’re sitting there trying to figure out how to reduce down fractions with square roots in them, that’s simply not relevant to 90% of the children in that school.

And there are other things that we don’t teach that are. And I sometimes think that we are saddled with a kind of system that is that way because it’s always been that way. And it would be better, I think, if we started including things like critical thinking.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That would be incredibly useful to us.

**John:** So while you get all the negative email about your rant there, I’m going to stick up for common core. Because one of the things I’ve noticed when my daughter was going through her public elementary school is that the common core math and English stuff that they were doing was smart in the sense that it built off of each other. And like those critical thinking skills in terms of like is that a supported argument did fit well back and forth together.

Now, the common core math worksheet she got when she was in kindergarten, first grade, some of them were sort of inscrutable. Like why are we doing this thing? But once you understood the underlying logic it’s making sure kids understood numbers are counting things but numbers are not just counting things. That they actually have placeholders. How place values work and all that stuff. They were doing a very rigorous job explaining all of that stuff so that you could get to the other math and you could really have a foundation for understanding the more complicated math.

And I think when people struggle with math it’s generally because some important step along the way just wasn’t made fully clear for them.

**Craig:** Well, and of all the things that kids reasonably say, “I will never use this. Why do I need to learn this,” math is way up there. Because for a lot of it they’re right. I mean, honestly – look, I am glad that I know how to multiply fractions. And I am glad that I know how to add fractions. And if you’re cooking sometimes it comes in very, very handy.

But for a lot of people, especially now, they’re just going to type it into a calculator. And, in fact, they will say it. They will say, “Hey, blankety-blank, tell me what the such and such.” And their favorite PDA is going to speak it back to them.

**John:** Yeah. And I’m not so worried about that. The fact that I will use a tool like that to do division or multiplication or other things just because it’s faster, I don’t think that’s actually a crisis. As long as they understand what the process is that’s going on behind the scenes, that I could do it by hand if I needed to do it by hand, I’m really not so freaked out about that.

**Craig:** Yeah. Neither am I. It’s an interesting thing. And, look, the reason I’m saying this is not because I’m grouchy about – I love math. I legitimately love math. I also recognize that a lot of people don’t. I also recognize that it’s a massive problem for kids who have certain learning disabilities. And it is traumatic for kids that don’t have learning disabilities. They’re just no good at it.

We excuse the tone deaf from music classes. They don’t have to attend. They are not forced to sing in front of everybody. But there are people who are a little bit number deaf and they are forced to go on this somewhat humiliating march.

And when – look, look. I was an excellent math student. And then I got to Princeton and I was pre-med. And one of the deals with pre-med is that you had to take physics 103. Not physics 101, which was physics for poets. Physics 103. Physics for physics people.

**John:** I took that, too.

**Craig:** So off I went. And I’m in the lecture hall where Einstein used to be. And I’m surrounded by, you know, geniuses. [laughs] And for the first time in my life I knew what it meant to be utterly lost. I fought – and when I say I fought I mean I’ve never fought harder academically – fought my way to a B. That’s a B at Princeton, which is basically the equivalent of a C. Right? I fought. But I remember distinctly thinking, oh, this is what it’s like. When the teacher says something everybody goes, “Well of course, but what about this?” And he says, “Great question.” And you’re thinking, no, I’m still stuck on the “oh of course part.” Why is that of course? What are you even talking about? I’m drowning and with every additional sentence I’m further and further behind to the point where I just go limp. It’s scary and it’s upsetting and we have to just be aware that there are a lot of kids that are experiencing that every day. And I’m not sure they need to.

**John:** So my experience in freshman year Physics for Majors, which I took out of pure hubris. I didn’t need to take that science class but I took it. And there was some sort of like physics picnic at the start of the year. And so we were all invited to this thing. And it was at this playground thing and there was a spinning thing. And I thought, oh, centrifugal force. And I got these looks form people like, “Wait, did you just say centrifugal force?” And I’m like, yeah. They’re like that’s not a thing.

**Craig:** That’s not a thing, man. It’s centripetal.

**John:** Yeah. And I’m like, oh. And from that moment forward, oh wow, I don’t belong here. These are lovely people and I’m so glad they have the skills they have, but I’m not one of those people.

**Craig:** Yeah. I just remember thinking, oh god. Because what had happened was I had come out of a high school where the best you could do with math was to get to calculus. That was it. Well, wonderful public high school in New Jersey. And a lot of these kids had come from private schools where they were already taking Calc 2. They were in AP Calc. Their math skills were really far beyond mine. And the thing about math is like you said, it’s a pyramid. You build on it. So, that’s my big sort of plea to the world of education to maybe ease up on the math stuff because the kids that love math and excel at math are going to gobble it up anyway. And if you see a kid drowning, just back off. Back off.

**John:** Or build out classes that are actually practical applications of math. Because, I mean, teaching kids how to balance their budget is much more important than teaching them how to do high level things. And sine, cosine, and tangents, which they will never, ever touch again in their lives.

**Craig:** I mean, honestly, it is a rare thing. The only time I ever think of Sohcahtoa, you know what Sohcahtoa is, right?

**John:** I don’t know what that is.

**Craig:** Ok. So you once did. Sohcahtoa is the all-purpose pneumonic for figuring out how to calculate the sine, the cosine, and the tangent. So, Soh, is sine is opposite over hypotenuse. Cah, cosine is angle over hypotenuse. And Toa, Tan, tangent, is opposite over angle. Sohcahtoa.

The only time I ever use Sohcahtoa is when I’m helping either – well, Jack is now, he’s graduated so he’s no more math for him. But Jessica is in 9th grade and the 9th grade math they’re getting into it. That’s why I use it. To help teach my kids. And then I think WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS? We’re on this wheel. This purposeless wheel. Like they’re learning it, why? So they can teach it to their kids?

**John:** Indeed. So they can share the story with their children.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly.

**John:** It’s a generational gift.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** Craig, thanks for the math talk.

**Craig:** Thanks John. Stay safe.

**John:** Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* Huge thanks to all of our special guests for sharing! Follow them here: [Emily Zulauf](https://twitter.com/emilyzulauf) on Twitter, [Mike Birbiglia](https://www.instagram.com/birbigs/) on Instagram, [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/meganarao) on Twitter, [BJ Novak](https://twitter.com/bjnovak) on Twitter, [Chris Nee](https://twitter.com/chrisdocnee) on Twitter, [Charlie Brooker](https://twitter.com/charltonbrooker) on Twitter, [David Iserson](https://twitter.com/davidiserson) on Twitter, [Susana Fogel](https://twitter.com/susannafogel) on Twitter, [Damon Lindelof](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0511541/) on IMDb, [David Wain](https://twitter.com/davidwain) on Twitter, [Mari Heller](https://www.instagram.com/mariellestilesheller) on Instagram, [Rawson Thurber](https://twitter.com/rawsonthurber?lang=en) on Twitter, [Liz Hannah](https://twitter.com/itslizhannah) on Twitter, [Malcolm Spellman](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1173259/) on IMDb, [Alison McDonald](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1037485/) on IMDb, [Ryan Knighton](https://twitter.com/ryanknighton) on Twitter, [Ricki Lindhome](https://twitter.com/rikilindhome) on Twitter, [Chris Keyser](https://twitter.com/chrskeyser?lang=en) on Twitter, [Lulu Wang](https://twitter.com/thumbelulu) on Twitter, and don’t forget to congratulate [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli?lang=en) on Twitter!
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* [Dead Pilot Society](https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/dead-pilots-society) and [Online Codenames](www.horsepaste.com)
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* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

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