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The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2018/commencement).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 376 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show we’ll be looking at how you know when it’s okay to start writing on that project you’ve been hired to write, and how that ties into the new Start Button the WGA is unveiling this week. We’ll also be answering a three-part listener question about television and some other listener questions as well.

**Craig:** Terrific. And you’ve been working on this one for quite some time, so this is–

**John:** This has been a long term project.

**Craig:** I’m excited. It’s good though. This is why we elected you, John.

**John:** Aw, thank you.

**Craig:** Oh, and you know what? Well, I guess I’ll put it in follow up. I have follow up.

**John:** All right. We’ll put it in follow up. My little bit of news is I’m just now back from book tour. So I did a book tour of Europe. I did a book tour of Texas and Colorado. And I love it and I love signing people’s books and meeting people. But I can’t sign everyone’s books. So I’m doing what a lot of other authors do which is if you’d like me to sign a bookplate which is essentially a fancy sticker that you can put in your book that has my name on it and your name on it, I’m doing that now.

So, if you would like your Arlo Finch copy signed, maybe as a Christmas present, or a gift for some other young reader, you can do that now. So there’s a link in the show notes or just go to johnaugust.com. You’ll see the Arlo Finch little thing there. And I can send you a sticker that you can put in your book as a gift. So if you’d like that just go to johnaugust.com.

**Craig:** We don’t do any kind of Scriptnotes gift exchange at the end of the year.

**John:** We don’t. I mean, why don’t we do that, Craig?

**Craig:** Probably because I hate people and you aren’t really a person.

**John:** No, I would say that it’s because I don’t like giving gifts. I’ve just never been especially gifty. Stuart Friedel, our former producer of Scriptnotes, he was so good at gifts. He would pick the perfect gift for my daughter. He clearly had a brain that was just always on the hunt for the perfect gift for people.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** You know, Craig, I think we should break tradition and actually exchange gifts and I think we should do it at our live Scriptnotes show.

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** So we’re doing a Scriptnotes show on December 12 in Hollywood. And maybe we should exchange gifts at that event.

**Craig:** We have to give ourselves some kind of limitation. Otherwise it could become absurd.

**John:** So less than $1,000?

**Craig:** Oh god. That’s an enormous number.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** That’s crazy. I’ve lost interest.

**John:** All right, so we will exchange some sort of gift but it should be a meaningful gift that the other person will like and we should do it at the live show.

**Craig:** OK. We’ll figure it out. But we’ll have to put a reasonable financial limit on it so that one person doesn’t overwhelm the other with insanity.

**John:** Why don’t we say $20 because the tickets are $20?

**Craig:** I like that.

**John:** So that will be the baseline. We’re going to be announcing our special guest for the show really soon. We were talking about it right before we got on the air.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So we’re excited. We’re excited to be back in Hollywood doing our annual holiday live show. Tickets are on sale now. You can click on the link in the show notes or go to writersguildfoundation.org, or wgafoundation.org. It’s the usual place. And you can get a ticket for the show.

**Craig:** And we have not yet settled firmly on guests, but we have some excellent ideas that will blow your minds.

**John:** Blow our minds. So come see that. We have some follow up. So, Craig, why don’t you start with your follow up first?

**Craig:** My follow up is just some exciting news. We’ve been going on and on about these credit proposals and they passed.

**John:** They did pass.

**Craig:** Super excited by that. They passed by a very healthy margin, despite a little pushback from a prominent member of the legal community here in Los Angeles. But I think we as a committee we made a good strong case. And the nice thing is that all the changes that we made are really for the benefit of writers.

So, I’m really happy about that. It’s a great way for me to kind of ride into the sunset as I believe this incarnation of the credits committee is being sunsetted. I have been involved on a credits committee now in one form or another for like a decade. So, this is a nice retirement for me.

**John:** Very nice. So I will be joining the credits committee and I think the plan going forward is to listen to members about sort of the things they’re experiencing with credits. And as you and I have talked about there are some unique things happening with movies being written in really unusual ways that make determining credit a challenge and so we need to rise to figure out how to deal with those challenges.

**Craig:** We have actually done I think a very good job as a union to shift our perspective on how credits should interact with the world around us. When we joined the union we were still kind of living with the burden of the old philosophy which is we will write credits rules in such a way that will change the way the business does things.

No. Business doesn’t care. Go ahead and penalize rewriters all you want. They’ll keep hiring people to rewrite things. So, there was a nice philosophical pivot that happened over the last 10 years where the guild said, OK, this is how movies are actually written. How can we better serve our membership who are writing them? And that’s been a good change and there’s obviously lots of more room for improvement. These things have to be done carefully and incrementally and they’re subject to votes. And sometimes even subject to negotiation with the studios. So it’s a tricky, tricky business. But if anyone can do it, John, it’s you. And me. But not me this time. I’m not doing it anymore.

**John:** Not you this time. There will be many wise, smart people on both the East and the West figuring this out together, so I’m excited about that.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes.

**John:** So, a big piece of follow up, Craig many, many, many episodes ago you had made a spontaneous offer that if any studio wanted us to come in and talk about their notes process you and I would be willing to do that. And this last week we did.

**Craig:** We actually did it. So Disney invited us. They were the only studio brave enough to just listen to two writers talk for an hour. That’s all we ever suggested doing. At no cost to them. They were the only ones that even expressed interest in hearing what writers thought about the notes process, which on the one hand speaks glowingly of them, and on the other hand makes everybody else look a bit, well, tawdry to me.

We came and we did it. And I hope that they actually shared that experience with their other studio, their fellow studio people, because they seemed to really like it a lot. And what you and I did was speak about how notes feel on our side of the table and try and help them tailor the way they give notes to us and our responses so that they actually get better work out of us, better responses, better conversations, less strife, less drama, less trouble.

And it went really well. You know, tip of the hat to Disney for doing that. I was really pleased and just a roomful of executives who were willing to listen to writers talk about this. And, by the way, they seemed legitimately interested, which I really appreciated.

**John:** Absolutely. So it was a good conversation. We sort of laid out kind of just best practices, like some dos and don’ts, and really what it feels like to be on the receiving end of those notes and which notes are helpful to us and which notes are maddening because they don’t actually recognize the writing process or the filmmaking process.

And we actually got into a bit of back and forth because they say like, “Well sometimes we have to give that note because of X, Y, and Z.” And we said, great, so tell us why you’re giving us those notes if they are crazy notes. So it was a good conversation.

I know we’re going to be going in to talk with some other development executives down the road, but I guess we’re offering this to other folks as well?

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, my feeling is there’s no reason that executives at Warner Bros, executives at Fox, executives at Sony, executives at Universal wouldn’t want to hear this. What does it cost beyond an hour? And just to be clear, we don’t walk in there and go, “You guys are stupid. Your notes are dumb.” That’s not at all what we do. What we do is really talk about the psychological experience of writing something and receiving notes and where the notes are helpful. We divided in half. This is helpful. This is not helpful. So, it’s very pro-note and it’s really designed to kind of help improve the relationship between note givers and note takers. Why wouldn’t they want? It makes no sense to me.

But, you know, hey, Disney, trailblazers.

**John:** Yep. So, another thing we’ve been talking about on the podcast and also in the guild is the sense of No Writing Left Behind. This idea that you should not be leaving your materials behind after a pitch, so that it doesn’t become free work you’re doing for folks. And today we have two new folks who have written in who aren’t screenwriters but are encountering the same kind of thing. Craig, do you want to take the first one here?

**Craig:** Yeah, sure. So this is what this person writes in. “In following the No Work Left Behind thread over the last number of episodes I wanted to relay a similar issue in the feature directing world, specifically the pitching process. For writers it sounds like “Show us exactly how you would write the script for free and then we’ll decide if we want to pay you.” For directors it sounds like “Show us exactly how you would direct the movie for free and then we’ll decide if we want to pay you.” In my experience, a typical feature film directing pitch from start to finish takes 250 hours or more over about two or three months. It’s free work. If you don’t get the job you don’t get paid.

“And often after going through the entire process the outcome is that the movie gets canceled or the studio hires a bigger name director. If one were to pitch for three or four projects you’re talking about more than 4.5 to six months of fulltime, unpaid speculative pitching work. This is reflective of my 2018. And no one seems surprised by this. In fact, it’s expected.

“I’m a WGA and DGA member, and while the WGA is brilliantly taking on the free work issue, I haven’t gotten a straight answer from the DGA, my reps, or anyone else about the free work required of directors. The only answer I’ve received is when you’re starting out you just have to do a lot of pitching. It’s pretty normal.

“One now well-known director’s rep told me that this director was consistently a runner-up on directing job hires for three years. I know Scriptnotes is a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters, but would you be willing to lend any insights or suggestions about the free work issues in directing? No one else seems to be willing to talk about this issue.”

John, I feel like we could help this person.

**John:** I think we could as well. So, talking with director friends, this is absolutely true. And so I want to distinguish between a little bit – you know, writers write words and so we focus on like don’t leave your words behind, but there’s obviously a lot of work that’s being done to go in and pitch. And so if we’re telling you like, OK, you may have to pitch this project 10 times but you’re not leaving that document behind that’s still a tremendous amount of your time. And you and I both know many feature writers who are spending a tremendous amount of time pitching and pitching and pitching on projects.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** This is a director who is doing the same thing. But what the director is coming in with is not a document. It is usually a huge mood board and cut of videos and rip reels from other things to show what he or she is planning to do were they to get the job of directing this movie.

And I would share this director’s frustration that like you are basically giving the studio an option for like this is what the movie could look like and getting almost nothing out of it in return.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, this is one of those rare moments where in the feature business writers have it better than directors. And I say rare because once the jobs are handed out, way better to be the director in features than the writer. The director is treated with respect and has some creative authority and the writer has none of those things.

But prior to employment however the writers do have a certain advantage because as you point out our work product is words on a page. So, it’s really easy for us to withhold that because that’s the only thing we’re paid for. For a director, what they’re paid for is film in a can and, well, or on a small digital card, and there is no way to essentially withhold that because that’s not going to get made anyway. It seems to me that if you are spending that much time creating a kind of film directing pitch and it’s not converting into jobs then you I suppose must ask the question what is converting into jobs for people.

If you’re spending six months of fulltime, unpaid speculative pitching work I feel like maybe the answer is to spend six months shooting something that is kind of remarkable.

**John:** Yeah, I mean, one of the luxuries writers have is that it’s cheap for us to do our jobs. And so we can just – you and I can just go off and write a thing. No one can stop us and it’s free. For a director to make something costs money and takes time and to make a film requires a tremendous amount of money. Even to make a small film you’re spending a tremendous amount of time and money to do that.

So, just this past week we had a launch party for Start Button stuff. And I was talking with a feature writer who was saying that he was going in pitch after pitch after pitch on this project and at a certain point he wanted to say, “OK, I will go back in and pitch again but you need to start paying me some money.” And he’d be fine if that was money against what they were ultimately going to pay him. But if it costs $500 or $1,000 to take another meeting that would at least incentivize both sides to really ask is this worth it. Is this money well spent? Is this time well spent? Because it becomes crazy after a certain point.

**Craig:** It does. I mean, look, the problem is I think from the point of a studio that’s contemplating hiring a director and paying them some amount of money that’s significant and then also putting them creatively in charge of a project that’s worth millions and millions of dollars they might look at that as penny ante nonsense and slightly unprofessional or dinky. And it may hurt you.

And you’re right. It is really hard to, well, it’s much harder for directors to create speculative work, like a proper film, than it is for writers to create speculative work on paper. But it’s cheaper now than it’s ever been before.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And it seems to me that we’re collecting quite a list of writers who are saying I have work that no one seems to want to pay for and directors who are saying I’m doing work that no one seems to want to pay for. And maybe they should get together and in actual partnership start working together to create work together that will benefit them together. And I’m pretty sure there’s about four billion actors who are saying I’m not getting work.

Do you know what I mean? If I were an agent I would be saying, “OK, here are three really talented directors that are underemployed. Here are three really talented writers that are underemployed. Get in a room and start talking guys. I need you people to figure out how to work together and create something that lets me be able to sell you.”

So, you know what, I’m blaming the agents, again.

**John:** I would also ask our listeners if you know of a system, it could be a different industry, we have people writing in from ad industry as well, if you know of a system that is set up to sort of help deal with this, to help deal with the sort of pitch again, pitch again, pitching for free forever. I mean, actors go through this, again, with auditions. And if you know of a system that you think actually does help with this I’d love to hear what you think could be a solution.

So, whether it’s an existing system or your pitch for how you actually fix this issue. Because I do think it’s the next wave of stuff we have to take into account.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s always been bad. It’s getting worse. And it will continue to get worse. And the thing that makes me really nervous, because look the part where employees like directors and writers, artist employees are being mistreated, that makes me feel bad. But what makes me nervous is that when you start to move large groups of people into states of scarcity, resource scarcity, they begin to turn on each other. It’s inevitable. And I think Hollywood, that is to say corporate Hollywood, has done a wonderful job pitting directors, actors, and writers against each other all the time in their system in such a way that the artists do not unite, regardless of the creation of a studio called United Artists. And they’re just really good at that. They’re smart. In general it makes sense that that’s what they’re good at. And we tend to bite each other’s backs, writers and directors in particular, really just go at it, fighting over the scraps that they toss down.

I know I sound a little bit like a Marxist nut job right now, and I’m not normally, but it’s not good what’s going on out there.

**John:** No. Well, I mean I think what tends to happen is there’s a race towards the bottom. And fortunately because of our unions we do have a bottom in terms of compensation which is scale. And so you cannot undercut each other on that financial level.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But creatively you can undercut each other and the one person who decides like, oh, I will turn in this 50-page treatment and sort of ruins it for everybody else. And that’s a real thing. And so we’ve got to make sure that we understand that it doesn’t get better until everyone sort of agrees on some terms.

**Craig:** Yeah. I completely agree with you. And one thing that I did once that worked out beautifully, and this is not for our director friend but for our writer friends, is that I made a deal for a project and they were a little bit like, hmm, we’re not sure if we want to do that. And I said I’ll tell you what. Let’s make a deal for it. And I will write a very extensive treatment. And the deal will have a cut off after the treatment. So just go ahead and pay me scale for the treatment. And if you read the treatment and you think, yeah, you know what, we don’t want to go ahead with this, you’re done. But if you do want to go ahead with it, then we have the deal and you go ahead and you trigger the first step and I start writing. And it worked out because they did like it and they did trigger the first step. But I got paid for that.

And I think any time you can say, listen, let’s just start dealing with scale. How about that? Because sometimes I think we’re so afraid to say, OK, just give me scale for something that we go ahead and accept nothing in its place. And nothing is in fact worse than scale.

**John:** It is in fact worse than scale.

**Craig:** And in that case doing the scale work got me my full fee and then some for the rest of it. I don’t mind being quasi speculative in that regard, but you got to pay me something. So, scale seems reasonable.

**John:** Yeah. So, this last week we got a tweet from Anïas with three questions and I thought they were all good questions, so let’s try to answer all three of these. Number one, what makes a good procedural TV show work, Craig?

**Craig:** Oh, OK. We’re going to go one by one. I like it. These were good questions. I am not the biggest procedural show fan. That said, I’ve certainly seen my share of procedural shows. To me, the most important thing for a procedural show is that the concept of the show is such that the actors involved have a job that is episodic. So, whatever they do for a living it changes on a daily basis or a weekly basis. They get something new that will have a beginning, middle, and end.

This is why most procedural shows are cops, lawyers, doctors, firefighters, because they get cases. But, you know, there are certain other kinds of procedural shows that are based around the nomadic lifestyle of the hero, for instance Highway to Heaven. Or, when we were children The Hulk, the Incredible Hulk was essentially a nomad show where a loner roams from town to town, arrives in a new place, deals with a new situation that has a beginning, middle, and end, and then can leave. But the important thing is that conceptually there is no continuing action beyond the kind of interplay between the characters who are doing the job, but the world/the plot always has hard ins and outs. And the concept needs to support the reality of that.

**John:** I would say a good procedural show is like one of Craig’s best crossword puzzles in that you sit down with it and you sort of know what you’re going to get. You’re not sure how it’s all going to fit together. But it delivers on what your expectations were for that period of time for that experience. You know sort of exactly what you’re going to get and that is I think why the good procedural shows keep going on forever and forever because they just deliver what you expect. It’s like McDonald’s hamburgers. They’re exactly what you think they’re going to be.

You know, when you talk with people who work on procedural shows, they will at the start of the season on a big white board figure out the giant arcs of characters over the course of the seasons, like what kinds of things we’re going to do. This character is going to buy a house. And these things will change. But episode to episode not a lot is going to change. And in many cases you could take episode 10 and episode four and swap them and nothing bad would happen. Serialized shows that wouldn’t work.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly. And interestingly there’s been an evolution in comedy, in televised comedy. Sitcoms were always procedurals. We don’t think of them necessarily as procedurals, but they always were. It’s just the procedural wasn’t saving a life or trying a case. It was my dog got free, or I agreed to date two people at the same time. So it’s the situation right. And it was a procedure. And then it was done. And so week after week it was a new story entirely.

Comedy has now drifted more towards a serialization because of the changing nature of the way television is delivered to people. So even on network, for instance, Blackish is still a procedural essentially. It’s a comedy procedural. But something like The Good Place is serialized. They literally – each episode gets a chapter number, because they’re telling one continuing story like an ongoing soap opera.

So things are changing somewhat. And I think what has kept procedure, like classic procedure – for instance, our friend Derek has 20 procedural shows on the air.

**John:** He has all the Chicago shows.

**Craig:** He’s all the Chicago shows and the new FBI show. And what has kept procedurals going so strong for so long is how easy it is to essentially replay them. You can run them again and again and again in any order, at any time, and no one has to scratch their heads and go, “Wait, what?” You can’t show somebody episode 21 of The Good Place and have them understand anything. But I can literally watch any single episode of Chicago Fire and aside from, OK, I don’t necessarily know what the characters are talking about in terms of their relationships with each other, but the fire story I can watch that and be like, oh damn, OK. There was a beginning, a middle, and an end. And it works.

**John:** Every episode of a procedural basically contains its premise. That this is a group of people that does this thing. Versus a true serialized show that wouldn’t make sense. You would not be able to follow episode 13 of that show if you just started watching right there.

**Craig:** Right. And I will say to people at home, don’t sleep on procedurals. Sometimes we think of them as old fashioned, and I guess in way they are old fashioned, but they work. People love them. And if you get yourself in a good groove with a good procedural. I mean, Dick Wolf’s entire trillion dollar empire is based on procedurals. And great writers have cut their teeth and then some in procedurals and mastered the craft. John Wells is one of the most successful television writers of all time. You know, was involved in huge procedurals.

**John:** Like ER. Like West Wing. And West Wing really is functionally a procedural. There’s great writing and there’s great characters and lots of stuff is happening, but the episode begins and the episode ends and there’s been an arc in that episode. It’s fitting into a larger piece but it is the crisis of the week.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is essentially a procedural.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s the monster of the week. Yes, there’s great big arcs and if you didn’t know who some of those characters were at the start it would be confusing a bit, but there’s still – you know what you’re going to get over the course of an episode generally. And then the unique episodes where they really broke those expectations stand out because it is just so jarring. The Body is great example of like it broke the expectation of what’s supposed to happen in an episode of Buffy.

**Craig:** Yeah, so you know Buffy is a good example of a very cool procedural in case you think like, oh, maybe they’re a little fuddy-duddy or a little boring. They’re not. And when they’re done well they’re done wonderfully well. And all shows ultimately are borrowing elements of procedurals. There’s always some kind of plot inside of a single episode that gets kind of consumed within the episode. So, something to definitely think about. Don’t necessarily think that you have to chase whatever you might think of as avant-garde or sexy or cutting edge. If you love procedurals, by god, write one. Because there’s still gold in them thar hills.

**John:** Yep. We’re only a third of the way through Anïas’s tweet. Her second question is what makes a show better to watch once a week versus bulk release.

**Craig:** Well, I have a little bit of a possibly unpopular opinion here, because I think this is a question of opinion. I’m not sure that there’s anything particular that makes a show more enjoyable in one way or another. I think all shows are better when you get them once a week. I think all shows are made better with anticipation. I just do. I think that there’s a certain joy to waiting and then to being satisfied. And sometimes you wait forever. I mean, we’ve been waiting for this last season of Game of Thrones for quite some time and we’ll continue to. And then it’s going to be satisfying.

And as we watch it week by week we all share in it together. Yes, some people watch it a little bit later than others, but for all the people that watched it when it was available we get to talk about it and share it and it’s the watercooler syndrome. All the shows that are kind of dumped at you, there’s no watercooler. Everybody watches them at different times. They watch them a lot, a little. So for me, I love a nice once-a-week. I do.

**John:** I watch a lot of once-a-weeks, but of course I’m also binging shows on Netflix at the same time. Many episodes back we’ll find a link to it. I had Damon Lindelof on the show and he and I were talking about Lost. And Lost was a once-a-week show that had a giant mythology and I think some of the success of Lost has to be attributed to the fact that it was coming out once a week and that fans could build up the theories over the course of the week and there was a chance to do it.

It would be a completely different experience if Lost had dropped all its episodes in a bulk. Like it would have been a very different experience. And, you know, a great example of that is when the writer’s strike happened their season got split. And so it ended up being a giant gap between those initial episodes of the season and the later ones. And it got strange. It got weird. Like once it got off of its rhythm, the fans had a hard time sort of grabbing back onto the show.

I’m in conversations now to do something that would be a once-a-day thing, which I think is a sort of interesting blend between the two. So there’s a watercooler moment, but you can also catch up which is a good thing, too. Sometimes the once-a-week shows, I guess a good thing about them is once I hear about them I’m not so far behind that I can’t catch up.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Sometimes when a 10-episode, 13-episode thing drops on Netflix all at once I’m like, oh god, I’m just never going to be able to. It’s just daunting. I’m never going to be able to catch up to the conversation about it. So if you have something that needs to have a big cultural conversation to really work I think that speaks towards the once-a-week or the not all at once release plan.

**Craig:** Yep. I’m just old fashioned that way. I like it better.

**John:** So, third point in Annalise for the Win’s tweet is what in storytelling differentiates a serialized bulk release from a movie? So storytelling wise what is different between what you’re doing for Chernobyl, which is a serialized – it’s not bulk release. You’re still doing it once a week. But what is different about Stranger Things dropping 10 episodes at once versus a long movie? Storytelling wise, how do you think about those things differently?

**Craig:** Well I think that the bulk release – the release pattern there is a bit of a red herring. I don’t think whether it’s released all at once or once a week is necessarily changing how you write your shows. Because each episode needs to have some driving force at the end of it that makes you want to watch the next one. Essentially it’s that page-turning feeling that you want to create whether that second episode is available immediately or it’s going to be available a week from then.

The real question is what’s the difference between that and a very long movie and that’s kind of it, what I just said. It is a long movie. There are a million differences in terms of how much time you get to spend on things and the way that you can make certain storylines and characters elastic. You can expand them as you desire. You can take a moment and just do a side trip that’s fascinating because it gets a beginning, middle, and end. The most important thing is at the end of it you keep moving toward the next one. And that when you are done you have clearly told a story that had its beginning at the beginning, and the ending is relevant to that beginning.

So, for me, having gone through the experience of writing Chernobyl it was the best because it was everything I love about writing closed end narrative and none of the things that I hate about writing closed end narrative.

**John:** Yeah. I would say a thing to think about the difference between a movie versus a long drop of a series is the previously on. So, in many of these shows that are all dropped all at once they got rid of the previously ons. So it’s essentially assuming that you may just be watching this whole thing through from the start and so therefore we are not going to give you a previously on.

I’m always a fan of previously ons because I think they can help steer the viewer’s eye and attention for the things that are going to be important for just this episode. I just finished watching Bodyguard which is a BBC production that’s on Netflix now.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And I think it was – I don’t know – maybe it was a week-to-week originally in the BBC but they kept the previously ons and I thought the previously ons were incredibly helpful in just steering you towards what to focus on in a given episode because even though it’s only six hours long a tremendous amount happens and you would have a hard time noticing those things. So, you know, with that I think they were able to get rid of some clunky scenes that would have otherwise just been there to remind the viewer that something had happened.

Movies don’t have previously ons. It’s just a run.

**Craig:** They don’t. And what’s also great about previously ons is that they can dip back – they can redefine what previously is. So, Game of Thrones occasionally in a previously on bit will show you something that happened two seasons earlier, because it’s suddenly relevant now. In fact, sometimes it annoys me a little bit because they’ll show me some random thing from two seasons ago and I’ll be like, OK, that’s tipped me off quite a bit about what’s going to happen here.

So, sometimes it can actually diminish a little bit of surprise. But with something that is as sprawling and as multi-episode as Game of Thrones you need it. It’s really important. But even for Chernobyl we’re certainly going to have to do some version of that. I’m a big believer in giving people a little bit of a short refresher and then before the HBO static comes on. And I’m a big fan of giving them a glimpse of what’s about to come. Which, again, is maybe what’s happening in next week’s episode, or maybe it’s a little bit of a glimpse ahead to the episode three weeks from now. They never really tell you which I think is cool. So you get to shape the kind of set up and the expectation for next time which you can’t do in movies.

Again, like, I don’t know, I think I should just keep doing. I mean, I just love it. The thing that always scared me away from television I think was just kind of the endless – but even now I think about the endless ongoing thing and I think you know what that was only a nightmare for me when I considered the idea of doing a procedural. I could never do what Derek does because it’s just not how my mind works. You know?

But now you can make these seasons that are eight episodes long. That is a miniseries essentially. And you just need to know that like, OK, and then I can do a second miniseries of those characters in this situation again the following season and it’s not so daunting. It’s actually quite lovely.

**John:** All right. Now, before we lose Craig to television forever, I want to get his opinion on something that’s really more of a feature issue which is our marquee topic today which is commencement. Commencement is a fancy word for beginning, but actually it’s a term of art that means something especially for screenwriters. It means that you can now start writing the thing.

And so let’s talk about this from the perspective of Craig you have just been hired to write a movie for somebody.

**Craig:** Which I have been.

**John:** Congratulations. Which is true.

**Craig:** It’s true.

**John:** And so it doesn’t matter really if it’s a first draft or if it’s a rewrite or a polish, ultimately you’re going to be turning in a draft.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And a draft is sort of two things. I mean, it is a bunch of pages that have text on them and that is a thing they will hopefully shoot and make into a movie. But a draft from your perspective and as you’re planning your life, a draft is also time. It is a chunk of time in which you are going to be writing this thing. And because it’s both of these things sometimes it’s useful to think about just kind of a timeline. And on this timeline there’s one point where you start writing. That is commencement. And there’s one point where you give them the script. That is delivery. And ideally those are really clearly defined moments and everyone agrees on what those moments are and everything is happy and wonderful.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** The experience that you and I both had as screenwriters and which all other screenwriters can nod and attest to is that it’s really murky sometimes what those moments are. So take the delivery side, like I send in my script. You and I both grew up in a time where we had to print our scripts and put them in an envelope and a messenger would come and pick them up. Or we would literally drop them off someplace. Now we’re attaching them to an email and we’re sending them in as a PDF. And so we think like, “I delivered.” But did you deliver? Is it all done? Is it all final? Or did you just send it to the producer and the producer is going to come back with notes? Is the studio exec going to say like, oh, could we do a little bit more?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And if you’re still within your initial writing period, which we should also talk about, yeah maybe you do do a little bit more of that stuff. But that becomes the endless rewrites. Those endless unpaid rewrites. Ultimately, you want to come at the end of this to be you really delivered when they’re cutting you a check. That is the moment that you can really know like, OK, I am done with this draft. This draft is both this document, this time, this moment has ended. And you don’t get to the end until you start.

**Craig:** Well, look, that’s how our contracts are designed. It’s essentially what they’re advertising to you. And then they immediately say now here’s how it really works. What they’re advertising to you is you write the script. You deliver the script, we give you a check. And also you started the script, we’ll give you half the money. Great. You deliver it, we give you the other half.

And then they do everything they can to subvert that. Everything they can, including taking forever to pay you the first half. They may say we’re not paying you the first half until the long form contract is done, but in the meantime you have to start writing because we need this soon.

I have been in situations, and this was a long time, the very first movie I ever worked on they dragged their heels so much that when we – because I had a writing partner at the time – when we finished the draft we called and said you can’t have this until you pay us commencement and delivery. You can’t have it. And it was a scary thing to do for two 25 year olds to say to the Walt Disney Corporation. But it worked.

But I never forgot how they dragged that out miserably. And while you’re looking at a piece of paper that says, OK, I officially have 12 weeks to do this. My contract says I have 12 weeks. Everything that they’re going to do is designed to make you work for 800 weeks.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So you think like, oh, in a contract where you have a job and then you have a timeline where you have to do the job by that the person hiring you would want to enforce that. They specifically don’t want to enforce it.

**John:** No. The studio executive is being paid for every week of work. They’re not getting paid for like, oh, you know, make some movies and then we’ll pay you eventually. No, they’re being paid for their work and as writers we’re not paid for our work in the same way. Because we’re still working under the assumption that our work is this draft that we’re handing them, they will try to extend that time endlessly.

Our goal of this conversation is to talk about starting the clock and so that once you’ve started the clock you know the clock is running and then you can actually stop the clock when you’ve turned in the thing.

So, let’s talk about commencement because commencement is that sense of like, OK, it’s OK to go ahead and start writing your script. Now, the people who might tell you that it’s OK to start writing your script but you shouldn’t necessarily believe them are your agent, your manager, the producer, the junior studio executive. They might all say, “Great. You’re good. We all agree. You can go start writing the thing.” When you should really probably start writing the thing is when your attorney who is negotiating this says we’re good. So I would trust that person. I would also trust if you get a check in your hand that is a sign that you are truly commenced.

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah.

**John:** Short of that check in your hand, you kind of don’t really know. If you signed your long form agreement that’s a good sign, too. But that check in your hand is really what means that like they believe you are starting writing, so start writing.

**Craig:** I don’t think I’ve ever waited for the check in hand.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** But I have certainly waited for the certificate of authorship, which is a pretty decent stand in for a long form. And it’s something that if a studio is seemingly dragging their heels and saying we’re not going to actually pay you until you sign this long form but please start writing, that’s when your lawyer should be asking for a certificate of authorship. And what that does is it basically just establishes the most important fact for all parties involved. They’re hiring you. They’re paying you. You are doing it as a work-for-hire so that they have the basic minimum required to be able to cut you a check.

**John:** Yeah. So, what I’ve taken to doing over the past couple of years is when I’m starting on the project I will send an email to the producers, to the executives, to everybody who is involved and say like, OK guys, I’m starting writing. We all agree that I’m starting writing. And I anticipate handing this in at about this date. And just having some sort of virtual paper trail that says like this is when I think – these are the boundaries I think are on this project is helpful, because it gets them in a sense of like, oh, you know, we can’t actually expect him to be turning this in sooner than that because that’s not realistic. And we can’t be dragging him on a long time after this because there is some limit to it.

If you don’t define your edges a little bit they’re going to just keep trying to get more out of you.

**Craig:** That’s correct. What they will do is say, listen, we need to get this as soon as possible. Everybody wants everything as soon as possible.

**John:** Everything is a crisis.

**Craig:** Everything is a crisis. But what they really want, and this cuts directly to producers. This is more about producers than the studio. The producers will not get paid unless the movie is made. That’s where they make their money. They get a very, very large fee for a green lit movie and then of course a percentage of the grosses is quite likely as well.

So, they want to get a green light-able movie as fast as possible. Which means they want you to write your first draft as fast as possible. Give it to them. They can tell you how it’s going to need to change to get the green light. Then you’re going to write that new change as quickly as possible and they’re going to keep doing that until they have something that they believe is going to slam dunk it on in there. And while that’s going on often they are showing it to the studio and kind of basically playing development without paying you. That’s sort of the gig.

And that’s why I don’t do it.

**John:** Yep. So my previous solution in terms of like sending out the email to everyone saying like this is – I’m starting writing. This is good. It was useful for me, but that’s not a sort of general purpose solution. And so one of the things we’ve been working on with the WGA West over the last six months is something we’re calling the Start Button. So that’s what we introduced this past week. And if you’re a WGA West member you can play along with us at home.

If you go to my.wga.org/sb for start button, or you can just say Start Button, you’ll log in and you’ll see a brand new thing there called Welcome to the Start Button. And it gives you a chance to update an existing project, create a new project, or go back to the main page.

If you create a new project it gives you a couple fields. And, Craig, you just did this. So do you want to talk us through what you did and how it worked?

**Craig:** Yes. Pretty simple. I said, yep, I’m starting a new thing and I hit that button. And then it asked me for the working title of the project. I typed that in. It asked me for the studio. It didn’t have the exact name of the studio in there because it’s sort of a prepopulated list and studios have like 14 million different weird names. So I was able to just type in the studio’s name and it took it. And then I put down essentially what kind of step it was and when I anticipated delivering it, which is basically the amount of weeks. And in that case I went for the maximum of 12 weeks.

**John:** 12 weeks.

**Craig:** And then that was it.

**John:** Yeah. So you could have put in an expected delivery date or 12 weeks and you hit start.

**Craig:** And then I hit start. That was it.

**John:** That’s all you do.

**Craig:** Done.

**John:** So what Craig did when he did that was create a record in the WGA that says like this is a project that exists. This is a movie that someone is working on and 12 weeks from now we can check in with him and say like, hey, is everything OK with this project.

Now, it seems like, well, shouldn’t the WGA already know that this movie exists? They don’t. And that’s the crazy thing is because in television, you know, the WGA knows week by week every writer who is working on every television project. In features we don’t because all that paperwork, all the pay records, they can be months and months and months behind. So, this is a way for the guild to know what writers are working on at the time and help out if you’re in situations where you are being asked to do endless free rewrites, if you are being paid late.

It’s a way for us to check and see like what’s actually going on with this project. And in a general sense where are writers having the most challenges and where are writers having a pretty OK time.

As you go through the second screen you see there’s also a chance to upload your contract. Uploading your contract is super helpful because it lets the guild know kind of what’s happening out there in the world overall and what are the general trends that writers are seeing. Because the guild is responsible for making sure you’re getting paid your minimums, but the guild also wants you to get paid as much as you can be paid. And so keeping track of that over scale payment is another crucial function.

**Craig:** And I would imagine that if the guild has a copy of your contract and it has your start date and all the rest that when it calls and says, look, what’s going on. And you say, um, well I mean I’m done but they just keep asking me to do more. That they can say, well, we’re the bad guy and we can call the producer and the studio and say, “You guys are violating his contract and this is part of the minimum basic term because it’s effecting,” and they cite some MBA rules and you’re not allowed to do that so you have to pay him.

**John:** Yeah. And so to clarify, the guild is not going to suddenly call you. The guild is not going to call on your behalf unless you say so. So, what’s going to happen is 12 weeks go by. You get an email saying like, hey, checking in. Seeing what’s going on with that.

If you go back and you say like everything is cool, it’s all fine. Great. Nothing else. If you say there’s a problem we’ll ask do you want us to call you and talk to you about it. And if you say yes then the guild contacts you and figures out what’s going on. And figures out whether they should get involved on your behalf.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I think what Craig said is probably the most crucial thing. It allows the guild to be the bad guy because the guild should be the bad guy in this situation. It’s so hard for writers to stick up for themselves in a lot of these situations, but that’s why you have a union.

It’s also why you have agents and managers who should be doing some of this, too. But it’s why you have a union. And the union is good at this. And the union is good at collecting money and let them be the bad guy in these situations.

**Craig:** Absolutely. And if you are worried that it’s going to somehow end up, you know, blackballing you, driving you out of the business, I point to the aforementioned DGA which acts as a bad guy on behalf of its directors all the time. Now, granted in the case that we read earlier they’re not particularly interested in advocating on behalf of directors that have not yet been hired. But when you are hired by the DGA and you’re working under the DGA, which I have done, they spring into action. They’re there. They show up on your set. They start talking to you. And they make a presence known. And if they sniff any kind of trouble, any sort of encroachment on what they consider to be directorial rights they are on it.

And the attitude in Hollywood is not well let’s not work with that director anymore. The attitude is, oh god, we have a DGA problem.

**John:** Yep. Yeah. And so I guess a crucial difference is the DGA reps, they can show up at a set because a set is a physical place. The WGA people can’t show up at your office and say what’s going on here. This actually gets them closer to being able to say, hey, what’s going on here. Is everything OK? I want to make sure that our writers aren’t being abused.

**Craig:** Correct. So it’s a really good idea. You’re smart for having done it. And this is why we elected you and such.

**John:** Hooray. Great. So it’s available now. Check it out. So if you’re starting writing something it’s a good time to do it, or if you’re on a rewrite for something. So try it out and see what it feels like.

All right, we’ve got time for one question. Shari writes in, “Friends and family who have read my pilot say it’s ‘too dark for television,” that it could never be produced. Yet South Park gets away with having woodland creatures banging each other in a satanic ritual on Christmas, while Frank in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia screams he has AIDS to cut through the line at an amusement park. My writing is not nearly as dark, I don’t think, but my script tries to poke fun at the fact that people sometimes have no choice but to experience some dark moments in life.

“Looking back on it, those moments can be funny as hell. So how do dark comedies redeem themselves? Do dark comedy writers follow different craft and structural rules in order to secure their audience? Is there are market for dark comedies on television? What does it look like to have crossed the line in dark comedy?”

**Craig:** Well, I would say that your friends and family may not be as dark as you. And you’re right. There is dark comedy on television. There’s more of it now than ever. And it’s been around forever. Seinfeld got incredibly dark. Even though it wasn’t maybe as overtly dark as South Park sometimes gets, in its own way was pretty brutal.

And you’re right. It’s Always Sunny definitely goes there. And so the answer is how do dark comedies redeems themselves, they don’t necessarily. They are there to be enjoyed by people who love that kind of edge.

We need to know that the people that we’re watching aren’t cruel. That is to say they’re not sadistic. They don’t enjoy the pain of others. The people that we like watching in dark comedies are selfish. They are self-obsessed. They’re egotistical. They are locked in self-defeating patterns. So it’s a little bit of kind of they are dark people operating in a moral universe, which is why I actually love the final episode of Seinfeld because it just basically took them to task for their behavior over the course of all their seasons.

Is there different craft or structural rules? No, it’s about your tone, your voice, and what you think is funny. I would say don’t apologize for any of it. If you’re going to be dark, be dark. And if you think it’s funny, then you think it’s funny and you stand by it. Yes, there’s a market for dark comedy on television, there’s a market for television on television at this point given that we have more and more content producers making more and more shows.

What does it look like to have crossed the line in a dark comedy? When people stop laughing. That’s what it looks like. When they just go, “Oh, that’s actually not funny.”

Years and years ago I was talking to a friend of mine and we were discussing that there’s that complaint that some white comedians used to make where like, OK, black comedians get to make fun of white people. Why can’t white comedians make fun of black people? And the answer is it’s not funny. That’s why. It’s not funny. It’s not about justice, or what’s right or wrong, or balancing. It’s not funny. Punching down generally isn’t funny, although sometimes it’s hysterical.

It’s hard to describe. We just know it when we see it. And for some people they will say, you know what, that crossed the line for me. And other people will say, oh my god, thank god they did that. The line has just moved again. Hooray.

You find your tribe. You do your comedy for them and you hope it’s a big tribe and you hope they love it.

**John:** Yeah. Craig’s you know it when you see it really speaks to expectation. And so my hunch is that friends and family who are reading your script right now Shari they are not expecting it to be what it is. And so that may be something about because they already know you, or it could be because of what they’re seeing on those first two pages. But there’s a mismatch between the thing they think they’re going to get and what they’re actually reading. And so they may not be the audience for it all, but if they were the audience for that kind of stuff they’re not being led into it in the right way to let them understand what the rules of your sort of moral universe are. And how the darkness is going to work in your writing.

So, I would look both at your friends and family. Look at who your readers are and are they the right readers for this thing. But also look at your writing and trying to figure out is there something about how I’m presenting this, really how I’m setting this up, that is leading people in the wrong direction so they think it’s one thing and it’s actually a very different darker thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, look, when Todd Phillips and I were writing the Hangover sequels we oftentimes would go places that were so horrifyingly dark, so incredibly dark that we kind of knew that we had crossed the line a little bit. And that’s keeping in mind the fact that we opened the third movie with a giraffe being decapitated on a freeway. But it was fun. We needed to do it. We needed to get in that zone. I mean, we had this idea – I don’t think I’ve ever said this before – we had this idea that – it would never fit in any of the movies. We were just talking about Mr. Chow, the character of Mr. Chow. And we just had this weird fantasy of shooting a scene where Mr. Chow goes to find his father who he’s not spoken to or seen in 30 years.

And he finds his elderly father and his father says, “Leslie?” And Mr. Chow says, “That’s right, mother-f-er.” And then he cuts his throat. He cuts his father’s throat. And his father’s final words are, “At last you make me proud.” [laughs]

It’s so sick. It makes me so happy. Now, I don’t know if anybody would think that was funny, but oh my god we thought it was hysterical. Just the idea of this family that was so sick that – anyway, I don’t have to explain it. It’s bizarre, right?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So you go down these roads of this total F-ed up stuff. And then you come back from it and you, you know, you write things that are still F-ed up but maybe not so wildly F-ed up. But you need room to be transgressive, particularly if that’s the style of comedy you’re doing at that point. And it sounds like, Shari, you’re pretty transgressive. Go for it.

**John:** Go for it.

All right, it’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is Art and Arcana. Now, Craig, have you bought this book yet?

**Craig:** You know I haven’t.

**John:** It’s fantastic.

**Craig:** Yeah, I probably should.

**John:** I feel guilty sort of recommending $125 book on Dungeons and Dragons artwork and history, but there’s also a $34 version which is just the book. So, the big fancy one comes in a box with extra stuff. But you do you. Decide what version of this you want because if you want this you really want this. It is the history of Dungeons and Dragons as told by the creators and showing all the artwork and how this thing came to be.

And so I have just – it’s one of those books that’s so giant that I have to sort of sit down on the couch and prop it on my legs and just fully engross myself in it. I found it just terrific.

**Craig:** That sounds like something I may slip my wife on a gift list for Christmas, you know.

**John:** Nice. Very good.

**Craig:** Because she hates – every time Christmas rolls around she’s like what do I get this guy.

**John:** Yeah, I know that Melissa loves Dungeons and Dragons. There’s nothing she gets more excited about than that. [laughs]

**Craig:** She hates it so much. So it will be fun to force her to buy that. My One Cool Thing is a fascinating discovery in the world of pain management. I was so excited when I read this article. It’s in Wired. And it’s an article about a cactus plant that grows in Morocco. Now, you’re probably familiar with the Scoville Scale of hotness, John?

**John:** Absolutely. So like pepper sauces are rated on how hot they are.

**Craig:** Exactly. So for instance the world’s hottest pepper, I don’t know, it’s so many hundreds of thousands of Scoville units.

This thing, this cactus like plant, clocks in at 16 billion units. So it is 10,000 times hotter than the Carolina Reaper, which is the world’s hottest pepper. 10,000 times hotter. And it’s that way because of this chemical in it called resiniferatoxin. I think I’m pronouncing that right.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You’ve had a jalapeno before?

**John:** I have. I’ve had good and bad experiences with jalapenos.

**Craig:** So this cactus is 4.5 million times hotter than a jalapeno. You cannot eat this. You can’t eat it.

So here’s what happens with this stuff. The reason that your tongue burns when you eat a pepper is because there’s a chemical in there that essentially stimulates the nerves that would be stimulated if you had actually lit your tongue on fire.

So, this thing does that so massively that it literally burns – it destroys the ends of the fibers of nerve bundles that generate pain signals. But only pain signals. So what it does is it doesn’t burn out nerves that sense pressure or cold or hot or feeling, just pain.

Now, the problem is if you’re going to do this it’s also going to cause you tremendous pain while it’s doing it. But, for this stuff that they pulled out of it, RTX, what they do is they give you an anesthetic. So let’s say you have knee pain. They give you an anesthetic in your knee so that you won’t feel the terrible pain of the RTX. Then they inject the RTX. The RTX binds to pain-sensing nerve endings and essentially blows them out to the point where they can’t really come back on for about six months.

**John:** Wow.

**Craig:** And then when you’re anesthesia wears off in your knee you might feel a little bit of like, ow, my god, but after an hour or so it’s over and then there’s this incredible pain relief. And the best part is there is no associated reinforcement effect. There is no euphoria. There is no reason to become addicted to it.

**John:** It’s not a neurotransmitter situation.

**Craig:** That’s right. It’s not an opioid or anything like that. And given how disastrous pain management has become in this country, something like this could be a huge, huge game changer, particularly for people that have chronic pain and also end of life terminal pain associated with cancer and things like this.

So, if you have arthritis or any kind of longstanding pain, this is exciting. So I hope that it – they’re just starting now, but it looks good.

**John:** Good. I like that. Optimistic.

Our show was sort of all over the place this week. And so we started and stopped so many times. So I wanted to quickly recap some of the things we talked about.

If you would like an Arlo Finch bookplate you can go to johnaugust.com. Click a link there and you get a bookplate. It makes a lovely gift.

If you are a WGA West member and want to try the Start Button, it’s available right now in your MyWGA panel, mywga.org/sb, so try that out.

If you want any of the other stuff we talked about you can find the links in the show notes.

Lastly, if you would like tickets to our live show on December 12 they are available now. So you can click a link in the show notes or go to wgafoundation.org.

Our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. Edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is fantastic. It’s by Andrew Burns. 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 like the ones we answered today.

Short questions on Twitter are fantastic. I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

You can find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening to this right now. Leave us a review. That helps people find the show.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com.

If you want to get to all the back episodes, they are at Scriptnotes.net. It is two bucks a month for all the back episodes and bonus episodes back to the beginning of time.

There are no more USB drives. The USB drives have sold out.

**Craig:** Sweet. When do I get my check?

**John:** Oh, a giant check is coming. Well, on the 12th you’ll get your gift for less than $20.

**Craig:** [laughs] Getting ripped off again.

**John:** Yeah. At the live show you’ll get it.

**Craig:** Yeah. Great.

**John:** Craig, thank you for a fun show.

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

**John:** All right, bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2017/five-star-podnerships).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. So today’s episode contains some explicit language. You might want to listen on headphones. Thanks.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

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

**John:** Craig, you have reindeer ears. This is our live holiday Scriptnotes show. Thank you guys all so much for coming. It’s the end of 2017. Thank you for braving fires for being here. You’re awesome. Craig, what a year. It’s been just a huge year. So much has happened.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Something that on Twitter this producer pointed out that the movie Kong Skull Island, that came out in March. That movie is from this year. This has been the most endless year of all years.

**Craig:** I want this stop. Perfect miserable discordant.

**John:** Absolutely. But that’s actually sort of the meme of this moment because as you guys all know as we’re recording this it looks like Disney and Fox, well, Disney is going to buy Fox. That’s a huge change. So we talked about that on the–

**Craig:** Dox.

**John:** Yes. They will call it Dox. Bart Simpson and Mickey Mouse together.

**Craig:** Ooh. Wow.

**John:** Something there.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. It is fascinating to see how they are – I mean, it’s not done-done, but they are doing this very careful carving up of Fox. So they’re taking Fox Television. That’s the part that produces the TV shows, but they’re leaving the network because you can’t own two networks, because Disney owns ABC. And they’re taking the movies. They’re taking the movie library. They’re taking the television library.

Nobody knows what they’re going to do with the animation studio. Blue Sky?

**John:** Blue Sky, yeah.

**Craig:** Fox News, not taking Fox News with them. Crafty Disney. Very crafty. And also they’re leaving the sports behind because they have ESPN. So it’s very strange. And I don’t know what’s going to happen to the lot. Do you know what’s going to happen to the lot?

**John:** I have no idea. So you have these two giant powerhouse companies. You have Disney and 21st Century Fox combining and something you said on the last podcast is like, you know, other companies are going to need to figure out what their plan is to do because you don’t want to be the last person without a partner.

**Craig:** Correct. Otherwise you’re in a competitive disadvantage.

**John:** So, Craig, what I want to talk about tonight is we need to be thinking about the future of our media empire and what we’re going to do because consolidation is sort of inevitable, so we need to figure out–

**Craig:** I don’t want to lose the money I’m not getting.

**John:** Yeah, so it’s crucial. We need to find ourselves–

**Craig:** We have to protect.

**John:** We need a podnership is what we need. And so I want to talk through some options. I put together a little small deck to talk through some of the options. If we need to merge up with somebody else–

**Craig:** Is that a small deck?

**John:** This is a small deck.

**Craig:** Got it.

**John:** So it’s only about eight slides that can talk you through my vision for what can happen down the road.

**Craig:** I’m super ready.

**John:** So we can survive.

**Craig:** Thank you, by the way, for consulting me.

**John:** Yeah. You’re welcome. First let’s talk through goals. What are the goals of this merger?

**Craig:** Money.

**John:** And what do we want to get out of this?

**Craig:** Money.

**John:** Well, yeah, we want to maximize shareholder value.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s crucial. So–

**Craig:** Do I have shares?

**John:** Well, you have a lot of emotional investment in this show, right? You have fans. You have people. People like Craig. You can’t buy love, Craig.

**Craig:** But you can’t eat applause either, right?

**John:** You also – we want to make sure we can exploit our library of valuable characters. And that’s where you kind of come in. Because you think about – a lot of the characters on this podcast, they’re Craig characters.

**Craig:** All of them.

**John:** A lot of them are.

**Craig:** There’s Robot, that’s you. You’ve got that.

**John:** I’ve got Robot, yeah.

**Craig:** But I got Sexy Craig.

**John:** Yeah, Sexy Craig problematic in this era. I just want to point that out.

**Craig:** Sexy Craig, actually there may be an article dropping. I don’t want to freak anybody out, but there may be an article dropping.

**John:** But there’s Whole Foods Craig.

**Craig:** Whole Foods Craig.

**John:** A lot of good synergies with Whole Foods Craig.

**Craig:** And Umbrage Craig.

**John:** But that’s just Craig.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Finally, I want to position us to be able to compete with Netflix, because that’s really the goal, because it’s clear that Netflix is going to become giant. And so we need to make sure that we’re ready when they do become giant.

**Craig:** What do we do?

**John:** Well, we need to look for another podcast we could merge with and sort of synergize with.

**Craig:** Oh, mega podcast.

**John:** And so maybe even sell ourselves out to somebody bigger so we can actually survive.

**Craig:** I just have to think of another podcast.

**John:** How about Pod Save America. So, Craig was actually a guest on Pod Save America and you were fantastic, Craig.

**Craig:** Oh, thank you. Thank you. I wasn’t really quite sure what it was until after I did it, which infuriated John by the way. Made him crazy. I love that part of it. That was a fun show. I actually did Lovett or Leave it which is the–

**John:** It’s part of the whole empire.

**Craig:** It’s part of the Pod Save America empire.

**John:** So maybe we can join their empire.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And I think what would be good about it is you share a hatred of Ted Cruz. So that’s good.

**Craig:** I think that everyone qualifies on–

**John:** That’s true. They have really fun live shows.

**Craig:** True.

**John:** We have live shows, they have live shows. They do it every week. But we could do more live shows.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, we’ll step it up.

**John:** All right. Down sides.

**Craig:** Apparently they don’t want to be here every week.

**John:** There are too many Johns. So their show has Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, there’s me. So something has to go.

**Craig:** I’m honestly OK with it.

**John:** Finally, America may be done. So, that may be – the brand may be – I don’t know what the value is – what is the future of Pod Save America after America–?

**Craig:** You’re talking about the brand? You’re not talking about, like, just because Armageddon in general should be a negative for all of these.

**John:** Yeah. I don’t know that America has enough future to support a podcast called Pod Save America.

**Craig:** Right. The runway is starting to get a little short for us, isn’t it?

**John:** Shorter.

**Craig:** Yeah, shorter and shorter.

**John:** So we might need to go to like a narrative podcast.

**Craig:** Oh, great idea. Is it Stone?

**John:** No, it’s S Town, or Shit Town is the other thing you can call it.

**Craig:** Well, that’s just outrageous.

**John:** So Craig does not listen to podcasts. This is a thing. By applause, who has listened to S Town?

**Craig:** Liars.

**John:** So, S Town follows this reporter who goes to visit this guy. It’s a real thing. You would love this show because here’s some things you would love about this show. It talks about a grumpy loner with opinions on everything.

**Craig:** Oh, I remember hearing about this. And making a decision to not listen to it. Yep. Yep.

**John:** And he’s really fascinating. And there would be so many opportunities for How Would This Be a Movie. Because like pretty much everything he touches. He has a maze on his property.

**Craig:** Do you think that How Would This Be a Movie deserves its own acronym, really?

**John:** Totally does.

**Craig:** It’s not like Return of the Jedi.

**John:** In the outlines it’s actually called How Would This Be a Movie. Yeah, if you read the outlines?

**Craig:** But it gets a HWTBAM?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** HWTBAM.

**Craig:** HWTBAM. Okay.

**John:** Some downsides. Can you think of any downsides for this?

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t listen to this show.

**John:** Yeah. And also it’s too acclaimed. Craig, that might scare you aware.

**Craig:** I don’t like the tinsel. I don’t truck in awards.

**John:** And the show is also about whether this main character John was hiding gold on his property and that’s a little familiar for us.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** Yeah. There’s gold hidden here.

**Craig:** He’s so rich because of this.

**John:** Dirty John. Who listened to Dirty John? So not as popular. It’s a coproduction with LA Times. Really fascinating. You know about this?

**Craig:** I read it.

**John:** So you know the history of this. So tell us a little bit about Dirty John.

**Craig:** I watched the podcast with my eyes.

**John:** So tell us about what it’s like to read a podcast.

**Craig:** It’s amazing. It’s just like you remember reading things, and that.

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** Dirty John, great long story of a horrendous, sociopathic, manipulative man and a woman that he cons. One of many women that he had conned in his life. And it’s about her and her family learning the truth of him and trying to get free of him. And it ends in the most spectacularly violent way. It’s remarkable.

**John:** Yeah. It was a really enjoyable listen or read. So I feel like this is a natural brand extension.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Easy. Dirty John & Craig. Just you add an ampersand. We add you to the mix.

**Craig:** Dirty John & Craig. That’s like a great ‘70s band.

**John:** Absolutely. So, the main character, the main bad guy in the show, what was his profession? Do you remember?

**Craig:** Well, he claimed to be a nurse, right?

**John:** He claimed to be a medical professional, sort of like you.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So like he had a medical background, so that fits in really well with you. So those are good synergies.

**Craig:** Great point. I do know a lot.

**John:** You know a lot.

**Craig:** I know a lot.

**John:** Yeah. Some downsides of this? What do you think?

**Craig:** Somebody give me something.

**John:** I would say it’s in Orange County. We got to go to Orange County.

**Craig:** I forgot that it was in Orange County.

**John:** And if you listened to the podcast you’d hear the Orange County accents. It would drive you crazy.

**Craig:** What is the Orange County accent?

**John:** Listen to it and you’ll just claw your ears out.

**Craig:** Is anyone here from?

**John:** You agree with me guys, right?

**Craig:** Oh, there we go. Man.

**John:** That was tough.

**Craig:** You’re not going to do it?

**Audience Member:** What do you want me to say?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That was it?

**John:** That was it, yeah. Sort of curious but indignant.

**Craig:** Actually sounded like she was from London. What do you want me to say?

**John:** The last thing I’ll say is you don’t listen to podcasts but there’s these Hunt a Killer subscription boxes that were so creepy and I don’t want to go back to that. I don’t want subscription boxes on our show.

**Craig:** That one just didn’t work for me.

**John:** Because you didn’t see the show.

**Craig:** Oh, no, no, the Hunt a Killer thing. I got the box.

**John:** Oh, you got the box. Great. Did you find the killer?

**Craig:** I didn’t go past the first month.

**John:** I’m sorry. Yeah. Sorry.

**Craig:** Didn’t work.

**John:** Didn’t work for you. So you’d be a bad advertiser for that because you didn’t enjoy hunting the killer.

**Craig:** Yeah, we probably should stay ad-free just because of my–

**John:** Yeah. So finally Missing Richard Simmons. Did you listen to Missing Richard Simmons?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No. It was a very popular podcast. Who listened to Missing Richard Simmons?

**Craig:** Why?

**John:** Because they like podcasts. They like our podcast.

**Craig:** I also don’t understand that.

**John:** So here’s what possibly could work about Missing Richard Simmons. Screenwriters as a whole are not necessarily the fittest bunch.

**Craig:** True.

**John:** So there’s opportunity for fitness.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Screenwriters not so healthy. He gets them–

**Craig:** He cries with us. We cry with him.

**John:** So here’s the other thing I need to tell you about this. Aline Brosh McKenna is obsessed with this show. She loved this show. So that’s a plus.

**Craig:** That’s a downside as far as I’m concerned.

**John:** It’s also a downside, too. A plus and a minus.

**Craig:** Nailed it.

**John:** And Richard Simmons, he also just wants to be left alone. That’s ultimately what you come out of the show learning.

**Craig:** Is that literally the big secret of Missing Richard Simmons is that he just wants people to F off?

**John:** Kind of yeah.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** That’s really Craig’s secret. He basically just wants to be left alone.

**Craig:** That’s not a secret.

**John:** So let’s take a look at the numbers so we can run through and figure out what we’re worth. We have about 50,000 listeners, a solid 50,000 a week.

**Craig:** That’s pretty good.

**John:** That’s pretty good. We’ll take that. People here in the room. We make money selling t-shirts and so t-shirts we sold $1,429 is how much we made on t-shirts off of this last thing. So thank you everyone who bought a t-shirt. Thank you very much for that. Yeah, absolutely. We’re rolling in cash.

**Craig:** My share of that is?

**John:** Is what you’ve always gotten.

**Craig:** Gotten. Gotten. God.

**John:** And we have monetized through advertising, which was zero dollars in advertising. Now, the Disney/Fox deal is about $60 billion is what I heard with the Disney/Fox deal, so I’m thinking maybe – keep it a little simple – maybe $59 billion.

**Craig:** To be fair, we bought about–

**John:** We will take Apple Pay, so.

**Craig:** We bought about 100,000 bitcoin about 12 years ago.

**John:** Yes. So we’re doing this for kicks and giggles.

**Craig:** That’s really what we’re selling. We’re just selling the bitcoin.

**John:** So if anybody wants to make a bid for $59 billion for us, Megan is here. She has her Square c ash reader, too. So anyway you want to pay, Megan is here in front. But let’s get on with the show.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** We have three amazing guests for you tonight. Our first guest is Julie Plec. Julie Plec is the co-creator and showrunner of Vampire Diaries, its spinoff The Originals. Also Containment. She developed Tomorrow People. And has written for Kyle XY. Julie Plec, welcome.

**Julie Plec:** Oh hi.

**John:** And so we need to tell everybody that Julie Plec is actually taking a red eye after this show. That’s how much she is devoted to the–

**Craig:** She showed up with luggage.

**Julie:** I did. I walked in with my suitcase. My parka.

**John:** Nice. Next we have Michael Green. He is the co-creator and showrunner of American Gods and Kings. He’s also the screenwriter of every movie you saw this year. Murder on the Orient Express, Blade Runner 2049, and Logan. Michael Green, welcome.

**Michael Green:** Hello. Good to be here.

**Julie:** Amazing.

**John:** Justin Marks who wrote the live action Jungle Book and its sequel. His TV series Counterpart debuts January 21 on Starz. Welcome the three of you. Thank you guys very much for coming here.

**Craig:** What a bunch of losers!

**John:** Oh, they’re fantastic. We know very little about TV, even though Craig is about to do a TV show, so I thought we’d—

**Michael:** Oh, why?

**Craig:** Well, it’s a miniseries. So I think of it as just a long movie.

**Michael:** Same.

**Craig:** No, because it ends. Isn’t that the problem with TV is that it keeps going and going and going? Justin, isn’t that the problem?

**Justin Marks:** Yes.

**Craig:** It just won’t stop.

**Justin:** Yes. That is definitely the problem with TV. It just will never leave your life.

**Michael:** In success you run till you die.

**Craig:** Till you die.

**John:** Julie Plec, your shows have run for a very long time. You’ve been on incredibly successful shows that run a long time. Originals is just about to end. I think that’s actually where you’re headed is to go to the wrap party for this. What is it like coming back season after season on a show? Is it great? Is it bad? Should Craig run away from it? Should he run towards it? What do is it like having a —

**Julie:** It’s sort of like to each their own, right? I’ve worked with writers who get two years in and they’re like, “Get me out. I can’t.” Their brain, their mind, just atrophies and they feel like nothing they do is fresh and nothing that they do has any value, et cetera, et cetera. Basic self-loathing stuff.

For me I get so much personal and emotional value out of building the community. When you make a movie you’re, you know, a few months in, six months, whatever. In and out. And you might never see any of those people again. And in television you can – year after year after year you’re working in success with the same people and you’re watching them grow from the bottom of their position all the way up the ladder till you’re partners. And there’s just something so emotionally fulfilling about that that above and beyond the storytelling it’s really – it’s a very full life. So even when it’s hard you still feel really satisfied by it.

**John:** Julie, you’re doing a traditional show where you are writing and shooting the show and editing the show all at the same time, but you guys had a more – the new wave experience where you guys – on both American Gods and on Counterpart didn’t you write everything before you started shooting? Is that correct? Justin, why don’t you start?

**Justin:** Yeah. We wrote the entire first season before we started the first season. And it has its advantages and it definitely has its disadvantages, too. But the hard thing is that you can’t, you know, you write these roles and it’s great – in TV you’re supposed to be able to see the actors and how they gel with it and how it works. And then you have these things and there are just a number of opportunities where you look at a role that you’ve written for ten episodes and then you see someone there and you’re like, oh my god, this person is in the show for the next nine episodes. And the other way around, too, sometimes people come on for two episodes and you’re like, oh my god, this person is great and you’re stuck with it. I mean, you’ve shot – everything is planned out and everything is done. So that ten-hour movie thing has, you know, some strengths. Some strengths.

**Craig:** Ten-hours is a lot.

**John:** Michael, so American Gods–

**Michael:** We were somewhere between the two for the first season of American Gods. And I should point out, so I’m the recently disgraced showrunner of American Gods.

**Craig:** What happened?

**Michael:** My partner and I on the show were let go last week. It’s in Deadline.

**Craig:** Why are we bringing this up in this show?

**Michael:** But I loved the experience. I’m very proud of it and happy to talk about it.

**Julie:** Shame!

**Michael:** Shame!

**John:** Shame!

**Michael:** I’ll answer the now boring question. We wrote about two-thirds of the season and made sure to leave the ending so that we could course correct and rewrote the hell out of the middle of it. Because it’s the best of both worlds. We were able to put in a bunch and know where we wanted to go but also say, you know what, we see the actor who we want to lean in to and can craft towards them and do the things that television does really well.

**John:** One of the things that TV did a lot of in 2017 was not just sort of like do shows that were like previous shows, but they literally just did the same show again. So we had Will and Grace come back. We have Roseanne coming back. Dynasty is back. As you guys, and Julie especially you’re writing for network, is there a pressure to just like come into them with a thing that is like exactly either – is literally the same thing they’ve done before? Do you get approached about like why don’t you reboot this series that already existed?

**Julie:** No. You know, weirdly I’ve managed to avoid the “just take that thing and make it different and preferably better” pitfalls. I think it’s because ultimately I’ve been locked in my own franchise for the last eight years, so I just keep making those again and again.

I was talking to somebody the other day and they said something like 80% of the stuff in development at the network is IP, whether it’s remake or whatever.

**Craig:** Welcome to movies. And so the golden age of television died.

**John:** Well, but there’s also just so much more TV being made. So you’re saying 80% at network, but it feels like where you guys are doing it, so on Starz or on Netflix—

**Michael:** Well, I worked on something that was IP. It was based on a book. But you had an original.

**Justin:** Yeah, it was original.

**Julie:** Hey, how was that?

**John:** That’s true. American Gods is based on a book. That’s right. I forget.

**Craig:** But it was based on a book, but there is a sense that in television now they’re starting to do this thing that they’ve been doing in movies forever where they take something that honestly really should have just been left alone, like—

**Michael:** Slinky the show.

**Craig:** Or Battleship, the movie. And Battleship. Still the best story ever told. And where is Earth? And they make a movie out of it and now they’re going and digging up these shows. Like for instance, a few years ago – you guys probably all got this call to write a Dynasty movie. I think it was at Fox. And now they’re like, ah, you know what, that’s a dumb idea. We’re not doing that anymore. For a while we were doing that. Now let’s just make the Dynasty show again.

**Julie:** But the thing that I don’t get is that like, I mean, I’m 45 and I watched Dynasty in high school. It was one of my favorite shows. But I’m not tuning in to watch younger Dynasty necessarily. Like I just–

**Craig:** You want those Dynasty people.

**Michael:** I would watch Dynasty reruns. I mean, I’m older than you. I loved – watched the shit out of it. And the more ridiculous it was, the more we loved it. Someone needs to have that experience.

**Craig:** Yeah, but like Melrose Place. I don’t need to see Melrose Place again. Like a new Melrose Place.

**Justin:** I really have to say as the resident person here, I have no idea what Dynasty is.

**Julie:** What?! Young child.

**Justin:** And I don’t know if that goes to your argument.

**Michael:** So there’s Alexis Morell Carrington Colby Dexter Colby. Look it up.

**Craig:** Dynasty was the show that came about because Dallas was popular. Have you ever heard of Dallas? Who shot JR and all of that?

**Justin:** Yeah. I know it’s in Texas.

**Craig:** Yes. Correct. So then Dynasty was like the Pepsi to Dallas’s Coke. It was not great.

**Julie:** Yeah, I mean, my point is like if you’re marketing – and by the way, all my Vampire Diaries crew ended up going to work on Dynasty. So yay Dynasty. And I hope it survives forever. But you’re building off of a franchise name or a brand or whatever, but it’s like so old that the people that remember it as being a popular viable brand are so far out of your demo that like what are you doing. That’s my question.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I will say, this is a very mild defense, but as a father of a 12-year-old daughter, there’s things – she won’t watch things that were shot before a certain time. Like she won’t watch things that are shot square, in like 4-3 format. She can just tell like, oh, this is old school, old style. And so like I tried to get her to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is brilliant, and she won’t because it looks old to her. It looks old-fashioned to her.

**Michael:** It’s like we wouldn’t watch the black and white Gilligan’s Island?

**John:** Yeah.

**Michael:** Those are the old episodes.

**Craig:** I would watch those. I was that kind of guy.

**John:** Justin, a question for you though, because Jungle Book is an example of taking an existing property and making it in a whole new way because you have new technology to do it.

**Justin:** But that’s what I don’t understand. I mean, not to pick, I don’t understand the – you know, parents who grew up on a movie like Jungle Book or something like that, it’s bring your kids. Is anyone really saying like, “I watched Dynasty, I’m going to tune in with my kids?”

**Craig:** Not a person.

**Justin:** Anyway, I interrupted the–

**John:** No, but I wanted to go back to sort of your sense of when you were doing Jungle Book, the degree to which how much are you trying to reinvent the story of Jungle Book or how much are you trying to do it with the same story with a new technology? Because I faced that with Aladdin, which was the pressure of are we trying to reinvent the whole thing and rethink everything, or are we trying to Beauty and Beast it and literally just do the cartoon? And you must have faced that same pressure?

**Justin:** I think it’s harder the better the original movie gets in that sense and the more complete the story is. In the case of Jungle Book, you know, it’s from a certain era and there’s a sort of episodic nature to it. And we just had a list of here are the things that you remember without being aided, you know, from the original movie. And you just sort of live with that. And then everything else in between you evaluate and you interrogate and you say is this as good as it could be, or can we make this better? Can we make this richer and more, you know, a little deeper, motivate the villain a little better? Anything like that.

But, you know, there was definitely a list of like half a dozen moments/images/ideas that absolutely had to be in the movie because I feel like no matter what you feel about the original you would want to see it again. That’s how you associate it.

**Craig:** And are you – this is a question for both of you guys, because you both move between movies and television. How is the balance? I mean, how do you work that out? Is it something that you are kind of edging one way or the other, or are you perfectly divided up here?

**Justin:** I think I’d like to know from the person who wrote four movies this year.

**Julie:** Four movies. Four credited movies. God knows what else you did.

**John:** It was really the year before was a lot of that, but still.

**Michael:** I can’t say there’s any balance at all. It’s like any project or when you’re balancing two or more things. It’s whatever bullet is coming at you, dodge that. Look for the next bullet. Dodge that. You know, and just get through it. I mean, look, four movies in a year is the product of five years of development, just all sort of like “fuck you it’s happening.”

**Craig:** Yeah, I think sometimes people think that you just went, like here’s a mountain of coke, and whaaa….

Yeah.

**Michael:** But there was definitely the weird summer last year when I was hopping between three sets. And I don’t recommend it. It’s not the way to do your best work. You know, if you have a family and you like them, or even better love them, you know, that’s not a good thing to do.

But it was mostly about, if I made any conscious decision it was television is getting so strange and volatile and new and unrecognizable, and features the same. So, I thought why don’t I just try to do two careers at once and maybe one will win out or be dominant at that point. And that means there are some times where you’re not doing shit in either. And then there are time when both suddenly the tinder lights.

**Craig:** And there’s neither one medium nor the other holds a greater personal or creative satisfaction for you?

**Michael:** No, I think like everything else whatever I’m doing I wish it was the other.

**Craig:** Ah. That is a Jewish Christmas.

**John:** Michael, I want to get back to the question that Justin tackled which was there’s an existing piece of thing out there that people are familiar with and then you’re going back and you’re tweaking it, you’re redoing it. So Murder on the Orient Express, there’s a book, everyone has read the book. Everyone – lots of people have seen the movie. Lots of people come into it knowing the twist. So how do you approach – like what were your first conversations about this property as you sat down to tackle it? What was your way in?

**Michael:** It was a bizarrely wonderful experience, because I went in to the studio. I had already worked with the producers on it. And it was the, “Hey, do you want to do this?” And the answer was yeah. And they said, “Well what would you do?” And I said, well, let’s do the book. Like let’s not fuck with what’s great. I don’t want to out Agatha Christie Agatha Christie. Yes, there’s an ending. I’m pretty sure Americans don’t remember it. If they do, then it’s like Bare Necessities in your – you know, these are the things we want to get to. And then they’ll look for how did you present it, can you make it emotionally resonant, can you add to it so that you do, “Yes, and?” But also like I’m just not going to try to beat out that, nor am I going to blow up the train. Nor am I going to set it in space.

But if you’re OK with that, let’s write the movie. And it was with Fox. And they were like, “That sounds great. That sounds like what we want to do.” And gave them a script and it was one of those things where everyone wanted to do the same thing. The planets aligned, so the gravitational pull was to the same direction, down to when you’re lucky enough to get Ken Branagh to direct it, and say he wants to star in it. Ok, now we know that it’s going to feel like the kind of movie we’ve been talking about.

So, it was the lucky thing of never having a moment where someone was trying to turn it into something weird or other. But that said, it’s IP. It is familiar. It’s British civil religion. They certainly remember the ending there, but they don’t mind that. They want the security of the Americans aren’t going to fuck it up. And we told them we wouldn’t by hiring–

**John:** Kenneth Branagh.

**Michael:** Their best guy.

**John:** Hire the Shakespeare guy to do it.

**Michael:** The most British man there is.

**John:** Basically they’re giant British fans for the original Agatha Christie, so they will know all that stuff.

**Michael:** Yeah, they’re rabid. That’s their baseball as I understand it.

**John:** Now, Julie, you have rabid fans from what I understand.

**Julie:** I do. Yes.

**John:** So, Nima who works for us is a rabid fan. He’s seen every episode of Vampire Diaries. And so he wrote a question which I’m going to now paraphrase for you. And you don’t even have to answer the question, but I want to sort of answer the meta question of this kind of question.

**Julie:** OK. OK.

**John:** So his question is on Vampire Diaries vampires have the ability to compel humans to obey their will. Could a vampire compel a human to not obey another vampire’s compulsion, or compelling?

**Julie:** Whoa.

**John:** See, yeah. Nima is excited that you said whoa on that.

**Julie:** Yeah. Maybe. Shoot, eight years, we never went down that road.

**Craig:** Probably because it’s the nerdiest road ever.

**Julie:** Should have gone nine.

**Craig:** Just saying.

**John:** So, my meta question is about that kind of question, because you must get that stuff all the time which is like someone who is a huge, huge fan of what you’re doing but wants to needle or poke or just ask things that either you don’t have an answer for or, you know, it just kind of doesn’t matter. How do you deal with that?

**Julie:** Most of my fan engagement and interaction has been on Twitter. And for the first four or five years I was very, very heavily involved in and invested in Twitter. And I would read all my mentions. And I would spend hours and hours. And that particular group of fans that I was engaging with heavily weren’t concerned with that kind of shit. Like literally they were like very worried about who Elena was going to end up in bed with. And it was very important. And when it didn’t go their way they were very mean.

Like if somebody had tweeted me that I would have been like, “Let’s talk man. This is great. I’m so excited.”

**Craig:** Finally something to discuss dispassionately.

**John:** Nima is here. He’s very excited to meet you. There’s Nima.

**Julie:** Oh hi!

**Craig:** But there is a certain kind of interaction now between television producers, particularly shows like yours which do have a very visceral connection for an audience. And I think a lot of the shows that I see, generally speaking sci-fi shows, horror shows, superhero shows, there’s a certain kind of fandom that gets really intense. And I watch it from the side and I will sometimes see these reactions happening on Twitter and I will get frightened just standing near it for the people that are making the show.

**Julie:** Yeah, well, you know, it got ugly. And it got sad and ugly because then I had to stop reading my mentions and I had to not engage on Twitter in that way. And for the last couple years I mean at best scroll through every now and then, just wanting to find that one person who is like asking, “Hey, how did you get into writing,” so at least to reward the good behavior, you know?

I mean, we could have a symposium on this. And I’m only really focusing right now on the negative side of it because obviously there’s a tremendous amount of positives. But the negative side of it is just this entitlement that is so toxic. Like just you are ruining the thing that I love, therefore you are terrible. And yet I’m like, but I wrote the thing that you love. You know, and it’s like, I mean, you love that. It just becomes so personal and it becomes not just about, “Oh, I’m not happy with the way this storyline is going,” it becomes about, “You’re fat. And you’re ugly. And no one is ever going to marry you. Thank god you don’t have children because they’d be ugly.”

I mean, like it’s all that stuff.

**Craig:** I should not have said any of that. I just—

**Julie:** And it’s just extraordinary. And it’s a high level, in a weird way because I noticed it all happening over the first couple years and I thought, hmm, like the world is going to a dark place and I’m seeing it happen through the sort of Twitter fandom. And then the world went to a dark place and now everybody talks to each other like that. And I saw it first.

**Craig:** It is frightening. I just wanted to say that I think that a lot of the people – I think anybody that falls in love with any television show or any movie, when we say we like it or we love it, what we’re really describing is a relationship that we have with it. That’s why people change their minds about things, right? We have changing relationships. As we grow older our attitudes towards things change. We revisit. I think people sometimes can have a very bad relationship with a show. It means something to them you did not intend. It is providing a function or serving a function for them. And then when you don’t do what they want or you kill the wrong person, because as we know sometimes that person is just wah-wah-wah, and so they’ve got to go. Right?

**Julie:** Yeah. [laughs]

**Craig:** These people lose their minds because you are disrupting this thing that they have an unhealthy relationship with.

**Julie:** Yeah, and I remember in early seasons them saying like, “You don’t understand this relationship.” Two and half seasons I have painstakingly laid in every little nuance and detail of the time their hands just sort of brushed, and the way that she looks at his lips before she looks in his eyes when they’re staring at each other. I like gave you that relationship that you love detail by detail. And now you’re, you know, you’re coming at me in such an aggressive way.

**Craig:** Geez Louise.

**Michael:** I liked when you touched my hand.

**Julie:** That was nice.

**Michael:** By the way, wait, to go back to your first question because Julie, who has had a brilliant career that I admire and tell everyone about because she’s one of the heroes, has gotten to work on her shows for long enough for people to have that relationship.

**Julie:** Yeah.

**Michael:** That is not a miniseries relationship.

**Craig:** Right.

**Julie:** That’s true.

**Michael:** And so the exchange rate for having – to be able to steep, to be able to play that long game, to be able to have your own emotional investment be reflected back in your audience’s emotional investment, the exchange for that is your life and health in like 15 years.

**Julie:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Well, you know, Dan and Dave, we had Dan and Dave on our show – Dan Weiss and David Benioff who do Game of Thrones – and those guys don’t look at anything. They have never looked at anything. And it has been fascinating, because every now and then I’ll be like, “Hey, how you are guys – oh, yeah, you don’t even know. Never mind. You don’t know about the firestorm that just occurred because of the episode in which blah-blah-blah happened.” Nor do they know when people are like, “Oh my god…” They are just completely isolated.

And, now it works for them because they are – well, they’re weird.

**Michael:** But do you read reviews?

**Craig:** I stopped. I have stopped.

**John:** So I, generally I stopped–

**Craig:** I have good reason to stop.

**John:** But this last time with Big Fish opening in London I was not going to read reviews, and so I was putting my phone away and someone tweeted at me, “Shame about the London reviews.”

**Craig:** Oh that, ugh.

**John:** Why are you doing this? And so I had an early flight, so I had already taken a Xanax so I could fall asleep. So like, you know what? Fuck it. I’m going to read all the reviews. And so I was already pre-medicated and I read all of them. And in a weird way it was good. I’m glad I did it because there were like two-star and five-star reviews, so it was a real range. And it was actually really good to actually know what it was, because there are times where I haven’t read reviews and I’m just kind of wandering around in a fog like I don’t know what’s out there. And so for me it was good to know–

**Craig:** I suppose in the limited circumstance where I can pill myself up and be on a plane, I’ll go ahead and read a few reviews.

**John:** Justin Marks, will you read reviews of your show when it comes out, Counterpart?

**Justin:** You know, it’s really hard because with the show especially you’re much more accountable to those reviews than you are on a movie where it’s done. I mean, there’s nothing else, what can I do? Can I go back and change the movie? No. So I’m curious for the people who do television, because I’ve never been through this process before. I think I kind of have to. I think I kind of have to know what’s working and what’s not working if there’s a collective consensus about something.

**Michael:** You don’t have to. You work for Starz, so here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to get an email every day with the headline of whatever review came in and a parenthetical that says, “Positive, negative, mixed.”

**Justin:** And so you just look through it like that?

**Michael:** That was more than I needed.

**Julie:** I will say like I’m personally one of the writers who in television believes that there’s a social contract between a storyteller and the viewer. And I could introduce you to 50 writers who completely disagree with that and say I’m telling my story the way I want to tell the story and the viewer either likes it or they don’t. I like the fluidity of understanding what people are connecting to. And then trying to absorb why, you know.

And conversely, you know, I learned a lot about even just racial representation on my show through social media. Things that I had never considered, ever considered being a problem, and then sort of confronted with that. And that was so illuminating. I mean, I was mortified. And learned a lot in a way that nobody would have stopped me on the street and been like, “Do you realize that that person of color had two lines?” You know, that kind of stuff.

And so I wouldn’t ever want to like tune out from that relationship because it is a sort of focus group feedback that I think is really valuable.

**Michael:** There was one – we did an interview with this podcast Fan Bros and it’s a black audience for genre stuff. And they were great. And they kind of took us to task and said, “Well, we really love the show, but your black lead you’re doing a terrible job.” And we’re like tell us about that. And it was very helpful and our response was we hired them. We put them on staff. Because had we not heard that – they weren’t allowed to write reviews about the show anymore.

**Craig:** That’s how you get a job is you start a podcast—

**Michael:** Tell the showrunner it stinks.

**Craig:** Tell white people they’re fucking up.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** I could do that.

**John:** All right, so while we’re talking about reviews I thought we might play a little game. So, let’s move on. We’ve had some good reviews, some bad reviews, but this is Christmas, or the holidays, let’s have only five-star reviews. So underneath your seat you have some five-star reviews.

**Julie:** Oh my gosh.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** So we are properly set up here.

**Craig:** So excited.

**John:** So these all come from iTunes. And so we went on iTunes and we found reviews of different projects we worked on. And we’re going to read them now and we’re going to have to figure out – titles of these things are not on here so we’re going to have to figure out among us what they are talking about in these five-star reviews.

**Craig:** And the ones that we have in our hands, could these be any of our movies?

**John:** Any of our movies.

**Craig:** OK.

**John:** All right, so I’m going to start us off. So this comes from Skip Hunt.

**Craig:** That’s not real. That’s like Mike Hunt.

**John:** So, “Not sure how I found this podcast. I think I was searching for info about the fountain.io markup stuff.” A nerd. “Anyway, I’m hooked and I’ve added this podcast to my regular playlist. I have not interfaced with Mark Mazin, but John August has been very generous and helpful with his time. Thanks for putting this podcast out. I’ve found most of it very helpful. Smiley Face.”

**Craig:** Now we’re supposed to guess what that’s for?

**John:** Yeah, I think we can figure that one out. That’s a pretty easy one.

**Craig:** Fucking Mark Mazin. I’ll tell you. That guy–

**John:** So that was Scriptnotes. Craig, read us another five-star review.

**Craig:** All right. This one is titled “Impressed,” by MJ Gingsham. “Very nice directing and editing. Actors are very decent and acceptable. The music is very cool aswell. 5 stars!” Huh? Music is very cool, as well.

**John:** As well. As well. This is punctuated exactly the way it was there.

**Craig:** Hmm, what do you guys think?

**John:** What do you think? What could that be?

**Craig:** I’m kind of leaning towards—

**Julie:** Are these all movies?

**Craig:** No, it could be a TV show, right?

**John:** It could be a movie or a TV show.

**Julie:** Oh, oh, oh.

**Craig:** Is it the Vamp? Is it Vamp Di?

**Julie:** I feel like if it’s just generally across the board a mediocre five-star review, that’s probably mine.

**John:** Julie Plec, you’re correct. Julie Plec, read us a review.

**Julie:** OK, from I Am Romanov 2, “This movie was much better than the Passion of Christ.”

**Craig:** The Passion of Christ. Oof.

**Julie:** Yes.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It feels like Jungle Book to me.

**John:** It could be Jungle Book. Lots of choices here.

**Craig:** Well, has anybody dabbled in a Christ movie other than Passion? No? No. No. Well, maybe Corpse Bride.

**John:** Could be Corpse Bride.

**Craig:** Because Christ.

**John:** Christ. Death. Resurrection. Yeah.

**Michael:** Frankenweenie. Same thing.

**Craig:** Frankenweenie.

**John:** Sure.

**Julie:** Who did Frankenweenie? Nice.

**John:** The answer is Michael Green for Green Lantern.

**Craig:** Why would you compare Green Lantern to Passion of Christ?

**Michael:** I don’t know. They were both hard to get through. They both hurt my soul for different reasons.

**Craig:** And the heroes did have super powers, so.

**Michael:** Also the CG suits.

**Craig:** CG suits. CG suits.

**John:** Yep. Nudity. Michael Green, read us a five-star review.

**Craig:** I would have never thought of that one. Your turn. You can read it right there.

**Michael:** OK, “Best movie of the year — This film did better than do the original justice. It’s a masterpiece!Ryan Reynolds stole the show and all the other actors did well too. Not to mention Hans Zimmers score completely fit and mixed in with this awesome epic of a film“

**Julie:** Is this the same movie?

**Craig:** That feels like Green Lantern again.

**Justin:** But Ryan Reynolds was great in–

**Michael:** Hans Zimmer did not do the score. So I’m thinking this is a Ryan flub.

**Julie:** Yeah.

**John:** So, what are you predicting?

**Michael:** Blade Runner.

**John:** Blade Runner 2049.

**Michael:** And you’re not fat.

**Craig:** Fooled me.

**John:** Justin Marks?

**Justin:** “I love this one by Ishiro Honda would be proud.”

**Craig:** How is that a name?

**Justin:** “This is the best movie I’ve seen so far this year and I’ve only seen 2 good movies this year. Amazing special effects, great characters and I felt like a kid again watching this movie. See it if you haven’t already.”

**Craig:** Jungle Book, right? It feels like Jungle Book.

**Michael:** Jungle Book.

**John:** It’s Jungle Book. All right. Next up, Miss Shorty Rocks says, “loved it — if u ppl have nothing good to say than don’t say nothing at all cause this move was good i liked it was really good i would watch it again again why dnt u all do me a fav n put the shut to up that means shut up.”

**Craig:** That has to be one of my fans. I mean, for a bunch of reasons not the least of which is she’s clearly arguing with the majority of people who are upset. So I got to – that’s got to be one of my people.

**John:** You’d be wrong.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** That is for Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li. Justin Marks.

**Justin:** Yeah, my mom does write under that Miss Shorty Rocks.

**Craig:** Wasn’t Ishiro Honda in Street Fighter? Wasn’t he one of the characters?

**Justin:** Was that a character? Don’t ask the writer of Street Fighter.

**John:** Craig Mazin?

**Craig:** Oh, I’ve got one here. “Wow,” by Edward Elrick Fan. “I wish I was bloating like the girl.i always wanted to bloat like that girl in the movie I wish I was her SERIOUSLY!”

OK, this has to be Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

**John:** It’s a movie about bloating. I love that he’s a bloat fetishist who is like you know what, I’ve got some time, I’ll leave five stars for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

**Michael:** Violet, you’re carrying water, Violet.

**Julie:** That’s amazing.

**Craig:** I was most just concerned with the lack of the subjective mood here.

**John:** Yes, that really is the biggest cue of that.

**Craig:** Edward, you wish you were bloating like her.

**John:** Seriously.

**Craig:** Were Edward.

**John:** Julie Plec.

**Julie:** Sponge Bob Girl 101 says, “You have your options in what movies you like. People say it was horrible and some people say it was good just give it a chance if ur not interested in cussing and comedy i recommend that u do not watch this movie. I enjoyed this movie a lot it was so funny. And i didn’t watch the trailer thats probably why i didn’t hate it”

**Craig:** Again, that feels like one of my people.

**John:** Yeah. Which movie though?

**Craig:** Notice fighting off others. Any one of them, honestly.

**Julie:** Cussing.

**Craig:** Not Winter’s War.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** I’ll go with Identity Thief.

**John:** Identity Thief it is. And Michael Green, I think you have the last one.

**Michael:** Mine is not a five-star review.

**Craig:** It’s a two.

**Julie:** Ouch. That’s mine.

**John:** Go for it.

**Michael:** OK. I think things are going to get mean. “Box of Bisquick,” by Woody Wood 123. Because there were 122 other Woody Woods. “Am I the only one who deleted this podcast after three episodes because, while the information was useful,” at least you’re using that well, “I just couldn’t get past John August’s manner of speaking like he just swallowed a box of Bisquick.”

**John:** Just swallowed Bisquick. I love that.

**Michael:** “Sometimes he’s barely intelligible. Good this he’s a writer.” Good this he’s a writer should be like. Oh. “A shame. I would have liked to be a follower.”

**Craig:** I would have liked to have be a follower. We would have liked for him to have be a fan. Just, this person was hearing the best of you, by the way. I just want to point out.

**John:** Absolutely. That’s after Matthew’s edited me carefully. So.

**Craig:** I don’t think it’s Bisquick.

**John:** What would you say I have in my mouth?

**Craig:** Quikrete.

**John:** Oh yeah. Something quick that fixes.

**Craig:** Some sort of marble and cement product.

**John:** Yes. I want to ask a practical question of our TV folks here in the room which is you guys are all not just writers but you are hiring writers to work on your TV programs. If someone is – as you’re reading through scripts and trying to put together a staff, what are you looking for in writers that you’re trying to hire onto your shows?

**Julie:** For me, just a voice. You know, like a distinct voice. Somebody that can write a funny line. Something that makes me laugh, even if it’s in a drama. Has a personality. Has some kind of cool twang to it. Because I don’t have time as I’m reading material to really dissect like, oh, structurally that was really excellent and I would have slid act two later. Like I’m reading it for my own enjoyment and if it grabs me, the voice grabs me if it’s got sparkle, I tend to read the whole thing. And if there’s no sparkle, even if it’s a great script, I just put it aside.

**John:** So how many pages will you read before you detect if there’s a sparkle.

**Julie:** About ten.

**John:** Ten. OK. Michael Green, what are you looking for as you read scripts?

**Michael:** Very similar. I’m looking for someone who I see something that will make my show better and different. I remember a showrunner I worked for back in the “22 episodes a year I don’t know how we did it days,” and I don’t know how you do it. But he said when he was hiring, and this stuck with me as a bad idea, he was looking for ten little hims. And I thought that’s terrible because you can already write like you. You know, and I can write like me all the time. I can’t stop. It’s awful. So I want people who can do what I can’t do. And then I suddenly realize reading that voice that if that voice was in my show, my show would be better. So that please.

Specificity in ten pages. Sadly, that does bear out. Showrunners read about ten pages because if it isn’t excellent in ten pages it’s never better by 20. It just doesn’t. And so polish the shit out of the first ten, please.

**John:** Justin Marks. What are you looking for?

**Justin:** I really try to look for writers who make me jealous. I think that’s really the thing that I feel like if there’s something – because I completely agree. That idea, and we’ve talked about this in the room a lot, like I can do me. I can do me pretty well. Like I feel like I know me and I can write for me and understand that. But if I am reading someone who really writes from a place, a voice that I’ve never really been able to bring out of myself then that’s exactly what I want to do.

And I will also say, I mean, yes, the question is about reading. So it’s leading in that sense. But I do think from a place, for me at least, the meeting is everything. We’re not having the meeting unless that spark has happened on the script. But I find that the best collaboration with writers in the room are people who – it also brings the best part of me out when we’re having this conversation and we’re talking about our favorite movies, or our favorite TV show, or our favorite book. You know, that’s the dynamic in the writer’s room every single day.

You know, you can bring a lot of diverse voices together, but if you don’t like the same stuff and want to do the same stuff I feel like that’s where you run afoul. So, yeah, I think it’s a combination of the two. And in some ways, depending on I guess the way everyone writes their show, I think it’s that meeting. What do we bring out of each other? That’s a hugely important thing.

**Craig:** Did you ever have any problems with control issues having come from a place of, look, I write by myself. I write. This is mine. And now I have to let you do it?

**Justin:** So badly for me. I mean, like so badly. I was so bad at it at the beginning. And fortunately the writers are really good when it comes to knowing that I was a first-time showrunner. But my thing was really like I just kept using this phrase, “I have to wrap my head around this.” And the only way I can wrap my head around it is to sort of just run through it and see it and keep doing it and keep doing it. And I realized I was making so much more work for myself. Like so much more work for myself to such diminishing returns as you’re doing it. Because it’s really like maybe it seems big to you as you’re sort of going through each page and each scene and each line of dialogue, but like you’ve hired brilliant people who can write this stuff. And, I mean, you’ve all worked it through together in the room and unless something has really just run sideways on the page, like there’s no reason to do it.

So, I had a hard time with that at the very beginning. And really like the first season was a tough journey to realizing like there are people around you. Ask them for help. That was a really tough thing. I wish I had learned that. I wish I had worked on a show. They should only, only let people run shows who have worked on shows. They should not have hired me.

**Michael:** The best day on your first season show isn’t when you get picked up for the second season. It’s when one of your writers gives you a draft that you don’t have to touch. Because it means you can now have a weekend, or now you just tell that person, “I’m sorry, you’re fucked. You’re going to write a lot.” Because otherwise you’re going to have to do every page and that’s not – there’d be dragons.

**John:** We’re going to have time for about four questions. I want to ask you guys about, you’re not just reading, and you’re not meeting with folks, but you’re also managing folks. And it feels like the management of a writing staff has become a – Harvey Weinstein was two months ago. It feels like it was six months ago, but it’s only two months ago. Has anything changed in the sense of how you guys are approaching life in the room? How you guys are approaching your shows in the wake of the sexual harassment stuff that’s come up?

**Julie:** I was just talking about this today. We had our little holiday lunch and I said – I said what is it going to be like for us moving forward in a writer’s room? And I was at a table full of women, so it was a very easy conversation to have. But I said, you know, we have to be as respectful of everybody’s space as we’re asking men to be of ours. And we can’t sit around and talk about like bras and periods all day long either, you know.

**Craig:** Aw.

**Julie:** I know. I know. There has to be a sense of mutual respect for everybody in the room. But on the other hand, I mean, when you go back to what they teach you at Warner Bros. in the sexual harassment training that I’m sure will be wholly revamped before next year is about the Friends lawsuit. And the Friends lawsuit back in the day was a woman who was in the writer’s room as a writer’s assistant, I think, who basically was just like the things discussed in the room, the words used in the room, the ideas discussed in the room were unacceptable to me and made me uncomfortable. And the defense, which turned out to be a winning defense, was but we’re in a creative space in which we are supposed to be allowed to be free to express ourselves without filter and without judgment.

And I really do believe that. And I think it’s just a difference between if someone is expressing themselves freely without filter but are also an asshole, then there are lines that have to be drawn. And a woman that I was talking to said, “If we could just get more comfortable saying, ‘Oh, that’s too far for me, or that’s too much.’” Or even better, if we don’t have to say it at all, she said, “I would love nothing more than to never be the woman in the room that says, ‘You know, hold on.’ But if some guy would tap his buddy and be like, dude.” And just move on. Say that’s a little too much. Hey bro, back off. And let it go. And don’t make a woman or a man or whoever is feeling objectified, or persecuted, or just offended have to be the one to sort of raise the Debbie Downer flag and be like, come on guys.

Although we did have a bell in my last room where like a writer brought in a bell and every time somebody swore inappropriately she’d be like, “Ding.” And then we’d laugh and we’d move on.

**Craig:** That’s not a bad idea. I mean, systems that are based on the male observational power generally are doomed. But if you have a situation where someone, like OK, you know that there’s a guy. Like let’s say I’m in your room and you can look at me and be like, and I’m like, OK, got it. Dude. Right? And then we just have a thing and then I know because I do need to be told. I think a lot of men need to be told. Because we’re just a little duh.

**John:** Let’s go to a question. Sir, your question.

**Male Audience Member:** So this is a bit of a champagne problem, but I hope there’s some general advice in here. So, it’s taken me ten years to get to this moment. And I have a spec script that’s going around town. And I got an agent. We had to move very quickly with that. And I’m at this lovely moment where every manager in town wants to meet with me, take me to lovely lunches. And I don’t quite know what’s the right way to pick a person to work with, hopefully for the long term. Like what is the trait to optimize. There are bigger places. There are smaller places. There are people that function like agents. There are people that develop.

You guys have experience. I will never have the opportunity to ask people like you this again. So I’m curious–

**Craig:** Correct. We all disappear after this.

**Julie:** What do you need in your creative process? Like if you had a perfect creative relationship with someone else that was on your team, would it be sit in a room with me for eight hours and help me break this story? Would it be I need really great comprehensive notes on my material? Or would it be like I wrote this, shut up and sell it? Where in that is what you would wish for?

Male Audience Member: I think frankly my agent team can take the shut up and sell it side of stuff. I’d like someone that I could kind of work with almost like a producer. I can call, I can game plan. I can be a little bit closer with. I don’t necessarily need day-to-day notes. I don’t need – I’m a grownup. I don’t need hand-holding. I don’t want to be told what to write. But I’d love someone to read stuff and give some feedback.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** Some general advice I give to anybody who is looking for new representation is pick somebody who you won’t dread getting a phone call from. Because sometimes people will be like, “Oh, he’s a shark but he’s great. He’s on my side.” But if you don’t want to answer the phone, if you don’t want to talk to him, that’s not the person for you.

Julie’s question is very smart about just in terms of like knowing what you’re actually looking for. So are you looking for a bad cop? Are you looking for a good guy? Figure out what it is you’re going after. And Justin Marks, you and I have had a lot of discussions about managers because I was down on managers for a long time and you were like, “No, no, John, you don’t understand what’s actually going on.” Talk to us about managers.

**Justin:** Yeah. I think – and it’s interesting because I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately as you get on a show and you’re just doing one job this whole time. And so my manager’s role in my life has changed significantly from the beginning. But in the beginning when I was just starting out I really think, and it’s only because I can count on less than one hand the number times a month I’ll speak to agents now. And my manager is the person who I’m always in the trenches with. He knows what I’m writing on a given day. He knows, you know, are you moving on to this? Are you getting this done? They’re calling about this. You have to get that finished. Whatever it may be, he’s the person who is really like a partner.

And I’ve had my manager since I was in college from the very beginning. We’ve been together and I have a very comfortable rapport. He’s the only person in my life who can tell me when something is truly terrible. He’s the person who calls to deliver bad news. And can do it fairly and without spin which is really important to me.

So, I feel like in this – and this is where our discussion was originally is I don’t think agents do anymore what they used to do.

**John:** I think everyone agrees with you there.

**Justin:** And maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy because managers have come about. But I think it’s a very important thing especially because this is not true of all agents but I’ll just say it, I think the attention spans are very short. And if you have a good manager that’s not what it’s about. They have a very long attention span.

But you only get one shot of giving a piece of material to even your agent in that sense. You don’t want to damage that relationship. So to have a manager who you can really vet your material with and to do multiple iterations on it with I think is a really important thing.

Now my relationship with my manager is very different. I mean, he’s like my therapist more than anything. Or he’ll come to set and just sit around for a little while, and then we’ll go for walks where we just go for walks like in movies where someone is really down and going for a walk. That’s what we do.

So I guess it’s worth 10%. Right?

**Julie:** Well, I mean, I’ve always been down on managers, too, because working in television I always tell people don’t get a fucking manager, for god’s sake. That’s 10% of your income. You want to buy a house. You want to raise a child. You want to put him in college. You want to keep your money. Like for the love of god, don’t get a manager who is just going to put you on a show and then cash a paycheck for nine months out of the year.

But, what you get for that 10% is a fulfilling relationship if that’s what you need. You know? Whether it’s breaking every story with you beat for beat, or just walking around the block with you. If that’s how you want to spend your money to have that relationship, then just make sure it’s someone who is going to give it to you. Because there are way too many managers in this town who just operate like agents who will stay on the phone with you longer. And I think it’s total bullshit.

**Craig:** I agree with her 100%. And I will say you don’t have to sweat this decision. Pick one of them. And if you don’t like him or you don’t like her, fire their ass and pick another one. Because there’s a thousand of them.

**Julie:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. Great. And just in case you are a Michael Green in a couple of years and you have four movies in a year, what’s your name?

**Male Audience Member:** Jeremy Cohen.

**Julie:** Good luck, Jeremy.

**John:** Jeremy Cohen. There’s probably a few other Jeremy Cohen’s on IMDb, I think, but–

**Craig:** You can only have one Michael Green or one Jeremy Cohen. You can’t have Michael Green and Jeremy Cohen. We’ll have to figure this out.

**John:** All right, on this side. A question.

**Female Audience Member:** So Craig is always talking about how he doesn’t make any money from the podcast. So what is going on there?

**Craig:** Thank you! Oh my god! Like all this time I’ve been waiting for somebody to ask the obvious question. What is going on?

**John:** So, I can actually honestly answer you. So that number about the t-shirts, that is true.

**Craig:** Oh god. This is going to be bad.

**John:** So, a bunch of you are premium subscribers. Yes, some people in the audience here. So people who get all those back episodes, that’s $2 a month. We get a dollar of that back from Libsyn. So that ends up being – we have almost 3,000 of those, so that’s $3,000 a month that’s coming in. So that’s good.

That helps pay for Megan’s salary. It pays for Matthew. And our transcripts. And so that’s kind of what it covers. There are podcasts that make good money, like those Pod Save America podcasts, they’re making bank. And it’s a whole different world. But we just decided we didn’t want to sell Casper Mattresses.

I mean.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Julie:** They do it so well. I mean, that’s part of the novelty of Pod Save America is they–

**John:** They do a great job of that.

**Julie:** The way they do their advertising is so funny and enjoyable.

**Craig:** I’m sorry. We would crush it.

**Julie:** You guys would crush it. It would be amazing.

**Craig:** We’re professional writers.

**Julie:** I want to hear you talk about–

**Craig:** By the way, you know who we should advertise?

**John:** Who?

**Craig:** Bisquick.

**John:** Bisquick. Yeah. Bisquick would be a fantastic thing. And so I can tell you guys here tonight, I think for the first time, that I am going to be doing another podcast in the New Year and that one will have ads in it. And so that will be a very different world for me. And it’s been an incredibly different experience learning how all of that works, because it’s not just two guys talking–

**Craig:** That’s not going to last a long time though is it?

**John:** No. It’s a miniseries just like yours.

**Craig:** Oh, OK.

**John:** Yeah, it’s fine.

**Craig:** No, you go and you have your thing.

**John:** Yeah. It’s fine. We can each do our own little thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. You love someone, set them free.

**John:** Thank you.

**Craig:** The truth is I do love talking about it because it’s hysterical to me, but John really does all of the work. That’s the other thing I often repeat. And between Megan and Matthew who edits and then the hosting costs and all of the other stuff, it is – we break even.

**John:** Yeah. I should say Craig used to have to write me a check every month for the hosting and stuff. Craig used to write money out of his pocket. So that doesn’t happen anymore.

**Craig:** So like that’s how I get paid now is by not having to pay money. But if we did advertise, how much money do you think we could make?

**John:** We could make good money. We’ve gotten approached a couple times. Because you guys are obviously incredibly upwardly mobile people and–

**Craig:** That one guy is.

**John:** Yeah, that guy.

**Julie:** Jeremy Cohen.

**John:** We could advertise only to Jeremy Cohen.

**Michael:** You could advertise him.

**John:** Yeah. Absolutely. Be that guy.

**Craig:** Stuff that Jeremy likes.

**John:** Cool. Great, thanks. Another question.

**Male Audience Member:** As you guys have sort of underscored throughout the evening, it’s been quite a year. And I’m wondering how the sort of world climate/political climate, the darkness of the moment has influenced the creative decisions you’re making, both on a day to day level in terms of scene work, character work on the page, but also the projects you’re taking or the stories you’re interested in telling.

**Craig:** That’s a great question. Great question.

**John:** Yeah, it’s hard whenever you have a villain to sort of not go into a place where it’s like, oh, is it this kind of villain or is it this kind of darkness. It’s hard to write dystopian story now that doesn’t feel like, oh, you see outside your window.

So I’ve definitely been mindful of that stuff. But I would say that I was in France during a lot of this and then I was also writing my book for 10 to 12 year olds. So that was great to sort of have that escape hatch and not be sort of in the thick of it all the time creatively. How about you guys?

You wrote Chernobyl.

**Craig:** Well, yeah. Actually great timing. Here’s a story about Russian lies. And what’s been happening over the last year has been actually very influential.

I started working on Chernobyl about four years ago. And just a week ago I rewrote the very first lines of the show. There was a time when the show was at its foundation about a thing. I mean, obviously it’s about Chernobyl but what human point is there to all of this. And as I started writing through the episodes by the time I got to the end I realized it had become something else and it’s something that is far more relevant to what is happening now in the world around me.

I think in general as a writer I have become vastly more concerned about representation of characters. It is on the forefront of my mind. I am constantly asking myself questions like just checking the pitfalls. The pitfall of default white. The pitfall of this character doesn’t deserve a name. You know, all of these things. And just constantly running that tape in my head. Whereas before, honestly, nobody ever asked you to do that. Nobody expected you to do it. And if you did, they would ask you why.

Like I remember years and years ago, my gosh, it was for the Weinsteins. There was a script and there was a discussion that a character had with a guy who was just like at a reception desk for a hospital. And the guy at the reception desk I just happened to make Southeast Asian. And they were befuddled. Why did you do that? And I’m like because there are a lot of them. And they’re people in the world. Now it’s the opposite. And that’s wonderful.

I think actually in a great way the response to the fucked-up-ness has been really good for me as a writer. I think it’s been great for our business in general, not just in terms of weeding out terrible people, but also just in the day to day business of how we approach storytelling and how we approach each other as human beings. There is a strange optimism. It’s just every time I start to feel good then some other asshole comes along. So anyway.

**Julie:** Yeah. I’ve had a two-pronged experience which has been sort of fascinating and concerning, but also really great. So the fascinating/concerning part was I write, you know, Vampire Diaries was – it’s gothic romance. And all of the origins of that kind of like the bad boy, the murderous bad boy, and the love triangle, and vampires in general, vampires throughout literature are very sexual beings. And so I use a lot of bodice-ripper kind of influence and all the Harlequin romance novels that I read growing up, and soap operas.

And I remember hitting like Season Seven and I’m pitching, “OK, and then this happens, and she doesn’t want to go. And she’s refusing to go, and so he breaks her neck, throws her in the back of the car, and she wakes up and she’s in a hotel room against her will.” And the whole room went, “You can’t do that.” And I was like, “Why? You know, she’s a vampire. She would do it to him.” And they were like, “Because that’s rapey. It’s like rape culture shit.” And I was like, oh, god, you guys. And I’m being very glib right now to make my point. But I said “This is the show. Like the gothic romance. I’m a feminist. I’m a strong woman. I’m not advocating abuse here. I’m just – there is a quality of sort of titillating fun to this that has built the empire of the show. And now if I can’t dip into that well then what the hell are we going to do, you know?”

And I was filled with despair and it actually launched into this great conversation in which we agreed to disagree and ultimately modified the beat so she had more agency, which I outlawed that word for a year in my writer’s room. I’m like the buzz words.

**Craig:** The buzz words. Because executives have stolen them.

**Julie:** But, you know, and then you realize, OK, but there are now limits to what you really should feel comfortable representing. And so that was my sort of growing experience. And the sort of wonderful experience was after the election and our despair and coming back to the writer’s room of The Originals this year we were like, OK, what stories are we going to tell? And someone was like, “Well what if there’s this faction of vampires who think that only a certain kind of vampires are cool. And like they want to get rid of all the other kind of vampires. And they certainly hate werewolves. And they really hate witches. And they were like kind of vampire purists.”

And so just basically made our whole season about like–

**Craig:** Alt-Right Vampires.

**Julie:** Trump supporters, you know. And it has been the most liberating, wonderful, it’s just amazing. And it’s so on the nose you guys, and I’m going to apologize in advance. I was watching a playback today and I’m like, ooh, that’s really on the nose. But it felt so good all year. And we loved it. Loved it.

**Michael:** Sometimes you got to punch right on the nose.

**Julie:** Exactly.

**John:** Michael Green, how has it changed your process?

**Michael:** Largely a lot of angry writing. A lot of just channeling that. Actually I should say it’s a pendulum swing between escapist bullshit and really, really angry writing. So, Season Two of American Gods, like Season One we wrote in a progressive administration, assuming we were going into a progressive administration, before America decided to shit the bed. And it’s not funny, but we had written a lot of things about immigration, very culturally diverse. But it was kind of accidental that we were doing it. We were just writing what we thought would be positive and suddenly it became a sparkplug. Up until last week we were leaning into that with a lot more ferocity. And part of the reason we parted ways was we wanted to defend that stuff when circumstances would have prevailed that we might have had to not do it.

On the other hand, escapist bullshit. Like I was on the set of Murder on the Orient Express, or I went the next day after the election. And I was never so glad, like I walked across fake snow to a fake train. And I’m like 1930s! And all of a sudden I realized that 1930s Europe suddenly felt idealistic.

**John:** Justin, how has it changed you?

**Justin:** I will say, I’m sure it’s the same for all rooms, but so much of our time is taken up talking about this stuff now, just every single day of how bad everything has gotten. But what’s really interesting, we have a show about identity. That’s sort of the idea. It’s two worlds and it becomes a show about who would you be under a different set of circumstances and all these things. And so very often in the first season we’re exploring ideas of gender identity, of sexual identity. And then we come to this season and the conversation feels very different now.

And we have a very diverse room. It’s a very important part of what makes this show what it is. But at no point had we really had the conversation about racial identity and what that means. And it was suddenly like we’re having this conversation. It was a really interesting day when we started to talk about it because, you know, we take place in sort of Berlin and then an alternate Berlin in another world. And there’s all these kind of throwback themes to espionage in it. You know, this conversation started like, well, do we always have to have this conversation as it relates to it? And someone said, and it was the best thing, and it was just like a glass of cold water to the face for the whole room of, “We’re already having this conversation whether we want to be or not. It’s time we actually start engaging with it.”

And that changed everything for us. It suddenly became this, and you know, we tried to create I think a better way of also just talking to each other. It may be a sexual remark, but it may also be a racial remark or something like that. To sort of get a form of discourse where people are comfortable, not just criticizing but also being criticized, and not taking it personally. You know, especially I think the white male point of view immediately goes to a place of, well, hold on, but I voted for Obama. It’s like one of the good guys thing.

And it’s like, no, you really have to take a step back and listen to yourself and hear yourself in that way and feel – and ask aloud to a diverse room around you, “Is this OK? I mean, how does this make everyone feel if I say this. It’s different if I say this than if you say this, right? Is that what it is? Or, no, what is it?”

And it becomes a really interesting thing. And I’ve got to say, I can’t believe that it has taken this long for these kinds of conversations to happen so comfortably and so much in the open. So in that sense it is – I do share that feeling of optimism. I do share that feeling of – I mean, what else do we have? It’s like the stories, you read that Sebastian Younger book about a tribe where no one was happier than when they were in London during the blitz being bombed every day because at least they had a community. Like that’s kind of how I feel now with it is like—

**Julie:** Well, yeah, it goes to what we were saying about making something comfortable in the room. So, I am a very energetic room personality. And when we’re in a flow and we’re talking story and when I get onto an idea and I’m pitching a thread, I’m like oh and this, and boom, and that. And nothing – nothing ruins that more for me than someone is like, “Well, you can’t do that because that’s not – I’m going to blanket it not PC. But it’s basically that’s racist, or that’s this.” And I’m like, come on, you know. And you get so frustrated because the air is cut out of your momentum. And you’re like that’s not sexist. Or that’s not rapey. Or that’s not whatever.

But, somebody in the room thinks it is. And somebody in the room had the balls to say that to you. And especially somebody like me who is then going to have a sort of hilarious, never angry, but a hilarious meltdown of like, “Oh, the energy just got sucked out of my soul.” We have to create these environments where people, especially young staff writers, et cetera, can feel free to be like, “Um, hello, you can’t do that and here’s why.” And where I will then come off of my sort of downward spiral and say, “OK, no really, tell me.” And then I can still decide you know what I disagree or I hear you or whatever. But to make sure the conversation happens.

**John:** Cool. Thank you very much. We usually end with One Cool Things. We’re going to do something special this time. This is our new little thing called, let’s see if the slide will change, Secret Santa or Lump of Coal. So there’s no emoji for lump of coal, so we used a smiley pile of poop.

So this is something great from the last year that we want to make sure people are aware of, and something from the last year which we could do without. So, My Secret Santa would be this was the final season for both Please Like Me, which is a series I loved, and Girls, which I loved to death. And we can forget that these great things happened in this year. So, my Secret Santa are those two shows. Go check them out if you’ve not checked them out. Their last seasons were both great.

My lump of coal goes to post-credit scenes on superhero movies. Just stop. I mean, like I kind of dug it at first. It’s like, oh, it’s an Easter egg. It’s a little bonus thing for the fans. But now a movie will end and like, ugh, I’m pulling up Wikipedia, like is there a tag scene? Ugh. And by the time it actually gets to it, like ten minutes later, I’m like it was not worth it to stay. So, let’s just stop. We could all stop. We can all agree to be done. Or do it within one minute, but then it be done and say, OK, no, there’s no more. Done.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m with you. My Secret Santa, is that what the good one is? Secret Santa? Is something I talked about on the show before, but it’s become an integral part of my life. 1Password. You don’t have to use 1Password. There’s other things like 1Password. But here’s why I’m actually evangelizing this.

So, for those of you who don’t know it’s a password management thing on your computer. You put all of your passwords in it. It generates good passwords for you, really strong ones so that not everything is Baloney1. And it’s great.

But, here’s the best part about One Password. So now it’s like a subscription-based thing the way all software is going, which is annoying, but my wife and I now share a subscription and so we have all of it now as a family. So the point is if I croak, she has everything there. And we have to start coming to terms with this that when we die now we leave behind this minefield of digital shit behind us. And we also have these accounts and things and banks. So now your partner has access to it all.

So, be a good digital citizen and get yourself something like that.

Lump of coal. You don’t like those post-credit sequences on movies, what I cannot have any more are these stupid mini-trailers in front of the trailer. Show me the trailer. What is that fucking thing at the beginning of the – I’m already watching the trailer. You know I’m watching it. If I’m going to see your thing, that means I’m watching the trailer. The thing lasts like four seconds. It’s a mini-trailer in front of the trailer.

Go on YouTube, go to a trailer, and watch what happens. Oh, I’m going to watch this trailer. First there’s a mini-trailer. It’s four seconds long. It’s insane.

And then you watch the regular trailer. What is that? Make it stop!

**John:** Done.

**Julie:** Amazing. Amazing. OK, so my Secret Santa, we already covered Pod Save America, which has just been my absolute salvation this year. And I would like to be on it if anybody knows anybody. Honestly, Reed Morano and Susanne Bier I want to say is the last name, Byer, but it’s two female directors in television, Handmaid’s Tale and The Night Manager. And what these two women did visually was so spectacular. Just the art direction, the cinematography, the actual – the visual point of view. That’s where you really can understand a director at least kind of knows their shit a little bit. They’re not just telling a story. They’re presenting a world, a beautiful world to you. And female directors in television, the good ones are few and far between and growing by the day.

But I was so wildly impressed by their work and I think that they, along with Patty Jenkins, and of course Ava DuVernay, on the movie side have really just planted their flag this year and made us all look good.

And then my lump of coal is the six-act structure in broadcast television. It is the death of good storytelling. It is the quagmire of where formerly good writers go to die. It is – when you think about it, it’s really seven-act structure because your title card comes in there and then you’ve got to – every 3.5 minutes you have to turn something and twist something. And it’s horrible.

And somebody today said that finally networks are starting to say, good networks like cable networks, are starting to say, “Oh, we don’t care about the act out. We’ll like act out in the middle of a word if we want. Don’t worry about building to that.” And that is interesting at least to explore because it’s the worst.

**Craig:** Is this for commercial interruptions?

**Julie:** Yeah. The worst.

**Craig:** That’s bad.

**John:** Michael Green?

**Michael:** Secret Santa, The Leftovers.

**Julie:** Ah!

**Michael:** If you haven’t seen it, you do. If you’ve seen it, watch it again. Damon Lindelof, Mimi Leder, speaking of female directors, she’s an authorial voice in there that demands mention and notice. If you haven’t seen it, there was probably a reason. It felt like, oh, that’s too hard. Or maybe there’s some homework. And you know what? First couple episodes, yes. Yes. And there are 450 shows on the air. Anything that takes a couple episodes to get going, I get it. You don’t want to. Like why should I acquire a taste? It’s gross.

No. Just to get to the pleasure of seeing what real writing and what real television – I mean, what it can get to in the third season. It would be worth running a marathon and I will never run a marathon. It is gorgeous. It is liturgy. It’s beautiful. I admire it.

**Julie:** It’s a masterpiece.

**Michael:** It really is. It’s a masterpiece. And just to see how you can end a show by choice, word felt. I watched it and went, “I want to try harder, do better.” And it made me want to.

Lump of shit. This is probably not the room to say this in, but there’s this hashtag I see a lot, #amwriting.

**Craig:** Thank you. I know.

**Michael:** Like if you did that, you’re not. Secondly, writing is like, you know, if you’re a writer that’s hygiene. Like #ambrushingmyteeth. Or worse, it’s like people who declare they’re in love publicly. Then you’re not. #inlove. Like blast fuck you.

Just write and turn your wireless off and shut the fuck up.

**Craig:** That is a man after my own heart. No romance. None.

**Michael:** The romance about writing, just–

**Craig:** Oh, it’s the worst.

**Michael:** Just do your shit.

**John:** Justin Marks, bring us home.

**Justin:** My Secret Santa, and I can’t believe that I even have to say this in 2017, but I would say the thing I’m most grateful for this year is a free press. More specifically, and I want to see it around next year, and I think that especially the kind of press that values good investigative journalism and checking sources. And I think we’ve seen it both on a very high level and then in the last couple months here in this industry how much it can change things. And I really hope that we keep – in the age of the Internet when we’re just sort of pushing free journalism left and right, I hope we all have a newspaper subscription. I really, really do. Or at least the one that gives you the online version of it. That’s my earnest one.

The pile of poop, this is a thing, and I have it here. The fact that cell phones these days, they’re just getting bigger. I have the iPhone SE and this is too big still. I want a smaller phone than this. And I don’t understand why there’s not a choice. Michael has a new phone that I don’t know how it can fit in your pocket. And that’s what the thing is. We live in this age where technology is everything you can fit in a pocket, and yet it can no longer fit in your pocket.

And I just don’t understand why I cannot have a phone the size that I want it to be.

**Julie:** Right. But you’re not 40 yet are you?

**Justin:** No.

**Julie:** Because the vision starts to go and then you can’t see. And I’m like I need a bigger goddamn phone because I can’t read anything.

**Craig:** You ageist.

**John:** So for young bucks like Justin Marks, we want small phones.

**Justin:** Small things. Like really small, like the Zoolander phone. I don’t know why we don’t have that in smartphone technology.

**John:** Yeah, movies promised you the Zoolander phone and it never came.

All right. That is our show for this week. Guys, thank you so much. We have so many people to thank, so let us thank them.

We’ll start off with Chris from the Writers Guild Foundation for putting us on. Writers Guild Foundation, you’re the best. Thank you.

**Craig:** Thank you, Chris.

**John:** We need to thank The Los Angeles Film School for hosting us, especially Daniel who did our AV. Daniel, thank you very much.

**Craig:** Thank you, Daniel.

**John:** We need to thank Dustin Bocks and Nima Yousefi for putting together all of these slides and stuff you saw.

As always, our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. Megan! It is edited by Matthew Chilelli who is in Japan, so cheer loudly for Matthew.

Our intro this week which truly was great, and so you’ll hear it on the real podcast, is Jon Spurney.

**Craig:** Brought to you by the devil.

**John:** Our outro is by Andy Roninson. If you have questions for us, write into ask@johnaugust.com, or find us on Twitter. I’m @johnaugust. Craig is…?

**Craig:** @clmazin.

**John:** What are you guys on Twitter?

**Julie:** @julieplec.

**Michael:** @andmichaelgreen.

**Justin:** I’m really annoying. It’s @justin_marks_ because there’s a NASCAR driver named Justin Marks and it’s really bizarre.

**John:** That’s fine.

**Justin:** Don’t tweet him.

**John:** You can find the show notes for this and all episodes at johnaugust.com, or all of the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. You guys are the best. Thank you very much and have a happy rest of your 2017.

**Craig:** Merry Christmas.

Links:

* [Show slides](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/Scriptnotes-Dec7-Live-Show.zip), in case you want to follow along at home.
* [Pod Save America](https://crooked.com/podcast-series/pod-save-america/)
* [S Town](https://stownpodcast.org)
* Dirty John to [listen to](http://wondery.com/wondery/shows/dirtyjohn/) or [read](http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-dirty-john/)
* [Missing Richard Simmons](https://www.missingrichardsimmons.com)
* Julie Plec on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0687096/)
* Michael Green on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0338169/)
* Justin Marks on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1098479/) and check out his new show [Counterpart](https://www.starz.com/series/counterpart/featured)
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](johnaugust.com/guide)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
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**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

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

**John:** And this is Episode 306 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, we’ll be taking a look at what happens when the drama is behind the camera and the difference between what’s reported and what’s really going on. Then, we’ll be answering listener questions about writing for specific actors and how to keep your hero driving the story.

But first we have big news. We have such exciting news that I’m so excited we get to share.

**Craig:** Does it involve me?

**John:** It does.

**Craig:** OK. Then I’m going to pay attention then.

**John:** We’re having a live show. So, we are having the first live show with both of us in about a year. It is July 25. That is a Tuesday. In Hollywood, California. I will be in Hollywood, California for this live show. And so will Megan Amram who is one of our special guests. So, I am very excited to be sitting next to you and to Megan to be having a live show with our audience back at the LA Film School where we do a lot of our shows.

**Craig:** Yeah. We’re getting you back. And it’s long overdue. This has become a problem for me and that therefore is a problem for you, as far as I’m concerned. That’s how we prioritize the problems in our lives. My problems first. And then also second.

So, we’re getting you back, which is great. And this is going to be our first live show together in, well, since you left. Megan Amram is not only a brilliant writer for many, many television shows that you know, like Transparent, and The Good Place, and Parks and Rec, but she is also a very popular Twitter personality with I think 4 billion followers. I think she’s up to 4 billion.

**John:** I think that’s the right number.

**Craig:** And more importantly she’s also my cousin.

**John:** She is your cousin.

**Craig:** Granted, distant cousin, but still. So, Megan is going to come on the show with us. She is amazing. And one of the funniest people on the planet. We’re talking to a few other people and I think those of you who attend will be pleased. But you’ll know ahead of time.

John, are tickets on sale?

**John:** We believe tickets should be on sale by the time people are listening to this podcast. Like many of our shows, this is through the Writers Guild Foundation, so we will direct you to their website – wgfoundation.org. Or there should be a link in the show notes that you will click and follow and purchase your tickets. This is not a big venue. This is not as big as the thing you did at the ArcLight. So, tickets will sell pretty quickly. So if you are listening to this podcast when it comes out, maybe pause. Maybe just check and buy yourself a ticket. Because it’s a Tuesday. It’s Hollywood. It’s going to be a good fun time.

**Craig:** Yeah. And we are the Jon Bon Jovi of podcasts. We sold out the ArcLight. If we can sell out the ArcLight, I’m feeling like – well, we always sell out. That’s what we do. We’re sell-outs.

**John:** We began as sell-outs. We’ll end as sell-outs.

**Craig:** That’s a good segue for this next bit.

**John:** [laughs] So why don’t you let us know about this new bit of information?

**Craig:** Well, we are approaching the next round of WGA elections. The Writers Guild has elections every single year. There are certain years, and this is one of them, where we elect both half of the board and also new officers. And then on the other year we’re just electing the other half of the board. So, this year we’re going ahead and we’re going to end up with a new president. And we’re going to end up theoretically with a bunch of new board members.

In terms of the officers, it appears that our next president will be David Goodman, because no one is running against him. I thought about it briefly, honestly to just annoy him. Because that would have just been fun. I actually like David a lot. He’s a good guy. He’s wrong about almost everything when it comes to the Guild, but he’s a really good guy. So I thought maybe I should just run against him for funsies, but then I remembered that I didn’t want to.

So, he’s going to be the president of the Guild for sure. And among the candidates running for office, there is one who hosts this podcast who is not me.

**John:** That’s correct. There’s a person running for the board who hosts Scriptnotes podcast who is not you. So, that will be really interesting to see how that all shakes out. I’m as curious as anyone to see what will happen down the road as the board is elected.

The other candidates are also fantastic, including good friends of the show like Andrea Berloff and Zak Penn. So, there’s lots of good people. Here’s what’s going to be happening in the months ahead. This is the announcement of the candidates. Down the road, there will be candidate statements that will be printed in the election booklet, so you get to read through those and see what everyone is talking about. There is an official Candidates’ Night, which is August 31, where people can come. And after that there is voting. So, the voting finishes September 18. We’ve still got quite a few weeks ahead of us before this election process is finished. But it’s exciting for me and I look forward to this years’ encounter more than most. I think I will be paying much more attention than in previous years.

**Craig:** Yes. You’ll certainly be more involved. And I suspect great success is going to be coming to a person who is not me, but who is in fact you. [laughs] It’s good. Because I want you to have that experience. I want you to know what it’s like. I did it. Now you’ll do it.

**John:** So, I want to circle back to this idea of there’s only one person running for president, also one person running for vice president. Technically, there should always be two candidates. And technically there were two candidates. The other candidate withdrew her name from running. So the rules were technically met, but there’s only one person running right now.

Someone else could run though. There’s a possibility of becoming a petition candidate. So, the deadline for petition candidates is July 21. If you are a WGA member in good standing who would like to run for president, or vice president, that’s a thing you could do. You could also run for the board that way. I think, you know, more voices, more discussion is always helpful. So if someone out there really feels like he or she could be that next person, there’s still an opportunity.

**Craig:** Well, maybe I should run for president.

**John:** Ugh, Craig. This would be a really complicated situation.

**Craig:** I don’t think it would. I think it would be–

**John:** No? You don’t think so?

**Craig:** No, I think it would be uncomplicated by smooth victory. Yeah, I could just run for president. You know, mostly to mess with Goodman. That’s a great motivation for things. Just, you know, cause trouble. Look, I’d be an amazing president of the Writers Guild.

**John:** Yeah. I do agree with you there. I agree you’d be an amazing president of the Writers Guild. So, if you would like Craig to run, you should tweet at him. Fill up his Twitter timeline with demands. And, also, specific things that you want him to fix when he does this.

**Craig:** I’ll fix them all.

**John:** He’ll fix them all. Let’s get to our marquee topic, because this was tweeted at us by many, many people. And this was not one thing, but many, many things that were tweeted at us over the course of the last really two weeks. And we thought we’d sort of lump them all together and talk about them as one thing, both the actual events, but more importantly what kind of happens when these things happen and what it’s like to be on a movie when these things are happening. And what we can take from it both as the writer who might be on set, but also an outside observer watching these things.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, we’re talking in a very general sense about the drama that happens behind the scenes which is now reported in the trades and now in the popular press and how we should respond to that. So, we can start in many different places. I thought we might start with The Mummy. So, The Mummy is a movie that came out. Did not perform well in the US. Performed much better overseas. But I’ve read a lot of articles recently – or not really read. I’ve seen headlines for a lot of articles I didn’t click through of really behind the scenes, this is what went wrong with The Mummy. This is the behind the scenes drama. And you know what? There’s always behind the scenes drama.

I have not been surprised these articles come out, but they only kind of come out when movies underperform.

**Craig:** Yeah. They do. I can think of one interesting exception and that was World War Z, where the movie was actually a success, but the story of it was so salacious and titillating to people that it earned itself an enormous Vanity Fair article. Well, we’ve entered a new era. So there were always these things where people would talk about this sort of stuff.

When we were starting out, I remember fewer of these things. It seemed like there was maybe a little bit of a collegiate agreement between the trade press, which at the time was really just a printed Variety and a printed Hollywood Reporter, and the business, because of course they relied upon each other symbiotically. The only people buying ads in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter were studios and networks. So, there was a general understanding of like we’re not going to bury you or expose this stuff to an incredible extent.

That all changed when Deadline came along, and then ultimately everything moved to online. And then social media has now essentially taken over anyway. Any little scrap of anything reported by any blog becomes fodder, it seems, for this massive discussion. And we have had this strange confluence this past two weeks of a bunch of these things happening and what I want to talk about with you today is just how remarkably confident the world seems to be about something they know nothing about.

**John:** Yeah. 100%. You talked about this Vanity Fair look at World War Z, and I’m trying to remember whether the World War Z article came out after the movie had come out and proven to be a huge success, or if it came out before then. Because World War Z had this long trajectory. There’s a long period of time where it was in limbo. I’ll put a link into this Mummy article which is also Vanity Fair, but of course it’s the Vanity Fair online. And I think what’s happened is because of the Internet, because time frames keep accelerating, you just find out about these things so much earlier. And when we were starting out, the only places you’d read these kind of stories were in the trades, rarely, or Premiere Magazine, which was like the only kind of film magazine that would dig into sort of the business of things. Sometimes Spy would get into there. Spy was a great magazine.

But now everybody has to sort of go through those things. And so things will blow up on Twitter and you find yourself responding to things.

So, this last week, the thing which we had to respond to is Lord and Miller. So, Chris Miller and Phil Lord left the Han Solo movie, which is currently in production in London. And people said, oh my god, this is amazing, and they would tweet at us because they know that we knew so many of the people involved. Friends with both those guys. Lawrence Kasdan was on our show. He was a guest where we talked about Star Wars. And so everybody wants to know what’s the real story, what’s going on behind the scenes.

This is what was officially put out about this. This is Lord and Miller in an official statement. They say, “Unfortunately our vision and process weren’t aligned with our partners on this project. We normally aren’t fans of the phrase ‘creative differences,’ but for once this cliché is true. We are really proud of the amazing and world class work of our cast and crew.”

**Craig:** So here’s what happens. The world goes bananas for a few days. There is an article written that is then essentially reproduced by 4,000 different independent websites, all saying the exact same thing. So you have this world of people that are just shooting the facts at you. And then you have the interpretation machine that begins to spin up. What happened? Who are the heroes and who are the villains?

It’s remarkable how quickly everybody just stampedes towards a dichotomy. If something like this happens, there must be a villain and a hero. There must be a justice and an injustice. Somebody was bad, somebody was good. It’s amazing how this happens. And here’s the truth. The truth is, A, nobody talking about this casually on the Internet or in social media knows what happens, because they weren’t there.

If you were there, there are decent odds that you would have a different interpretation of what it all meant and why it all happened than the person standing next to you who was also there. These things are complicated. And we’re talking about people who all have tremendous success behind them. And sometimes stuff doesn’t work out. And the part that confuses me the most about the response to all this is who cares. I know people do care. That much is clear. What I don’t understand for the life of me is why. Because it doesn’t matter. I go to see a movie to see a movie. I don’t go to see a movie to see the end result of some social experiment I was invested in. I’m just going to see a movie.

Either I like it, or I don’t. What does it matter to me who got along with whom on a set?

**John:** I can understand I think why some of this curiosity kicks in. I’m going to try to do a sports metaphor here, so everyone just bear with me, because I’ll probably make some things very, very wrong. But here’s what I’ll say. Like on a sports level, it should be who won the game. Did this team win, or did the other team win? But, between the games you’re following the drama of the players. You’re following the decisions that the coaches are making. Whether that was a good trade, a bad trade. Whether they should have benched that player or not benched that player. You’re following all of that stuff.

And I think to some – especially in nerd culture – I think Star Wars and these big properties are kind of like our sports teams. And so when we see something that could be damaging to our sports team, or will clearly affect our sports team, it’s going to peak our interests. And so when we see that there’s a change, we swapped quarterbacks, that’s a big deal. And so I can understand why there’s this discussion.

But I agree with you that ultimately the team will win or the team will not win. And the game is still being played. It’s a like time before we know the outcome of this Han Solo and how that’s all going to shake out. And I would guarantee you that what Phil and Chris are saying in their statement is probably very largely true, because it very much matches with what the statement came from the other side is that like there was a disagreement about what was going on and they left. We don’t need to know all of the details. And even if we knew specifically, this was the moment where this happened, and this moment, and this person said this thing. That may not still really be the reason.

I bet five years from now you could interview everybody involved with this movie, which is probably going to be a hugely successful movie. They would all have a slightly different version of what actually happened. But I would bet you that in the movie’s success, they would all be appreciative of the good things that had happened getting up to that point.

**Craig:** Yeah. I agree. And your sports analogy is apt. And I understand the fandom curiosity and interest. It’s when, unfortunately this is also true in sports fandom, the need to impose a narrative upon things just is unfortunate.

You know, like you said, we’re friends with these guys. I’m friends with Lord and Miller. We’re obviously friends with Larry. And we love and respect all of them. You start to see these things, well, you know, finally a writer gets to fire a director. Well, Larry didn’t fire anybody. And also Chris and Phil are also writers. There’s no real writer versus director. I don’t really think this is – also then it was like evil corporate Disney versus creative people. No, I don’t think that that’s quite it either. I think that this was just one of these complicated situations where something didn’t work out. And I wish that that were enough. I wish that you could just say to people, “You know what? Here’s the thing. I could tell you…”

Let’s say I knew about every single thing that happened. And by the way, I do know a lot. But let’s say I knew every single thing happened. And I would tell all of it to you. At the end of that very, very long discussion, I think you would be less titillated by everything than you are without all that information. The more you know and the more you talk to people and the more you understand about any kind of situation, the more boring and mundane it suddenly – you’re like, oh yeah, yeah, well, I can see how that. Yeah, it’s complicated. Oh, that’s tricky. Well, you know, everybody went into it with good faith and it just didn’t work out. And so now it’s…

It’s just not exciting, the more you know. So, where it’s hard to read all this stuff on the Internet about behind the scenes things because people don’t know. It’s like a weird opposite situation. The less you know, the more excited you are. And the more excited and titillated you are, the more you cling to this theory that is uninformed. And that part, I think, is actually weirdly corrosive to the movie business, because it leaks back in. That I don’t like.

**John:** So, a thing that was tweeted at us often was speculation about who would get credit for directing the movie. And because we’ve talked about writing credits on the show, people assume that, oh, it must be a similar process for how the DGA determines credits. It is not a similar process at all. And so I had to look it up.

So, there’s a basic agreement between the DGA and the studios, just like there is one for the Writers Guild and the studios. And it spells out that if there’s multiple directors on a project that the production company makes an initial determination of who the directing credit will go to, the one person who will get the directing credit. The other people involved, the other directors involved can appeal to DGA. The DGA can then make a determination. Ultimately, though, it is the production entity that will make the final decision of who is credited on the movie. We’re still a really long ways away from that there though now.

So, it’s reported as we were recording now that Ron Howard is going to be taking over the reins.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But we don’t know what’s ultimately going to happen. We don’t know what name we’re going to see on the screen. And I’m not going to say it’s not important, but like it shouldn’t be the focus of a lot of our attention and energy. It should be – I guarantee you that all the filmmakers involved are looking at the actual film that’s after the credit and not that person’s name.

**Craig:** Oh, yeah, no, 100%. This does actually happen. People generally don’t hear about it much. Because it’s rarer that a director leaves than say a writer be replaced, which bums me out, but fine. And also the Directors Guild is far more draconian in their credit system in that there’s one credited director. That’s it. They don’t do shared directing credits.

So, these things do happen. And certainly when you look at the Star Wars, I mean, Rogue One famously had a bit of a directorial change there. That was maybe more of a typical one because what will happen sometimes is a movie is completed, it’s cut together. Everybody looks at it. They say, “We need to do a lot of work. We need to do some significant changes. So, we’re going to actually get another writer and another director to do that work.” And that becomes sort of an addendum production. But typically the director that was overseeing principal photography will keep the credit.

I also get the sense that directors probably – I may be a Pollyanna about this. I suspect there’s less fighting about it than maybe there is in the Writers Guild. Where we’re routinely trying to arbitrate credits and there is an opportunity for multiple writers to be credited. With directing, I feel sometimes that maybe a director is more inclined to say, yes, I’m going to come in and I’m going to do this work, but I’m not going to take a director credit.

But the DGA has the ability just like the Writers Guild to make that determination. The one person that can’t get directing credit or be the director, well, it’s not just one person. But one person for sure is Larry Kasdan because of something called the Eastwood Rule.

**John:** So this goes back to The Outlaw Josey Wales where Clint Eastwood was an actor on – he was the star of The Outlaw Josey Wales, and took over the directing of the movie from the director. The rule prohibits that situation from happening. So a person already involved with the production cannot take over the directing responsibilities.

**Craig:** Well, little bit of a tweak there. A producer or an actor. But I don’t think the Eastwood Rule applies to writers. In this particular case, Larry is also a producer on the film. So, any of the actors – the cast can’t take over. You can fire a director. You just can’t replace them with one of the producers of the movie or one of the actors. But I think a writer you can. If that writer is not a producer.

**John:** What we should say is Craig and I both have had experiences where you get into post and the movie is not working. And the director is pushed aside, let us say. And then other people end of sort of really doing the work to finish the film. And that director still has his name on the film. And it’s still his movie. And everyone talks about it as being his movie. But that person did not end up finishing the movie. And so crucial decisions were made without that person.

Sometimes another person came in to do the directing on reshoots. That happens. And that’s just a quietly done thing that occurs. So, it is unusual that in this Star Wars situation they’re in the middle of production. They’re deep, deep into production and this is happening. I fully grant that that is unusual. But the idea that a movie changes direction, changes directors, is probably more common than I think people are aware.

**Craig:** No question. No question. And that’s the other part of this. Because Star Wars is so public and because there seems to be this general insatiable desire for commentary about these movies, this one becomes the main topic of discussion. But the love of drama does bleed back into things. And there’s a story that was circulating around in the wake of the success of Wonder Woman. Some people were digging up Joss Whedon’s unmade Wonder Woman script that he wrote a number of years ago. And basically saying, “Look, this compared to the Wonder Woman that’s out in theaters that we all love, this is bad. Boo Joss Whedon.”

And I’m reading this stuff going what the hell? Why? What is this about? And how is this even accurate to anything?

**John:** Yeah. I don’t know how that helps the world to dig out an old script and say this is worse than the movie that we actually got. So, what exactly?

What’s interesting is that this was the converse of a thing I see quite often. Where like a movie does not work. It’s just a bad movie. And they find an old script and say like this script was actually pretty good. And they dig out an old thing, and so what went wrong. That kind of forensics, I guess I can kind of understand. Because a lot of times those are scripts that were in the chain of title. They were along the process that got them there. And you’re sort of figuring out, OK, this is where things kind of got off the tracks.

But this was not along the process of the way to get to the Wonder Woman that we saw. The process of getting to the Wonder Woman we saw, you and I both know, and I think everyone in Hollywood knows, was a very tumultuous time. It was not a smooth sailing ship across calm waters.

And yet the movie turned out fantastically. So we’re not talking about all the storms that happened along the way because the movie did so well. And I think that’s the fascinating thing about this is we only want to stir up the drama on things that were just already problems. Good ones, we just ignore that.

**Craig:** Yeah. Look, if we could go back in time and say to people, “OK, everybody on Twitter, you’ve heard the good news right? Joss Whedon, whom you love, is going to write Wonder Woman.” And everyone is going to go yay. And then you say, “But hold on. Guess what? Warner Bros is then going to fire him.” Boo. “Oh no, it gets better. And then what they’re going to do is they’re going to hire a series of about six different writers. And you know who is going to be somewhere in the mix? Zack Snyder. He’s going to be working a treatment. And you know the guy Jeff Johns who runs DC. He’s going to be working on it, too. And then they’re just going to cobble together from all that stuff. And then they’re just going to make a movie. And it’s definitely not going to be Joss Whedon’s vision.” Everyone is going to go, oh my god, DC, blah, blah, blah, Zack Snyder, blah.

OK, but that’s exactly what happened. And it worked out great. And that wasn’t enough. Now they have to go back to Joss Whedon’s script. Dig it up. And kick it around. Like exhuming a body so you could play with it. Here’s the truth. The truth is we don’t know why Joss Whedon’s script ended up the way it did exactly. Because we don’t understand on the outside of things how any particular development process might go.

You write a script. You pitch something. You hand it to somebody. And then they read it and then they come back to you and they say, “Here’s the problem. We want to get this star. They don’t want to do this. We want to get this financier. They don’t want to do this. We can’t release this in China if you do this. Here’s a bunch of notes. Here’s what we want to do.”

And so a second script is created. And then that’s the one people find and go, “Boo.” We don’t know. Or, hey, how about this? Maybe – and this is crazy now – maybe Joss Whedon has days where he doesn’t write the most amazing script ever. I know. I know. Maybe he’s a human being and not every single thing he writes is incredible. And so you know what we should do? Let’s punish him publicly for it.

There is an internalized, weird, self-loathing of writers, because I see writers doing it all the time. Like what is wrong with you. This is the last thing we should ever do to another writer. And we certainly shouldn’t applaud while other people are doing it. It’s gross.

**John:** So here’s where I think there’s a case to be made for reading old scripts that were never made. I got to do this when I was at USC. And USC had a good script library. This is before we had PDFs. And so you were literally checking them out of the script library and taking them home and reading them and bringing them back in.

And I got to read a lot of things that were never made. And I learned a lot from that, but I also got to learn like, oh, you know what? This amazing writer, their script never got made. And maybe there’s some reasons why that never got made, but it was also really helpful for me to see like, you know what, not everything is going to be perfect. Really talented people do some things that are not the best things I’ve ever read.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And as something to check out of a library and read, I’m fully in favor of something like an old Wonder Woman script. I think that can be great and helpful to an entry level writer to learn about the craft. But to do a big public unveiling of this script, and then to hold it up as like this is not nearly as good as you think it would be, and Joss Whedon sucks for some reason is ridiculous.

Because you know why Joss Whedon doesn’t suck? Because we’ve seen so many other things he’s done. We’ve seen hundreds of hours of television that he’s done that do not suck. We’ve seen movies he’s made that have been fantastic. So, just stop Internet. Just please stop.

**Craig:** Yeah. Just stop. I mean, look at the Han Solo situation. So you have Kathy Kennedy. You have Lord and Miller. You have Larry Kasdan. All three of those entities have done remarkable work, repeatedly, over and over with extraordinarily high batting averages. What it comes down to is sometimes there’s just a mismatch of people or material. That is fair. That is human.

Maybe Joss Whedon was mismatched with Wonder Woman. That’s fair and human.

Here’s the truth: we pretend that everything that works out is intentional. It’s not. I know that’s a scary thing to contemplate. Wonder Woman, believe me – believe me – you and I know this very, very well. The way it ended up was not the result of a carefully planned, clean, efficient, smart, unrandom process. It was messy. It was not intentional. Nobody would design a path, a business model that byzantine and with that many stops and starts and turn-arounds and go forwards.

But in the end, the sum total of decisions created a good movie. So, it was a messy, unintentional process, but then the right people were matched with the right material, and that wonderful confluence occurred. When a movie comes together and works, it’s a miracle. I don’t think people quite understand that. When you end up with the right director, the right cast, the right script, the right producer, the right studio, the right marketing, at the right time, it’s a little miracle.

**John:** One of my very first classes was taught was taught by Laura Ziskin. And she produced many wonderful films, but the biggest hit she ever had was Pretty Woman. And so she would tell us the stories of Pretty Woman. And Pretty Woman for people who don’t know the backstory was a very, very dark drama about a guy who picks up a prostitute in Hollywood. And it became Pretty Woman.

And what I loved about Laura is that she was always thoroughly honest about like we have no idea how it became what it became. It was just every day we would show up and we would keep changing things and changing things. And we were literally cutting and pasting lines out of the script and gluing them together because it was before we had computers to do these things.

And it eventually became Pretty Woman and became this phenomenon. But she never presumed that she understood how it all worked or how it all happened. She’s always said they should give an award for just getting a movie made. And that’s really the truth. It’s remarkable that any movie turns out at all.

**Craig:** It really is.

**John:** So before we get into some advice for when you find yourself in this drama, I do want to acknowledge, because someone is going to point this out, it’s another weird thing that happened the last month is that Joss Whedon is going to be taking over the postproduction on the new Justice League movie because Zack Snyder is dealing with the death of his daughter. So, a horrible situation and it’s great that Joss is stepping in.

As people look forward, I would say whatever happens with the Justice League movie, please do not ascribe all credit or blame to Joss Whedon or to Zack Snyder, or to what the civics of this situation are. Let’s try to look at the movie. Let’s try to look at the actual film itself and what works at it and celebrate it if it’s great, or find the things that don’t work if it doesn’t work. But let’s not try to make everything be about this one moment if we can.

**Craig:** I agree. What a sad tragedy. And Zack’s wife, Deborah, is also involved in the production of those movies, so it was both of them together dealing with this. That’s actual drama. That’s actual human drama. And that’s the real stuff of life that hurts human beings. The rest of this is who cares.

So, you know, you have just given a very grown up, wise admonition and it will not be followed.

**John:** Not at all.

**Craig:** But, no, but I salute you and your attempt to do so, because it’s the right thing. We have to start – I don’t know when this happened, when the soap opera of behind the scenes became just as interesting as the soap operas in front of the cameras. But I don’t like it. I wish it would stop. And it won’t.

**John:** It won’t.

So, let’s say that you are a writer who is involved in a film that is achieving new levels of sort of behind the scenes drama. Let’s think through these scenarios, because you and I have both been there, and offer some guidance. I want to talk about the kinds of drama that you may encounter. I listed five here, but there’s as many variances as you can possibly imagine.

The one kind of drama you’ll encounter is that one person is freaking crazy. One person is just nuts. And the entire production is focused around getting this one insane person to not destroy the movie. So sometimes that is a major star. Sometimes it’s the director. Sometimes it’s a producer. But there’s just one crazy person and everything is about making sure that one person doesn’t ruin everything. That is a frequent behind the scenes drama.

Second one I’ll point out is too many cooks. So there’s basically no one who is in charge, or no one with enough power to get everyone to sort of go in one direction. Or what I think happens more often and sort of more subtly is that there are enough people who are important enough that they can’t ever be sort of ignored. And so it just becomes this churning thing where on a daily basis there’s sort of one monster you have to fight. That’s’ a – you’ve probably encountered that many times.

**Craig:** I think I’ve encountered every single thing on your list here.

**John:** My third thing would be a power struggle, which is usually there’s two people who are vying for power in the movie. They might have different creative visions, but they are just not compatible visions. They might have thought they had compatible visions, but they fundamentally don’t have that. And something has got to give, because you can’t make two movies. Well, actually, you often do make two movies. There are two competing cuts of the film somewhere down the road. And then what’s so fascinating is while you’re shooting you can just keep shooting. And then eventually you have to decide on one movie. And it just becomes unpleasant.

**Craig:** Yep. I mean, that’s the part where I start to feel physically ill just contemplating it. Because if I said to you, John, I have this idea. You want to write this script? And you say, “Oh my god, I’ve thought about it and I have this wonderful vision for it. Yes, I want to write it.” And I say, good. While you’re writing it, I also want you to write a different version of it that’s like this. You would rather eat a gun. The mental math and the emotional dilution required to write two versions of something. It’s like, here, take a kid and raise him, but on every other day raise them as a different gender and with a different value system. Do that.

You can’t. You can’t. And yet sometimes directors do find themselves in situations where that’s kind of going on. It’s horrifying to consider.

**John:** It’s horrible. Other bad situations are really just an outside force. Like something completely crazy beyond anyone’s understanding happens. Sort of the force majeure situations where there’s weather, there’s a weird budget thing, there’s a war in the country you’re trying to shoot in. And suddenly like some outside force has just taken over all normal, rational decision making.

And then finally, and sort of most sadly, things are actually going relatively well, but then the movie just sucks. You actually see the film and it’s like, oh, this is just terrible. There’s just not a movie here. And we’re going to have to do something very different. And that’s actually one of the most frustrating things because you can’t point to anyone person and say like that’s the person responsible for why this is in such horrible disarray. It’s like, no, everyone was just doing their job and sometimes it’s not Pretty Woman. Sometimes it’s just a movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. This movie should not have been made.

**John:** Yeah. Oh, I hate those.

**Craig:** I’ve experienced all of these. I have to say I’ve been somewhat lucky in that with rare exception I haven’t really been in the center of the swirl. I’ve found myself on the edge of the swirl, watching the swirl happen. Which is, I guess, in terms of climatology I should be in the center. That’s where it’s calm. I think I’m in the center. I’m in the eye of the storm, but I’m not on the edge where the cars and tractors are hurling around.

So, I’ve been kind of lucky that way, but it’s hard to watch.

**John:** Well, Craig, I think you’re honestly, you’re a little Stockholm Syndrome there. Because I do know from situations you’ve described that you’ve been in those storms. You’re like, oh, this is just weather. This is just some rain. When by any normal human standards it’s a downpour.

**Craig:** Yeah. I guess what I’m saying is it’s bad, but I found – for instance, I found myself, I’ll just be open about it. When I was making movies with David Zucker and Bob Weinstein, I spent a lot of time trying to diffuse what was between them. You know, and that was crazy and there was an enormous amount of drama. It wasn’t about me. But, it was less the yelling at me. I guess that’s what I’m saying.

And sometimes that’s the worst thing, because you realize I can’t get off this ride. I’m the only adult in the car. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. You were the child trying to make your bickering parents get along.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** But you were the adult child. The adult child of divorce.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So here’s some advice I have for if you find yourself in this situation. It’s just bullet points, but it may be helpful. And I’m sure Craig will add to this.

If the press come to you, you don’t say anything. Do not say anything. If you’re in the middle of the situation, you’re doing no one any benefit by speaking publicly about the trouble in the movie or in the film or in the TV series you’re in. It doesn’t help anybody. And I would also be careful about venting on phone calls. If you’re talking to your agent or your manager, so often someone else is listening in, an assistant. That stuff can just get out. Even if they don’t sort of use your name, it gets out there in the world. Try not to do that.

If you leave a project, don’t light the building on fire. There’s this temptation to burn it all down behind you. Never do that. Because then you make it impossible for you to come back in and help if there’s something there to salvage later on. It’s never a good idea to just kill it all.

And make yourself available if you think you can be. So, as I’ve left projects I’ve tried to be always really clear like, OK, I’m going now. I still love this movie. If you need me to come back, I’m so excited to come back. And down the road if they do come back to you and it’s just a horrible situation, it’s very easy to make yourself unavailable. Say like, “You know what, I would love to do this. I just don’t think I can do this now. I have these other things going on.” Make up some work. Just don’t burn relationships. Just disappear if you have to. That’s a situation where like ghosting I think is fair.

I’ve made myself unavailable to like see a cut of a movie, or to go to a premiere because I wasn’t going to benefit anybody by going to it.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know, when you’re in the middle of it, I think the most important thing is to just try and be the person that isn’t throwing fuel on the fire. Maybe the most public bit of drama that I was attached to peripherally I suppose was when there was a dispute between some cast members and Todd Phillips and the studio about whether or not Mel Gibson should be in Hangover 2.

And it was a big news story. And Mel Gibson was going to be in it, and then he wasn’t going to be in it. You know, in those situations, you may be the sort of person who feels like you should get involved. And if you are that person, you should recognize that feeling. And appreciate that that feeling is perfectly fine to have. And then don’t do it. Just don’t do it. Because you can feel like you want to get involved. You can feel like you have a great answer. You can feel like you have that one wonderful thing to say to somebody in private that’s going to make it all better. You don’t. And it’s not. And now you’re involved. And it’s just hard.

This is a show for writers, so it’s actually easiest I think for all these people for writers to just put their heads down and write. We don’t have to deal with quite the level of politics that the directors do and that the cast does between the director, between the studio, amongst themselves. Put your head down and do the work as best you can. And try and not make a difficult situation more difficult.

Because I’ll tell you this much. I have seen this happen. I have seen two strong parties at war. And I’ve seen a third party enter in to the middle to either attempt to diffuse or help one party, and the two parties at war turn on that person, destroy them, feel really good about it, and get back to work.

**John:** Yeah. You don’t want to be that sacrificial lamb.

**Craig:** No. No you don’t.

**John:** So, two things I think I can pull out of what you just advised though. That put your head down and write can be a really good helpful thing, especially in post I found. Is that if I’m the person who like writes the notes after seeing a cut, and I’m the first person with the most notes, the clearest notes, and those can go in and everyone can respond to those notes, that can be really helpful. Because then people are responding to a thing in front of them and they can sort of see that. And that can provide some logic and framework. That’s great. The other thing I will say is that if you find yourself in the middle of a crisis, like during production, or a TV show that’s going off the rails, recent Scriptnotes guests, both Damon Lindelof, Andrew Goddard talked about how they really got their opportunities because they were on sort of a sinking ship.

And on that sinking ship, that [unintelligible] suddenly gets to steer the ship for a while because there’s no one else to do it. And so if you find yourself in those bad situations, you may actually get to step up a few notches and do some important things.

Early in my career I got in the editing room on some of the movies that I probably didn’t really have business being in there, but I seemed to know what I was doing and they needed me. And so when things are going south, look for things you can do that might actually be helpful.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s great advice. That’s certainly the bulk of the new experience I got working on the movies with David Zucker was because of the nature of the production and how tumultuous it was and frantic and dramatic and hyper fast the schedule was. I had to – I was impressed into service, essentially, and had to sit in the editing room and had to take on more than a screenwriter should. And it was really an incredible education.

And you’re right. If you’re on a very stable movie, your role is very, very stable and it’s exactly what you presume it will be, and then you’re done. So, you’re right. There are opportunities here. You just got to be careful to not confuse opportunity with ambition. Ambition is a desire. Opportunity is something that comes to you. There’s nothing wrong with being ambitious. I think there is a danger in being ambitious because you see crisis around you. And you think, oh good, this is my chance.

And I’ve seen people do that, too. That generally doesn’t work.

**John:** I’m going to try another sports metaphor. This is going to be an unprecedented episode of Scriptnotes.

**Craig:** Wow. Wow.

**John:** But I would say if the ball lands near you, and like no one else can pick up the ball, pick up the ball. That’s what I’m saying. Doesn’t really matter what the sport is. If it’s a sport where you’re allowed to pick up the ball, I say pick up the ball and run with the ball.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** If you go back to the previous episodes and listen to Drew Goddard, he was on a TV show that was behind in scripts and it was crazy, but he got – it was actually a Joss Whedon show. He got to pitch to Joss and sort of help figure out an episode. In Damon’s episode, he talked about he was on a show that was not doing well and he just went home over a weekend. He was the writer’s assistant. And just banged out a script and presented like, hey, I know you can’t use this. I do not mean to sort of be a burden and a drag on you. But I wrote this. If it’s at all helpful, if you want to rewrite it. If it’s anything this is good for, I just wrote you a script. And they loved it and that got him started.

So, when you see things falling apart, if you can help put them back together, help.

**Craig:** Exactly. Exactly. Help. Help. Try and be the person that makes things better. It sounds so obvious, and you’d be shocked how few people either seem to know this or put it into practice. It is shocking to me how many times I see trouble and drama and then somebody running toward it with a bucket of gasoline. It’s amazing. I just – and I don’t understand it. But, it’s what happens.

**John:** All right. Let’s wrap this up by talking about if you’re not the writer inside the situation, but you are the person who is reading about these situations or seeing these headlines. What advice can we offer? Maybe don’t read the stories, but at least don’t retweet them. Don’t celebrate them. I don’t think that’s helping.

Remember that there’s at least one other side to what’s going on. So, whatever theory you’re reading about what happened, there’s somebody else who has the exact opposite theory, which is not wrong probably. There’s many perspectives on things.

And just finally remember that everybody involved in the situation chose to be part of that situation. They signed up to be part of something. And they weren’t going into it saying like let’s make a terrible movie that’s a disaster and everybody hates each other. They were going in there with really good intentions. And even with those really good intentions, sometimes things go wrong. And that’s just the reality of it. But don’t have schadenfreude for a movie that’s not working.

**Craig:** Yeah. And resist if you can drawing large conclusions about the state of the world, the state of the entertainment business, the state of anything. Because here’s what I have noticed over time. I said this on Twitter. Essentially 90% of the time 99% of what I read about the entertainment business is false, any particular story. It’s just not right. Not only – not that it’s off or incomplete. I cannot say how many times I’ve read something and I’ve known the truth. And what was being put out there wasn’t just wrong or incomplete. It was the opposite of what was right. It’s frustrating.

I suppose if you are interested in reading about this stuff, what I’m saying to you is you can’t trust what you’re reading. And you can’t. Because it is always incomplete and soaking in a kind of narrative. And then on social media it’s only really narrative. No one seems at all concerned with – and you just watch as the allegiances shift and change and they decide who is good and who’s bad. Why is Joss Whedon winner one day and goat the next? Well, the truth is he’s just the same human being who is doing his best, which as it turns out is really, really good. And it’s not always perfect. And also sometimes you have to presume when you’re reading things that aren’t on the screen, maybe that wasn’t even where it ended. You know? It’s all – you can’t take it with a grain of salt. You have to take it with all of the salt.

**John:** Yeah. Take all of the salt. That’s our diet advice. Take all the salt.

**Craig:** Take all of the salt.

**John:** Let’s see if we can give helpful advice to two of our listeners. First, we have a question from Philip and he wrote in with audio, so let’s take a listen to what he said.

Philip: My name is Philip and I’m an aspiring writer-director who is fresh out of film school. I’m about to embark on writing my next feature screenplay and there’s a young actress who I have worked with on multiple projects before that I’m imagining for the lead character in my screenplay. Neither of us have any industry notoriety or actual prospects to financing the film, so at this point the project is really just more for practice than anything else. So my question is am I doing myself a disservice as a writer by crafting a character around this performer? Of course, it’s going to be helpful to picture someone as I write, but am I perhaps closing myself off to potential takes on this character by having her already cast in my head?

Finally, how do you think this situation might be different in a professional’s position? Obviously big stars have writers write roles for them all the time, but do you think this is limiting?

**John:** Philip asks a great question. He’s mindful of my first bit of advice which was going to be, no, it’s great to sort of write for somebody because then you at least know that somebody could do the part. There’s a specificity that you’re probably building into it by writing it for one person.

But I would say don’t worry about the role is going to be limited because you had this one person in mind. I bet if this person is really as good as you think they are, you’re going to make really great choices that are going to bring out the best of what she can do and ultimately if it becomes another actress, it’s still going to be a better role I think because of the attention you paid to it.

Craig, what’s your thought?

**Craig:** I agree. First of all, Philip sounds like such a smart guy.

**John:** Yeah. We have the best listeners.

**Craig:** We do. We have the best listeners. He just sounds smart. I like people that speak in complete sentences. I agree with you. I think that the ultimately question, the test to apply to any of this stuff is what’s going to help me write my script. What is going to help me write my script the best that I can?

And I find that writing for an actor is an enormous help. Even if you are essentially closing yourself off in some ways, the truth is that’s part and parcel to achieving specificity. You have any millions of choices that you can make. But if you’re going to end up with a specific character on the page, you have to begin closing off choices by the thousands, in big waves. And when you are writing with an actor in mind, that’s essentially what you’ve done is purposely closed off a whole bunch of options and narrowed it down to one that allows you to be specific.

What ends up happening is as you write your script, you start to see this character as very discrete and separate from the actor per se. Because it’s becoming yours. But it’s a wonderful beginning to at least have a sense of a person who is real and occupies space and has a face and a manner of speaking and a rhythm of speech. So, I would definitely recommend if you have somebody that’s going to help you write this, then you should use them.

I don’t think you’ll end up in a position where should somebody else read this script they will say, “It’s amazing. The only problem is I can’t imagine any actor in the world doing this part.” And then you say, well, this is the actor. And they say, “Oh my gosh, that is the actor, but unfortunately we can’t make a movie based around her because she’s not famous. So no movie for you.”

That’s not how it works. There will be actors to which that role applies. It’s more about helping you do your job. So, I would encourage you to do whatever you think will help you write a good script as best you can.

**John:** I completely agree with that recommendation. Also, you and I have both written roles specifically for Melissa McCarthy. Like knowing that is for Melissa. And I’ve even written her into things where she did not end up playing that part. So, there’s a role in Big Fish which is played Missi Pyle, but I wrote that for Melissa. And Melissa was not available to do the movie. But that was written for Melissa. And that role completely makes sense with Missi Pyle in it. Missi Pyle brought her own special energy to it, but it wasn’t worse for having been written for one actress and then another person cast it in. It was better, I think, for it. The specific choices were made.

The only thing I would caution Philip on is to make sure you’re doing all the work of actually describing that character and making sure what is unique about that character translates to the page. Because sometimes if you’re writing for someone who is just such a unique talent, you might not be really capturing that spirit on the page. Because you know what they can do. But you’re not putting it on the page. So make sure you’re making a role that we can see, even if we don’t know your friend.

**Craig:** That exactly right.

**John:** All right. Last question comes from Ferris. And, again, he has audio. We love when people have audio.

**Craig:** We do.

Ferris: I’ve just crossed the threshold of listening to more than half of all episodes in the app while simultaneously keeping up with the new ones. There’s one thing I really wish you would go into depth about and that’s character development. Like my stride is I’m pretty decent at coming up with good plot, with twists and turns and interesting philosophical questions that the viewer can ask themselves. However, I’m being stuck on a current script and I’m realizing my lack of handle on my characters is really road-blocking me.

So, how do you truly get into the mind of a character? Like understand their motivations. How they would react in certain situations? How do you go about making the character drive the story instead of the other way around? I understand there are stock answers to these questions. If we go a bit further than that, that would really be great.

**Craig:** Oh boy.

**John:** So, Craig, he’s not going to take any of your stock answers. You got to push deeper. Again, an incredibly smart question. We’re now an hour into the podcast, so I’m not sure we can get into all the depth that we possibly could.

**Craig:** You know what? I mean, maybe we should just–

**John:** Punt?

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, maybe we should just have a big discussion about character development in the next show and answer this question as in depth as we possibly can. Because it’s a huge topic.

**John:** It’s a great question and a great topic. That will be our next show. Well, we always promise it will be the next show, but then something else comes up. In a future episode, we will tackle Ferris’s question in greater depth and it will be fantastic.

**Craig:** Yep. It’s going to be the best question of all time.

**John:** No pressure.

**Craig:** It will be the best answer of all time. It will be the best answer of all time.

**John:** It’ll be fantastic. It will be better than any other answer.

**Craig:** Do you know what I want to happen? After that show airs, everyone else that’s ever written about character development is just going to quietly commit suicide.

**John:** Indeed. They’re like, man, I thought I asked the question that would get the best answer, but no you didn’t. No. Because he did.

**Craig:** Yeah. He did. He did.

**John:** Building this up too much. All right, it’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is genuinely a One Cool Thing. To the point where I feel like everybody who is listening to this show will probably actually want to click through to the link and see what this thing is and what it does.

So, this is Computational Video Editing for Dialogue-Driven Scenes. It was a paper and a demo video from a team at Stanford. And what they did is they shot a very simple scene between two actors sitting at a table and they did it very much the way you would cover this. So, there’s a two shot. There’s over-the-shoulders. There’s tighter shots as well. So it’s basically five setups in this. And they feed all the video into the computer. The computer figures out what the shots are. They figure out the different takes. They match it to the script. And then they can say Assemble. And the algorithms will put together an assembly of what that scene could look like and figuring out, OK, here’s how we’re moving between the wide shots and the over-the-shoulders. Here’s the close-ups. This is the rhythm we’re trying for.

But then you can change the parameters and will give you a new version, and a new version, and a new version. So, in my description of this you might say, “That sounds fantastic, or that sounds absolutely horrifying.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And the truth is sort of both at once. So, if you are a person who loves editing like I love it, you would say like, oh, you know what, there’s a point at which this is incredibly useful and helpful. Because there’s so much of an assistant editor’s job is just like pulling that stuff apart and figuring out what are the takes where they do this thing or that thing. That is really, really good. But I was surprised at the degree to which I might be at least curious to see the initial versions of what it’s assembling, because I think if you could have a baseline version of like this is what a computer algorithm could do, then you can sort of take the handles and figure out what do I hate about this and how can I do something better.

And so I think it’s a great starting place for a discussion of editing and sort of how algorithms could be used in doing some of the really more mechanical parts of the process. And then the greater question of like to what degree do we allow computers to do some of the artistic work. So, take a look at the video. It’s a really well done video.

**Craig:** Siri, edit my movie.

I like doing that because then people’s phones start going, boop-beep-boop. Alexa, edit my movie.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Excellent. I mean, you know, I’m always deeply suspicious about these things. But listen, as long as it involved editors losing their jobs, and not writers, I just…

My One Cool Thing this week is potentially cool. I have not yet used it, because I haven’t completed the enrollment process. But in theory it should be great. Are you a Global Entry guy, by the way?

**John:** I am a Global Entry guy. I love Global Entry. It’s so good.

**Craig:** It’s the most amazing thing. So we’re a Global Entry family. And I think it might have been my One Cool Thing. Yeah. It’s basically you go through a registration process with the Customs and Border Patrol agency. And you pretty much have to have a clean record. No arrests, I think, or stuff. And you have to be on the up and up. And they ask you a whole bunch of questions. And then they register you and they get your fingerprints. And you are essentially now – well, first of all you’re automatically registered for TSA Pre-Check, which is lovely. And when you are returning to the country, you don’t have to fill out a customs slip. You don’t have to wait in that long line. You can just insert your passport and then scan your fingers. Answer a few questions on the little computer screen. And you walk right out. It’s lovely.

So, coming back from the Netherlands, after we came back in with our Global Entry card I thought this is great. I wonder is there another level, because I’m all about speed at the airport. So, there’s a service now called Clear. And it is in most of your major airports. It just opened up at LAX. And it’s a similar kind of deal. You put in all of your information and the enrollment finishes when you actually sit with them briefly in person. So I have to do that. And they have a lot of places where you can do it. And when you get to the airport, instead of going through the normal security and check in, there’s a little kiosk. You tap your finger or they look into your eye and then you get through security lines in five minutes or less. I think they literally take you to the front of the TSA line. There’s a whole thing.

So, I’m hoping that it’s good because, you know, I like going fast.

**John:** You like going fast. I think there’s a good discussion on a show that’s not our show about sort of the way in which people can just keep buying their way past the worst parts of life rather than necessarily dealing with those worst parts that should be sort of fixed by government. That’s not our show. But I think it’s a show that someone else could have.

But I am curious to check out Clear. I’ve seen those lines. And I’ve never actually seen them working, so apparently now it’s working in some parts of the US. Cool.

**Craig:** Yeah. So I’m hopeful.

**John:** While we were doing our show, I just got confirmation that tickets will be available for the live show on July 25. And so by the time you’re listening to this program you will be able to click through. So, now is the perfect time.

At the bottom of this episode you will see the show notes. You can also find them at johnaugust.com. That’s where you’ll find the link to all the things we talked about, but more importantly the tickets for the live show.

Our show is produced by Godwin Jabangwe. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week comes from Rajesh Naroth. 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, like the ones we sort of answered and sort of punted on today.

For shorter questions, I’m on Twitter @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

We’re on Facebook. Just search for Scriptnotes Podcast. Look for us on Apple Podcasts. Search for Scriptnotes. Leave us a review. People left us a review this last week, like three or four people. It was great.

You can find the transcript for this episode and most of our episodes about four days after the episode posts. And you can find all the back episodes of Scriptnotes at Scriptnotes.net.

And if you’re back there, I would say definitely check out the Drew Goddard special episode, because that’s really good. And, of course, the Damon episode is great, too. And the Larry Kasdan live show we did a zillion years ago.

**Craig:** Indeed.

**John:** Indeed. Craig, thank you for a fun episode.

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

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [The Mummy](http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/06/tom-cruise-the-mummy-control)
* [Lord and Miller and Han Solo](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-why-han-solo-movie-directors-were-fired-1015474)
* [Joss Whedon on Finishing Justice League](http://variety.com/2017/film/news/justice-league-zack-snyder-daughter-dead-joss-whedon-1202440505/)
* [Joss Whedon on his unmade Wonder Woman](http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/joss-whedon-leak-wonder-woman-script-sexist-a7800571.html)
* [Computational Video Editing for Dialogue-Driven Scenes](http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/roughcut/)
* [Clear](https://www.clearme.com/home)
* [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)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Sam Brady ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_306.mp3).