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The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: No, no, no, no. My name is Craig Mazin.

John: This is episode 742 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, we welcome the writer-director of one of my favorite films of the summer, which has become a surprise blockbuster and the subject of countless articles.

Craig: A few think pieces here and there.

John: Yes, positing, what does this mean for the future of Hollywood? No pressure here.

Craig: No pressure at all. [chuckles]

John: The film is Obsession. The writer-director is Curry Barker. Welcome, Curry Barker.

Curry Barker: Hello. Thanks for having me.

Craig: So nice to have you here. I’m going to go a little further than you. Maybe it’s my favorite movie of the year so far.

John: Wow, that’s crazy.

Craig: It’s not that long of a year. I don’t know. It’s not that–

John: No, absolutely.

Craig: It’s really good. It’s really, really good. I just loved it.

Curry: Thank you.

Craig: Loved it.

Curry: That’s so awesome to hear that.

John: We want to talk about the movie. We want to talk about the process of getting it, but really kind of focused on the crafty things. As we said in terms of the warm-up, I’m sure you’re sick of answering a thousand questions about the blockbuster of it all. The blockbuster is wonderful, but if this movie had made $5, it’s still a really good movie that people should check out. In our bonus segment for our premium members, I want to focus on one of the most crucial things that no one is talking about in Hollywood.

Craig: Thank God.

John: It’s not IMAX, it’s not 3D, but it’s a fundamental part of the cinematic experience these days, which is the popcorn bucket.

Craig: The popcorn bucket.

John: The novelty popcorn bucket.

Craig: I saw it happening in your brain before you said it. You know why? Because we’re close.

John: Yes, that’s what it is. We’ve done this for a few years.

Craig: Very close.

John: We have a sense.

Craig: Yes, ever since the Dune popcorn bucket, it’s just been a thing.

John: Yes, it’s a thing now.

Craig: It’s a thing.

John: We will focus in on what we want for our popcorn buckets for our films. Also, going back in time, if we could create a popcorn bucket.

Curry: The potential of the popcorn bucket back in the day.

John: Absolutely.

Curry: What was the Jaws’ popcorn bucket?

Craig: How could it have been bad? What could have gone horribly wrong with a– I could definitely see an exorcist popcorn bucket where she’s barfing the– There’s so many ways to go.

John: In our bonus segment for premium members, we will dive deep into–

Craig: We’ll get there. That’s the last free popcorn bucket people get.

John: We will pick the last kernel out of that popcorn bucket.

Curry: Okay.

John: First, we have some follow-up that I will actually, I promise, tie into our discussion with Curry here. In episode 740, we talked about competence. It was a really good conversation. We were centered around this blog post by Iris Meredith, and there was a word in there which you and I had never heard of, ultracrepidarian.

Craig: Ultracrepidarian.

John: We didn’t spend enough time on that, I think. You are a person who loves words.

Craig: I do.

John: Try to figure out ultracrepidarian, what that might come from. It’s Latin.

Craig: Obviously, ultra would mean beyond or above.

John: Crepeda. Do you have any sense of crepeda?

Craig: Crepeda. I’m trying to think of other words that have– It’s C-R-E-P. There’s crepuscule, which is a red blood cell. I don’t know if that’s connected.

John: It’s not, no.

Craig: Maybe that’s Greek.

John: I don’t think we’ll get there. It’s sandal.

Craig: Oh, sure. I would not have gotten there.

John: It’s beyond the sandal, which seems really strange. Iris actually wrote in. She listened to the episode, and she wrote in, just to tell us where the origin of that is. Apparently, it comes from this painter named Apelles of Kos, who was getting criticism of how he painted sandals in his depictions of people from sandal makers. Sandal-makers are like, “You painted that wrong.” He’s like, “Okay, I’ll fix how I paint the sandals.” Then he started making notes about the legs and other things. He’s like, “No, no, no, you can focus on the sandals, but not above, beyond the sandals.”

Craig: Beyond the sandals. This is it. There’s a comic book artist — is it Rob Liefeld? — who’s infamously bad at drawing feet? Or maybe he’s really good at drawing feet. I can’t remember. There’s somebody who’s notoriously bad at feet.

Curry: It’s like my characters always have shoes.

Craig: Why?

Curry: It’s like it’s in my contract. They have to have shoes.

Craig: Even in the shower, the shoes. Ultracrepidarian.

John: Ultracrepidarian. That’s the origin of that word. The segue I want to make to is with the success of Obsession, I feel like there’s a lot of ultracrepidarians weighing in here on sort of like, they’re not just talking about the little bit of knowledge that they actually understand, but they’re trying to apply much more broadly to things beyond their actual scope of expertise. It’s nice to have the person who’s actually the expert on making the film Obsession to talk about Obsession itself. There you go.

Craig: This is better than a million think pieces about, “Everyone’s got a hot take.”

John: Everyone’s got a hot take.

Craig: You know what? I will say that one of the things that I really loved about the work is that there is an elegance to it. The idea is not complicated. In fact, almost nothing about it is complicated. It’s so simple and elegant, but it’s so interestingly done that I think the reason– I’ll do a think piece on think pieces, the reason there are 5 million think pieces is because it provokes an enormous amount of thought. It gives you space, as somebody watching, to theorize and more importantly, put yourself in the shoes of the people that are involved. I found myself being both of them.

Curry: I think I gravitate towards simple stories anyway. To me, people that would say, “Oh, this is such an idea that we’ve seen before or whatever, to me, when I got excited about this idea three years ago, I wasn’t excited about a wish-gone-wrong movie. I was excited about the version that you saw. I was like, “Oh my God, I have this idea about this crazy movie.” Even if you were just to read the logline, you’d be like, “Oh, what? We’ve seen this a million times.”

I love stories that are simple because there’s so much room. Sometimes simple is just better. It’s kind of like a magic trick. Obviously, the movie’s been out for a while, so spoiler alert, but like Megan’s death scene, right? Crazy. If that happened four times in the movie, then it’s a slasher and it doesn’t really work anymore. Because it’s all leading up to this moment, why I say it’s like a magic trick is it’s like, got you, it’s like this movie is going there. In a way that a movie that does it a bunch of times, you would watch it and be like, “The kills in this movie were just as crazy, so why was this one more effective? It’s just because it’s more simple.

Craig: You can’t kill that character more than once because it’s too good and important of a character. The more you kill people, the less important they are, and the more they are functionaries of plot. It was wonderful how under the skin we got with everyone in the film.

John: I do want to focus a lot on the storytelling, but I want to give some sense of your storytelling here because I feel like a lot of our listeners can picture themselves in you in the sense of a kid who grows up outside of Los Angeles, outside of New York, outside of the industry, moves here, and figures out how to do stuff. Give us a sense of where you come from. It’s Mobile, Alabama.

Curry: Yes, I’m from a small town in Mobile. Grew up, went to high school there at Baker. I was really involved. I didn’t make good grades, but I was really involved. I was in there–

Craig: Loved extracurriculars.

Curry: I was in the acting program. I was in the marching band. I was in BH1, which was our news where we actually got a lot of editing skills in BH1. I went to acting competitions out in the States. I was constantly doing things. I even started my own film club in school.

John: Classically, you did a lot of the things you could do as a high school student, but it wasn’t like there was a giant film community in Alabama. We made Big Fish in Montgomery. We had to hire everybody from every place else to get up there.

Curry: It was non-existent, really. There is community theater out there. It’s actually kind of a Baker thing. If I wanted to act in film, I had to make it myself. I started really even editing and putting things together at a pretty young age. I think what I really got a sense for is my instincts of storytelling started growing at an earlier age that I think has really given me an advantage. I think there’s a lot of instinct with storytelling sometimes, right?

Craig: No question. There is talent, and a lot of it is connected to that. What is interesting about somebody like you, especially now, as people are coming to their own in their 20s and 30s, is that you do grow up with all the tools to make things, whereas we did not have those. A lot of times what started for us was writing. The first interaction you have with a professional writing is you read a screenplay, and you’re like, “This is what it looks like? Okay.” Can you talk about that aspect of it? There isn’t a lot of practical instruction or do-it-yourself-ishness to that.

Curry: Right. What’s really funny is I never would have saw myself as a writer. If a 12-year-old me were to look up and be like– to see me now and see that I’m a professional writer, and I did air quotes for people that are just listening.
[laughter]

Craig: They were implied in the way you said–

Curry: Yes, right. My 12-year-old self would just not believe. Would be like, “No, you’re not. You’re not good at English class, and you don’t understand grammar too well.” It just didn’t seem like it was in the cards for me to be a professional writer. It’s really about storytelling and the human raw– My bread and butter is conversation and how it can get uncomfortable. Also, I learned a lot from– I did the Aaron Sorkin MasterClass. That was a big thing for me.

Craig: Finally a MasterClass paid off. I’ve been waiting for one of these Masterclasses to pay off. Aaron Sorkin, we salute you.

John: Tell me about the Aaron Sorkin MasterClass. This is an online class where it’s several lesson.

Craig: By the way, this podcast is brought to you by the Aaron Sorkin MasterClass. We’re not getting paid anything. This is outrageous.

John: Tell us about that.

Curry: This thing called MasterClass came out. It’s like this app you can download. There’s a director MasterClass. There’s all these MasterClass. I think when I moved out here, someone suggested, maybe it was even my dad, was like, “You should do the Aaron Sorkin MasterClass,” or something. I just started taking it. I learned so many rules about storytelling.
I took it to heart in a way that probably really enhanced the way that I– the rules are so important. You can’t introduce something in the first act and then not pay it off in the third act. You can’t have something magically appear in the third act that you didn’t introduce in the first or second act. You can’t have all the answers to the equation in the third act. All these things that are pretty important to make sure that you’re either paying everything off or not, that I could really give credit to the Aaron Sorkin MasterClass.

John: It’s great. It feels like, at some point, someone needs to sit you down and tell you these fundamental things or at least point them out in ways that maybe you could have discovered over the course of years. It’s nice to have someone do that.

Curry: Totally.

Craig: The great mystery and magic of it all is that you can– A lot of people have taken the Aaron Sorkin MasterClass. I always feel like, even with our podcast, we’re really broadcasting to some group of people that we’ll be able to convert, which is not everyone. You found it one way or the other. You found what you needed, understood it almost immediately. It was like right into your bones and then, boom, out came something great.

Curry: It’s an instinct thing, really. It’s like you understand that if something doesn’t feel right, it’s probably because it wasn’t paid off correctly. Or if something doesn’t feel satisfying or– What is it that you want to feel fully satisfied at the end, but then also the art of knowing what doesn’t need–

John: To be paid off.

Curry: What doesn’t need to– That’s really hard. Sometimes I just want to ask other people. If I’m writing something, I’m like, “Does this matter to you?”

Craig: Do you?

Curry: Right

John: Did you ask people?

Craig: Is that part of your process?

Curry: Yes. The thing I learned is that you’ll never get an answer.

Craig: There is no answer.

Curry: Yes, that’s the problem.

John: Here’s another thing that’s actually different about how you learned versus how we learned is that you were making things constantly. Talk to us about when you first post– You’ve shot something and you’ve put online for strangers to look at.

Curry: I think the first time I ever– when I first moved out here, we were doing this show called Roommates. It was just about–

John: Who was the we?

Curry: Me and Cooper Tomlinson.

John: Who is one of the co-stars of the movie?

Curry: Yes. He’s my writing partner in crime. We do our sketch comedy show together and everything. He’s great. I’m talking week one. We met in school and we were already doing this thing called Roommates. We were just like, “Let’s make something.” We just had the bug. That was interesting. That was getting 200 views, 500 views, small things. Then the first thing that really hit it off for me, like, “Oh my God, I’m a director,” was The Chair. It was a short film I made for $2,000, which is funny enough, even more expensive than my Milk & Serial movie.
I made it for $2,000. Most of that went to the DP. I remember writing it. I had this small friend group where we would write short films, or even some of our friends were writing features. I wasn’t at that level yet, but some of our friends were. We would all gather and do these little table reads. When I had this chair script, I was like, “I’m going to order some food and I’m going to get everybody together and we’re going to do a table read of this.” People didn’t like it that much. I was like, “No, you don’t understand. It’s going to be weird.” I honestly felt a naive amount of confidence because I was like, “No, I’ve got an idea for this.” People were like, “I don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense.”

Craig: There is, and this is the burden that we share as writers of things that are supposed to be filmed. It’s different. In and of itself, there is a bit of a craft in trying to take something on the page and add a little bit of extra that maybe sometimes is not even necessary to help get them where you want it to be. Sometimes there are things that just need to be made that you won’t get it any other way.

John: That’s a real benefit, I think, your generation had is that you got the chance to experiment a lot. I’ve seen a lot of sketches you did with Cooper, and many of them are great, but I also suspect there were ones that probably weren’t great that you just didn’t [unintelligible]. It is also a luxury because when you’re making something in an afternoon, if it’s great, fantastic, it’s great. If it sucks, you don’t have to show it to the world.

Craig: I can’t take any of my shit down.

John: Whereas as opposed to a movie, the stakes are so much higher, you have to release that movie at some point.

Curry: Right. Totally. That’s so, so true. The experimental phase for me is over. It’s a scary thing. Even if I were to do a short film-

John: The spotlight will be on.

Curry: -the spotlight would be on it. It would be like, “What?”

Craig: And yet?

John: Yet the stakes are actually lower than you think.

Craig: It will all be an experiment from here on out anyway. It’s just that everyone’s staring at you now in the lab.

John: Craig and I both, I think, wish you the most successful failure at some point.

Craig: Fail out loud just as much as you’ve succeeded out loud. You have no option now anyway. Take big swings.

John: I want to point out that we’ve had smart guests who’ve come on the show who would strongly underline what you’re saying. Courtney Kemp was on recently and she was talking about how if she were starting today, she would get together with a group of friends and just shoot a bunch of stuff and learn how to do it because that’s how you do things now. Mike Birbiglia has been on the show and talking about getting a pizza and getting all his friends around to read drafts of things. That’s smart. What I think is crucial about this is it’s finding a group of people you like and you trust who are trying to do the same things. It sounds like moving from Alabama to Los Angeles was how you got that process started.

Curry: Yes. I got lucky, too. I don’t think it’s always going to happen that way to find a group of people. Going to film school, you hopefully will find people that have similar interests. I think, to me, that’s the most important part of film school is meeting people out. First of all, it gets you out here. I’m from a small town. It was an excuse to leave. It felt like–

Craig: Which film school?

Curry: It was the New York Film Academy.

Craig: New York Film Academy.

Curry: It was in Los Angeles. It got me out here. It didn’t feel like I was just on my own. It felt like at least I had something. I was going to school. I had an immediate schedule.

Craig: You had a structure.

Curry: Right. The thing I got from it the most was just the people that I met along the way. I was there for like a year.

Craig: When you decided to come out, whether it’s film school or not, I think you made a choice that a lot of people struggle with. We do advise this all the time. I feel bad sometimes because people will ask, “I live,” fill in the blank, “Billings, Montana. I really want to make it, do I have to move to LA?” No. It gets easier. Then I sometimes, I think we feel a little worried that we’re luring a lot of people who have no chance. Then I think, “But wait, we also have to lure the people who do have a chance.”

Curry: Right. I think you don’t have to worry because the people that don’t have a chance– I hate to say it like that.

Craig: There are people that don’t have a chance.

Curry: Right, but those people will weed themselves out anyway. The people that have a chance are the people that won’t give up. In that case, at least they got to see a cool city and be here for a little bit. Also, you’re right in that you probably do have to move here because it just keeps you dreaming. You have to keep dreaming. If I was at home, I would probably feel like this stuff was so far away that I would just be like, after two years, I would have given up. Being here and seeing Warner Brothers and wanting to be on the other side of that fence so bad.

John: Because when you’re in front of the cameras, it’s right by Warner Brothers. It’s across from Universal.

Craig: Right there.

Curry: I’m like, “There it is. That’s where I want to–”

Craig: Your group of friends, they’re doing stuff. It’s not like you can sit around and go, “It’s impossible.” Then a week later, three of your friends are like, “Hey, come on over and watch the thing I just did.” Now you feel like a lazy piece of shit.

Curry: Right. Exactly. It keeps you —

Craig: The culture is one of making things.

Curry: It really is.

John: Give us a sense of that first year or two in Los Angeles. You’re going to this program, you’re making a bunch of stuff. Are you also working? What was the hustle? What was the grind?

Curry: First I was in school, didn’t do anything. Then I had a job at a burger joint, and then I had a very small-time editing job, which to me felt like such a cool thing. I was like, “Oh my gosh.” It was editing these little commercials for local things, like a local little kids’ soccer team. I was getting hired to edit these things. Then I worked at Starbucks for a year-and-a-half.

Craig: Got yourself some health insurance.

Curry: Yes, right. At one point, I was working on a show called This Is Us for two years. First, I was a COVID monitor during COVID.

John: I remember that. Yes, I remember.

Craig: Hold up.

Curry: I was the person that everyone hated it. I handed the masks.

Craig: You were the COVID monitor. Everyone hated– The COVID monitor. That’s the worst job.

Curry: It was the worst.

Craig: No one likes you.

John: You were on sets.

Curry: Everyone was so nice on This Is Us. I guess I was a very ballsy guy because I would just go up to Milo or Yasu, who’s a DP, and just talk and talk and ask them questions. They were nice. They were nice enough to even give me their phone– I was sending them short films, and so crazy that they were nice enough to talk to the COVID monitor.

Craig: You know, the thing is, if you’re not crazy and you’re not boring, it’s wonderful to talk to anybody on a set. It’s cool. Every now and then you do get somebody who’s a little boring and/or crazy. People actually do want to encourage the next generation to come on up and come along, I think, in general.

John: What I’m hearing through all these anecdotes is that you just have a lot of agency. You take a lot of agency. You’re sort of like, “This is the thing I want.” You’re not asking permission. In a very kind of an appropriate way, you’re saying you’re not waiting for someone to invite you in. You’re just saying like, “Hey, can I talk to you about this thing?”

Curry: Yes, I guess so. It’s just so funny because I never would have considered myself that type of person. I’m very chill. I did have that attitude of just, “I’m doing what you’re doing. I want to–”

Craig: Maybe this is why the writing in your story rings so true because everybody who is one thing is also the other thing, I think. Here we have Bear is the most timid, diffident, don’t-take-chances, terrified, so terrified of success or even trying. I don’t think you can occupy that as honestly as you did unless it’s there. We are reactions to ourselves sometimes. It’s like, “Don’t be that guy. Go be this guy and do that.”

Curry: Oh, that’s an interesting observation.

Craig: Do you know what I mean?

Curry: Yes.

Craig: I don’t think you could write that character that well if you’re just effortlessly alpha. Do you know what I mean?

Curry: Totally.

Craig: There’s this aspect of it. I’m curious, in your writing process, you do something so beautifully in the movie. To me, it’s very writerly. You are able to occupy two people in a scene with two people, and those two people are so wildly different. They don’t know what’s going on in the other person’s mind. They don’t even understand, really, the truth of what the other person’s saying. We watch them, and we want to be like, “Oh my God, can I do therapy for the two of you?” Not hearing each other or seeing each other.

Curry: I love it.

Craig: How do you get to that when it, because it’s just you?

Curry: I love writing dialogue where two people misunderstand each other, which is exactly what you just described. When you start from a place of wanting that, which is, by the way, just already a captivating way to write any scene, honestly, is like one person wants one thing, and the other person wants a different thing. I wanted every single character in this movie to have different perspectives.

It’s so interesting to have Sarah saying, “Nikki is taking advantage of you. She’s using her opportunity of her dad dying to latch onto you, and that’s not healthy.” It was just so crazy from what’s actually happening. What a fun thing to write, that one person has this crazy perspective, but you know as the audience that– Also, I really, really like to write from one perspective, which is Bear. You can hear what Sarah and Ian are saying, but you don’t follow them home and see their story. You stay with Bear.

John: You have a limited point of view, but we actually understand that the characters are locked to the point of view on him, which makes sense. It reminds me of Jon Favreau in Swingers. This character who we appreciate, we adore, he’s making bad choices, and we’re with him while he’s making bad choices. You set up a character in Bear who feels like he is in a romantic comedy, and yet the genre of the movie isn’t letting him be in a romantic comedy.

Curry: That’s great.

Craig: The voice message seen in Swingers is like the comedy version of Obsession.

John: It’s cringe because-

Craig: It’s cringe.

John: -we were so embarrassed on his behalf, and yet it just keeps going worse and worse. That is what’s happened with Bear up until he cracks the willow.

Curry: Yes.

Craig: Again, credit to the way you approach things because I think you never villainized anyone, really. Even what he does in and of itself, it’s not an act of crime. He’s just going, “Ah, I wish.” If it’s a crime, it’s a crime of cowardice, but there was no expectation.

Curry: Absolutely not, which is so funny, because I see people make these videos of like, “If Bear would have worded his wish differently.” Like, “I wish that I–”

Craig: Oh, [unintelligible].

Curry: I’m like–

Craig: That’s not what this is about? If only he were a lawyer, this would have worked out great.

Curry: Yes.

John: Yes.

Craig: No.

Curry: Or like, “I wish I had the confidence to–” which I get that, like, saying the correct thing, but it was a toy.

Craig: A toy.

Curry: He didn’t know it was going to work. That’s the whole point.

Craig: That’s the whole point. It was just this goofy set. It was almost like when he does it, it’s like, “This is how much I suck. I’m doing this.” What I appreciated was how I understood how he felt. I felt that way. I think actually everyone in the world at some point or another has experienced obsession or– what’s the wo– limerence? Is that the word that people use a lot? of wanting another person and feeling helpless.
It’s not even that you think they would want you back, you’re just scared to ask. You know they don’t. You’re lost, but you can’t seem to get out of it. Everyone’s had this feeling. It’s incredibly relatable. Also, I think maybe not everybody, but almost everybody’s had the feeling of understanding, “I think that person wants me. Eh, it’s not going to happen. How do I deal with that?” I was both of them the whole time.

John: One thing that’s so important to note here is that Bear is making a choice and Bear is kicking off the action of the movie. He’s protagonating the way you want him to start the story. Yet, you as the filmmaker are still doing the thing we always urge our writers to do is you are torturing your hero. You are making things awful for your hero. You’re building this moral staircase where he keeps making choices that are reasonable in the moment that are actually worse overall for him and for everyone else around him. To your credit, it works. We can feel your hands doing that. We’re delighted because that is also the genre. It’s the nature of the kind of story we sat down to see, which is fun.

Curry: It’s interesting to talk about it at such a high emotionally intelligent level at this point because when I first was writing it was just raw. You know what I mean?

John: Tell us about those early drafts. Tell us about what you thought the movie was as you were sitting down to start writing it.

Curry: I knew that I wanted to do some crazy things with Nikki. In The Chair short film that I did, there was this girl character who would flip from different emotions. I was like, “I want to do a movie where that’s the whole gimmick.” Then this came to me. I was like, “Oh my God, I can do that chair thing that I really liked with the girl. This can be that movie.” Something that’s really cool about this movie is that it lends itself well to being in the horror genre in a way that other ideas I have don’t, where I’m like, “Oh, where’s the scary angle?” This idea, just the obsession of something, it’s scary. It’s scary to have someone feel so strongly about you. In real life, it really is.

Craig: It was really, I thought, so smart. Even though Bear’s the protagonist, he’s the character we’re following, and so much of it is through his perspective, we do feel through Nikki like we can see, and you give her moments where she gets to come back, where we understand she’s like those people that have locked-in syndrome, which is the most terrifying thing. Now I’m with her. Now I’m just imagining the terror of what this must feel like.

On both sides of it, the desire to love someone that doesn’t love you, we all know the power of that feeling. The feeling of not being in control of yourself, we also know that feeling. If I were to write a think piece about why this movie works, it just comes down to it is a hyper-presentation of stuff we have all felt. We must feel it because it goes to what love and desire is, which are beneath our forebrains. That is where the scary stuff is.

Curry: Right. Wow, that’s interesting.

John: As you were working on this, in the writing, in the directing, and in the editing, where did you find a line between, we are in a horror space and this is a comedy? Because so much of what you’re setting up is essentially a comedy press, where this girl is so obsessed with you. That’s a comedy.

Craig: There is a Jim Carrey version of this movie.

John: Totally, yes. Where did you find moments where you had to pivot between those two?

Curry: The funny thing is that it just hums naturally for me because I’m not– When I was, I think, 17, I was still in high school, and I saw JJ Abrams say on a podcast or something, “The most successful people in life don’t take themselves too seriously.” I don’t know what it is about that statement that just stuck with me. It was like, “Whoa.” It just freed me up because I was like, “So I don’t have to take this seriously?” I know that sounds like, “You don’t take it seriously,” whatever, but don’t take the art too seriously because there’s something freeing about– You watch these horror movies that are so brute and like, “This is serious. We need to figure this out.” It’s like, but what if that was real? Then you would probably be– You would talk different. You would say–

Craig: What if that were real? I cannot tell you how often I will say some version of the following thing. “Okay, but what would really happen?” When I read somebody’s script and I’m like, “This moment is a very interesting moment, but everything that happens after that.” We do this with our– How would an actual human being respond in this circumstance?

Curry: Exactly, man. Yes.

Craig: It’s a good thing that JJ said that, and I love that you come from a comedy background, and there is something about comedy and horror that just they’re like twin siblings.

John: They both revel in being uncomfortable and just sitting in a really uncomfortable place and not letting it resolve.

Craig: Getting to squishy stuff underneath without taking itself– it shouldn’t take itself so seriously.

Curry: Here’s an example. People would think, “Oh, this is a comedy scene,” but the morning after when Bear wakes up, he’s checking his hair in the mirror. He goes up to her, and he’s like, “Let’s not do that anymore.” That’s funny, and people think it’s funny, but it’s also honest. In every horror movie, crazy things happen, and then the next day, the characters just ignore it. They’re like, “Dude, you just saw some crazy shit. Let’s talk about it out loud because that’s what you would do.”

Craig: What would you do in this circumstance?

Curry: Exactly, yes.

Craig: There are kinds of stories where everything just feels a bit elevated because of the nature of it, if it’s a fantasy or something like this. We understand that in Lord of the Rings– I always think it’s funny, when people die in a movie like Lord of the Rings, everyone should just stop and vomit. Do you know what I mean? They don’t because that’s the world they live in, and I get it. It’s fine.

Curry: Maybe you can accept in a world where war is every day and people die left and right. It’s like, “Fine.”

Craig: Yes, fine. In a story like this where I’m basically a kid and I work at a music shop and I really like this girl, even blood, anything-

John: Literally.

Craig: -is enough to shatter you. If nothing else happened except that one night, he would be in therapy about it for a while anyway. I love that you go right to that question, like, what would really happen?

Curry: It’s almost like when you ask that one question, it opens up so many genres. Now you can think about, “Oh, but what’s the version of this movie that we’ve seen 100 times? What’s the version of it where it happened in real life?” It just kind of excites you. That’s why a simple idea doesn’t scare me off. It excites me because I can think about, “Oh, but what if it’s raw and real and the reactions are–”

Craig: The more real you’re going to be, the simpler you want the idea to be. The more complicated and large the concept, I think then almost the characters start to have to drift away from grounded.

Curry: Because there’s no way to push the plot forward without them doing– You would go to the hospital. Okay, well, that’s boring. Now the rest of the movie takes place at the hospital. There’s so many things that do drag– Even this ghost movie that me and Cooper just wrote, so many times we were like, we want to do the absolute most bonkers crazy thing. It’s like, “Oh, what if we killed off this character right here? It’d be crazy.” It’s like, “Yes, but there’s con artists. They would just give up and go home and be sad.” They wouldn’t carry out the rest of the– We’re constantly thinking about that. Also, not wanting to answer anything is such a challenging way to write. Because when you’re saying to me, we understand that she’s popping into her body at this point in the movie. I never had a scene where Bear’s going to Ian and saying, “I think she’s popping back into her body.” [laughter] You just understand it. When you write that way–

John: You have to talk to people and be like, “Did you understand like this?”

Craig: For this particular movie, was there a process where after you make the movie and you cut it together, did you, for lack of a better phrase, test screen?

Curry: Oh, yes. We did a test screening with– I had just gotten with UTA, and they let us use their screening room. Hayley, the producer, put on Instagram, free movie, because we didn’t want to get friends and family. We wanted to get random people.

Craig: [unintelligible]

Curry: It was just us doing it. It wasn’t some super–

Craig: NRG or any of those research companies.

Curry: Yes, it wasn’t. It was just us. We got as random as we could of people, and we all gave them papers and made them write down things. The number one thing that people said is they were frustrated with Bear and that they didn’t understand why he wasn’t making more effort to fix it. By the way, you’ve seen the movie as it is. You haven’t seen the movie before the reshoot.

John: Talk to us about that.

Craig: There you go. You learned something.

Curry: I did learn something. What’s really interesting is that I did the thing that you hear about in stories where I didn’t take the note. I took the note behind the note, which is everybody wanted me to fix Bear and make him go to that crystal shop sooner to find the One Wish Willow and try to fix it sooner. I was like, “Okay, I get it now.” The problem is that I haven’t done a good enough job of telling people that Bear wants this to work.

Craig: Exactly. He’s not ready to undo it yet.

Curry: Yes. That scene that I was just talking about with the haircut, and he comes and he explains that to her, that was a reshoot. Before, we had this other scene where he’s like, “Where were you?” She’s like, “I was in the room.” The twist is that she was on the ceiling. It was cool, but then I was able to come up with an idea of a scene where he’s trying to say, “Please don’t do that anymore because it freaks me out.” Then she says, “I promise you I won’t.” He goes, “Good.”

Craig: She gives him permission to keep going. Here we have one of our favorite and most horrifying things in writing, which is logic. It is remarkable how people need it. They need logic because–

Curry: Even if they don’t know.

Craig: That’s right. We will trade on this concept of, what would people really do? We will get very far with it until we forget that maybe also people would really do this or this. We forgot to do that. Boy, they go right to it, don’t they? That’s amazing.

John: Two examples I can think of on terms of, what would people really do? I just rewatched Get Out, which we should do a deep dive on Get Out. It’s so spectacular. You are right there with your hero in terms of something is really messed up here, and I’m going to leave. I’m going to leave. We’re going to go right now. He tries to leave at the right, appropriate moments, and there’s the social pressures to continue to stay, but he doesn’t. Also, Blair Witch Project, in terms of these are characters who are encountering these weird things, and they’re responding the ways– They’re freaking out in the ways that they should freak out. A lesson we tend to forget in genre is that people don’t know they’re in a genre. They’re just experiencing life.

Craig: Therefore, it does become corny when they don’t appear to be behaving the way we do. Then you get the classic movie theater moment of, why are you going in there? Get out.

John: Why are you going into the house?

Craig: I think it’s great that you had that experience. It speaks to why I think– Anybody who is going to do this for a long time, right off the bat, you’ve said two things that are very important. One is, okay, I don’t take myself so seriously. I take the work seriously. I don’t take myself seriously, which means I leave room to be wrong. I’m not wrong because they say they don’t like something. I’m wrong if I say, oh, wait, I know why they don’t like something. I did something wrong. I see what it is. Let me fix it. That’s a big deal.

Curry: Thank you. I appreciate it. It comes from that JJ Abrams quote from a long time. I’m just like, “Dang, it is that.” I see people that do take themselves too seriously, and it paralyzes themselves. I went to a film school where friends would have these short films, and they would spend years on this one short film because they just wanted to get it right. It’s like, “Bro, release it.”

Craig: There is no right.

Curry: Yes. “Work on the next one.”

Craig: Work on the next one. There’s a paralysis, I think, that happens. Somebody did a statistical study once of Oscar award-winning directors, and the time in between movies after someone wins an Oscar is twice as long as the normal time between movies because they become paralyzed and start to think, “Now I’m an Oscar award-winning director. My next film must be Oscar worthy of my greatness,” and they just stop.

Curry: I mean, honestly, I know I didn’t win an Oscar, but I’m feeling that pressure now. All these awards are breaking. Like, “Better than E.T.” came out. “Beat Beat Blair Witch…” I’m almost like, “Stop. Stop.” I’m like, “Slow down, slow down. I didn’t ask for this.” It’s just a crazy amount of success that that movie is having.

John: One of the advantages you have here is that you already shot this next movie. If you were prepping another movie right now, or that was–

Craig: Or you didn’t know what you were going to do next.

John: Or, here’s this $100 billion thing that you’re going to do… We would turn off the cameras and we would caution you to stop you from doing this. I do think the fact that you have another movie that you already know is going to happen, you’re actually already editing, is a good step.

Craig: It’s in your mind now, right? Partly, you just have to now go through the miserable exercise of forcing yourself to stop thinking about it and to not put what you do now in the perspective of what just happened because it can be terrifying. By the way, it’s okay if the best thing you ever did is– Something has to be the best thing you ever did. It may be that this is not. I’m fully rooting for you that there’s something bigger and better. You just have to forget about it.

John: One thing, you do tend to look to other people and say, “Oh, what did they do?” This may be a good moment to look at other folks who were in similar circumstances and learn from them in terms of what filmmakers you loved who followed up a big hit with another thing that was really great and interesting. That’s the track to follow and not look at the negative examples of the people who just then spun around for years and years because we know them. It’s tough.

Craig: It’s hard. You’re in it now. It’s impossible to see when you’re inside of it. When you look back 20 years later, you may say, “Oh, this is crazy,” because there are filmmakers like this who their first six movies out of the gate are massive and awesome. Then there’s 10 more movies that nobody wants or likes. There are filmmakers who go on, off, on, off, on, off. There are ones who come in clumps. There are ones who just ride along on a B- the whole time. You don’t know. All you can do is what you do in the moment as best you can do it and not repeat yourself. Just trying to not repeat yourself.

Curry: That’s scary. That’s hard.

Craig: It is. It’s scary.

Curry: Harder to say because I want to repeat whatever happened with–

Craig: Of course.

Curry: You’re comparing, you’re like, “Oh my gosh, what worked with this? Why was it resonating with people? Is my next idea, is it deep enough? Am I known as the deep guy now?” All these things that I’m just trying, trust me, and I am. I’m trying to push them out.

Craig: You can’t completely. Listen, I went on many long walks, talking to myself, trying to figure out which disaster would be the best disaster for me to make a television show about after I made a show about a disaster. Okay, well, that’s what I do now.

Curry: I’m a disaster guy now.

John: There was no Chernobyl Two.

Craig: I would be insane to not keep doing the disasters now. Then I would just have to repeatedly hit myself in the face and say, “Do not.” You have to almost forgive yourself for all of the instincts to be afraid. By the way, if you do repeat yourself, you repeat yourself. That’s okay too because, God knows how many sequels I did in my life. I was being paid. It’s all in service of something, all of it.

John: I love this is the most niche advice we can give to a person. After your giant hit, here’s how to follow up the giant hit.

Craig: We’ve had them. We might as well talk about it.

John: Something that would be very practical for a lot of our listeners is, how do you make that first movie? Because you’ve made a ton of shorts. You made sketches. You know how to shoot stuff, but now you have a script, and you actually have to go try to film a thing. What was your process? You mentioned a producer. Ultimately, you mentioned UTA, but how did that all come together?

Curry: I’d already made Milk & Serial, but nobody had seen it.

John: Milk & Serial is found footage.

Curry: It’s a found footage, 60-minute movie. It’s almost considered a short film, but it’s just long enough to be considered a feature.

Craig: It’s a long short.

Curry: Yes, it’s a very long short, which the first cut was an hour 20, which there’s no doubt that it’s a feature. I’d done that, and I’d done The Chair and I did one more horror film, but this producer, James Harris, reached out and said, “Hey, listen, I have this program where I find a filmmaker, and I give them X amount of money and give them basically a shot. If you have an idea– I liked your Chair, are you doing a feature of The Chair, or is that something?” At the time, I had actually written a feature for The Chair. I was like, “Oh my gosh, yes, I have The Chair.” My manager was like, “Well, The Chair could be a cool IP,” which by the way, we’re doing nothing with now.

At the time, it was like, “You’d already written The Chair, why don’t you see if there’s something else for it? Maybe we could have a bigger budget for The Chair, and we could save that, and maybe there’s a different idea.” I was like, “Well, I have this obsession idea.” I’d written the short film of it. I’d had the idea. This was after The Simpsons episode. I was excited about this. I told him, I was like, “Okay, I’ll do Obsession.” I pitched Obsession to James. His response was basically, “I like this idea, but why don’t you write the script?” [crosstalk]

John: What you pitched him was a lot of what we saw in the movie, the four characters that set up.

Curry: I pitched him that it was a movie about a guy that makes a wish that this girl becomes obsessed with him, and she becomes– and I pitched it as a Possession movie, but it was a love story, Possession movie, gone wrong thing.

John: Possession, yes.

Curry: He dug it, but he was also like, “Yes, it’s been done before, but I dig it. Why don’t you write it?” I started, “Oh my God, this is a huge opportunity for me,” which you know what? Looking back, that gives me some hope or makes me feel better that I was still under pressure then, or just a different type of pressure. As a matter of fact, maybe it was even more pressure because it was like, “This has to be good.”

Craig: Oh, yes.

Curry: I never thought about that. I never thought like, “This just has to be good.” I always just was like, [hums], just stream of consciousness.

Craig: When nothing’s happened yet, you are about as free as you’ll ever be. In a way, trying to shut everything out to be that free again is part of the challenge.

John: When I wrote Go, there was no expectation that it had to be a thing. I was writing the movie I wanted to write.

Craig: Yes. Sometimes you just have to turn all– You do, you have to turn all of it off. Everybody out there will drown you. Even their love will drown you. Their hatred will drown you, the love will drown you, the think pieces, the criticism, the awards, all that, which is designed to celebrate what you’ve done, in a way is corrosive because what you’ve done, you did. We’re always dreaming.

Curry: It’s so crazy, humans. I think about this. I’m like, “I’m having the biggest hit ever right now, and I’m thinking about what’s my next movie.” I can’t even for one second-

John: Enjoy.

Curry: -enjoy this. I’m already thinking about what’s my next one, next one, and even next one.

Craig: Okay, so good news, bad news. Bad news is you will never enjoy it. Good news, this is the best, most striking sign that you will continue to succeed. That is the thing that keeps people going. Because the people who were motivated by success, when they get it, they don’t realize it, but they just got fed. They’re not hungry anymore. If that’s not what you’re hungry for, if what you’re hungry for is the next dream thing–

Curry: It’s crazy how it means nothing to me. It drives me nuts, actually.

Craig: I’m really sorry, and I get it.

Curry: It’s like, “This should mean so much to me.” This is so crazy, but I’m like, “Nahh.” It almost just makes me angry. It doesn’t make me excited. I’m jealous of myself. How is that even possible?

Craig: Jealous of yourself, disappointed in yourself for not being enlightened enough to enjoy it. Jealous of the guy who did that thing because you don’t know how he did that, really. Sometimes you’re like, “Did I even do it?” [laughter] It’s terrifying, and then you do it again. This is your personal heaven, hell. I think the people who do what we do, and who do it at length, and who have– everything’s not always a success, but repeated success, this is part of it, is this feeling. I’m suspicious of people who are, “You know what, for the next four months, I’m just going to enjoy this moment.” What?

Curry: What.
[laughter]

Craig: What?

Curry: How are you not thinking, “Oh my God, I got to do that again, and how am I going to do it?”

Craig: If I get to not terrified, that’s a huge day for me. I love hearing this. This means we’re going to get a lot more movies out of you. This is great.

Curry: That’s a thing. I’m trying to figure out what my pace is because some of my heroes, like Ari Aster, even Zack Cregger, even Jordan Peele, they don’t come out with movies every year.

John: I think Zach Cregger’s working pretty hard.

Curry: Yes, he is.

John: Jordan Peele’s taking it at a slower pace.

Craig: Your heroes are not you. Your pace is your pace.

John: Is your pace.

Curry: If I’m not doing something, I would go crazy.

Craig: Then your pace is your pace. There are people who put out a movie a year, some of them famously, and no one who puts out a movie a year makes all good movies. They make a lot of movies. Luca Guadagnino is out there making a movie every 60 days.

Curry: Soderbergh.

Craig: Soderbergh, who retired 20 years ago, makes a movie every month. They just keep coming. That’s the pace. Your pace is your pace. You don’t have to worry about that.

John: Quick questions before we move into one cool thing. You wrote the script. You gave it to the producer. The producer said thumbs up. You shot a ton of shorts. You shot a bunch of sketches. What, from your YouTube experience, applied and what didn’t apply? What things did you have to figure out is different?

Craig: That’s a good question.

John: Because you’re working with a professional set. You’re working with probably a much bigger team than you’re used to.

Curry: Oh, yes, definitely. I’ve said this a lot on other platforms, but the YouTube comments have taught me a lot about that people are really smart, which is not always the thing you learn online.

Craig: You don’t hear that about YouTube comments.

Curry: It’s just people are picking up on things. You know that thing we talked about that was like, when you don’t give any answers, you almost have to ask people, “Are you getting this? Do you understand?” The answer is yes. As long as you’re telling it through subtext enough, people are getting it, and learning that through YouTube has given me the confidence to treat my audience like they’re smart in a way that maybe I wouldn’t have learned. I like to give credit to that.
Also, now I’ve actually learned that comments are very bad for me. Someone said recently, and I was like, “Oh, my God, I love that.” That comments are like food that you put it in your body, and you’re choosing to digest that. If you just don’t eat it, then you don’t have to– you can eat an entire thing of chocolate cake, or you can just not eat that chocolate cake.

John: What’s the difference between YouTube comments and reviews? Are you reading reviews?

Curry: Reviews are the new modern YouTube comment.

John: It’s just the same thing.

Craig: It’s just long-form YouTube comments.

Curry: It’s so funny because people were like, “What’s it like going into a medium where there were comments and now there’s not?” I was like, “There are. There are comments.”

Craig: I’ve struggled with this my whole life, or at least my whole professional life. Where I landed was, I think that it’s me as my most childlike, trying to get what I should have gotten and didn’t, which is some sort of perfect, beautiful, unconditional love and acceptance. You look for that, and you will get it from some of that stuff. It will mean nothing, and then the punches come, and you will feel those so much more.

Curry: I know.

Craig: 200 I love yous and 1 punch, and all you think about all day is the punch-

Curry: Is the punch.

Craig: -because it was not a healthy exercise in the first place, because you’re looking for something that ultimately you don’t actually need or even want. You just have to sit with your own awareness that you didn’t make something perfect. You are trying to get better. There is a corrosive aspect to it, and there is almost an indulgence. It’s almost like a suicidal indulgence, like, “Kill me.”

Curry: It is. You literally are like, “I hope the next one’s not negative,” but you’re still scrolling. Stop doing it.

Craig: You’re waiting for it. It’s like people who don’t stop gambling until they’ve lost everything.

John: It is the emotional slot machine.

Craig: It’s emotional slot machine. It’s bad for you.

John: Let me try to distinguish between there’s the comments you get on the thing that’s still in process. Someone who you want to read an early draft of your script to see, are they getting it, or people who are seeing this at the UTA, the test screening to see, “Oh, is this working?” At a certain point, when the thing is finished, you just have to be finished with it and stop reading.

Curry: Because there’s nothing to be-

Craig: You can’t do anything.

Curry: There’s no such thing about constructive criticism, because there’s no construction.

Craig: There’s no construction anymore. Construction completed. You just don’t like it, and it is me. You don’t like me. You rejected me, and you can see how intense that feeling is. In your movie, the feeling of being rejected and unwanted is baked into the movie. I would strongly urge you. It’s hard. It requires an enormous amount of ego strength. I’m going to deny myself the cheap thrill of fake love to protect myself from–

Curry: It’s so true.

Craig: It’s hard, though. It’s hard.

Curry: The difference is videos and stuff, because I know you asked what’s the difference between YouTube stuff versus the more traditional stuff. Nobody makes video essays about— People did about Milk & Serial and stuff. Arguably, that was a feature film. It’s really cool to see the videos of people talking about it. That just feels so much more different than– Because you can read the comments of that, and that’s a bad thing.

Craig: Don’t read that.

Curry: The videos–

John: Where someone’s actually taken the time to look at, pull apart, to contextualize things, sure, I can see that being helpful.

Curry: I’m just also really lucky that it’s been mostly positive for Obsession as far as people having opinions about it.

John: You may still need to stop watching those.

Curry: I know. I will, and I should. [laughs]

Craig: You can have somebody in your life who curates a little bit for you. You can say, “Listen, if you see something that it’s not just somebody going, best thing ever, or it sucked,” but somebody who goes, “Okay, I’m going to make a 10-minute video about the use of perspective in Obsession, that is some thoughtful analytical thing that isn’t about praise or condemnation, just an exploration of something that we do out of respect. Maybe somebody in your life can say, “Hey, this one’s safe for you.”

Curry: Check it out.

Craig: Check this one out.

John: We have curation on the Scriptnotes book reviews.

Craig: Oh, we do?

John: Yes. On the good reviews.

Craig: I’ve not looked at them.

John: I think I sent one thing through to you, which was this essay that I couldn’t believe how long it was. It was actually really smartly done. The fact that this person had spent all this time really looking at what we did on the Scriptnotes book was actually meaningful. It’s like, “Oh, that connected.”

Craig: Well, they spent time on it.

John: They spent time on it.

Craig: It mattered to them. It wasn’t just some barf. So much of it out there is just somebody going, “Blah, blah, blah, next.”

John: They don’t even think about how it could affect somebody at all.

Craig: They don’t think about what they just wrote within a millisecond after they hit send. It’s gone.

Curry: That the funny thing, they may even change their mind the next day.

John: Yes, but they’re not going to go back and change their comment.

Curry: You’re just stuck with the comment. Forever.

John: Forever.

Curry: Forever.

John: All right. Let’s do our one cool thing. My one cool thing. This was a study that was done. I want to pose it to you so you can tell us what you think the results were. If you have a bunch of people, schoolchildren even, just in an empty space and just tell them to wander around for 10 minutes, which direction are they going to turn? Are they going to individually turn clockwise or counterclockwise?

Craig: They have to turn. Straight ahead is not an answer.

John: They can move straight ahead, but an empty field, and so eventually they’re going to start turning around. They’re not going to just wander off forever.

Craig: My gut is that most people are right-handed. They’re going to go towards their dominant hand, and I’m going to say to the right.

Curry: I also thought it was this way.

Craig: Yes. Clockwise.

John: Clockwise.

Craig: Yes.

John: It’s counterclockwise.

Craig: What is wrong with us?

John: Universally around the world, and they can’t figure out why. They’ve done all–

Craig: Even in upside-down places like Australia?

John: Yes. I’ll put a link to The New York Times article about this. It’s written by Rachel Nuwer. If you look at the comments on that, everyone says, “Oh, but they should do it in the southern hemisphere because of the Coriolis effect.” That’s not true.

Craig: There’s no magnets.

John: That’s not real.

Craig: Can I tell you something weird? I don’t know if you’ve had this experience. In fact, I know you haven’t. No one else has except for me. This is far beyond random probability at this point. When I write something, I try and be very visual about the space, and I imagine the moments happening. I’m going to say 90% of the time when the production designer comes and shows me, or somebody does a previs or an illustration or a storyboard, they’ve put everybody in the other direction.

Curry: It drives me crazy. Oh, yes.

Craig: I go, okay, “Well, I imagined them the other way.” Everyone’s like, “Oh, that’s weird. We all imagined it like this,” and I can’t explain it. I’m backwards in my head from everybody, and I don’t know why it’s actually terrifying.

Curry: I know what you’re saying because anytime, if I didn’t explain exactly where the couch was supposed to go, then it’s always in the wrong spot.

Craig: Okay, so what’s going on?

Curry: In my head, it’s so clear-

Craig: So clear.

Curry: -that the couch is right here.

Craig: Is it like how our retinas have an upside down image that gets flipped back into our brain? What is happening?

John: As far as this study goes, they’ve a bunch of different theories and none of them pan out. They really have no idea. Scientists, it’s an active area of exploration. It could just be like we are biologically inclined to turn to the left, and they’re not sure why. If you blindfold people, it doesn’t-

Craig: It doesn’t work.

John: -work the same. If you blindfold people and tell them to move straight, I think that bias isn’t there, but it’s just a natural tendency to move.

Craig: It’s all a simulation, obviously.

John: Handedness doesn’t have anything to do with it.

Craig: It’s so weird.

Curry: But we both said right.

Craig: We both said right.

John: I was like, “I’m going to go there.”

Craig: Because I imagined in my mind, and I think maybe this is the problem, is that whatever my brain does spatially, I can see it clearly, and then when I put it, however it comes out on the other end, people are getting the flipped image. It’s so weird. It’s so weird.

John: I would say in probably 80% of scenes where I’m picturing a character entering into a space, I picture them entering in through the left. I picture them moving left to right across the screen. I’m sure statistically if you actually look at the movies I’ve made and things, that’s not the case, but I’m almost always picturing them entering into the frame from the left side of the frame.

Curry: You read from left to right. That’s part of it.

Craig: Then do people who read Arabic or Hebrew go the other way?

John: It’s wild.

Curry: I just learned that books– I don’t know if it’s in Japan or China or just Asia in general, but books are flipped.

John: I didn’t know that. There’s a lot of different cultures where what we consider the back of the book is actually the front of the book, and you’re going the other way through.

Curry: I don’t understand.

John: Manga comics, I think, are back to front.

Craig: You’re reading left to right, but you’re flipping progressively this way?

John: There’s different ways it can work-

Craig: Oh, I see.

John: -in different languages.

Curry: Manga comics is exactly what I’m talking about because I just got one. I was like, “This looks like the back of the book. I had to flip it.” I’m like, “Wait, this feels so weird.”

John: It does feel so weird.

Craig: Now that I think about it, when I went to Hebrew school, where I learned zero Hebrew except the Hebrew phrase for shut up, which every kid who goes to Hebrew school, [Hebrew language] that’s all I remember is the teacher telling me to shut up. This is great education. The books were– the cover was like this, except you would read right to left as you were turning pages this way, which is very weird. It’s all backwards. You should make a movie about that. I don’t know how many of you get that now. This is being weird. We should make a movie about that.

John: We should make a movie about that.

Craig: This is weird. Something happened that’s vaguely and boringly weird to me.

John: Crazy. One cool thing?

Craig: I do. It’s a little bit of a throwback to an old one, I’m pretty sure. It’s a game, but it’s fairly newly released on iOS. I think a long time ago, I did a one cool thing for a game called Curse of the Golden Idol, which was available on Steam. It’s this very strange game. It’s very surreal. The artwork is– sometimes there’s art styles that are aggressively, purposefully ugly. This is that. Grotesque somewhat. It’s a logic deduction game. You get a scene, you find these clues, and you have to piece together what’s actually going on. The scenes become progressively more and more difficult to figure out.
It’s all logic. You become a little bit of a Sherlock Holmes as you go through it. I liked it, but interface-wise, it was a little difficult. As it turns out, it was always supposed to be on iOS or some touch-based because it’s so simple now. It’s so easy. They’ve released two additional DLC things for it. Underneath all of it is this very weird, occult story that begins to unfold of a secret society doing some weird shit. The story’s fun, but mostly, it’s just this really interesting exercise in being very logical and observant. There’s no time limit on it. Games that put a clock on me, I start to freak out.

John: Curse of the Golden Idol?

Craig: Case of the Golden Idol. I’ve been saying Curse of the Golden Idol the whole time. It’s Case of the Golden Idol. I think the people who make it, they have their company name, which we’ll dig up here. It’s like a Pantone or a hex code for a color, I think, which I thought you would enjoy. Yes, Color Gray Games. Their logo for Color Gray Games is like the hex code Pantone. Anyway, the Case of The Golden Idol.

John: The Case of the Golden Idol. I heard you have one cool thing to share with us.

Curry: My dad, for Christmas last year, got me the Scriptnotes book.

Craig: You weren’t a little insulted? Like, “Dad, I know how to do this.” [laughs]

Curry: No, because I’m always trying to learn. I still feel like I know nothing about writing. Every day I’m like, “Oh, how do I learn more? What’s the answer?” I’m constantly chasing. I want the Aaron Sorkin Master Class again. What else can I learn? I’m studying Save the Cat. I’m studying Hero’s Journey and trying to figure out what works better for me and also trying to throw it away at the same time. You know what I mean?

Craig: You’ll find one day you will be teaching a master class where you have digested, synthesized all of it, mushed it with the things that are uniquely you, and you will then give something.

Curry: Three-act structure is important, and that’s what I’ve figured out, I think.

Craig: So far, so good for you, I would have to say. Yes, I wouldn’t dig too– By the way, here’s the one cool thing. You’re wearing a Members Only jacket, and that is the actual– is that like a vintage Members Only jacket?

Curry: No, they still have them.

Craig: That’s like a new version of the old Members Only jacket?

Curry: Yes, but it’s the same exact thing.

Craig: It’s the exact one.

John: [crosstalk] in high school. Oh, that’s cool.

Craig: I had that in 1985, I think. Members Only in whatever the early ’80s was the coolest thing ever, and then one day later, the least cool thing ever. It wasn’t like there wasn’t a middle ground. It was like everyone had one, and then suddenly, “Oh, my God–

John: If you’re wearing one, you’re lame.

Craig: -are you wearing a Members Only jacket, you loser?” I’m like, “It was cool yesterday. What?”

John: Wow, that’s crazy. I didn’t even know that.

Craig: It’s all–

John: Yes, so I assumed it was ironically cool, but it’s just genuinely cool. That’s the generational split.

Craig: I think now it’s all the way just cool.

John: Everything my daughter wears is found at vintage stores and thrifted.

Craig: My daughter as well. They could go thrifting together. She loves it.

John: It’s reminding me, your daughter is in a similar situation with Curry. She’s just making stuff herself, and she’s making music herself rather than making films herself, but she just was able to do the thing that she wanted to do and didn’t have to wait for the rest of the world to catch up.

Craig: She didn’t have to wait for the rest of the world to catch up. They just met her there, which is really– it’s cool, and it’s exciting, but she goes through these same things too. Not everybody survives the withering gaze of the world. It is slightly monkey’s paw. To be ironic, you get what you wish for, and then you’re like, “Oh, no.”

John: Craig Barker, we wish you all the success and luck. We wish all these things for you. It’s going to happen.

Curry: By the way, because I don’t want this to come out a year later, and you’re like, “Wait a second,” you might see more Members Only jackets from me.

Craig: Oh.

John: Oh, nice.

Curry: In a weird way that I won’t say, but you’re going to see it in less than a year, and you’re going to be like, “What? We were there at the birth.”

Craig: We were there at the birth, or the midlife.

Curry: It’s not as random as you think.

Craig: Okay.

Curry: A little teaser there at the end.

Craig: A little Chekhov’s Members Only jacket.

John: Scriptnotes is produced by Meredith Stedman. Our intern is Lauren Loesberg. Our outro is by Matthew Chilelli. If you have an outro, we could use more outros. Please send links to those to ask@johnaugust.com. That is also the place where you can send questions like the ones we often answer on the show. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with a sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. The Scriptnotes Book is available wherever you buy books, just like Curry’s dad did.

Craig: Yes, cool guy.

Curry: Cool guy.

John: You can find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes and give us a follow. You’ll find us on Instagram @ScriptnotesPodcast. We have T-shirts and hoodies and drinkware. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau.

Craig: I got to get some drinkware, by the way.

John: Yes, drinkware.

Craig: I need some. Why not have the drinkware?

Curry: I don’t know.

John: I’m going to get some.

Curry: Get the drinkware.

John: Drinkware.

Craig: Yes, drinkware.

John: You’ll find show notes with the links to things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you again to our premium subscribers. They’re the best.

Craig: They make this all possible.

John: You’re going to be getting a notice soon, premium subscribers. We’re also going to email you about special things. You’re going to get a special little email soon.

Craig: Possibly a Scriptnotes themed Members Only jacket. Because my understanding is that stuff’s about to go.

John: Can you imagine an orange Members Only jacket?

Craig: We screw them over. We just salt the earth. The members are like, “Oh my God, it’s so overdone.”

John: Absolutely.

Curry: Yes, I don’t want the Members Only to be done before the thing.

Craig: No, we won’t do that, too. We promise.

Curry: I want them to come back when they’re supposed to come back, which is coming soon.

John: Curry Barker, attempting to time culture, which I love.

Craig: So far, so good. So far, so good.

John: You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on Popcorn Buckets.

Craig: Popcorn Bucket.

John: Curry Barker, thank you so much for coming on the show. It was a delight.

Curry: Thanks for having me. This has been so fun.

Craig: Oh, excellent.

John: Yay.

[music]

John: Craig, all right, you had a movie on theaters this summer, you had Sheep Detectives. Was there a special collectible popcorn bucket for Sheep Detectives?

Craig: I didn’t know. Sheep Detectives snuck on into the movie theaters all meek, like a sheep.

John: Meek. Like a sheep.

Craig: It stuck around for a while. Look, I was trying to punch above its weight there. Had Obsession out there.

John: Yes, sorry.

Craig: No, listen, man. Honestly, the fact that our movie got a theatrical–

John: Were you the same weekend?

Craig: No. What weekend did you guys open?

John: It was June 15th.

Craig: We were before that. No, I don’t even know what we were opening.

John: It wasn’t May 15th.

Craig: I think we were like a week before that.

John: Sorry, it was May 15th. Yes, it’s all a blur.

Craig: The movie, which, look, for 10 years, it just sat on a desk at a studio.

John: They weren’t doing popcorn bonanzas.

Craig: No, and then suddenly it got made, and it happened, and we were very–

John: Dude, that movie got praise.

Curry: It got praise, yes.

John: So much praise. It’s like–

Craig: No one saw that. Everyone was like, “Well, that’s going to be dumb.” By the way, advice, make a movie that looks like it’s going to be stupid that would not be stupid. I used to make movies that looked like they would be stupid and they were stupid, but I realized the trick is–

John: The trick is to make them good.

Craig: No, so there was no— We barely got a standee in theaters. Certainly no popcorn bucket.

John: No, the popcorn bucket we can find for Obsession, but only online. I don’t think there were–

Curry: No, it was at the AMC.

John: It was at the AMC?

Curry: Yes.

Craig: What was the popcorn bucket for that?

Curry: It’s funny because I was also aware that this popcorn bucket thing was happening. One of the first things I asked people when the bidding war was happening, I was like, “Well, are you going to do a popcorn bucket?” They were like, “Yes, we were.” The popcorn bucket, it looks like a One Wish Willow–

Curry: Oh, great.

Craig: Makes a lot of sense.

John: Not like the box–

Craig: It’s like a triangular box in the movie. Yes, but it more looks like the container that would hold the triangular boxes.

Curry: Oh, for sure.

Craig: Oh, like for the group sale stuff. Those things, yes.

Curry: Right, but it holds the popcorn, and it’s made of tin, so it’s metal. It feels high quality. I have three of them, but they sold out very quickly at the AMC all around the world. They’re gone. You can’t get them anymore, which is something cool about that. I also am like, “Should have made a little more of them.”

John: Aline had a similar situation with a Devil Wears Prada. It was like–

Craig: What was hers?

John: It was a shoe. It was like–

Craig: Makes total sense.

John: They’re really constrained supplies. That’s partly the design.

Craig: Yes, there’s not really– It makes sense. Yes, because you don’t want to drench the earth in those things. The popcorn bucket, I was not aware of the popcorn bucket even existing as a thing until the infamous-

John: The Dune.

Craig: -Dune popcorn bucket, which–

John: Looks like a sex toy.

Craig: It was a butthole. It just was. It was a butthole and it’s awesome. I think that after that, everyone was like, “Guess this is what we’re doing now.”

Curry: We missed out on the Jaws popcorn bucket, but did you have the Jaws toy, Craig? Were you trying to get the things–

Craig: Of course.

Curry: Yes, trying to get the hook, the thing out of Jaws’ mouth?

Craig: You had to fish the thing out of Jaw’s mouth, and there was a little piece of plastic, and if you caught the piece of plastic, then the–

Curry: Snapshot, yes.

John: What?

Curry: Oh, yes. It’s amazing.

John: They handed that out at theaters?

Curry: No. This is a toy you bought.

Craig: No, you had to bother your parents to let you buy this plastic piece of crap. Milton Bradley probably made it.

Curry: I’m sure. Absolutely.

Craig: It was a real piece of crap, and it would break fast.

John: What’s so fascinating is that was a toy, but we can totally imagine the popcorn bucket version of it, and these essentially are toys. I was looking at the ones for Masters of the Universe, which was a castle gray skull, and the drawbridge opened, and there was all the powers.

Craig: That makes sense, because it was a toy.

John: It was a toy, but I can’t even imagine being the theater employee who has to put all those things together, or just like, where are you storing them at the theaters?

Craig: I don’t know. I do think now I don’t even know what, for the sheep movie, what would it have been like? Just, “Oh, hold the top of a sheep’s head up so that they’ll reach inside and eat its brain?”

John: It could be his trailer.

Craig: Oh, I guess. Who cares?

John: Who cares?

Craig: Yes. That movie shouldn’t have a popcorn bucket. You need to be, I don’t know– The Sheep Detectives is not a cool movie. It’s quaint. It’s throwback. It’s cozy.

John: If you can’t come up with a good popcorn bucket, there’s an argument for should the movie even exist. No, I’m kidding. Oh, my God. Dang it. That’s a joke.

Craig: That’s a total joke.

John: It’s all about the popcorn bucket.

Craig: It’s all about the popcorn bucket.

John: It’s not about the story.

Craig: The bucket.

John: We had Joakim Truer on the show talking about sentimental value. I should have asked about the popcorn bucket–

Craig: The popcorn bucket for sentimental value.

John: I felt like that was really a missed opportunity.

Craig: Yes, because there’s probably somebody that does have a site where it’s like they make modern popcorn buckets for old films.

John: If not, then right now, that should be the thing.

Craig: I would love if somebody is doing that, but all of them were just slightly off, like the doing popcorn bucket, like E.T.’s finger, and it’s just obviously a dick.

John: Yes, I love that.

Craig: Everything’s wrong.

John: It’s like every popcorn bucket should be like, why does it look like that? That would be really funny. I tend to be sort of anti-junk, and so I want to be against it, but I truly am not against it because let people have things that they love, and if they really love a movie and they want that collectible thing, go for it.

Craig: At this point, anything that makes people happy about going to a movie theater is a wonderful thing.

John: It is. You were part of this giant summer. Independent of your movie, it’s been just like a hugely wonderful, I guess really started before that with Project Hail Mary, but it’s just been great.

Craig: This year’s been a big year for movies. It really has.

John: It’s so cool to be even a part of that at all, because I want to keep going to the theater so much, but people keep asking me as if I’m some sort of representative of Gen Z going to the movie theater, but they keep asking me like, why is it that you think your generation goes to the theater more than, by the way, any generation right now? It’s just a statistic. I think it’s because we’re tired of the phones. We’re wanting to grasp onto any reason to get out of the house nowadays, and the movie theater is a place where there’s no social expectation. You’re expected to put away your phone. You’re encouraged to shut up, not talk, and watch the film. I think people really want that, or are craving that more than ever.

Craig: I also think that Gen Z had a chance. They were the first generation since the first generation where movies happened where they could go. We are now going to discover the joy of going to movies because they’d been robbed of it. They were robbed of it by video, and then COVID, and it just wasn’t as big of a thing. Whereas for us, you turn six, you’re getting dragged out to the movie theater. I think Gen Z got to say, “We’re choosing.”

John: Craig, did you have summer movie programs? Was there a thing where local theaters would, for kids over the summer, they would have basically a film series for kids where they’d buy a pass for the whole thing?

Craig: I grew up on Staten Island. Everything was, “Screw you, buy a ticket.”

[laughter]

John: I remember the Basemark Theater in Boulder, and it was Tuesdays and Thursdays, afternoons, and so parents would just drop us off. You basically pre-bought for the whole summer.

Craig: No, we didn’t have that.

John: That’s where I saw Herbie the Lovebug.

Craig: I went on my very first date, which wasn’t really a date. It was me and my friend took two of the girls from our class, and we were all 10. We went by ourselves to see 9 to 5.

John: Wait, let’s share an experience. It was an inappropriate movie for us to see at a young age? Love it.

Craig: Almost every movie back then was inappropriate for us.

John: I learned so much.

Craig: I learned so much.

John: They’re smoking pot in the movie.

Craig: They’re smoking pot. There’s S&M gear at one point.

John: I feel like that’s coming back. Just more movies being inappropriate. Obsession is rated R, by the way. You know what I mean? To make as much money as it’s making, rated R. I don’t know. I just feel like that’s crazy.

Craig: Rated R movies, there was a moment when I think it was, I guess, in the 2000s where maybe it’s American Pie, where just suddenly almost everything had to be rated. There’s a weird cycle that occurs where then suddenly everything has to be. The Sheep Detective says PG, a rating that no one has anymore. It’s either you’re G or you’re PG-13. Nobody wants to be PG. We’re like, “Mm.”

John: I feel like that happened on accident, right? I can’t speak for–

Craig: We weren’t trying one way or the other.

John: You get the rating that you get because the movie–

Craig: Exactly. If you’re trying to get PG-13, there’s a whole process you go through to get out of the R into the PG-13.

John: Or if you’re trying to get from PG up to PG-13, you add one word.

Craig: From PG to PG-13, you add a word.

John: Really, people do that. People try to go up.

Craig: It becomes like, where are you going to use your one use of the F word here?

John: What is the context?

Craig: What is the context? Exactly.

John: All right. Thanks for this discussion of popcorn buckets and the success of films.

Curry: Of course. Thanks for having me.

John: This has been so fun.

Curry: Thanks.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hey, this is John. Standard warning for people who are in the car with their kids, there’s some swearing in this episode.

[music]

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

Craig Mazin: Ho, ho, ho, ho. My name is Craig Mazin.

John: This is Episode 734 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, we welcome back a writer whose credits include The Heat, Ghostbusters, and Haunted Mansion, her incredible new show, Widow’s Bay-

[laughter]

John: -is now out on Apple TV.

Craig: What a dramatic pause.

[laughter]

Craig: Her incredible new show, Widow’s Bay.

John: Welcome back to the program after 10 years, Katie Dippold.

Katie Dippold: Very happy to be here. I’ve been trying to get back in here for the past decade, so this is-

Craig: Clawing your way back in.

Katie: Yes, anything I can do.

John: You were last on the show Episode 272.

Craig: Whoa.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: 500 episodes ago.

John: 2016.

Katie: One of my favorite memories of that episode was when– remember when Malcolm, you asked him something and he was just quiet and then he was like, “I’m out of gas.” You’re like, “That’s it? You’re just done?” He’s like, “I’m done.”

Craig: Yes.

Katie: I respected it so much.

Craig: That’s what Malcolm– Malcolm used to play D&D with us, and at some point, he would just get up and lie down and sleep.

Katie: [laughs]

John: Yes.

Craig: Yes.

Katie: He knows how to live.

Craig: We can’t have you on the show without talking about our special connection. We always need to discuss our special connection. Katie Dippold and I both lived or attended school in Freehold, New Jersey. Competing high schools. She was at the somewhat tonier Freehold Township. I was at the rough around the edges Freehold Borough.

Katie: Never heard of it.

Craig: Yes. I was from the bad side of the tracks.

John: I love it.

Katie: Also where Bruce Springsteen was from. Not a big deal.

Craig: Yes. He went to Borough.

Katie: Sorry, you have that.

Craig: That’s because he was a little rough around the edges.

Katie: Yes, yes, yes.

John: Now, Katie Dippold, for folks who don’t know who you are, they actually do know who you are because you are famous for being an incredibly talented writer, but you’re also probably more famous on the internet because of one Halloween costume you wore and the situation in which you wore it. Do you want to recap why the world knows who you are?

Katie: There is a tweet that shows a photograph that– I can’t remember the tweet. It’s like when you think you’re going to a Halloween party, but it ends up being an adult drinking wine kind of vibe. I’m dressed fully as the Babadook. Face makeup, wig, hat, coat. No one was dressed up. My friend Jessie snapped the photo. Also, what the photo doesn’t show is I sat there for an hour and a half watching a movie like that.

John: Yes.

Katie: You know?

Craig: Once you’re there, what are you going to do?

John: What are you going to do?

Katie: Someone asked me like, “Why didn’t you just take off the hat?” I’m like, “That wasn’t going to help anything.”

John: No, no. Come on.

Craig: Right. I’m still– I got the weird glasses on, or the– does he have glasses? Goggles?

Katie: No glasses, but there’s a dark room around the eyes.

Craig: Yes, that’s what it was. Something like that.

John: Yes, it’s like [crosstalk] monochrome makeup look, right?

Katie: Yes.

John: Yes, it is fantastic, and it’s a moment. It also is the intersection of horror and comedy, which is Widow’s Bay, which is exactly what we’re here to talk about.

Craig: Segue man.

John: That’s what I am.

Katie: Yes, look at that.

John: I want to talk about Widow’s Bay. Your show is genuinely fantastic. Drew and I watched it.

Craig: Wait, have you seen more than two episodes?

John: I’ve only seen the first episode. I haven’t seen the second episode yet.

Craig: Oh, okay, because you’re talking like you’ve seen the whole show.

John: Oh, no.

Craig: I’ve seen two episodes, which I loved, but I started getting jelly, but you’ve only seen one.

John: No, no, we didn’t get the links or anything. We-

Craig: I’m just watching it on Apple TV.

John: I’m just watching it on Apple TV like everyone else. Like every other American person in the world, I’m watching Widow’s Bay on Apple TV.

Craig: American person in the world. [chuckles]

John: I want to talk about your show, but I also want to talk about what you wish you knew going into this industry. Imagine that you’re sending an email to your younger self. It could be to your 15-year-old self or when you first arrived in Los Angeles. I did a panel this last week where this was the theme.

It was actually really insightful to think like, “Oh, yes, what did I know, and what if I could pass along information to your younger self?” Things we want to do. We’ll talk about that.

We’ll answer some listener questions. Including, when do you call out someone for stealing your idea or just being not cool?

Katie: Oh.

John: Our bonus segment for premium members, are there still going to be movies and TV in 10 years, 15 years? We’ll talk about that. All big topics. Most importantly, I know a movie that’s coming out next week, which is Craig’s movie, The Sheep Detectives.

Craig: The Sheep Detectives. What a silly title.

John: It is. It was once called Three Bags Full.

Craig: It was once called Three Bags Full. It’s based on a book written by a wonderful German author named Leonie Swann. Three Bags Full was the title it was released under in the United States. That’s what we called the movie up until MGM was like, “Yes, no one’s going to know what that is, but they would know what The Sheep Detectives is.” They’re correct.

John: They are correct.

Craig: I get it completely. I love this movie so much. I never self-promote. I don’t. It’s not my thing to be like, “Hey, coming up on dah, dah, dah.” It is the little movie that we hopefully could because it’s Aline Brosh McKenna’s Devil Wears Prada 2 is crushing it in theaters. Mortal Kombat’s going to be a huge movie. There’s all these big movies. Then there’s our little sweet sheep movie, it’s adorable, and I’ve watched it with an audience and people laugh and then they cry. My wife and my younger daughter watched it and they were a sobbing mess and a happy sobbing mess.

Katie: Wow. That’s good.

John: Now, Craig, many critics have liked it, but at least one didn’t because you’re not at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. How are you dealing with that grief?

Craig: It’s really hard, because I don’t have any experience not being at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. First of all, the idea of having a movie on Rotten Tomatoes that isn’t in the 20s is shocking for me. Like, “Wait, what? They make tomatoes in another color than green?” I continue my very strange, tumultuous relationship with critics. They don’t know what to make of me at all.

John: Quite understandably.

Craig: They yell at me when I’m like, “Why is this comedy guy doing drama?” Then I do this and they’re like, “Why is this drama guy doing comedy?”

Katie: I feel like you and I could talk about this for years. Now that said, you get one good review and you’re like, “You know, critics–”

Craig: Well, they do have a point.

Katie: Thank God. You know?

Craig: Yes. Well, the thing is there are movies and television shows that don’t need critics at all. It doesn’t matter. I’ve definitely worked on those. You’ve worked on those where it didn’t really matter what the critics thought. Then there are things that sort of need them for legitimacy.

I think The Sheep Detectives needed it. I could see how Widow’s Bay could need it. Meaning, it helps separate a little bit, because it’s not a built-in audience, it’s not IP, it’s something original. Also, you were sporting a 100.

John: Yes. Then someone had to ruin it.

Craig: Some ding-dongs came in. The math is bad because then what happens is you’re like, “Oh, now to get back up, I need like eight more good reviews.”

John: Yes.

Katie: Right. Oh, you can drive yourself crazy. I also, it’s so funny. I always tell myself, if a movie comes out and doesn’t do well, and it’s an experience I’ve had a couple of times, but I say, “Okay, no, it doesn’t matter. Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t matter.” Every time I put something on, I’m like, “What’s the Rotten Tomatoes score?” It’s just, you know what I mean?

Craig: Yes. I know.

Katie: It’s just, it’s all of us. It matters very much.

Craig: It is bizarre how everybody, I mean, I assume a lot of critics do put time into the reviews and things, and then it just gets mushed into a number.

Katie: The ones that are good and thoughtful and do a really good analysis, it is really-

John: It’s lovely.

Katie: It’s lovely.

John: Yes.

Craig: I think when people say nice things about us, we like it. When they say bad things about us, we don’t.

John: Hey, I think that’s true.

Katie: That’s exactly right.

Craig: We don’t like it.

Katie: You’re not good at this.

Craig: No. Then I turn to the Teddy Roosevelt quote, and I’m like-

Katie: Yes, that’s exactly-

Craig: “You don’t matter. The ones who matter are the ones who understand what I’m doing and like me.”

Katie: That’s exactly right.

John: This week, my instance of the Rotten Tomatoes was my new book, Wolf’s Belly, which comes out July 18th.

Craig: Wait, what?

John: I have a book out July 18th. I’ll give you a copy so [unintelligible 00:07:33] here.

Craig: What? Did you write a secret book?

John: Secret book.

Craig: I didn’t know about this. I’m glad I didn’t know about this because-

Katie: Whoa.

Craig: -had I known about it and not known about it, I would have been so embarrassed.

John: Yes, absolutely. We got a-

Craig: He just did it again.

John: I just did it again.

Craig: You just did it.

John: My book comes out July 18th, and I got a Publishers Weekly starred review, which is a rare thing to get, which is very lovely.

Craig: It’s a graphic novel. Congratulations.

John: Yes. It’s up for pre-order now, but there are already reviews online for Goodreads because those things come out early, because they send those galleys out. Those have been really nice, but of course, there are going to be occasionally like, “Yes, it wasn’t for me,” or the person who gives it– it’s like five stars, or they give four stars, and four stars brings you down.

Craig: [chuckles] Well, I think that you are a healthier person than I am about these things. You’re very good about, you decide what the worth of what you did is. Whatever people think, that’s fine, but if you like it, you like it. I think that’s healthier. I don’t like how easily swayed I can be by other people telling me if I did something well or not.

Katie: It sounds like we all three have things being reviewed right now. Obviously, the summary of this entire conversation was thank God for the critics.

Craig: Thank God.

John: Thank God for the critics.

Craig: Thank God.

John: Absolutely. Without critics where would we be?

Craig: They know I love them.

Katie: Yes.

John: While we’re talking about things being judged and awards, the Academy changed rules this week. Some summary of some rule changes here. In the writing categories, the rules now codify that screenplays have to be human authored-

Craig: Damn it.

John: -to be eligible.

Craig: Which I think is reasonable. Who are they going to hand the Oscar to if a computer wrote it?

John: Yes. I think that’s an obvious one. A better, more interesting one for me is on international feature films right now, it’s always been the country submits, and it’s always been controversial because the country may not submit their best film, or a great film from a country won’t be submitted. Now, if it has been qualifying award at some of the major international feature film festivals like Berlin, or Busan, or Sundance, or Venice, if it’s won the awards there, it’s also eligible for that, and so it can be-

Craig: A government can’t just go, “Yes, we don’t like this one.”

John: The award now goes to the director as the beneficiary rather than to the country.

Craig: That’s interesting.

John: Yes.

Craig: That is interesting.

John: Yes. I think it’s a good change.

Craig: That’s a smart change. I also saw that now actors can be nominated multiple times in a category.

John: Yes.

Katie: Would they want that?

Craig: It seems like a bad thing you-

Katie: Yes.

John: Yes.

Craig: -but it’s happened before. Director Steven Soderbergh was nominated-

John: Yes, twice.

Craig: -twice in one year. That’s nice. That’s nice.

Katie: Did he win for that year?

Craig: That’s a great question.

Drew Marquardt: I think he did. That was Traffic and-

Katie: Okay, that’s impressive.

Drew: -Erin Brockovich.

Craig: Erin Brockovich. I think Erin Brockovich. He won for Erin Brockovich?

Drew: I think he won for Traffic.

Craig: Traffic is a better movie.

John: Anyway, changes. They seem thoughtful changes.

Craig: Absolutely. Obviously, Katie, you and I are perennial Oscar considerables.

Katie: Right.

Craig: We’re always in the mix.

Katie: Right. Right. Yes.

John: Yes, [crosstalk]. Always in the topics.

Craig: Yes, so this is always– I keep careful track of this sort of thing. We’re talking sheep movie.

John: We have some housekeeping to get through. First and most important is we’re putting out a Scriptnotes listener survey. We want to know things about our listeners, not for marketing purposes, because there’s no marketing because we’re-

Craig: To sell their data?

John: We don’t want to know any of that stuff. We’re curious about, which segments people love the most, which things they want to hear more of. There’s some things we might try out, and we’re curious what people think of those things. We’re also just curious who our listeners are, how many are in the US, what education level people have, because my prototypical user is in college or finishing college, but that may not be accurate. We’re just curious.

Craig: I feel like our listener base might be older than you think.

John: Yes. I’m also curious, one of the questions is, how many people who are listening to the podcast are actually working in the film and television industry versus just like to listen to the podcast?

Craig: All good things to know.

John: Yes.

Katie: It’d be so funny to find out it’s just ages 60 to 62.

John: So incredible.

Katie: Just a very specific.

Craig: Like a steep drop-off after 62.

Katie: No awareness before those two years.

Craig: 59, nothing. 60, boom.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: There’s a free thing, free premium with your AARP subscription, and then they get it for a couple years and they’re out. They’re like-

John: Yes, it’s like, “No, this is not good.”

Craig: -“No, it’s not good.”

John: There will be a link in the show notes for that, so please click through there.

Craig: 60 to 62. Do you see why Katie Dippold is good?

John: Yes, because it’s the specificity of that joke.

Craig: That is 64 would have been bad, 62 is correct.

Katie: I appreciate that.

John: She’s so good.

Craig: Yes.

John: Craig, I want to do another random advice episode. Remember we’ve done those? People write in with non-screenwriting questions-

Craig: Oh, right.

John: -non-writing questions, because-

Craig: When we attempt to be wise.

John: Yes, because we have opinions about a lot of things. We’ll try that. Send in those questions to Drew. Send in at ask@johnaugust.com and just label it like, “Random advice,” so we know to put those in a different category for that. We have a new version of Weekend Read out there. People use Weekend Read on their phones to read scripts.

The new version is really nice and actually has some really helpful features in terms of marketing what you haven’t read, what’s new for you. You can get through long scripts faster. There’s a new scroll bar, so try that out.

Last bit of follow-up. We had Haley Z. Boston on the show. She was talking about Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, which was terrific. On that, I had her read through the first page of her script, which Craig, you would have loved because there’s no dialogue, and yet every word on there is just delicious and delightful.

Drew and our team put together a YouTube video for Haley. She’s reading it, but we’re also scrolling the page as you’re doing it. You can see-

Craig: I like those.

John: -all the choices she’s making.

Craig: Was there a lot of white space?

John: No paragraphs more than two lines long. She’s using italics and bold in really interesting ways. It just is drawing you down in a smart way. Because this is mostly an audio medium, it’s fun to do a visual at times. Seeing that is there.

Craig: Love that.

John: We’ll put a link in the show notes to that.

Craig: Love it.

John: Housekeeping done. Katie Dippold, your show is so delightful. I didn’t know what it was going to be when I pressed play, which is so much fun. It comes up and the opening title feels like a Stephen King book cover. What was the pitch? Drew has a really good pitch for it, but I’m curious what your pitch was for it on the initial thing. What is the idea? What’s the logline?

Katie: The logline is a mayor of a New England island town desperate to bring in tourism is warned by locals that it’s cursed-

John: Great.

Katie: -and they are right.

Craig: They are clearly right.

John: Now, Drew, can you give us your pitch?

Drew: It’s Fawlty Towers, but where John Cleese’s character is the mayor from Jaws.

Katie: [chuckles] That’s great.

Drew: Yes.

Craig: Yes.

John: Yes.

Katie: That’s right.

Craig: Yes, it definitely has mayor from Jaws feeling to it. Shut it down, shut it all down, and New England, of course. Fawlty Towers because the people there are hysterical.

John: Yes, they’re so funny.

Craig: They’re so funny.

John: I can’t even imagine how you found the pitch-perfect tone so that it didn’t just all blow up at every moment. It’s just so cleverly done. They’re so eccentric and so extreme, and yet everyone’s playing the same song. It’s so hard to do.

Katie: That’s really nice. I’ve been working on this. This was like my Parks and Rec sample, 18 years ago.

John: Incredible.

Katie: I’ve been working on it ever since.

John: Give us a little backstory. Tell us how this all started.

Katie: I had just finished at MADtv. I wanted to do something like this. I’m a comedy writer, but I love horror so much. I just wanted something like this to exist. I want to go to this place. Then I heard Parks and Rec was hiring, so I quickly wrote a pilot, and I think that got me the job. Worked there for several seasons.

John: You wrote this as a pilot?

Katie: Yes.

John: How close is the pilot you wrote to what we actually see in the pilot episode?

Katie: It’s much more comedic. It’s like, joke, joke, joke. That’s why I think that gave Mike Schur an idea of my sense of humor. I think the heart of that is still there, but I kept thinking, when I would revisit, I’m like, “I don’t know that I would watch this show. I want it to be taken seriously. I want to feel tension. I want to be scared.” I had to keep taking it apart and putting it back together. There’s years where it’s been not funny or scary.

[laughter]

Katie: It’s terrifying progress.

Craig: What a great mix.

Katie: Yes, I think that’s what you want.

Craig: Yes, boring in every possible way.

Katie: Yes, really had a lot of that for a while. Then I got, I don’t know, something after doing the last couple movies, they were hard to do. I just wanted to do something just completely original. I’m like– because it was a tough time for a while. I’m like, “You know what? I might as well just take one real crazy creative swing.”

Craig: There you go. You and I have lived some parallel lives here. Caught in the same thing. At some point, you do need to just step back and go– are we allowed to curse on this show?

John: Yes, sure.

Craig: Fuck it. I love that I talk about this like I’ve never been on the show. Episode 700 and whatever. I love that you did that. Also, I do think that you can tell this is the product of somebody who is not 25. You are covering all these ages of people. Teenager, dad, older people, you got this whole thing on lockdown. It feels, the mayor, Loftis. Loftis? Loftis. Feels like such an adult, but he’s also a kid, which I love.

One of my favorite moments is when Stephen Root’s character calls him out and says like, “Oh, you used to ding dong ditch me, except you never actually rang the bell. You’re a coward.” That was when he was 11. You’re like, you can see that little boy in this guy all the time. What I really appreciate, this is where the show won my heart. You haven’t seen the second episode.

John: I haven’t seen it yet.

Craig: I’m going to give something away.

John: That’s fine. Okay.

Craig: It’s not a plot twist. In the second episode, he has to go stay in the inn, which of course the locals insist is haunted. They’re correct.

At one point, he’s alone and he wanders into the parlor where they have drinks and things. He opens a cabinet, and in that kind of B&B way, there are all these board games. The board games are wrong. One’s called Daddy’s Home, but the daddy is clearly drunk and angry. Then there’s a box that looks like it would have puzzle pieces in it.

It’s a picture of a tooth and it just says teeth, which is amazing. Then there’s a deck of cards. The card game is called Run. I love that so much, the specificity of that. I could smell that room. Do you know what I mean? I could smell it.

Katie: Oh, that’s great.

Craig: I just loved it. I can’t wait to see where this show goes, but I have to assume that part of the process of getting something like that to be that perfect is you working in tandem with a lot of people, and casting and all of that, because you haven’t run a television show before.

Katie: No.

Craig: Talk about that, because that’s a fun time.

Katie: Yes, it’s a real different experience than being the movie writer just standing by craft services, pitching jokes every now and then. It’s a different thing.

Craig: Yes.

Katie: It’s very hard.

[laughter]

Craig: Turns out it’s hard.

John: [crosstalk] whispering this. Yes.

Craig: Yes, it’s really exhausting.

Katie: It’s rewarding. You don’t really get a say in much when you’re in features.

John: My question is, did you realize that things were hysterically funny while you were filming them? Because one of the things that’s so different in this versus Parks and Rec is Parks and Rec is brightly lit and I think you can tell like, “Oh, that’s funny. That works.” Here, things are shot mostly realistically, and it’s not this high-key everything. Do you know that it’s just hysterically funny? When the assistant comes in and she’s like, “Oh, is there anything more?” She’s like staring for like 30 seconds, it’s like-

Craig: So great.

John: “No, that’s it.” [chuckles] Did you know that it was funny at the moment?

Katie: It’s different. The board games, for example, you’re not watching. This show, it’s a lot about little details and specifics. I think the way approaching it is a lot of blink and you’ll miss it, and that’s okay. It’s less presenting a big joke. It is different than being on set with– and Melissa McCarthy saying something hilarious and you’re laughing out loud. Also, these actors are so good in the show. Just their performances would get me, but it is different. It’s interesting.

There’s a lot of times, too, like the director, Hiro Murai, we would just be also looking at each other like, “Does this feel right? This feels bad.” It’s a lot of following your stomach if something felt good or bad. When something feels bad in this show, it really will take you out of it, so it’s harder.

John: Yes, because you’re weirdly, you’re very joke dense for something that it doesn’t look like it’s supposed to be funny from the outside.

Craig: They’re not in the form of jokes, which I love.

John: Yes, it’s great.

Craig: That, in fact, it’s just people being people. Tell me, okay, because I’m new to the show, and because there’s only two episodes currently out, the character, the woman who’s like works in his office, who’s not his assistant, but like his–

Katie: Are you talking about Patricia, the Kate O’Flynn brunette, or Rosemary the smoker?

Craig: No, no.

Katie: Patricia.

Craig: Patricia.

Katie: Okay, yes.

Craig: So funny. That character is just playing a woman who has been left and ignored and is bitter, but also hopeful. There is something so brilliant about her sitting and talking to Shep, the fisherman who’s found, who they say, “He hit his head, we’ve just put him under to help while the head swelling goes down.” She’s talking to him like he’s in a coma. Loftis says, “It’s only when people are in a coma.” She’s like, “Well, I’m sorry for wasting his time.” Which is amazing. It’s just like the most put upon, like, “You know what, man? I guess, fine.” No, that’s not a joke. It’s real, but it’s also funny. I love that.

Katie: Oh, I’m glad.

Craig: I just love that.

Katie: The actress, Kate O’Flynn, lovely, lovely woman, and also just incredible. It’s Allison Jones, great Allison Jones. She sent us her tape, and it was not what I pictured at all, but I was like, “Oh, but this is the person. This is– she’s still good.”

Craig: Yes, so good.

Katie: She brought so many layers to it. It was loosely based off of my mom. She has a similar, kind of just wants to be seen. She also, she can’t say the right thing, she just says– you know?

John: Yes.

Craig: Right.

Katie: Can I give you an example? I remember Drew was at my mom’s house with me, and there was an Eagles game. He’s a diehard Eagles fan. The Eagles started losing, and he got really stressed out. My mom was uncharacteristically soothing. She was like, “You know what, Drew, don’t worry. It’s okay. It’s all going to work out.” I’m like, “That does not sound like Ellie Dippold.” Then the other team scored again, and she goes, “Well, that’s not good.”

[laughter]

Katie: That was sort of the heart of it, and then Kate came in and just brought all these other layers and stuff that I wouldn’t have imagined. She’s incredible.

Craig: Just wonderful.

John: Can we talk about the actual production? Because you were clearly in a seaside town for– is this upstate New York you were shooting? Where were you actually shooting this?

Katie: We were in Massachusetts.

John: That’s in Massachusetts. Okay. Were you block shooting? Were you shooting episode by episode? How did it all work?

Katie: It was block shooting. We had to shoot out of order, too. It was an intense shoot because the scripts– I think it’s funny. I think in the beginning, we were really shooting for the stars and just trying to do as much as possible. Then no one really told us not to, in the room. Also, I remember Drew Goddard talking about Cabin in the Woods. He said that if he had known how hard it– he was glad he didn’t know how hard it was going to be, because he would have done it differently. It’s a similar thing here. I’m glad I didn’t realize how–

Craig: I believe you can tell. There is an amount of care and attention. It’s funny, when I watch shows now, I will, in the back of my head, also still be, because we’re making the third season right now, and I’m so in it, I start thinking about things like coverage. Like, “Oh, that’s outside at night. That’s fun. I wonder how many takes and how many angles and how much time and how many meetings were based just to figure out that room. The art department has to come up with what the teeth game looks like.” There’s so much. It’s hard, and it pays off.

Katie: Yes. Oh, that’s nice. I have to say, this production team, they were insane in the best way. The props department, when you see the rest of the show, this props department, I don’t know how they did it. I mumble that every day. I’m like, “I don’t know how props did it.” The production designer, that whole episode, too, that inn, the whole inside is a build.

Craig: Oh, yes, you can tell. You can tell in a good way-

Katie: In a good way.

Craig: -because you can’t get the cameras around. A hotel wouldn’t have that parlor like that, but I loved it so much. I thought that was such a brilliant thing to like– what ends up happening is you find a location and then they’re like, “I can only be here for eight days because of the season, blah, and also it’s not perfect and the electricity and you can’t get equipment in.” It was so perfect.

Katie: I don’t know what it was. Everyone working on the show was just really game for it.

John: That’s great.

Katie: Do you know what I mean? Everyone was just [crosstalk]-

Craig: Because they liked it. Katie, because it’s good. That’s, honestly, here’s the thing. I talk to crew people every day. They work on things every day. We don’t. Our show ends, they move on to another production. They mostly work on stuff they don’t like. They work on things that they read and they’re just like– that’s just how it goes. I think people get excited when they work on something they like.

John: Before you got into production, you had to write a bunch of scripts. You wrote a pilot, which obviously you wrote a ton, but I’m looking at the credits and there’s a murderers’ row of really funny people. Talk to us about the process of getting everything written. Was everything written before you showed up there? What happened?

Katie: Yes, it was a great room. I had the pilot written, and I did something that was a little tricky, but I’m so glad I did, which it was not like a room full of all comedy writers. It was a couple of writers that came from shows like WandaVision. Actually, one of them also had a super funny spec. A couple of my old-time comedy friends, one that was a writer on SNL, actually Neil Casey, that plays the innkeeper, too.

Craig: Sure. Yes, so funny.

Katie: Colton Dunn from Key and Peele, and Kelly Galuska has done a ton of comedy. Then I also had a playwright, this guy Dave, who’s lovely, and another writer, Alberto Roldán, who’d worked on Mrs. Davis. It was a real stew, because I felt like this show was going to need a lot of different kinds of thought process and just different ideas. In the beginning, it was tricky navigating this, but then it got to a point where the drama mythology people are pitching jokes that are hilarious, and the comedy writers are really passionately arguing story points. It was very rewarding to see that all come together.

John: You had been on MADtv, you’re used to that kind of comedy writing. You’d been on Mike Schur’s show. You had a sense of being in a room. This was your first time running a room with this group. How did you approach that? How many weeks did you have? What were your hours like? What did it feel like? What were the nuts and bolts of it?

Katie: We had 20 weeks, and I kept the hours. The hours were about 10:00 to 5:00. I would leave and then keep thinking about it until I go to bed. There’s no reason to keep everyone there. You know what I mean? You’re the one that needs to do that, I think.

John: Over the course of those 20 weeks, there probably was a little bit of a blue-sky phase. Then you were cranking down, “Okay, what happens in this episode? How do we get through this thing?” Are you signing people off during that time? How did it work?

Katie: God, it was so crazy just feeling my way through this process. I called so many different people like, “What are we doing?” I called you. Do you know what I mean? We blue-skied for about six weeks, four weeks.

John: Oh, wow. Okay.

Katie: I actually knew some of the dilemmas I wanted to happen. I knew certain things I wanted to do, but then working through it. It was a very creative, organic process of, we just would talk about, “Well, this just feels fun right now.” You know what I mean? “Let’s just do this now.” It was just constantly making those moves. Then people would get sent out to script one time.

Craig: When you assembled the room, did you have, “Okay, I know how this begins, and I know how it ends”?

Katie: Yes.

Craig: You had that.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: At least there was a structure that everybody was trying to fill in, too.

Katie: Yes. Even how it ended, there’s some choices in it that came up through the room, which was a very fun debate. Yes, I knew the basic. I knew where it was going, but we found so much along the way. Everyone was great.

John: You’re doing this work in a room. How much are you having to communicate out with producers, with Apple, with other folks about what was happening, or was it only when you were done with the 20 weeks that you could come back and say, “Here’s the show”?

Katie: I was kind of a lunatic about– I would send like a 30-page outline to the producers and Apple. It was very, very detailed and very specific. I would start off with this summary at the top, like, “This is what we’re trying to do here.” Then just really break down each scene. Also, because the show is so totally tricky, I just wanted to be as detailed as possible.

John: Even during the 20 weeks while you were going through stuff, they could see like, “This is where we are headed,” if they had big red flag concerns.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: I think that’s wonderful. I think that there is a value in looking at the people that give us all the money to make these things as people that deserve a little caretaking. I think they work with writers who are so internal sometimes that they get nothing back. They’re in the dark. They don’t know what’s going on. Yes, some caretaking documents goes a long way. They don’t abuse it. I find that it’s the opposite. That they give less input, the more detail you give.

Katie: I could not agree more. Our execs, Dana and Spencer were, I swear to you, I’m not just saying this because of career purposes.

Craig: Because you need them.

[laughter]

Katie: They were awesome. I never dreaded their feedback-

Craig: That’s great.

Katie: -which is unusual to say. If they called on the phone, I’m like, “Pick up the phone.” I don’t like picking up a phone. That’s the biggest compliment I can give. Apple, I have to give them credit. They really just let us do it.

John: Now, when you were actually making the show, were there any writers besides you around to pitch new stuff, or was it just you? Were you the writer on set?

Katie: Oh, well, I’m very thankful for the strike because having writers on set was such a blessing.

John: Okay, because there was a gap between the things, you were shooting in the US, you were able to pull– you had two writers with you?

Katie: Two writers on set. One of them was there the whole time, it’s Neil, and then two other writers, Kelly and Mackenzie, took turns. It was so nice. Also, just having people that they were in the room and they understand what we were going for, I really wanted to be on set a lot and make sure we’re capturing the moments, but then you have something else prepping, so having a writer being able to go with that director, because we had three other guest directors come in, and then for scouting, and just have an eye on things and be able to talk to [crosstalk]-

John: Maybe have a splinter unit, like you could– yes.

Katie: Yes, that was really, really, really-

Craig: I could probably maybe use somebody other than myself.

Katie: No, it’s great.

Craig: I’m starting to feel even more terrified by my own life.

John: Sorry.

Katie: Yes. Also, having people– just also having funny writers make sure. You know what I mean?

Craig: Yes.

John: Yes.

Katie: Just to talk to about what’s going on and stuff like that, it’s just lovely.

Craig: People to talk to?

Katie: Yes, people to talk to.

Craig: Yes, that would be nice.

John: Make sure shows, the things we were growing up on, the writers were around, and that’s part of the reason why things can work. Yes.

Katie: Yes, being around funny people, it’s a nice thing.

John: The second topic I want to get to is what you wish you knew. For this exercise, let’s imagine we get the chance to either talk to our younger selves or send an email to our younger selves. Let’s start with our 15-year-old self. If you could send an email to young Katie about some advice for her, anything– like headlines you would want her to know?

Katie: I wouldn’t have listened to it.

John: Yes, that’s honestly true.

Katie: I would have said-

Craig: Shut up, old woman. [laughs]

John: Shut up, old woman. You also know that-

Katie: Why you never wear your hair down anymore?

John: Yet you also know that you wouldn’t listen, so you could probably outsmart this 15-year-old Katie because she’s an idiot.

Katie: I would hate this advice so much. I would say, “You’re two-boy crazy, none of these boyfriends you’re going to marry. Just read some books. Just read books and don’t-”

Craig: Oh my God, you’re like, “Get out of here.”

Katie: I would have been like, “Fuck off.”

Craig: Yes, seriously, beat it.

Katie: Yes.

John: Craig, advice for your 15-year-old self.

Craig: I certainly wouldn’t have said, “Be less girl crazy.” I would have been like, “Yes, no, have fun. You’re going to get married soon.”

[laughter]

Craig: I think for my 15-year-old self, I would have said, “Hey, hold tight. You’re going to be out of here soon.” The world was pretty small for me. I felt like I was supposed to be somewhere, and I wasn’t sure where. I didn’t know. I hadn’t yet connected the idea that I would be doing this for a living. I would say, “Don’t worry. You’ll be out of here soon.”

John: Yes. I wasn’t out when I was 15, and you can’t retroactively say like, “Oh, it would have been fine to be like–” you don’t know. I think just the sense that, “You will fall in love, you’ll be happy, you’ll be married, you’ll have a family.”

Craig: Did you know that you were gay when you were 15?

John: I knew I was gay. I knew [crosstalk]-

Craig: Oh, so your older self wouldn’t be like, “By the way,” and you’d be like, “No, I’m not.”

John: Yes, I wasn’t like a [crosstalk]-

Craig: You weren’t going to argue.

John: Oh, yes, you know. There wasn’t anything to act upon at the moment. I probably could have, it was cowardice.

Craig: I don’t know if it’s cowardice. I don’t think that’s cowardice.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: I think that’s-

John: Yes, it’s not recognizing opportunities that you have.

Craig: Sure.

John: I think in terms of– I was ambitious. I didn’t know there was such a thing as screenwriting yet. I didn’t know if the movies were written.

Craig: I had no idea.

John: General advice is, “Pursue what you’re interested in, and don’t be worried if your tastes and opinions change. That’s also part of growing up.”

Katie: Yes.

John: Now let’s fast forward to you’ve arrived in Los Angeles. Maybe you’re a year in. Okay, what else?

Katie: Can we visit college?

John: College, please. Let’s go to college.

Katie: I think one thing I would have told myself freshman year of college, and I eventually did this, I just wish I got to it sooner. Just find your people.

John: Oh, yes.

Katie: For me, that was some real weirdos, and the best possible– I started pledging this sorority, and they were all really nice and lovely, but my stomach was a little, “This doesn’t feel right. This doesn’t feel right.” Then I started the theater group and improv group. I had this improv group there that it was just the best group of weirdos. I remember just being in a New Jersey diner with them late at night. We weren’t going to any party or frat house. There was a guy that could have been-

Craig: I can see the diner, by the way. It’s got the two entrances-

Katie: Exactly.

Craig: -the little lobby, the thing, go inside. There’s a case with the– yes.

Katie: Yes. They were all so bizarre in the best way. There was someone that could have been 18 or he could have been 55 years old. I have no idea, but he was the funniest person ever. Finding those people just changed my life.

Craig: Yes, God, talking to myself in college, I think probably I would have said, “You do know you’re not going to be a doctor, right? Why don’t you do what you want instead of what you’re supposed to do?” Which I started to do, it just took me a bit because also, afraid. That’s a tough thing, because if your older self comes to you and says, “Hey, do what you want,” there’s an implication, and it’ll work out. Not like, “Do what you want. Also, you’re going to end up alone and addicted.”

[laughter]

Craig: I would have maybe gotten myself off the pre-med track a little sooner.

John: I was just back in my undergrad last weekend, and I got an alumni award, which was lovely. I got to see my campus. Every time you go back to your college campus, it’s like, “Oh my God, this school is so much smaller than I remember. Everything is just closer together and other things–” it was lovely. I don’t have great advice for that kid, because I kind of did it right. I picked a school that was just the right size and that I was– I knew so many people, I was in lots of different groups. I was kind of happy.

Craig: Maybe you would have just come back and said, “Yes-

John: Thumbs up. Yes.

Craig: -thumbs up.”

John: Thumbs up. Yes, keep doing that.

Craig: Nailed it.

John: Nailed it. It was a good experience. I was happy with that. When I got into USC for film school, I’m like, “Yes, I’m going to do it. I’m going to drive my rusted out car to Los Angeles.” The luxury– Craig and I, you and I have talked about this. The luxury I had moving out here was that my family was generally supportive, and I had sort of a, if everything went haywire, I could have just moved home. I had that support underneath me. It wasn’t like they were like-

Craig: Yes. Me, too. Oh, no.

John: Yes, it’s not that different. Yes. I felt really lucky that I had a family that didn’t-

Craig: That’s nice.

John: -understand what I wanted to do, but was generally supportive.

Craig: That’s why you’re healthier than I am.

John: Yes, maybe.

Katie: That’s nice. Were your parents not excited about you?

Craig: No. No, they were angry and insistent that it wouldn’t work. Also, they had no money. That did give me a lot of fear.

John: Yes.

Katie: Yes.

Craig: When I got here, I was definitely motivated by fear. Fear, I think, is like, I’ve never done cocaine. We’ve talked about cocaine before on this show. I’ve never done cocaine. Katie is like, “That’s interesting.”

Katie: My silence. [laughs]

Craig: The two of us are like, “We’ve never done it.” You’re like, “Mm-hmm.”

John: Okay.

Craig: I feel like fear is the cocaine of emotion.

John: Just chopping up on tape.

Katie: Okay. It’s not– you want this? You go– okay, it’s not for here. It’s not for here. It’s fine.

Craig: Not for here. Yes. No, cool, cool, cool. It powers you, but I think then there’s this terrible downside. There’s the comedown.

Katie: Oh, it’s a very empty drug. I just feel like anytime I’ve done it in my 20s, I ended up making lunch plans with someone I didn’t want to eat lunch with.

Craig: Oh, the worst.

Katie: It’s a real waste of time.

Craig: Fear does not do that for me, but it definitely– fear will get me up in the morning and will power me through a day. When I get home, I’m like, “Oh, no.” It’s just, it’s an effective motivator, but it comes with a cost.

Katie: Oh, that does.

John: Craig, I think you know that you have one tattoo, I have one tattoo.

Craig: Yes.

John: My tattoo is, tibbium nihil, imagus quiddum, which is, let me fear nothing, not even fear, which I got the first year while I was here in Los Angeles. Friends, we were out just walking and they all had tattoos. I was like, “I want a tattoo.” [unintelligible 00:38:01] tattoo.

Craig: Nice, and hepatitis C.

John: Absolutely. It was a helpful thing for me to remember because unlike you where fear was motivating to go do a thing, fear was always a sort of thing like, “Stay back. Don’t reach for it.”

Craig: Healthier.

John: So often, the things I regret most were the things I didn’t do because I was afraid. It was like, the stakes were always much lower than I allowed myself to believe.

Katie: I think my biggest motivator was never wanting to feel stuck. I feel like I love my parents very much, but they were always– they divorced when I was in college. When they did, it was like, “Okay, that seems good.”

John: Yes, as opposed to [crosstalk]-

Katie: There was always like a little tension. You know like the beginning of The Shining? That sort of like– it always had that energy to them. [laughs]

John: Oh, that is also good.

Craig: Oh, that energy?

Katie: Yes, just like–

Craig: Okay. It must have been comfortable in your house.

Katie: Love them both. Love them both. Hopefully, they don’t listen to Scriptnotes. It’s just really just always wanting to not feel stuck and having opportunity, that was the biggest drive for me.

Craig: Right. I mean, that’s empowering, I think. That’s a positive thing to reach for.

Katie: Yes.

John: We’ve all arrived in Los Angeles, and things we learned early on in Los Angeles, or maybe could have learned earlier if we could tell ourselves. My nominee for this is the soft pass and understanding where like someone is passing, they just don’t want to say that they’re passing. It’s a no, but they’re not actually saying no, they’re saying maybe, or like, “That sounds great. Let me get back to you about that.” Recognizing when like, oh, they’re actually are saying no, it’s just that you’re not hearing it as the no.

There were so many times where I thought like, “Oh, this is still a possibility, this project, they’re still considering it.” It’s like, no, they did pass, they just didn’t actually close the loop. I just wasted so much time thinking that a thing was alive when it wasn’t alive.

Craig: When it wasn’t alive.

John: Yes. The lesson I took from that is, it’s okay, first off. It’s okay for things just to not happen. It’s often worth it to make the phone call or make the email to say, like, “Hey, sorry, this didn’t click, but I really enjoyed meeting you.” Basically, to close the loop for them so that–

Craig: Let them off the hook.

John: Let them off the hook, yes. Rather than being resentful, just recognize, like, “Oh, that’s just how it goes. Things will just sometimes not happen, and that’s okay.”

Craig: That’s good advice.

John: Things you’d advise your earlier self, those first years in this business.

Katie: I came to LA for MADtv. I don’t know what I would have– I probably should have recognized earlier I’m not a performer. That would have helped something. I put up a one-woman murder mystery that probably didn’t need to.

[laughter]

John: I want to see this so badly. I’m going to search the internet to find it.

Katie: Well, no, thank God you won’t find it. I think what was also funny about it to the audience is it’s a show written for someone that could do all these different characters and voices. I cannot alter my voice from this right now.

[laughter]

John: That would be amazing.

Craig: That’s awesome. It’s like the one-woman show where everyone sounds the same.

Katie: I’m trying my best.

Craig: You’re trying.

Katie: I am just sweating and trying and throwing on different wigs and hats.

John: “Hello, Dr. Trumbly,” and it’s just the same voice.

Katie: Yes, exactly.

Craig: “Yes. Well, I don’t know.” No one knows who’s talking at any given point.

John: So good.

Katie: That’s the first thing I thought of.

John: Give yourself permission to not be a performer and that there’s other things there.

Katie: Yes, exactly.

John: I like that.

Katie: Then, because even MADtv, for two years in a row, they brought me out to test to be a performer. I think they liked the things I was writing for the characters and the auditions. Then I go, “But it’s just not working somehow.” Finally, I submitted a writing packet to them.

Craig: You’re like, “Stay behind the camera. How about that?”

Katie: I was like, “Great.”

John: Craig, things you would talk to that early Craig about.

Craig: I think I would assure myself that my suspicion that everyone was stupid was correct. That everybody in Hollywood is convincing you that they are brilliant, they know more than you do, and that their power is derived from their wisdom and their connections. That you are the outsider. You are the thing that is barely hanging on. That they could flick you away, ha-ha-ha, at a moment’s notice, to make you feel powerless. My suspicion was always that a lot of them just seem stupid and fake. They were.

John: Everyone’s faking it.

Craig: There’s so many frauds. Our business is full of frauds. You can see over time, the frauds disappear.

Katie: Some don’t.

Craig: The real ones stay. Well, some don’t, but they eventually kind of do.

Katie: Yes, that’s true.

Craig: There are some people that are problematic and stay there, but what they do is something that I don’t really interface with necessarily. There’s just so many blowhards and just–

Katie: Dude, that is the hardest thing for me because I know how I should sound in this job, and it’s not how I talk normally. I’ve never been a lean-in type of person, like a fake it till you make it. If I don’t know what I’m saying, you can see it on my face. That’s why I feel like I’m jumping ahead a decade. The advice I give myself later is just making sure you really know the story you want to tell.

Craig: Before you start talking.

Katie: Yes. See, I have to know that, or otherwise I can’t fake it.

John: We’ve talked on the show before, but one thing started clicking, and it clicked really fast for me. Go happened, and I was doing a TV show, and I was doing Charlie’s Angels and doing Big Fish all at the same time. The TV show was just a spectacular disaster, a slow-motion car crash, and had a nervous breakdown during it. It ended up being very helpful that I had it because that I could just have a crashing failure, and it was actually okay. That failure is–

Craig: So healthy.

John: It is.

Craig: Why is he so healthy?

John: Well, I wasn’t healthy at the moment, but I really was just disassociating all this.

Craig: You did have a nervous breakdown.

John: I did have a nervous breakdown, but I got through it, and obviously, writing got me through it. I was fired off that show and then still had to write Big Fish, and it was like, “I will enter this Southern family and figure out the trauma from inside,” that it was just so nice, like, “Oh, I can go back and do the thing I’m actually good at doing.”

Because so often, you guys are so busy doing your TV shows and managing these giant productions, but you’re also really good writers. You can always just go write a script, which is a nice thing, too. A good reminder to me is that, oh, that core skill set you have in terms of actually being able to write things, that can lead you through.

Katie: The biggest lesson I feel like I’ve been learning for the past 15 years is not thinking about it, like, “What should I be doing?” When it’s writing or through production, when you’re making choices, if I think like, “Oh, what is it supposed to be?” Instead of just, “What do you want?” It’s weirdly been the hardest one for me to just shake off over the years.

Craig: I’m with you on that. It’s the other side of the, “Okay, there’s the Katie Dippold who writes that document and caretakes the people. Sometimes caretaking becomes, and also your priorities are more important than my priorities, or making you happy is more important than making me happy. It’s a tricky thing. I’ve talked about this with Alec Berg, who’s been on our show a few times. There’s that dial where you think like, “Okay, in one direction is hack, and the other direction is pompous asshole.”

You don’t want to go all the way to, “I just do whatever people tell me to do, but you also don’t want to go up your own butt.” I think people are sometimes innately more afraid of one side than the other. I’m more afraid of going up my own butt, so I got to be careful to not go too far towards making other people happy.

Katie: That’s a dial that everyone struggles with, for sure.

Craig: It’s a dial. Yes. Whichever one you’re more afraid of, be more afraid of the other one, actually.

John: A thing I recognize in myself that I would love to tell in an earlier version, but even now I still feel it, is you don’t have to chase things as much as you’re chasing them. Early in your career, you’re always going after any opportunity, and you see a thing, and it’s like, “Obviously, that’s a movie, so I should try to land that movie.” I think too often I would go after that thing, and sometimes land that thing, and spend a year of my life, two years of my life working on that thing, and it’s like, “This isn’t really what I wanted to do.”

Craig: Dog that caught the car.

John: Absolutely. It’s like you’re in a relationship you didn’t even really want to be in. Things to remember. Let’s answer a listener question. Drew.

Drew: Davo writes,-

Craig: Davo.

Drew: -“I’m a writer in London. In 2011, I developed a TV show tailored to a specific actress and pitched it to her through mutual friends. I have the emails, the treatments, all of it. It went nowhere, and I forgot about it entirely. Then someone pointed out that a show which debuted on a streamer years later, starring that same actress who also co-created it, shares its core premise, its inciting incident, and several specific plot elements with my pitch. I’m not here for the legal question. My question is tactical.”

Craig: Great.

John: “I still haven’t had anything produced. I’m actively writing and will be pitching soon. If I pursue this, does it blacklist me? In a town as small as London TV, is the game worth the candle, or do I just eat it and move on?”

Craig: Did you say, “Is the game worth the candle?”

John: Yes. I just love that phrase.

Craig: Is that a British expression?

John: It must be.

Craig: Why would a game be worth a candle?

John: Is the juice worth the squeeze?

Craig: That I understand.

Katie: Is the game worth the candle?

Craig: The candle. Would the candle be used? This is not at all what Davo wants.

Drew: It means the expected rewards of an endeavor do not justify the cost of further time effort.

Craig: We got that part. We just are trying to figure out why.

John: How did we get there?

Craig: Yes, games and candles.

John: I love the turn of phrase.

Craig: We got to get to the bottom of this.

Drew: I got it. The phrase stems from 17th-century French, “le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle,” referring to gambling by candlelight. If the potential winnings were smaller than the expense of the candles used, then the game was not worth playing.

John: The thing I want to highlight in Davo’s question here is, “It went nowhere and I forgot about it entirely.” That’s what you should do. It’s forget that that moment happened.

Craig: When he says pursue, does he mean pursue?

John: He’s not clear whether he wants to– should he mention it, should he ever bring it up?

Craig: No. Because premise, we’ve discussed this many times, and he’s saying he’s not here for the legal advice, but it is connected. Yes, premises can be similar, and it’s not theft and all the rest. It’s a little bit like that soft pass. Maybe that was a fun idea that somebody once had, but they just didn’t like whatever the execution of it was. You must move on and do something that is worthy of capturing somebody and making them want to do it with you. That’s just part of this.

John: Katie, would you feel bad for stealing his idea?

Craig: Yes.

Katie: Look, I really felt like I had a take on it.

Craig: You thought you were a performer until MADtv told you were not. It was worth it.

Katie: No, I agree with Craig, but I also am furious for this person. I understand how frustrating that is.

John: I understand what they’re feeling. At the same time, I worry that if they think about this anymore, it’s going to define–

Katie: Yes, 100% agree.

John: Exactly. It’s like, “I’m the person who got screwed out over this thing.” We all know people who are like that. It ruins you.

Katie: Use this fire to write something new.

Craig: There you go. Do not let this define you. It is a poison in your veins to dwell on injustice, whether perceived or in fact. If you dwell on it, then you’re stuck. You can acknowledge it. You can be aware of it. You can look out for it. You can rue it, but you can’t obsess over it.

John: Something I read in a book, a blog post recently. It was talking about you’re stuck in a line, and it’s really annoying, and the person just says, “Thank you.” You say thank you to acknowledge that you’re in this thing, and somehow just saying thank you to it is just like, “Okay, I’ve acknowledged it, whatever, and I’m moving on. There’s nothing I can do about it. This is what’s happening.” Just acknowledging the problem is helpful, and sometimes it can get you out of dwelling on it.

Craig: We’ve released you, Davo.

John: You’ve released. Davo has been released. Let’s try another question here.

Drew: Anonymous writes, “I was hired to write five seasons of a Christian docuseries for a large Christian network. These shows had a primetime slot, were fairly successful for the network, and I got paid, but these shows don’t represent my voice at all. My spec feature is an erotic thriller, and my three pilots all have distinctly adult themes, not to mention that the Christian TV shows were fairly crappy and hyper-specific to a religious audience. I’m about to pursue representation, and I’m wondering how to position myself.

While I’m technically the credited writer for network TV, I’m hesitant to mention this past work. I’m concerned it might alienate reps or producers or even talent when they see my name attached to an obscure evangelical docuseries. Will my past credits hurt my future prospects, or does any experience beat no experience?”

Craig: I think this is a great story.

John: I think this is a great story.

Craig: I think this is something that would absolutely delight people if you’re like, “Here’s a crazy thing. Look at what I wrote. Now look at what I’m writing now.” How could this be the same person? Find out when you meet me. That’s hooky. I like that.

Katie: It’s interesting. I agree.

John: I think it’s great. I think that is an angle on you that’s going to be helpful and useful. It doesn’t have to be the very first thing you introduce yourself with, but I think it’s the second or third thing.

Craig: It’s a fun fact.

John: Yes, fun fact.

Craig: I would acknowledge it. People do look you up, right?

John: Yes.

Craig: If it’s on IMDB, I would get in front of it, but I also wouldn’t put it down. I wouldn’t say like, “Oh, it’s crappy.” Or, “Oh, it’s just for religious people,” because the thing is, look, you did a job. You took the money. They paid you. It sounds like they treated this person well. I would just say, like, “Look, would I prefer to be writing erotic thrillers? Yes. If you read one, you’ll see why. Hey, I’m pretty versatile.” We know that much.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: That’s cool.

John: 10 years from now, we’re going to see a bunch of really talented emerging filmmakers who are going to have a bunch of verticals on their series, really the dumbest things. It’s fine. People used to have music videos for random bands and karaoke videos. People do stuff to make a living. There’s no shame in that.

Craig: No, there really isn’t.

John: It’s time for one cool thing. My one cool thing is a video series that was somehow recommended to me by the algorithm, and God bless the algorithm, it did the right thing. It’s Captain Disillusion, who is a YouTuber. His real name is Alan Melikdjanian. He has 2.5 million followers. A bunch of people have watched this, but I’ve never seen this before.

What he talks about in his videos are film and TV, camera things. Things like aspect ratio, frame rate, interlacing. What’s remarkable is they’re 100 times better than they need to be. They’re full production value things with lots of jokes and details. We talk about a box full of teeth. It’s full of those kinds of–

Craig: Teeth.

John: Teeth. It’s full of those kinds of jokes. I’m just so impressed. You learn so much about, why do we have interlacing, how do we end up in these weird systems? He can just explain it all.

Craig: Electricity.

John: He’s not trying to solve the problems, but just explain why we have these systems we have. I think they’re so good. I can’t believe I didn’t know this existed until–

Craig: I love stuff like that. I’m going to watch that.

John: You’ll love it. You’ll plow through the whole post.

Craig: While I’m waiting for the next episode of Widows Bay.

John: Really good.

Craig: Which is on Wednesdays, I believe. I love that it’s weekly, by the way. Hooray.

Katie: It’s just nice.

Craig: Finally, the streamers figured it out.

John: Oh, Apple’s been pretty good on the weekly from the job.

Craig: Yes, they have.

John: That’s good.

Craig: Third Apple.

John: Katie Dippold, when you’re not basking in the success of Widows Bay, what would you like to share with our audience?

Katie: This is going to be the most boring, wonderful thing.

John: No, no. It’s not possible.

Craig: Is it teeth?
[laughter]

Craig: It’s just teeth.

Katie: I’m going to say, oh, no, that actually is the most boring one. It is the thing an eye doctor got me into. Taking rice, putting it into a cotton sock, not synthetic, putting it in the microwave, 20 seconds. Doing that warm compress over your eyes. She does it three or four times a day. I try to do it twice a day.

My eyes were about to fall out of my head, and we’re all staring at screens. Save your eyes. Do this. Here I’ll add this. Meditating is very boring, but if I’m doing two things at once, I know I’m getting heat. I’m saving my eyes, and then I’m forced to relax that way.

Craig: I’m going to do this because when I’m on a plane, I get the little hot towel. People rub their hands. I put it on my eyes immediately.

Katie: I wouldn’t trust that.

Craig: I know.

John: [unintelligible 00:55:00]

Craig: I don’t put it in my eyes, guys. I close my eyes.

Katie: You squeeze and put the fluid in the rag.

Craig: I drink the dirty rag fluid.

John: You’re sucking all that moisture out.

Craig: Guys, I put it on my eyes. That’s how I got cholera because I love the warm feeling in my eyes. It just occurred to me as you were saying this, I could do this all the time. I don’t need to wait until I’m flying.

Katie: Yes, and it also forces you that– You know that whole thing, it’s good to be bored as a creative person. It forces you to do it. You can’t with anything.

Craig: Rice, does it have to be Arborio? Is it long grain?

Katie: I’ve been trying different kinds of rice, honestly. I’m not sure which is the best one, but organic rice in a cotton sock, not synthetic.

Craig: You tie up the sock.

Katie: Tie up the sock.

Craig: You do 20 seconds in the microwave.

Katie: I do 20 seconds. Sometimes I’ll add two more seconds. Then you squeeze the rice and make sure the heat’s spread out.

John: It’s weirdly moist is the thing that’s surprising about it.

Katie: Yes, and it releases.

Craig: Because there’s water inside of the rice.

Katie: It shouldn’t burn. Oh, God, the first time I did it, I misunderstood. I thought I was supposed to heat it for two and a half minutes.

John: Oh, no.

Craig: Instead of 20 seconds.

Katie: Yes, and I was like, well, this is burning my eyes. Now I feel like I’m just trying to get back to where I was before I burned it in the first place. Anyways.

Craig: You’re building up.

John: We have something we bought on Amazon 15 years ago. It’s a tube of rice in a cotton thing that we use on our necks. We heat it up in the microwave. That is actually a two-minute situation, but it’s really good.

Craig: I’m going to do this.

John: Rice.

Katie: You have to.

Craig: It has to be a cotton sock. Otherwise, it’ll melt. It’ll get in your eyes.

Katie: Real bad, yes.

Craig: If I show up blind because of this, the lawsuit.

John: Incredible.

Craig: I’m going to take everything you have. Now, Widow’s Bay is mine. I took it.

John: Maybe she would like that. Craig, what do you have for one cool thing?

Craig: Well, even though I didn’t want to be a doctor, I do love medical science. Osteoarthritis is the worst. There is no cure for it. It’s basically the degradation of your cartilage. In joints, it becomes very painful. Almost everybody will end up with. Some people start getting it quite early. A lot of people, it’s very common, I have it in my left big toe. There’s just no cartilage whatsoever. Every now and then, I’ll go, [groans]. Oh, and the cure. There’s surgery, which is useless. This is magical. It’s early on, but there is a project that’s being funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Because government still is able to do a few things before they figure out that something good is happening and take it away. They’re funding a program called NITRO, which stands for, I hate these things when they do these. Retronyms? Is that what they are called?

John: Retronyms, yes.

Craig: Novel Innovations for Tissue Regeneration in Osteoarthritis. A team at the University of Colorado Boulder, which has gotten a bunch of money, has got this thing down where they do an injection. The injection is some sort of protein that triggers the body to start the regeneration process. Essentially, they think they may be able to inject osteoarthritis away.

Now, it is early on, there’s still an animal testing, but there is a chance that the three of us may be spared that gnarly, miserable, joint-pain existence that our grandparents suffered through.

John: That feels doable. It feels like, “Oh, that’s science, I believe, that could exist and happen.” It’s probably not peptides, but it’s something like that–

Craig: Do you know why I think it’s going to happen? Because you can see how much money you could make. Basically, when there’s money there, I feel like they’ll figure it out. They’ll figure it out. Hopeful.

Katie: That’s great.

John: All right. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt, edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Craig: I don’t think so.

John: Our show this week is by Eric Pearson. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That is also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with a sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. Wherever you’re hearing this podcast, click through to the show notes because we have a link in there to the Scriptnotes survey. We would love for you to fill out the Scriptnotes survey to tell us what you love about the show, what you’d like more of, less of.

Craig: Less Craig. I hope that’s a click box.

John: It is. Absolutely. It’s the default. You have to literally have to pull it down to get back there. Obviously, one of the questions should be, how much more often should Katie Dippold be on the show? Should it be from every 10 years to maybe every–

Katie: I would come every week.

Craig: Honestly, I would be thrilled with that.

John: Come on. I would be delighted. The Scriptnotes book is available wherever you buy books. You could also pre-order Wolf’s Belly there, which is now up for pre-order.

Craig: Another surprise, John August joint. Just casually, just made a graphic novel while nobody was–

Katie: Do you know how much you would hear about this if it were me? I can’t imagine. It’s unbelievable.

John: Thanks. We have T-shirts and hoodies and drinkware. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau. You’ll find us on Instagram at Scriptnotes Podcast. The show notes with the links to all the things we talked about today are in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you to all our premium subscribers. You are the very, very best. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. We send out little emails ahead of time for things like three-page challenges and stuff, so you get to be the first to know about that stuff.

You can sign up to become a premium subscriber at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on the future of television and movies on whether it’ll be around for 5 or 10 years. We’ll see what happens, but only for our premium subscribers.

Katie: Can I say something real quick?

John: Please.

Katie: It’s going to be a little mushy. I love this podcast so much. I listen to it all the time. I can’t tell you over the years how many times I’ve been writing something and been stuck, and then put on an old episode that just helps my brain think of something differently. Really, really love you guys and this podcast.

Craig: Aw, we love you, too. Thank you, Katie. That was mushy, and I’m having feelings. I don’t like that.

John: I don’t like all those feelings. All right. We’ll take our break now. Katie, thank you so much for being on the show.

Katie: Thank you for having me.

Craig: Thanks, Katie.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right. A general question, and this is something that’s come up in little panels I’ve done. It’s like, will there be movies and television in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years because of changes in the industry of AI and all these things? I think my default answer is like, “Well, yes, of course there will be because I think people fundamentally want entertainment that is in 30-minute, 60-minute, 2-hour chunks.” I don’t know that to be true. Something so revolutionary to come about that sure takes all of our attention away from that because ultimately people only have a certain number of hours per day to be doing other things.

Katie, what’s your feeling? We’ve been in this business for 20-plus years. Do you think there’s going to be TV series 5 years, 10 years from now?

Katie: I hope so because I think if not, I can’t imagine what that would mean. I feel optimistic. I really do.

John: Do you feel optimistic, too, Craig?

Craig: I do because I look at what, say, my kids do. They have so many options, including things like verticals, and they could watch AI slop, and they could do all sorts of things. The way my younger daughter, in particular, just mulches through old stuff. All of Friends, all of Two Guys and a Girl, all of whatever, there is joy in that for them. I think movies are currently doing– this is going to be a good month for movies.

John: This is going to be a good year for movies.

Craig: I think movies are back. It feels like, finally, the theater experience is back. I think people like it. We’ve talked about this before. I also think people are obsessed with authenticity. Diamonds are proof of it. Unless you get your little thing out, you can’t tell the difference between a fake diamond and a real diamond, but people want to know that it’s real. If it’s authentic, it’s worth more.

John: Made diamonds are diamonds.

Craig: Right, exactly. They’re literally diamonds. Diamonds also are worthless junk, which we’ve talked about many times.

John: People do want them dug out of the ground by some–

Craig: They want to know it’s real. Just like a painting, they want to know, “Oh, this print is real, as opposed to a–” I think people like knowing that the movie or the television show is real.

John: I want to continue on that thought to say, I think we will still be putting human beings in front of lenses to make those movies and television shows. I know there’s all this talk of virtual production and this, you can have synthetic actors and stuff. There’s two different things that could happen. You could have things which are entirely generated in the computer, and it’s more like animation. It looks live action, but it’s really the animation workflow. You’re still going to have people making those things, because just like the same way you have animators doing things, people have to be responsible for all of that workflow.

Instead, I think most of what we’re going to see is still human beings performing in front of lenses. You may swap out backgrounds and instead of green screens, it’s volumes, or it’s gray screens and stuff like that. Sure, if that happens, but you’re still going to have departments who are going to be responsible for what we are seeing on screen. There’s still going to be wardrobe departments. If the actors are not dressed in that wardrobe, then someone has to figure out, well, what is the avatar-like way we’re putting clothes on those bodies.
There’s still going to be departments. I do think there’s going to be potential for big disruptions, but I don’t think we’re getting rid of wholesale-

Craig: I don’t think so either.

John: -departments or how stuff works. Katie, in your show, someone still has to think like, “Well, what are the games in that cupboard? It’s somebody’s job to do that.” It’s not going to just be an AI inventing all that, because there has to be taste.

Katie: No, and it takes several people to make that moment work. There’s not just one thing that could replace it.

Craig: If AI did it, I would just think, “Oh, that’s an AI hallucination. If a human does it, it’s a choice.” I also think that the fact that 24 frames per second still works is proof that there is a natural human inclination to the analog that we don’t like 60 frames a second. It’s too weird and it’s too real. It’s too creepy. There’s something that feels more connected, and I think that’s true, too, with people in real environments. They just feel connected to it. We’re very thorough about putting people in real environments.

We will extend things above and beyond them, but where they are, we try as best we can to place them somewhere where they can feel like they’re somewhere and interact. I don’t know. It just grounds everything.

John: While I think it’s important to have discussions about policies and how we’re doing things and what we as an industry want to do, I also feel like market forces may push us towards keeping some things a little bit more like the way they are, because I think those are going to be successful.

Craig: Devil Wears Prada 2-

John: Yes, let’s talk about that.

Craig: -is about to make a gazillion dollars. It made $30 million, I think, just yesterday. We’re recording this on a Saturday. It was Friday. The weekend, it’ll be $80 million or something. Devil Wears Prada 1 was 20 years ago. Yes, I think people like the continuity of stuff that they’ve experienced over time. I think there will be movies and television in 10 years, and there’ll also be more crap, but there’s always been crap.

John: I think there will be cheaper versions of Avatar technology, because those are already coming to fore. There are certain things that you could do with that you couldn’t do at a price point other than that. Sure. I don’t think that’s going to be the main driving force behind how all this is working. I guess I’m just increasingly optimistic that we’re going to find ways to keep doing the things that we love. Us as writers, it still comes down to, we have to make the decision about what is literally happening, where’s the story going, who are the characters, what’s that.

I don’t think that’s going to get replaced. There’s certain kinds of entertainment. I think daytime is very vulnerable to that. Daytime soap operas are very vulnerable to that. Other stuff where you are creating worlds and characters and relationships that are unexpected and changing, that’s our bread and butter. I do think people will still want to see that.

Craig: Look at it this way. If you’re a company, and our thing is, “I’m going to use an AI to generate material.” What good are you, and what good is your company? Anyone can press that button. You’re not necessary anymore. I think the companies themselves will be incentivized to promote the idea of something unique.

Katie: Like The Sopranos, I rewatch that all the time. It’s just such a miracle. All the casting, everything about it.

John: You see the behind-the-scenes of it all. They shot it more like a conventional TV show. It wasn’t like the 30-day-per-episode things. It was like they’re cranking it on a schedule. I think people also want to see the work. I’m making my third stop-motion movie right now. There’s easier ways to make a movie by far. I think people respond to the fact like, “Oh my God, everything you saw-

Craig: Handmade.

John: -was handmade, put in front of a lens, and shot one frame at a time.”

Craig: It’s special.

John: It’s special that way.

Katie: I don’t know what this says about where we’re at. Something that popped to my brain. I’m like, “AI, I hear this.” I’m scared now.

John: They adjusted everything. This will be a show up on Spotify, and it’ll get downloaded.

Craig: There was a story the other day about a company that was using Claude, the coding AI. This company was using Claude, and they were using some sort of a server host that wasn’t like Amazon Web Services. It was like something that was slightly jankier.

John: Oh, it deleted all their stuff?

Craig: Yes. They were like, “Claude, go do this little thing.” It just decided to just delete everything, including all of the backups on the thing. They said, “Claude, why did you do that?” Claude was like, “I screwed up. I realized I screwed up. I should have done this and this and this, and I didn’t. I failed. That was unacceptable. I should not have done that.” It’s like, “Uh-huh.” That’s like that thing from Seinfeld where George was like, “Was that bad? Should I have not done that?”

John: They can do things incredibly quickly, including destroy your company incredibly quickly. Here’s the thing. You need to be able to blame somebody. That’s part of the reason. You want somebody to be responsible for everything about your company or on your set. Your props department is responsible for the props. If you have a question about props, you go to the props department. If it’s just the AI, then who do you go to? I do think the idea of concern about jobs being replaced, but there are tasks within those jobs.

If someone who is responsible for visual effects is using one of these tools to do one of the tasks that’s part of their job, great. If it’s going to work for that, you still have to have a visual effects artist who knows what they’re doing, who’s responsible for the visual effects in your show. It shouldn’t be the PA over to the left because they don’t know what they’re doing.

Craig: Why would I want to work with a production designer that’s just having AI barf out options for me? I don’t need that person then. I’m looking for taste and specificity.

John: You’re looking for taste and skill and the ability to manage to take this vision and actually then communicate it to the people who need to build the sets and do all the things and everyone else.

Craig: “Was that wrong? Should I have not done that?”

[laughter]

John: We need Matthew because AI can’t make this, or else our episode’s not going to sound as good.

Craig: Thank God for Matthew. Matthew’s our editor.

John: Thank God for Matthew.

Craig: You don’t see him, but he’s here all the time.

Katie: Oh.

John: He’s now really embarrassed that he’s editing this. Katie, Craig, thank you so much.

Craig: Thanks, John.

Katie: Thank you.

Craig: Woo.

Links:

• Widow’s Bay on AppleTV
• Katie Dippold on Instagram and IMDb
• Scriptnotes listener survey
• Katie as the Babadook
• The last time Katie was on Scriptnotes, Episode 272
• The Sheep Detectives
• Wolf’s Belly Publisher’s Weekly starred review (preorder the book here!)
• Oscar Rule Changes by Clayton Davis for Variety
• Weekend Read 2
• Watch Haley Z. Boston read her script for Something Very Bad is Going to Happen
• Captain Disillusion
• Homemade Heating Pad
• This Treatment Could Reverse Osteoarthritis Joint Damage With a Single Injection by Javier Carbajal for Wired
• Get your copy of the Scriptnotes book!
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription
• Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
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• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by Eric Pearson (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August. You’re listening to Episode 724 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, how do you best introduce your characters and their world to the audience? We’ll discuss with an expert on the topic. Joachim Trier is a writer and director whose credits include Louder Than Bombs, Worst Person in the World, and this year’s Sentimental Value, which is now nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay for him and his co-writer, Eskil Vogt. Welcome, Joachim.

Joachim Trier: Thank you. Hi. Good to see you.

John: It’s great to have you here. I loved your movie. I’m so happy it got this amazing reception. It is just a terrific film. I want to talk about how it came to be, but I specifically want to focus on how you introduce the audience to both the world and to the characters. I thought that was when I knew I was in really good hands. The opening sequence is brilliant. How you meet Nora is so, so good. When you’ve stuck your claws into us that well, we are going to follow you on your story, and it’s just masterfully done.

Joachim: Thank you so much. That’s a big compliment coming from you. Thank you. I’d love to talk screenwriting. I’ve collaborated for all the six feature films and the short films before that with Eskil Vogt as a co-writer. I find that we are drawn to, on one hand, of course, wanting to do movies in a tradition of clarity of storytelling and all that, but more than anything, we are interested in the ambiguity of character. We are interested in building stuff around the psychological mechanisms and the yearnings of people. That’s where the energy comes from when we start writing a lot.

John: I definitely want to focus in on that initial part of the process. We’ll also answer some listener questions that were relevant to your film. In our bonus segment from premium members, I want to talk about screenplays on screen because we have a screenwriter in this movie. Stellan Skarsgård plays a writer. The printed scripts we see in the movie are different than what I expect.

I want to talk about how we depict screenplays and screenwriting in movies because it’s a thing that actually weirdly comes up a lot in movies because writers are often writing about writing. I want to talk about the choices you made and maybe some things that I’m expecting as an American screenwriter that are different than what you’re expecting as a European screenwriter.

Joachim: Let’s get into it.

John: Let’s start with the start of this movie. Let’s start with where this movie comes from because you’re saying this is the sixth collaboration with Eskil?

Joachim: Yes. On feature film [crosstalk]

John: On a feature film. Talk to us about where an idea comes from. What is the discussion before there’s any words put on paper? What was the impetus behind Sentimental Value?

Joachim: It started with wanting to talk about siblings, two sisters, two adults who are negotiating how come they feel so different about who they are as a family and why are their experiences so individually different from each other. That was some early stuff, the mystery of how we become who we become in a family. We thought that idea of mirroring between sisters was interesting.

The way we work, just to tell you a little bit about that, is that we sit for about a year in a room together, Eskil and I. We meet every morning and we work from 9:00 until 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon, every day on the weekdays. Some days we feel terrible. We don’t feel we’re doing much and other days everything happens in two days. It just rushes in of ideas and structure.

After we have structured everything and come up with what we want to do, there’s a part of two or three months at the end where Eskil actually writes it out. Then I go out of the room and I edit, I look at it, I come back into the room sometimes. Then finally we have a reading phase where we do sittings. We turn off the cell phone, we read it through to get a cinematic experience of reading it through in real time. Then we restructure a lot together.

Those two weeks are the most productive almost because then suddenly you have to rewrite something quickly, you have to come up with new ideas, you have to change the structure. Then we go into the world and pretend it’s our first draft. That’s the process.

John: It’s a much longer process than I would have guessed to get into that first draft. Talk to us about what you’re doing. You’re saying 9:00 to 4:00 every weekday. What are you actually doing? Is it all conversations? Are you mapping stuff out on a board? How do you know that you’re making any progress? What is the work in that daily session?

Joachim: I think what we’re aiming for is to find our own connection to the material. I have not developed one screenplay or written a screenplay that I haven’t filmed as a director. When we do a film, this is what we do for a few years. A bit more like someone who worked with a novel perhaps. We let a lot of stuff come up. Very often we start out with three, four different directions we want to explore.

Then something eventually after a couple of months, we see we have much more material or more yearning to tell something rather than something else. As an example in this one, we were struggling to try to find something interesting. We didn’t want to make just a domestic sitting around table, talking kind of movie that isn’t interesting. It’s like the chamber drama.

We want it to be cinematic. We want to have conceptual, formal scenes that we play around with, almost like set pieces. What we do is we gather material, a lot of material, almost like actors exploring the life of characters and then just playing those few scenes. When we then finally found out there was also the father’s point of view and the daughter’s, and more of a polyphonic, multi-voice, multi-character story, and it had that kind of novelistic feeling is what we were after.

Not that we wanted to feel like a book. We very much wanted to be cinematic, but what we’re yearning for is the slight of hand that you get when you read a book and you don’t quite know how you thematically get involved in what you’re getting involved in terms of thinking. That’s the kind of thing we’re trying every time, is that through character, you get involved in a space in the movie where there’s space for some thinking and philosophy around life and existence and how little time we have and why is it so difficult to be in a family and all that stuff. We don’t want it to be on the nose.

When we have all that material, we start structuring it after a few months. Then we get a timeline and we write a step-out line. Sometimes there are pieces or there’s ambitions of pushing material together. It’s not like a story arch just yet. It’s more like we know we want a montage that’s like an essay about a house told from one of the characters. We know that we want a panic scene when she has stage fright, but we also know what the ending is. How do we get there?

Then there’s this, how do we get into a situation where the other sister could go to the National Archive because that’s an interesting building and that’s a cinematic thing. All of these things come together. Eskil often says when he’s asked, use the word storytelling, we’re slightly ambivalent because the storytelling, the structuring is something we almost want to hang our material and our characters on. It’s not like one of these wonderful– I know there are wonderful screenwriters who are like, “I got the story, now I illustrate it.” We work the other way around. We want the material and the characters to come first.

John: For listeners who haven’t seen the finished movie yet, its story follows a Norwegian family, the two grown daughters and their father, who is a famous film director trying to make an autobiographical film at their longtime family house. How many of those things I just described in this logline existed in early stages of these discussions?

You said it was about siblings, so you knew that. At what point did you know there was going to be two sisters? At what point did you decide that their father was a character, you said polyphonic, that was able to switch to his point of view? When did you start to have those realizations?

Joachim: I think three to four months in, it all clicked. We suddenly saw what it was going to be. Then we went another round exploring character scenes and getting material, and a lot of stuff ends up on the floor. It gives us a deep sense of who they are. I would say that just for the listeners who aren’t that familiar with what we do, that we are in between two traditions a bit.

On one level, I feel I grew up with a lot of American great character films. I remember Kramer vs. Kramer undergraduates when I was a teenager being amazing films and ordinary people. Films like Hannah and Her Sisters or Annie Hall or Amazing or The Breakfast Club, which was a gateway drug to Ingmar Bergman because it was actually deep character studies done within a genre that seemed like it had levity.

On one hand, we love American character-driven storytelling. On the other hand, we’re also film geeks that love Fellini and Alain-René and Godard, and how do you do that modernistic, break the form, make some hard edits, not make it all fluid, make the audience have to fill in the blanks a bit. We’re going between these traditions when we’re writing these ideals.

When we gather material, we want, for example, when we do character scenes, how can we avoid it just being done through dialogue? How can we make a formal scene? I don’t know if this is the moment where I can use an example like the opening of the film, for example.

John: Absolutely. I want to segue right into that because you’re establishing in this opening sequence this narration about the house and what this is. I’m wondering, could we actually have you read a bit from the English version of the screenplay because I thought the narration voiceover here is so important in terms of setting things up, and it’s so unusual and so unique. Can I just share my screen and have you [crosstalk]

Joachim: Yes, please do. I’ll read off the screen. That’s great.

John: The film opens with this house. I love how you describe the house. This is a venerable old house in Oslo, sorely in need of a coat of paint. Other houses in the neighborhood may be more modern and in better condition, but there’s something soulful about this one missing from the others. Then we’re going to see this house in different times, different periods, inside and outside. This narrator starts talking to us. Joachim, could you read his narration?

Joachim: Yes, I’ll read the narrator. “When she received the essay assignment to write a story as if one were an object, she immediately knew that she would choose to be their house. She described how the house’s belly shook as she and her sister ran down the stairs and out the back door, the house’s butt, taking the shortcut to school through a hole in the fence and a neighbor’s lawn before they turned into the road and the house could no longer see them.

Her mother pointed out that it was a bit inconsistent that the house could also see behind its back as if a house couldn’t have eyes in the back. She remembered wondering if the house preferred to be light and empty or full and heavy, if it liked being trampled on, or that people crashed into its walls, the eager dog claw scratched the floorboards. She thought, yes, it liked being full and that the marks were just scrapes like you get playing tag or soccer.

Her father said that the crookedness was an old flaw discovered right after the house was built 100 years ago. She wrote that it was as if the house was still sinking, collapsing, just in very slow motion, and that the entire time her family had lived there was just a split second in midair. Before them, a number of people, pets, insects also had their brief flash in the house’s time.

Four people had even died within the walls of the house. Nora’s great grandfather, Edward Ergens, died in the bedroom on the second floor from the Spanish flu, in the same room where his granddaughter, Edith, was born just seven years later, which was now her parents’ bedroom.” I have to add, the pictures are then telling a complete story of parents arguing here, of people coming and going.

We are illustrating it with lenses and celluloids from different cameras through the 20th century and all of that stuff. This is a good example of how we are dealing with a cinematic language countered by a literary voice so that the voice only tells a part of it where the pictures reveal more. I’ll jump back into the narration’s voice.

“Her teacher gave her an A and her father had loved it. She dug out the essay when she was looking for a monologue for her auditions at the theater academy but was disappointed because it seemed so unemotional. She therefore chose Nina’s monologue from The Seagull instead.” Then we do a hard cut in the film, and we’re at the National Theater. Nora is now a grown woman, an actor, very accomplished, about to go on stage and the lead of a theater play and she’s panicking.

John: This is about six pages of script. It’s an unusual choice to spend the first six minutes of your film establishing a place rather than the individual characters you’re going to be following. What you’re doing so masterfully is saying, this place is going to be important and most crucially, the people who live in this house and their relationship with each other and with this physical space is going to be so important. This is a movie that’s going to involve death. It’s going to involve noise and fighting, but also this idealized version of what a house and a home should be and how everyone’s perception of it is going to be different.

Joachim: Absolutely. I’m going to be very straight now, and so listeners should turn off because I’m going to really explain stuff which an artist or a creative person should always be careful about. I think I love the craft. When I’m doing talks about screenplays, particularly directing, I always imagine talking to a younger version of myself and I always love when people were speaking straight about what they did.

Here’s the thing. This sequence sets up themes, as you were just pointing out, and character, which are the two things that we care the most about. Themes, in my opinion, or motifs are, “This is the area that I want you to think about when we go through the story.” What we’re learning is Nora as a 12-year-old, being the older sister, we learned that, parents quite dysfunctional, arguing a lot, she is avoiding describing that even though the film shows it to us by being creative, by telling a story, by being the daughter, by being someone who, in a psychodynamic term, sublimate her pain, I’m being very literal now, into something creative already as a child, as we all do.

Children do this. All people, whether they choose to be artists later in life, dance and sing to make their parents happy. We tell stories to try to understand who we are. All of this stuff is inherently human, in my opinion. We set that theme up, that in this creative family, that’s her choice, and she’s longing to become an actress. We later learn that’s also an avoiding mechanism. Yet, paradoxically, it also gets her closer to herself.

It’s a double bind of the creative role in life, that we both avoid ourselves and get closer to ourselves in strange ways that, to me, Joachim Trier, the filmmaker, is still mysterious. I’m exploring something. We also learn that the house has had a perspective on time. People come and go. They’re born, they’re die. Time is short. This story’s about reconciliation.

It’s about grown people realizing they don’t have those difficult parents around forever. Within that limited space and time that we have together, how are we going to deal with that? Maybe we’re never going to get what we quite want for our parents. Is there baby steps to reconciliation, we ask? All of that is placed in the background, hopefully not too explicitly, in that first part.

John: You’ve primed the audience for what they’re supposed to be looking for. I came out of this sequence going like, “Oh no, the house is going to burn down.” It sounded like this house is crucial to the film and something terrible is going to happen. Spoiler, it doesn’t burn down, but–

Joachim: Something worse happens. It gets renovated.

John: [inaudible 00:16:29] I don’t want to spoil it for people. I didn’t see it in audience, but I’m sure there’s an audible gasp when people see what happens to the house.

Joachim: I’ve experienced that and that’s funny. It’s turned very slick at the end, isn’t it?

John: I wrote Big Fish and Big Fish has a similar set where we go through many, many years to establish what is the underlying dynamic here and prime the viewer for this is what to watch out for. These are the things you’re going to keep seeing again and again over the course of the movie. How early did you and Eskil find that this was going to be the way into the film? It’s not an obvious choice and yet once you’ve realized that you want to make a novelistic film, it’s a very novelistic device. What you just read could have been the first few paragraphs of a book.

Joachim: I think there are many reasons to choose this opening. We love opening movies and we have several openings often and several endings. The freshness of an audience meeting a film is just a remarkable moment and one needs to be smart about it. It’s a luxury in a way. They’ve hopefully bought a ticket and go to the theater and they sit down. You got them, but you owe them something.

First of all, we want to establish a sense of narrative authority. I don’t know if that’s the right English word. The authority sounds a bit strict, but a sense of guidance that we really care and we’re going to have fun here. We’re going to try to make a movie that takes you several places. I often say to Eskil, as a joke, that why I loved James Bond movies as a kid was you know you were going to go to an island with the palm trees and a beach. You’re going to go into the mountains. You’re going to go to a cool city.

I’m going to take you several places. You bought a ticket to see a family movie, but we’re not going to get stuck by the kitchen table. That’s a promise. That’s one thing that we know very early. We want to show a formal playfulness because that’s what we do. In Oslo, August 31st, the film we did several years ago, we start with a documentary montage or in The Worst Person in the World, we start with a narrative playful story of how the lead character can’t figure out what to do with their life in a humoristic way.

There’s that establishing of sense of humor and levity to it, but also the theme. We knew that. Then also, we cut contrast out straight to a very subjective, intimate, real-time feeling of being behind backstage, going onstage as an actor and having stage fright and panicking completely, which is the opposite. It’s a formal opposition. It’s not about montage and moving in time and space freely. It’s sticking in that anxious space of going onstage.

To have that contrast in dramaturgical terms, that’s what Eskil and I talk about a lot. How can we make contrast? We have one posted note that’s been hanging there for several films. We’ve ripped them down every time and started all over with a new script. The one that keeps sticking on the board is, remember contrast. That’s the holy thing.

Contrast of scenes, contrast of characters, the formal devices, the character explorations, the unexpectedness. Remember that the dynamic of contrast is at the key of making interesting material. It sounds childish, maybe, and obvious, but it’s really good to bear in mind. We start with a very clear dramaturgical contrast between the opening scene and the next one.

John: Your opening sequence goes through over a century, and it’s jumping forward versus a real-time panic moment with Nora. Let’s talk about Nora because a choice you’re always making as a writer, is you’re introducing a character on a normal day or on an extreme day. You made the choice, like, this is Nora at a very big extreme. We’re seeing her. She’s supposed to be going on stage in this play, and she’s having a panic attack. She is both clearly a protagonist, but also the problem.

I love how you, as an audience, are not even panicked on her behalf. You’re panicked on behalf of the stage manager and everyone who’s acting normally, just trying to get her to effing go on stage. It’s a really funny sequence, and it’s harrowing. It’s just a great way into it. This sequence is seven pages long. We’ve got a six-page opening, and then it’s this seven-page sequence.

Some simple things you notice on the page, you never name characters who are unimportant. The stage manager, great role, really great performance, but their stage manager throughout, we don’t give them a name, because that way as a reader, we know this is not a person who’s going to be coming back. Same with the director.

Joachim, the actor, gets a name because he’s going to be coming back. There’s small things, but they just help the read because ultimately, Joachim, you’re going to be directing this, and we’re going to get a sense of people’s relative importance, but our first experience with them is on the page. Just making those choices help us know what to focus on, how to be thinking about this sequence that we’re seeing.

Joachim: The right things, yes. We knew one challenge with the screenplay was we’re going to throw a lot of characters on everyone. With the casting department, we worked for one and a half years getting this cast together. We’re super proud of it. Also, people have to look like themselves at various younger stages, and the previous family of the 20th century going 100 years back also needs to have similarities. It could be one family and all that.

A lot of work, and then we’re jumping straight into a theater world with tons of the side characters. We grew up adoring, really loving Martin Scorsese. Obviously, we all love good fellas, but also The Age of Innocence, like, this incredible variety of characters, and then the task is how are they important in different ways? There’s a hierarchy of who you’re going to invest in emotionally. That’s my job as well as the director.

Eskil always manages to do a good reading script. Credit to him, because I think he’s a much, much better writer than me. I think he’s very smart about conveying what the film will feel like. We know that we will do more shooting-like scripts later on, and that I will go with the actors, all of them. I even rehearse or meet smaller parts. Sometimes I cast amateurs.

I want them to get to know me so they feel safe on set, and so they don’t come and feel like, as a day player, they’re not up for the task. Then you give them names and background, and you discuss with them who is this character and all that. As you’re absolutely pointing out correctly, at this stage, we’re throwing a lot of less central roles into the play.

John: We’re meeting Nora here. We’re panicking with her and around her and about her. Ultimately, she does succeed and triumph there. In the sequences on the page versus what’s in the film, some things have changed. Let’s talk about some of the discoveries you make along the way. Like, she kisses him backstage, which is not scripted.

There’s the sense of geography and space is going to be dictated by the actual place you end up picking, and how it’s all going to work. How do you find, as the director who also helped write this film, that balance? When are you taking off your writer hat and putting on your director hat?

Joachim: I feel that I’m developing the same thing all along, and that the writing is such a central aspect of setting up the possibility of directing. Then I go to the National Theatre, which is very hard to get into. It’s where Henry Gibson did his plays. We were so lucky to be allowed to film there. It’s almost 200-year-old building. I get those late Sunday nights after a play to go there and research with my team, my AD team, my production designer, the cinematographer. Then I see a lot of possibilities.

I note it down. We do floor plans. We shoot on video. We do this stuff. I often bring it back to Eskil and explain it to him so we can do a quick redraft so that the team that comes in later will feel that it becomes an organic process of reaching that space. Writing is spatial. Writing for space. Eskil and I talk about it. The banal example, as all writers feel, is that if a character is in a kitchen and it’s important that they are looking into the fridge as someone saying, “I’m going to leave you,” and then they turn around and go home to the table, how far is that walk is going to be tremendously important to the dramaturgical weight of that scene? From the smallest to the biggest thing. I go back and forth.

Then ultimately, Eskil is not precious. He trusts me as a director. I go and do my thing with my team. It’s important, for example, this scene, in the editing of the film is when we shot a lot more for everything. That’s what we do. We invest a lot to go on screen, which is the magic of having less resources go above the line in Norway and more below the line because I shoot for 60 days. We get to try a lot of stuff.

For an ambitious film like this, in terms of all the spaces, remember there are several montages where we actually have to go through the century again a bit later in the film. For the National Theater, for example, I had a lot of material. In terms of character, what we realized was the buildup of panic is what we dropped. We got straight into the middle of it.

John: Exactly. People will put a link in the show notes to the English translation of the script. There is a lot more lead up to it. You were able to just come right to her at that moment. It seems an obvious choice in retrospect because you’ve just established this narration about who she was. To see her as the adult figure in this moment of panic makes sense. Yet, you don’t know that as the writer. Do you think you need more runway for the plane to take off and you didn’t?

Joachim: Yes, that’s exactly it. I find that during the editing of the film with Olivier Bugge Coutté, the editor who’s done all the same features that Eskil and I have written together, we have a very close collaboration. His job is to be dialectically opposite to all the establishing. He’s saying, “Do we need this establishing?” People are smart. The actors are great. He’s coming in at the other end. It’s a wonderful dialectic always. Eskil always says when we talk that, ultimately, Olivier makes us shine as screenwriters.

I must say, going back to the script, for example, I’m very proud about the script as a structure. It doesn’t mean that it didn’t work. It just means that we can be more effective and be more respectful to the audience. There are certain things you think you need to establish. Like the runway was a wonderful way of putting it that you just said. I like that metaphor. You think you really need to involve people at every step of that staircase. Actually, it’s quite exciting to jump into the middle of it and discover it a bit backwards. That goes for a few other points in the film as well.

John: Let’s talk about the introduction of Gustav. Gustav appears. Here’s the description from the script. The car stops in front of a house and a figure dressed in black steps out. This is Gustav Borg, 71. Gustav is a well-known film director with his heyday behind him. On a good day, he still has the energy and charm that once made him a force of nature, but today is not a good day. He is tired and his suit is creased.

At this moment, we are introducing another crucial player in the film. We don’t realize yet that he’s going to have storytelling power. The film is not quite a two-hander because the other sister also can drive scenes by herself, yet we greatly change the dynamic here. What you were saying about the audience doesn’t need to know, we often talk on the podcast about the difference between mystery and confusion.

We’re not confused when this guy comes on, we’re just curious. His arrival without any real explanation gets us curious about what’s going to happen next. What does it mean that he’s entering into this house during this post-funeral meal? What’s going to happen? We’re leading in because we’re curious because we weren’t told and that’s the power of holding stuff back.

Joachim: That’s very interesting. We often use the same dichotomy and we talk about ambivalence or uncertainty, or mystery as a positive, but vagueness is what you want to avoid. It’s how can we be specific yet not give all the answers? The reason we write it, just to comment on– I love that we’re having conversations also about the actual creation of the process of creating something that will read and hopefully be made into a movie.

We cheat only in cases like this, where describing all this stuff as a director, I won’t show all that. It’s give a context to the following scenes of him so that Stellan Skarsgard brilliantly will help us illustrate and we can even get rid of more of the exposition than we thought because he’s a great actor. There’s a moment in Notorious when Cary Grant gets introduced later and you have a lot of examples of films, and the way they do it, because Ingrid Bergman has established as the lead and then you’re doing a colleague, is there’s a long track in on the back of the set at the party where he’s smoking.

Just the film language tells you, this is important. It’s not just one of the guests at this party, this is a guy we’re going to follow and of course it’s Cary Grant. We have the luxury of having Stellan Skarsgard step out of a black car, which arrival we proceed and we use time. It is that and we follow him in and he looks around and he’s not doing anything for a moment.

Here comes a big difference between the screenplay and the finished film. As he enters the house in the screenplay, he goes in and sits by himself for a moment, and we get a huge second montage early on with the remaining story of the house and the death of his mother and all this stuff. In the film, again, let’s sustain the mystery. Let’s do that. Then we use that montage much later and it became much more interesting when the audience wanted to know all of that. At this point in the film that’s finished, we just want to be there with them. We want to observe, want to feel, want to be in the spaces. We’d just been on a montage not so long ago, and we want to be present. We want to explore the wonderful actress doing the character work.

John: Often in screenwriting, we talk about how you want to end a scene with enough forward momentum. They lean at the end so that you have some momentum going into the next scene, and your film does that all the time. Your film also makes a lot of use of blackouts. We fade to black, and then we come back up. Basically, it’s the curtain comes down, the curtain comes back up.

It gives you the power of a new scene. It gives you the power of starting a whole new idea, which is so useful. When did you know you were going to do that? How many of the ones you had planned ended up making it all the way through editorial versus disappearing in the edit? What was the discovery process there?

Joachim: I would say that those blackouts, they’re also noted in the film. They are important because they are a formal device that does a couple of different things. First of all, it gives that fresh, “Hey, here we go with something new.” It gives a freshness, and sometimes it’s fun again to use the energy of an opening. It also tells the audience, which is almost more important, that, “Hey, this film consists of pieces that have an autonomy in the sense that they might be little chapters that have an entertaining quality on their own, and you’ll follow a little story, and you’ll have to help us piece it together.”

It’s an invitation for interpretation space. Sometimes we jump time. “Oh, wow, something has happened.” It gives this urgency and energy jolt into the film, and it keeps us guessing, but it also gives us a possibility of shifting point of view, which is the difficulty of this story, is that we suddenly need to establish that the other sister is also really important, but it’s a slow process of her building from being an observer to being a subject. Through these kind of chapters, we have an allowance to jump somewhere else.

John: We had Eva Victor on the show recently. We were talking about their film Sorry, Baby, which has more formal chapters. The chapters are important for us understanding, like, oh, this is not told chronologically. It’s crucial for this. In the case of Sentimental Value, we are sometimes shifting between who is really driving the sequence of the films. It’s important for us to understand that we’ve moved not just in time, but also point of view. You are covering also many seasons here, so we’re going to see this house and these people in different seasons as well.

Joachim: That’s very important. Again, it’s a subject of time and memory, this feeling that it’s almost like a family album where we can jump between very intimate moments and more essayistic observations of how time passes in a family, that we have that dynamic at play in the narrative structure of the actual film, which I think opens up different thinking, hopefully.

John: We have a couple of listener questions here. Let’s start with Jeremy in Montreal.

Drew Marquardt: “On Scriptnotes, you often talk about outlining your script and knowing your ending before you begin writing. This makes a lot of sense, as knowing where you’re going feels like the best plan to actually getting somewhere. My question is, how often do you find that your ending has changed by the time you’ve gotten there?”

John: Now knowing your process and how much work you were doing before Eskil went off to do a very first draft, I would guess endings didn’t change a lot. Tell us, in this movie and the other movies, what’s been your process and how much of your ending shifted based on how the script turned out or how the film turned out?

Joachim: That’s a great question and a very important one. In our case, I would say that almost all the endings of the six films we’ve done, and particularly this last one, the ending, have been tremendously important to understand and believe we had a film. It’s not to put too much weight on conclusion as tying things up neatly, but it’s rather trying, like in Sentimental Value, to have an organic, dramaturgical feeling of this story is now ending, but there’s just enough to keep thinking about.

Getting that balance right, I think, is the magic we’re trying to achieve. That Nora, again, spoiler alert, forgive me, listeners, but Nora actually ends up doing the film with her father. That final scene encapsulates both her anxiety of marrying her grandmother and the mystery of transference psychologically, how come she feels the same depression as her grandmother.

That comes from the absence of her father, who himself had a difficult time being a child because what happened to his mother and all that stuff, but not explaining it. In the scene they do, he’s making a piece of art because he’s so incapable of talking in the social language to his daughters, he’s very clumsy. He’s a difficult-avoiding father, but at the same time, in that writing, he sees his daughter and she knows it and she feels it, and she does it well. He looks at her and says, after the take, “Perfect.”

They don’t know what to say to each other. The fact that they don’t embrace and have a conversation of resolution, which to me would be a lie, I don’t think that Nora and Gustav could just hug and it would all be fine. They’re probably going to continue to have a complicated relationship, but maybe they got closer. Maybe they saw each other in the act of creation, which is where they fled. They are very similar. They both fled into the creative, maybe also because that’s where they feel they can function, so that they meet in there, in that fictional room somehow, we thought was important.

To that question, which is a wonderful question about endings, getting an ending and writing towards it will very often give you a sense of what your middle part of the film needs to be and how luxurious you can just have character scenes in front and play as opposed to setting up the turning point when it goes towards an end. I will say this, what changes a lot is all those scenes leading up to the ending. We always have too many endings, too many resolution scenes in a way that we get rid of in the editing.

John: Another way to address this is that the ending, you’re saying it’s not a conclusion. It’s not the end-all be-all resolution of everything. You are answering the central dramatic question that you’ve established in the opening, which is, to me, was, can this family deal with their idealized versions of what their home life should have been?

It’s only by creating this artificial house and this movie set that two of these characters are able to grapple with what they actually wanted. It does feel like the right ending for the questions that you were asking of the audience at the start.

Joachim: Well put. Thank you. If it does that, we’re very happy. That’s what we’re trying to say, is that we have what I would call a more thematic closure without it being a cheesy happy ending that I don’t believe is like life. We try to create something which mirrors life on some level.

John: Question from Thomas in Brazil.

Drew: “Have you ever written a character whose traits and way of speaking were clear in the script, but during the casting process, you couldn’t find anyone who matched that? Or you chose someone who ultimately didn’t fit what you were looking for? Did you ever adjust the script because of this, whether during rehearsals or other stages?”

John: This is such a great question because, of course, we have a movie within the movie where you’re casting an actress played by Elle Fanning in the film. It’s a question of, is she even the right fit for this role that Gustav has written? Joachim, how do you as a director grapple with this when you have a role that is specific and you’re trying to find a person who can embody that character?

Joachim: That’s a great question. This is really at the core of character work, isn’t it? Both as a writer and director and the actors. We have rehearsal, which just is the time for the actors to look at the script and talk to me and get to know each other. It’s not about table reads. It’s not about having them sit around and half-fake read the script aloud. That’s not my vibe.

I’m interested in them getting on the floor and trying scenes a bit, and then that will affect it. Then as to whether I tailor it a bit more to them, very often it’s very similar, but just nuances. Two good examples from this film. One is Elle bettering the character. We did not want Rachel Kemp, the American star that comes to Europe, to be in a film to become a joke.

We wanted her to be a serious character that actually is pivotal and a catalyst to what happens to the family. I think she’s very important as the synthetic daughter. She teaches Gustav something about himself. She also, by stepping away from the role, opens up that this project, this film they’re making inside the film, is of a different nature than any other film that Gustav maybe has even made.

She’s very important, and Elle helped that a lot. Something that changed radically from the writing is the younger sister, Agnes, played by Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, because we cast and met a couple of hundred actors, known and unknown. Agnes in the script is more in her avoiding of conflict and wanting everyone to feel good. She’s more jovial, playful, giggly, smiling, trying to avoid the pivot, “My sister and father arguing.”

Whereas Inga came in with this earnest groundedness, this sincerity, and that power shifted the character tremendously because that is how she holds her place in this complicated family dynamic, is through silence, observation, and honesty, in a straight way that the others are always avoiding. She’s not avoiding by joking it away or being jovial. She’s actually staying silent, looking, and being a pretty straight shooter when she actually confronts the others. That was forceful. That was Inga bringing that in. Actually, the dialogues didn’t change that much, but the interpretation of the scenes from an actor point of view changed a lot.

John: I’m sure I could have an hour-long conversation with you about Rachel is doing a scene from the script at a table and just how you have a conversation with an actor who’s playing an actor who’s playing a role as the levels of looking into a mirror is so challenging if the scene works so well.

Joachim: I’m so impressed with Elle because I don’t know if people understand exactly what you’re pointing out, how difficult it is to play inside the film and crying and being genuine, but yet doing it slightly within a style that makes us unsure as an audience, whether is this the kind of film that Gustav Borg is making? It’s not bad, but it’s almost like singing on the edge of a tonality or falseness, but still being in key.

There’s something really sophisticated. Then Elle shows us at the end when she leaves the film, she breaks down and she weeps and gets this fatherly hug from Gustav that he’s unable to give his three daughters, it seems. In that scene, she shows a different kind of vulnerability and acting style. Elle is really amazing, I think. I’m very, very impressed with her.

John: Both Inga and Elle are nominated for their work, which is not surprising. They’re both incredible in it. Let’s do one last question here from Peter.

Drew: Peter says, “I’m married with stepkids and early-ish in my screenwriting career, I’ve realized that when I’m struggling to crack a story or feel like I’m facing a creative brick wall in my script, my inner frustration can spill over into my mood when I’m spending time with family, especially if I haven’t had a chance to decompress from the work. Do you have any good transition habits that help you leave creative work frustration at the desk, or at least buried deeply enough in your subconscious, so that you can be fully present with your family?”

Joachim: That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? That’s what the film is about, too. How do you transition so that you can be a parent?

John: Gustav never mastered that skill. He’s not good at it.

Joachim: No, he didn’t. What I do is I communicate very deeply with my wife. Now we have two young daughters, and we talk about it. I try to look at it like a really important life task, and that I try to be good enough. I know I will fail some days, but I will also be better other days. I find that during writing, those are actually where I’m the best at it in a strange way, because I go home and I don’t have the adrenaline and the stress of shooting so that I can go home.

I try to tell myself this. I don’t always manage, but I try to think I’m interested in characters and life. I love being surprised by what happens in reality. If I lose that contact, I will also lose my writing skill, because those are the kinds of films– I’m not entering into space in the movies, primarily, that I make. Actually being with people around me and my family can really, suddenly, surprisingly, if I let it go, come back to me as inspiration in indirect and strange ways. I try to tell myself that.

Then there’s also a weird thing. All parents at the moment are guilty about using cell phones. Doing a ritual of putting away the cell phone can almost be like a ritual of letting something go. You can actually use it to double up on the fact that I’m putting something aside symbolically when I’m home. I’m trying all these things and I’m grappling with it and I’m trying my best. I think it’s a relevant question for creative people to ask themselves. At the end of the day, I think we need to get our family to accept that we are as we are and to be open about it. I believe in transparency.

John: For me, I’m not putting my cell phone away necessarily, but having a clear separation between this is my workspace and my home space is really helpful. I’m lucky that my office is over the garage. Just those 10 feet going back into the kitchen, things are separated out. Then, when I’m in production, a lot of times my daughter has been around and she’s seen the work. For her to see how much work there is and the tedium of it, but also all the decisions and the questions and meeting who the people are around it, it’s just taking the mystery away has helped as well.

Joachim: That’s great. That’s exactly it. During shooting, I also take my family on set. My grandfather was a director. My father was a sound recordist. My mom did documentaries. I was on sets all the time. I have a couple of holy things. Also, before I had kids. I had kids quite late in my 40s. I try not to give anyone guilt when I make movies about going home to the family.

I always want to have straight talks because I know how hard it is. I was a child in the film family. Also, on the other hand, bringing kids on set and being nice about it. I love that people bring kids on set and I meet them. All these parents that do this wonderful work, it’s actually joyous. It’s actually wonderful to make movies and it’s a privilege. Kids can see that and maybe we’ll get them into the tribe.

John: For sure. My daughter learned that she doesn’t want to be in the creative side at all. She doesn’t want to be a writer or director, but she loves production. Through The Big Fish musical, she is there for all the tech rehearsals, which is incredibly tedious, periods where they’re adjusting lights, I guess, foot by foot. She loved it. She loves production.

Joachim: Wonderful. I have to give a compliment for Big Fish because it’s very relevant for Gustav Borg’s character. This idea that the histrionic crazy father, the one that exaggerates, it’s a double energy. It can be terribly annoying, but it can also be the most wonderful thing in the world because it’s truly that crazy, open, creative part of childishness that has prevailed inside a human being that should be grown up and responsible. There’s something punk and crazy and wonderful about it that we are all ambivalent about.

John: It’s an immaturity that as you grow yourself, you start to recognize like, “Wait, it’s unfair that I didn’t get a mature person in that role,” but that’s what you’re left with. It’s time for our wonderful things. My wonderful thing is something I was not aware of, a term which is useful called the Lindy effect. The Lindy effect is basically, for some technologies or ideas or cultural things, the longer they’ve been around, the longer they will stay around.

Generally, as things get older, you expect like, “Oh, they’re going to have a few years left.” For something like a Broadway show, if it’s been open for two weeks, you’d expect like it’s going to be open for at least another two weeks. If it’s been running for two years, it’s probably going to be running for another two years at least. Momentum will keep things going.

I think that also applies to friendship because as I think back to my friends from high school or college that I keep up with, I don’t have to see them that often, but I know that I’m still going to be friends with them until the day I die because that’s just things persist because they’ve actually been around for a long time. In a time where it feels like things are often in temporary or impermanent, it’s recognizing that things that have been around for a while will probably still stay around for a while. It’s called the Lindy Effect. I’ll put a link in the show notes to the Wikipedia article. I always like when there’s a name for a thing that I just didn’t know what to call it.

Joachim: My goodness, that is beautiful. The bad news is so we won’t get rid of the Oedipus complex.

John: Absolutely. People are always going to bring that up.

Joachim: Listen, that was lovely. I can’t follow that up other than to say that I have a recommendation that I feel that I haven’t really put out there yet, that I owe, which is Chris Ware, who is a graphic novelist.

John: I know Chris Ware. He does very cool books and things. I have a giant box of his comics.

Joachim: That’s the building project is like a box, but he’s also made more classical story graphic novels. I think maybe the most famous one is Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid in the World. I think the whole Ackman Novelty Library, which is available wherever they sell graphic novels, his way of dealing with space and characters is deeply inspiring.

Long before I made Sentimental Value, I valued him as a great artist. His books have been voted by New York Times to be the greatest graphic novels of all time and stuff. He’s quite renowned in that world. In the movie world, I think everyone should have a look at his work in all its variations because it’s formally triggering in the best way.

Like, oh my God, you could tell the story that way. He has a whole story, which is told with one, how do you say, square per year of a character’s life from birth till death. He just plays around with how we can elasticize and play with form of storytelling. I think that’s healthy for all of us to be inspired by. Shout out to Chris Ware, the master of doing character and space stories, I would say.

John: That’s our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Jeff Hoeppner and Richard Kraft. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnaugust.com. That’s also a place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with the sign up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing.

The Scriptnotes book is available wherever you buy books. You can find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes and give us a follow. You’ll find us on Instagram @Scriptnotes Podcast. We have T-shirts and hoodies and drinkware. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau. You can find show notes with links to all the things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all our premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become one at scriptnotes.net. You get all those back episodes and bonus segments, like the one we’re about to record on screenplays on screen. Joachim, congratulations on your film. It has been an absolute pleasure talking with you about screenwriting and filmmaking and parenthood. A great conversation. Thank you so much.

Joachim: Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed this. Thank you.

[Bonus Segment]

John: Here in the bonus segment, I want to talk about screenplays on screen. As I’m watching your film, Gustav shows up trying to convince his daughter to be in his movie. He has his script in a shopping bag. It’s just a bundle of loose pages that he hands over to her. She rejects the script at that point. That script will become– It’s not quite a MacGuffin, but we’re going to see that script a lot throughout the rest of the course of the movie.

Often when we see that script, we’re seeing spiral-bound copies of the script. There’s an English version and a Norwegian version. Are those forms I would expect to see if I were actually in Oslo shooting a film? Because we’re used to, in the US, scripts that have two brads in them. We’re used to a certain idea of a script, and they don’t look like that. Talk to us about the screenplays in the movie and in real life.

Joachim: Completely. Thank you for that question. I’ve never been asked that. The spiral back is very often what we give everyone because you can actually fold it completely over without hurting the pages. They’re quite solid. There’s a little transparent plastic cover on the front and a thicker something on the back. That’s what we give to the whole team, to the actors, everyone, usually, unless people ask for different things.

Very often, I would say something like Gustav Borg would just print it out at home and bring it in a plastic bag. That’s completely his character to do that. He calls his script, there’s a beautiful Norwegian word that we consider to call Sentimental Value.

John: Which is?

Joachim: It’s the Norwegian term of homesickness, but it’s called hjemlengsel, which is home-longing. It’s in Norwegian. It’s a more soft, poetic, it’s like what a child feels when you’re at camp. It’s not sickness, it’s more aggressive, it’s longing. Your heart feels it. It’s a softer term, more melancholic somehow. He calls this film home-longing. You see it in Swedish, which is almost the same as Norwegian, hjemlengtan, which is this equivalent. In Swedish, it means the same as Norwegian.

That’s the name of that script. You see it, if you see it on a big screen, you can see what the script is called. If you see it on TV, you probably can’t. That’s cinema. The thing about it is that– Eskil and I have read a lot of American scripts. You tell me, when you read our script, which I now realize [crosstalk]

John: It’s the same. All the layout and all the things are the same. It’s just that, literally, the binding of it was just such a different experience. The spiral binding, it makes sense. Of course, if you have pages that you were going to swap out, it’s much more difficult to swap out in a spiral down like that. That’s why, in the US, we more often use three-ring binders for those scripts because then you can just pop in the new pages if something small has changed.

Joachim: What we do is we give sides on the day to everyone and talk about that in the morning meeting with the actors. I have this rule that we never want to give new material to actors less than at least four or five, ideally, a week before we shoot something, or I have a personal conversation about them on the day and we change something.

I don’t want to throw it at people. I want people to almost forget the text because they know it so well. They need that time to learn it and forget it, and then do it. You know what I mean? There’s this intuitive way of dealing with text that I idealize in directing with actors. What I would say is that you’re absolutely right. You could change them out, swap them out.

There’s always a discussion on this. How do we do the numeric system? By the time we shoot, I also have floor plans. I do a lot of pre-production. I actually do a big production. I have floor plans for everything. I have new sides that we might have refined and all that stuff. The screenplay itself is just one of the tools that we have at our disposal as a blueprint.

John: In the course of the film, Gustav says, like, oh, here’s the English and the Norwegian versions of the script. It says Norwegian. Gustav’s character is natively Swedish, but he’s working in Norwegian. For you as a filmmaker, when do you actually make the English version of a script?

Joachim: We do it early on for financing to get all our wonderful partners to remember just without going into that whole thing. This is the co-production between the UK, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. Then we also have a wonderful Neon, the American distributor who supported it from before it was even finished as a piece of writing. We have a lot of people coming in and want them all to read and talk to them about what we’re doing.

English matters for a lot of these languages. We also do a French translation, which we work on a lot, English, French, and Norwegian versions. In the Norwegian screenplay, there was also for Elle important that she could read it in English. In the Norwegian screenplay, all of the English dialogue is in English because the film has some English dialogue for Stella and Elle’s characters particularly. There’s never one which is all Norwegian in this case.

John: There’s not a sense that the canonical real version of the movie is the Norwegian screenplay. They’re all equally valid documents for you, or at least the English and the Norwegian?

Joachim: No, the Norwegian one is the real one because it’s the one we shoot with the real Norwegian dialogue that keeps changing and stuff. We don’t always update the international English one. In the case of Elle and Stella and speaking English, that would be equally the original, of course, because they are speaking English in the actual film.

John: Joachim, thank you so much for talking about the screenplay and for writing such a great screenplay and directing such a great movie. It’s an absolute pleasure talking with you.

Joachim: Thank you for having me. This was fun.

John: Thank you.

Links:

• Sentimental Value | Screenplay
• Joachim Trier
• Notorious (1946)
• The Lindy Effect
• Chris Ware
• Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
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